Rating: 
Summary: unreadable garbage
Review: Although, according to Wittgenstein, the world "divides into facts" (1.2), its constituent facts are "atomic" in the etymological sense of being indivisible. An atomic fact, which expresses a combination of objects, determines what is the case, and, conversely, what is not the case. In the system elucidated in the Tractatus, relations, and the expressions of them in language, become the structure that prevents the world from existing merely as a heap of objects. Although objects contribute to the constitution of atomic facts, atomic facts are irreducible to their constituent objects. The fact is the things in their relations, which does not produce a third thing-Object A in relation to Object B, producing Fact F-but rather completes the meaning, the truth of the proposition.Wittgenstein considers language to be already entirely bound up in the world, which is precisely the reason he is suspicious of its purported ability to express meaning. A true proposition creates a word picture because it describes what is actually the case, i.e., objects in their relations. This picture is, then, "a model of reality" (2.12), because "[t]o the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture" (2.13). As a thing in the world, however, the picture presents an interesting problem; it cannot describe it relation to the objects it depicts: "The picture [...] cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth" (4.1). The picture, as an object, brings itself in to relation to other objects, most relevantly those objects it depicts, and thus becomes part of the set of relations that need to be fully described in order to bring the atomic fact of those relations into completion. To integrate it into the set of relations would require a second picture that would depict the first picture in relation to the objects it depicts as a set of relations. This second picture, however, also stands in relation to its objects, which includes the first picture and the objects it depicts, and, at this incomplete stage, appears to stand outside this set of relations as a fourth thing, needing a third picture to describe fully the second picture's contribution to a state of affairs. One thus sets in motion an infinite regress. If, in her use of language, an individual constantly creates word pictures to describe states of affairs, then these word pictures always remain incomplete because they exclude from their descriptions their own relationship, as well as the speaker's relationship, to the set of objects. The set described remains an incomplete set, always lacking a crucial element necessary to the truth of these relations. In order to achieve a perspective in which one could completely describe all sets of relations, one would have to stand outside the world. To stand outside the world, however, means that one would effectively be denied the very objects one wants to elucidate and understand fully. According to Wittgenstein, this supramundane perspective is the appropriate domain of philosophy: "The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said [...] and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions" (6.53). Though an impossible method, it captures the dilemma confronting philosophers: Whither the view from nowhere, the perspectiveless perspective? Incapable of ever reaching this supramundane perspective, philosophy is confronted with its own limitations. It is brought into relation with it object and therefore cannot itself fully describe this relation. The ideal philosophy in Wittgenstein's system is really a philosophy of philosophy, a metaphysics of metaphysics. Because philosophical or logical propositions can only show, but not describe their own truth-value, one must simply accept her inability to evaluate the claims of philosophy. This inability leads to a radical democratization of all propositions or word pictures, philosophical or otherwise. In other words, because "[t]he sense of the world must lie outside the world" (6.41), any proposition concerning the world is a factual as any other-hence "[a]ll propositions are of equal value," which means that all propositions are of equally indeterminable. In the Tractatus, language-as-thing becomes subject to the same denegation of value as all things of this world. One can-and I believe that this is the ultimate implication-hold the Tractatus to the findings of its own inquiry. It employs language to demonstrate language's lack of value as a thing in the world, and therefore all of its propositions are of equal value. The work confronts its reader with a system whose content returns the reader to a consideration of its form. By declaring inaccessible the perspective properly occupied by philosophy, if it is to accomplish something other than describing, the Tractatus elevates intuition over logic, the latter of which conforming to inexpressible, indeterminable values. Intuition, on the other hand, is non-forensic, immediate, immanent to the thinking, perceiving subject, the monad of consciousness that "does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world" (5.632), who is unlocable among the states of affairs of all that is the case: "Where in the world is the metaphysical subject to be noted?" (5.633). Because she cannot be found in the world, she inhabits the same realm as ethics, which, according to Wittgenstein, "cannot be expressed" because "transcendental" (6.421). Following this statement, Wittgenstein claims, parenthetically, that "[e]thics and aesthetics are one" (6.421), which indicates to us that the proper place of philosophy, that ineffable place outside the world, is already occupied by the subject, ethics and aesthetics. The subject, the limit of the world who is nonetheless brought into relation to world by life-"The world and life are one" (5.621)-brings ethics and aesthetics into relation with the world solely by her speech and actions. In this manner she shows what she cannot express. Ethics and aesthetics reveal themselves in her words and deeds, but no true principles can be deduced from them.
