Review by dngoldman - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: A New Translation

dngoldman 's review for:

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: A New Translation by Ludwig Wittgenstein

4.5

challenging dark funny reflective

Rarely have I enjoyed so much a work that I understood so little of.

Wittgenstein himself does the best job of summarizing the essay’s purpose:

“The aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather—not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).”

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most influential philosophical texts of the 20th century. Its impact extends far beyond philosophy—touching mathematics, linguistics, and even the social sciences. Yet it is also a literary masterpiece in its own right. Its unique structure and austere, precise language make it a singular work—a kind of philosophical poem. Damion Searls translation is excellent - clear and non-stuffy like the early efforts. His introduction is well worth reading on its own for the difference between German and English.

Even though I didn’t understand many of the arguments, I was carried away by the presentation. I’m glad I persisted. Because I struggled with parts of it, I relied on several secondary sources. This review is, in part, a pastiche of those works, rearranged to fit my understanding. I want to give particular credit to Johanna Schakenr’s Living in Silence: The End of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Lecture on Ethics, which greatly aided my comprehension. Much of Professor Schakenr’s work is paraphrased here.

The Seven Propositions

Wittgenstein delves into how we derive meaning from words and propositions, and what this process reveals about the limits of language and logic. The Tractatus is divided into seven main propositions, the seventh consisting of only a single sentence. They are:

“The world is all that is the case.”
“What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs.”
“A logical picture of facts is a thought.”
“A thought is a proposition with a sense.”
“A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)”
In section six, Wittgenstein gives the general form of a truth-function.
“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

As these statements suggest, Wittgenstein’s aim goes beyond language for its own sake. His goal is to end the pseudo-problems that have plagued philosophy. Language, for him, operates by creating pictures of the world—or, as he calls it, “states of affairs.” Every meaningful proposition can, in principle, be reduced to its essential parts: names that correspond directly to elements of reality.

Thus, a proposition is meaningful only if it can, at least in theory, be verifiable by deciding whether it is true or false by comparing it to facts in the world. In this sense, propositions mirror reality; they have a one-to-one correspondence with facts. Meaning in the Tractatus is a kind of “pointing to”: propositions point to facts, and the names within propositions point to objects—the smallest constituents of facts (4.221). Elementary propositions, in turn, are composed of names (4.22). If an elementary proposition is true, then the corresponding state of affairs exists; if it is false, the state of affairs does not (4.25). The truth or falsity of these propositions depends on the world, which is made up of facts. In principle, if one could list all true propositions, one would have a complete description of the world.

Sense, Senselessness, and Nonsense

If language is an image of the world, then the terms sense, senseless, and nonsense describe how language operates. Within the boundaries of language—that is, when we make propositions about facts—we speak with sense.

When we attempt to speak beyond thelimits of language itself, our statements become senseless: they lack empirical content but still reveal something important. Logical propositions, for example, are senseless in this way—they “say nothing” about the world, even if they are true. (6.11). Yet, they are not nonsensical, for they show “the formal logical properties of language and the world,” i.e., the limits of both (6.12).

Wittgenstein’s view of logic drives him to assert a deep connection between thought (proposition) and reality (state of affairs). For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, there exists an a priori order in the world—an inherent logical structure reflected in language itself. “The great problem round which everything that I write turns is: Is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in?” (Notebooks, p. 53)

The Gramophone Analogy

In one illuminating analogy, Wittgenstein compares language and reality to a gramophone record, a musical score, and the sound waves produced when the music is played. Though these seem different, they all share the same logical structure—a “relation of depicting.” The symphony, the grooves on the record, and the written notes are connected by a general rule that allows one to correspond to the others (4.0141). Whether these rules are purely logical or analogous to physical laws of mechanics is uncertain, but in either case, they represent the underlying structure that ties elementary statements together.

Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Limits of Language

While the Tractatus primarily concerns logic and language, Wittgenstein also gestures toward ethical and aesthetic questions. A proposition about “the world as a whole” can never be meaningful, because it cannot be tied to any specific fact that would make it true or false. Such statements are “metaphysical nonsense.”

We must distinguish nonsense from no sense. Tautologies, for instance, are logically true but tell us nothing about the world—they have “no sense.” Nonsensical propositions, by contrast, are those for which no truth-conditions can be determined. Wittgenstein’s examples include: “the good is more or less identical than the beautiful” (4.003). These are nonsensical because their words have not been assigned a clear sense. As Wittgenstein notes, “We cannot give a sign the wrong sense” (5.4732)—we can only fail to give it one at all.

At times, Wittgenstein hints that ethics and aesthetics transcend the realm of the sayable, pointing toward a deeper, more intuitive dimension of human experience. This invites us to consider how our ethical beliefs and aesthetic judgments shape our understanding of reality—even when they resist expression in language. In an age of digital communication and social media, Wittgenstein’s questions remain strikingly relevant: How do our words shape our world? What are the limits of our expression in an age of endless information? The Tractatus urges us toward clarity and humility in how we use language.

The Silence - Should Wittgenstein Have Taken His Own Advice?

Elsewhere, Wittgenstein insists that philosophy is not beside the natural sciences but either “above or below” them (4.111). “The totality of true propositions,” he writes, “is the whole of natural science” (4.11). For him, the only genuine facts are those of the world; metaphysical “facts” do not exist. When someone tries to say something metaphysical, Wittgenstein would show—through the picture and truth-function theories—that they have said nothing at all. They have gone beyond the boundaries of the world, and thus beyond language itself. Hence his famous conclusion: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (7).

The puzzle, of course, is that the Tractatus begins and ends with statements that, by its own standards, would seem to be nonsense—or at least “no sense.” What are we to make of this? Is Wittgenstein simply urging us to understand the limits of language? Or is he rejecting all metaphysical statements, even as he makes them? I’ve read several attempted answers, but the most fitting, perhaps, is that it cannot be answered at all.

Closing Reflection

As I said at the beginning, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Tractatus—perhaps precisely because of its difficulties and enigmas. Its writing has a tone all its own: stern yet playful, rigorous yet poetic. It has forced me to think more rigorously about my own philosophical and ethical conclusions. And though I may never fully “understand” it, I’m convinced that Wittgenstein succeeded in doing what few philosophers ever have—showing us both the power and the limits of language.