Rating: 
Summary: Throwing away the ladder
Review: Much that has been written about Wittgenstein has been wildly irrelevent. I would ignore commentaries and concentrate on the fact that Wittgenstein himself calls the propositions in the book nonsense - no doctrines are given only the idea that we are prey to philosophical confusion. The Tractatus in engaged in what it calls "elucidation" - an activity of showing disguised nonsense (what we think make sense) to be in fact plain old nonsense. How - by offering us nonsense we believe we can make sense of and then trying to show us that it is nonsense.Definitive reading, to understand Wittgenstein is to realise the book teaches us nothing except about ourselves. When read in this light the later Philosophical Investigations become not a refutation of this work but rather a different view of how elucidation can be used in a philosophical work. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: logic instead of metaphysic
Review: Since the beginning, man is searching for a tool to perfect his thoughts. Of course, the greeks are unsurpassable for they have dwelved in the mind as nobody else ever could possibly have. Logic has been discovered by them. Illogism surmounted. But, still remain the search for knowledge of the inner as matter is. Mysticism remained the only solution.Wittgenstein taught the supremacy of logic. It's incapability of being revealed, but going one step futher than Thaetetis, described the way to achieved it. Simply because it can be showed.Learn its foundation and everything that can be said, will be said clearly. Logic shows itself. The mystical lies in the sentiment that the world is a universe.But we know that it is an infinity. From now on, the prolific search has begun.It is one step futher than when the materialistic view had erupted. Only remained to establish the foundation of mathematic. Wittgenstein has done it as Nietzsche has founded psychology. All this because of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Rating:
Summary: Seminal
Review: That is the only word to describe this book, even if some of the ideas are erroneous. That is not the only basis to judge a book's importance. His work seems to be an expansion of an aphorism found in Nietzsche's All Too Human, that people have always assumed words have an unchanging meaning, or have meaning at all in some cases. Ludwig compares our language to a mirror, which must represent something in reality to be truthful. This is not a rejection of what is thus deemed "mystical," but in fact is more respectful of it, in freeing it from refutations or proofs based in language. Ludwig perhaps states this better in his later work. He also shows that the idea of an absolute is nonsensical, that something must exist in relation to something else; to prove an absolute you would have to find a symbol that would no longer be a symbol. Not every proposition can be based on the criterion of truth or falsehood. This makes all previous philosophy nonsense. The symbols used are used to say something that cannot be said. His style is impressive in its force and simplicity. The book is an eclectic mix of logical proofs and regular prose. Now whether all philosophy is made suspect by Wittgenstein is debatable. There are some philosophies that do not repeat the previous errors of the Platonic tradition, such as existentialism. In any case, the study of language is profoundly shown to be integral to a full study of philosophy. Some knowledge of logic would be helpful, but not absolutely necessary to understand the import of his main ideas.
Rating:
Summary: heavy
Review: the beginning: ambigious, though who could be exactly clear with a philosophy that supposedly corrected all of human thought? using a language that was inept, clarity on the author's behalf must be overlooked. heavy on the logic, have symoblic logic 101 behind you.
Rating:
Summary: Second Most Important Work of Philosophy in 20th Century
Review: The `Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' by Ludwig Wittgenstein is easily the second most important philosophical work of the twentieth century, the most important being Wittgenstein's second major work, the `Philosophical Investigations'. I must have an especially large case of hubris today to pretend that I can criticize such an important and dense work. This very short book is by far the best example of Ezra Pound's statement that the quality of a work (of literature) is based on the amount of meaning the author can pack into the fewest words. Every one of the sparse sentences in this book is pregnant with meaning.
Wittgenstein's influence, unlike the Existentialists such as Nietzsche and Kierkegard is primarily through his influence of other philosophers such as the Vienna circle of the 1920s and Bertrand Russell, who did the introduction to the English translation of the book. So why would a non-philosopher have any interest in reading this book? When I am taught physics, I do not read Newton, Einstein, and Heisenberg. When I am taught German, I don't read Goethe or Rilke, at least not until I start studying German literature. So why do people always read the philosophers' original works when they study philosophy? The answer to this question is probably in an understanding of the nature of philosophical discourse itself, and this is at the root of Wittgenstein's doctrines in both his Tractatus and his Investigations.