Rating: 
Summary: A Work of Austere but Affecting Beauty
Review: Although, according to Wittgenstein, the world "divides into facts" (1.2), its constituent facts are "atomic" in the etymological sense of being indivisible. An atomic fact, which expresses a combination of objects, determines what is the case, and, conversely, what is not the case. In the system elucidated in the Tractatus, relations, and the expressions of them in language, become the structure that prevents the world from existing merely as a heap of objects. Although objects contribute to the constitution of atomic facts, atomic facts are irreducible to their constituent objects. The fact is the things in their relations, which does not produce a third thing-Object A in relation to Object B, producing Fact F-but rather completes the meaning, the truth of the proposition. Wittgenstein considers language to be already entirely bound up in the world, which is precisely the reason he is suspicious of its purported ability to express meaning. A true proposition creates a word picture because it describes what is actually the case, i.e., objects in their relations. This picture is, then, "a model of reality" (2.12), because "[t]o the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture" (2.13). As a thing in the world, however, the picture presents an interesting problem; it cannot describe it relation to the objects it depicts: "The picture [...] cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth" (4.1). The picture, as an object, brings itself in to relation to other objects, most relevantly those objects it depicts, and thus becomes part of the set of relations that need to be fully described in order to bring the atomic fact of those relations into completion. To integrate it into the set of relations would require a second picture that would depict the first picture in relation to the objects it depicts as a set of relations. This second picture, however, also stands in relation to its objects, which includes the first picture and the objects it depicts, and, at this incomplete stage, appears to stand outside this set of relations as a fourth thing, needing a third picture to describe fully the second picture's contribution to a state of affairs. One thus sets in motion an infinite regress. If, in her use of language, an individual constantly creates word pictures to describe states of affairs, then these word pictures always remain incomplete because they exclude from their descriptions their own relationship, as well as the speaker's relationship, to the set of objects. The set described remains an incomplete set, always lacking a crucial element necessary to the truth of these relations. In order to achieve a perspective in which one could completely describe all sets of relations, one would have to stand outside the world. To stand outside the world, however, means that one would effectively be denied the very objects one wants to elucidate and understand fully. According to Wittgenstein, this supramundane perspective is the appropriate domain of philosophy: "The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said [...] and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions" (6.53). Though an impossible method, it captures the dilemma confronting philosophers: Whither the view from nowhere, the perspectiveless perspective? Incapable of ever reaching this supramundane perspective, philosophy is confronted with its own limitations. It is brought into relation with it object and therefore cannot itself fully describe this relation. The ideal philosophy in Wittgenstein's system is really a philosophy of philosophy, a metaphysics of metaphysics. Because philosophical or logical propositions can only show, but not describe their own truth-value, one must simply accept her inability to evaluate the claims of philosophy. This inability leads to a radical democratization of all propositions or word pictures, philosophical or otherwise. In other words, because "[t]he sense of the world must lie outside the world" (6.41), any proposition concerning the world is a factual as any other-hence "[a]ll propositions are of equal value," which means that all propositions are of equally indeterminable. In the Tractatus, language-as-thing becomes subject to the same denegation of value as all things of this world. One can-and I believe that this is the ultimate implication-hold the Tractatus to the findings of its own inquiry. It employs language to demonstrate language's lack of value as a thing in the world, and therefore all of its propositions are of equal value. The work confronts its reader with a system whose content returns the reader to a consideration of its form. By declaring inaccessible the perspective properly occupied by philosophy, if it is to accomplish something other than describing, the Tractatus elevates intuition over logic, the latter of which conforming to inexpressible, indeterminable values. Intuition, on the other hand, is non-forensic, immediate, immanent to the thinking, perceiving subject, the monad of consciousness that "does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world" (5.632), who is unlocable among the states of affairs of all that is the case: "Where in the world is the metaphysical subject to be noted?" (5.633). Because she cannot be found in the world, she inhabits the same realm as ethics, which, according to Wittgenstein, "cannot be expressed" because "transcendental" (6.421). Following this statement, Wittgenstein claims, parenthetically, that "[e]thics and aesthetics are one" (6.421), which indicates to us that the proper place of philosophy, that ineffable place outside the world, is already occupied by the subject, ethics and aesthetics. The subject, the limit of the world who is nonetheless brought into relation to world by life-"The world and life are one" (5.621)-brings ethics and aesthetics into relation with the world solely by her speech and actions. In this manner she shows what she cannot express. Ethics and aesthetics reveal themselves in her words and deeds, but no true principles can be deduced from them.
