Thursday, July 27, 2006

Tractatus Logico Philosophicus : Ludwig Wittgenstein









Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is one of the most remarkable book I ever came across. For me, this book depicts the very insight of a human being and intelligence. But if I am truly asked I would say that there is nothing unusual in this book other than one sentence with which Wittegenstein ends his book Whereof, one cannot speak thereof, one must be silent or I would simplify it That which cannot be spoken about must be passed over in silence.

This contribution to the new readings of the early Wittgenstein presents in detail how one might read the Tractatus as a sustained attack on Frege's and Russell's philosophical and logical conceptions while at the same time presuming Wittgenstein to have always been in some sense a "late Wittgensteinian," that is, already embarked on the therapeutic task of setting down "the way of release" from philosophical confusion and "ensnarement of thought" (1). Taking seriously the passage in the Tractatus (6.54) in which Wittgenstein assesses his "elucidations" as "nonsensical," Ostrow places himself among those readers who infer that straightforward theory-making was not Wittgenstein's aim, but differs from them in his original and challenging account of how the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense.

This book, I love a lot.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

unlike human beings, the books we love almost always love us back: we live inside them as much as they live inside us. it's almost as if they need us- our bodies, our minds, our souls- to transform the world we inhabit to their imaginings. given the anthology presented here, i find amit's world both fascinating and terrifying; a world that exists somewhere between this world and the one beyond; a world in which each challenge must necessarily evoke a response; a world made alive by the sheer force of free-will; a world in which only gods personified as homo-faber may live. bravo!

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Anonymous said...

I like it! Good job. Go on.
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