One of the primary tasks of modern academic philosophy, the task very much defined by Wittgenstein's works, is to distinguish between various types of discourse. The easiest to understand is statements of fact, most clearly represented by the results of scientific research. As I write these words, it occurs to me that scientific discourse may in fact not be the easiest to understand when you include discussions of the nature of theories and explanation. So, for the purposes of this discussion, lets just use Natural History as the paradigm of factual discourse. This is the sort of thing Charles Darwin did on his voyages on the Beagle. He simply described flora and fauna and suggested new scientific names for newly discovered species.
A really difficult area is talk about art, the study of which is Aesthetics. As aesthetics is not nearly as important as science, few high powered philosophers have spent much time on the subject. Oddly, it is extremely relevant to my writing these little reviews, as I am making aesthetic judgments, even when I am writing about cookbooks, whose subject is pretty objective.
Another clearly defined realm of discourse is morality. The study of this discourse is Ethics. This is largely the study of right behavior and good behavior and the difference between right and good. Without going into details, let me assure you, good reader, that right and wrong are NOT simply what a society says it is.
The wishes of a society are more properly studied by Political Science. We can use a little sounder political science in our popular conversations to help us sort out the properly political issues from those that are more properly Ethical or Religious. While there are pretty good criteria for identifying right from wrong, the absence of such criteria is what characterizes religious discourse and beliefs.
A religious conviction, by its nature, is pure and simple faith. There are simply no scientific, moral, or even aesthetic criteria that can determine whether Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism is better. A telling fact is that all of these religions make virtually identical moral statements. This is the basis of the great wisdom of our founding fathers when they separated church and state. Politics and Religion simply do not mix. This is not to say that people with strong religious beliefs will not tend to hold certain political beliefs such as the wrongness of abortion. The problem is that they cannot use religious statements to support the political position that leads to laws against abortion. They can use other arguments, but saying that God believes in the rights of the fetus simply doesn't cut the mustard. This is a philosophical finding determined by analysis, not observation or reference to sacred documents.
As an aside, it is important to note that there is an enormous amount of philosophical method which can and should be taught to non-philosophers in college and even in high school. Starting with Aristotle, the workhorse of philosophical discourse has been logic. In most colleges, the Philosophy faculty, not the Mathematics faculty, teaches Logic. Detecting inconsistencies is the bread and butter of philosophical analysis.
Analysis of language is the kind of thing Wittgenstein taught two generations of philosophers to do with his two great works. Oddly enough, while the Tractatus is purely a work of some of the most insightful philosophy done in the Western tradition, the similarity between its findings and some of the tenants of Zen Buddhism is striking. It was the study of this connection that helped get me into a Ph.D. program in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. This apparent similarity is another important reason to make the effort to read this book.
One can easily be struck by the great difference in the doctrines of the Tractatus and the Investigations, written about 25 years later while Wittgenstein was a professor of philosophy at Cambridge. And yet, Wittgenstein himself said that next to the Investigations, the `picture' of language described in the Tractatus is a reasonable `next best' theory. In fact, even though I have been out of touch with philosophy of science for several decades, I would not be one bit surprised if contemporary philosophers of science and mathematics were not still going to the Tractatus and other Wittgenstein writings from the 1920s to look for inspiration. Unfortunately, the Tractatus is just too lean to provide tools to analyze Moral, Aesthetic, Political, and Religious discourse.
This book is too short and too important for an educated person not to at least take a crack at understanding its insights.
Rating:
Summary: A "must-read".
