The Philosophy Book

248

philosophical tradition that stems

from the 18th-century German

philosopher Immanuel Kant. In

The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant

set out to explore the limits of

knowledge by posing questions

such as “What can I know?” and

“What things will lie forever outside

of human understanding?” One

reason that Kant asked such

questions was that he believed

many problems in philosophy arose

because we fail to recognize the

limitations of human understanding.

By turning our attention back onto

ourselves and asking about the

necessary limits of our knowledge,

we can then either resolve, or even

perhaps dissolve, nearly all of the

philosophical problems of the past.

The Tractatus tackles the same

kind of task that Kant did, but does

so in a far more radical fashion.

Wittgenstein states that he is

setting out to make clear what can

be meaningfully said. In much the

same way that Kant strives to set

the limits of reason, Wittgenstein

wants to set the limits of language

and, by implication, of all thought.

He does this because he suspects

that a great deal of philosophical

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Philosophy of language

APPROACH

Logic

BEFORE

4th century BCE Aristotle

sets the foundations of logic.

Late 19th century Gottlob

Frege develops the foundations

of modern logic.

Early 20th century Bertrand

Russell develops notation that

translates natural language

into logical propositions.

AFTER

1920s Ideas in the Tractatus

are used by philosophers of the

Vienna Circle, such as Moritz

Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, to

develop Logical Positivism.

From 1930 Wittgenstein

rejects the ideas expressed in

the Tractatus, and begins to

explore very different ways

of viewing language.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

W

ittgenstein’s Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus
is perhaps one of the
most forbidding texts in the history
of 20th-century philosophy. Only
around 70 pages long in its English
translation, the book is made up of
a series of highly condensed and
technical numbered remarks.
In order to appreciate the full
significance of the Tractatus, it
is important to set it within its
philosophical context. The fact
that Wittgenstein is talking about
the “limits” of my language and my
world sets him firmly within the

Language is

made up of propositions:

assertions about things,

which may be trueor false.

The world is

made up of facts:

things are a certain way.

My language is

thereforelimited

to statements of facts

about the world.

Propositions are “pictures”

of facts, in the same way that

maps are pictures of the world.

Any proposition that

doesnotpicture facts

is meaningless—for

example “killing is bad.”

The limits of my language

are the limits of my world.