No book embodies the analytic tradition of western philosophy more perfectly than Wittgenstein’s early Tractatus. It is based on the assumption, first developed by Frege (1848-1925) and Russell (1872-1970), that the nature of logic, language, mathematics, and a few key concepts, can reveal to us the essential abstract structure of the world. This remains the ‘hard core’ project of analytical philosophy, which has now extended to other areas, such as ethics.
Wittgenstein (1889-1951) saw himself as simultaneously completing this project, and also undermining it. He tried to offer a perfect system in one short book, but also to deflate the status of what he had achieved, by reducing the importance of logic, and drawing strict limits to language (and thus launching the school of logical positivism).
The talk will bravely attempt to give a clear account of this enigmatic text.