Rating:
Summary: unreadable garbage
Review: An example of the bandwagon effect. Russell thought he was really smart, got him published, some other influential people decided to listen, then this nonsensical claptrap becomes a classic. Even Wittgenstein later realized it was garbage. But you can pretend to be smart by reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Its influence continues
Review: Considering its status in philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence, it is amazing that Wittgenstein could not find a publisher for this book. It took the efforts of Bertrand Russell, his teacher, to get it into publication, and Russell writes the introduction to this edition. The book will no doubt continue to be read and scrutinized in the 21st century, and its utility as a philosophy will be debated intensely. The book has been viewed by some to be the "foundations" of artificial intelligence. Whether such a opinion is justified is a matter of debate, indeed, it is debatable whether artificial intelligence, or any field of endeavor, needs any philosophical foundations at all. That philosophy is a foundation for all human knowledge has been held by many as an axiom, and this author to a large extent is one of these. But Wittgenstein's view of this foundation is not as comprehensive as some schools of philosophy. For him, the role of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts, and philosophy should not be thought of as an independent theory but an activity. If one is to write a philosophical treatise, then it should consist, in Wittgenstein's view, of a collection of "elucidations". Even more interesting is Wittgenstein's view of philosophy in relation to natural science. His view could be described as saying that philosophy is a kind of "side constraint" on the what he called "the disputable sphere of natural science." The author does not give explicit examples of this, and therefore his claims here should be viewed with some skepticism. But Wittgenstein is not the only philosopher to make these kinds of assertions about philosophy and science. The problem though is that despite the dogmatic insistence of some philosophers, the efficacy of philosophy in providing clarification to scientific issues has not been documented in any kind of detail. As a school of thought, logical empiricism and the positivistic trends it motivated, are perhaps the closest to what one might call a "common sense" philosophy. It shifted the emphasis on the intrinsic meaning of concepts to how concepts "do their jobs". Since concepts are phrased in language, then it is natural to assume that language should take on special, if not predominant, emphasis in philosophy. Philosophy as a "language game" is thus the main point of this book, and of course is the legacy of its author. The influence of this book continues, not so much in philosophy, and even less in physical science, but definitely in the field of artificial intelligence: the syntax and semantics of the languages used by the machines to think and to communicate with each other and their human tutors.
Rating:
Summary: An Opus of True Philosophical Genius
Review: Contrary to what two certain reviewers have said about this book, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is one of the most underrated books of philosophy. Wittgenstein possessed a tremendous amount of genius. No one else before him ultimately realized the connection between reality and language. This book, albeit hard to get through for those without some grounding in symbolic logic, confronts the limitations of language and dutifully recognizes this fact. It is not sheer nonsense, as some pseudo-intellectual thinkers would have you believe. They are simply unwilling to admit some of the holes in their own supermarket philosophies yet have the audacity to challenge analytical geniuses that blow their pathetic minds off the face of the earth. READ and THINK before you criticize. I am only a teenager, but I obviously can reason myriads better than some wannabe intellectuals who deem they are the smartest people under the face of the sun. Read this book, only if you wish to be mentally stimulated. Otherwise, don't bother.
Rating: 
Summary: a dead philosophy
Review: I am a bit surprised at the positive reviews of this book. Obviously, it has a strong historical importance and as such it should be recognized. But it is a stupid, dead philosophy, as Wittgenstein himself later realized. Now, don't get me wrong, there are details (like stipulation), perhaps many details, that Wittgenstein held onto, but the whole was thrown away and considered "blind." Thus, when I see reviewers having positive things to say about the big picture (A pun!) of early Wittgenstein, I can't help but think they are very confused or ignorent of the larger whole of Wittgenstein's authorship.
Thus, I will say this is an important book. But it is a stepping stone to the later Wittgenstein which is much better philosophy and (heaven forbid!) even phenomenology. Do not just read this book and think it is right. Please read Wittgenstein's own deconstruction of the Tractatus, I mean the Philosophical Investigations.
Rating:
Summary: Of That Which I Cannot Speak . . .
Review: I must remain silent. I often feel this way about my girlfriend's cooking. Wittgenstein's probably the most misunderstood 20th century philosopher (which he fully realized was inherent to the Tractatus [i.e., he realized no one can understand what it is he has to say; that is, and isn't, the point]) there is and the Tractatus is one reason why. Bertrand Russell wasn't even fully aware of this, which is evident from his (elucidating) introduction. However, if you read this book and understand it you will have achieved a level of understanding (perhaps of genius caliber) for which Wittgenstein fully realized no one was capable. Therefore read it if only to find out that you are a genius. As for me, I'm gonna ask my girlfriend if I can cook tonight.
Rating:
Summary: Logic and Mysticism
Review: I read this book in college and loved it. It's beautiful, but you have to know a bit about symbolic logic to appreciate it. The last few pages are really elegant. He writes of ethics: "the world of an evil man must be different than the world of good man." And of mysticism that "the fact that the world exists, that is the mystical." Wittgenstein's mysticism can be summed up like this. The word "hornet" connects somehow with the real insect, but, when I try to explain what the connection is, I am left with nonsense--this is the mystic--it is how the world is "this is the mystical." He writes only a few lines about God, but I think he acomplishes more than most writers on this subject, since, as he points out in his "motto": "All that a man knows can be said in three words."
Rating:
Summary: Logic and Mysticism
Review: I read this book in college and loved it. It's beautiful, but you have to know a bit about symbolic logic to appreciate it. The last few pages are really elegant. He writes of ethics: "the world of an evil man must be different than the world of good man." And of mysticism that "the fact that the world exists, that is the mystical." Wittgenstein's mysticism can be summed up like this. The word "hornet" connects somehow with the real insect, but, when I try to explain what the connection is, I am left with nonsense--this is the mystic--it is how the world is "this is the mystical." He writes only a few lines about God, but I think he acomplishes more than most writers on this subject, since, as he points out in his "motto": "All that a man knows can be said in three words."
Rating: 
Summary: A bit slow
Review: I was hoping for a more exciting denouement, and I must say I did not find the main character compelling. I recommend "The South Beach Diet."
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