Review: This book is one of the highly recommended reads for anyone interested in basic philosophy, language, information theory and philosophy of science. Also you should check "Philosophical Investigations" by the same author. I am interested in philosophy of science, and although Tractatus does not aim this subject primarily, I have experienced that this book is a preliminiary read for anyone interested in that branch of philosophy.
Ozgur Kurtulus (ozgur@tubitak.gov.tr)
Rating:
Summary: Critique of modern logic forshadowning concepts of OO design
Review: This is a primer of sorts for understanding modern logic; his book is a reply of sorts to some of Russell's thoughts, so it helps to have that context. It helps to have both the German & English text if you can read German. Each proposal is followed by some supporting detail. Its paced a bit like a journal, and has a curiously personal air that I found attractive for a book of this sort.
Rating:
Summary: Not a book to be read
Review: This is a very strange book. It is also very beautiful. Logic, ethics, and everything spanned by these two subjects is covered. But the book itself isn't important. See the penultimate proposition: all the previous propositions are nonsense--a "ladder" intended to help you "climb out of the hole" of philosophical misunderstanding. Once this is done the ladder can be thrown away. (I recommend keeping your copy, just in case you fall in the hole again). The final proposition, therefore the only nonsensical one, is Proposition 7: Whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent.
Rating:
Summary: Explication of the propositional calculus.
Review: Those not familiar with the proprositional calculus may not like the symbolic logic involved, but it is worth understanding because it is quite simple and makes the rest of the text very easily understandable. Wittgenstein's most important terms like 'elementary proposition' come essentially from viewing natural languages as an imperfect version of the propositional calculus. This idea is quite wrong, in fact even Wittgenstein himself was struck by his own naivety in believing that all language did was put forward propositions capable of truth or falsity. His later view that to understand language you must look at it, seems blindingly obvious, but he was just reacting to the general view of the logical positivist who only saw meaning in propositions capable of truth or falsity, which does not in any way match up with how we actually use language in everyday life. The idea of "pictoral form", a mysterious connection between the object relations of the real world, and the grammatical structure of the sentence is a beautiful and impressive idea, but lacks any real grounding in fact. Many would disagree, but I say ignore the numbered paragraphs and just read it through, Wittgenstein was just using a technique he learnt from engineering textbooks, and the structure doesn't help understanding. Many people will be frustrated by the lack of argument, and its almost biblical tone, but trust me, anyone familiar with Wittgenstein's life will know that he thought over these problems for a long time. Philosophical Investigations is a more important work, but shares nearly all the concerns of the Tractacus. Read the section in the Investigations on broomsticks and logical atomism, it will show the bankruptcy and arbitraryness of atomism in linguistic practise.
Rating: 
Summary: Semi-Successful in its Domain; NOT for the Faint of Heart
Review: Tracatus is the only book Wittgenstein published during his life. He was an odd man, with an odd lifestyle, and he published it with the idea that it would be the "book to end all books" philosophically.
Ironically, in his later years he denounced the book and called himself naive for writing it.
On the below review: Tractatus focuses on an empirical ontology. Where the review below goes wrong is the assumption that Wittgenstein is denouncing all non-objective and materialistic reality. The final line in the book (which is probably the books most poignant, and oft-quoted line) is "What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." demonstrates Wittgenstein is aware of the context that he's covering: the empirical, and objective realm of sensorimotor and rational experience. Wittgenstein was quite the mystic (to the horrors of Bertrand Russell), so one cannot be polemic towards his implied intentions; Wittgenstein was simply attempting to comprehensively cover the only realm in which he felt was capable of being written about: the objective realm.
It is under this context the book must be appropriately reviewed. The following paragraph will review the book within those parameters.
The book is quite thorough. It is a mere 90 pages or so, but every statement is concise, to-the-point, and unwavering in its objective quantification and observation of reality. It is laid out like an old mathematical textbook with decimal numbers annotating each statement in relation to every other statement. Thorough it is, but the book also requires a great deal of effort. Wittgenstein assigns a seemingly endless list of nouns to vague and ambiguous ideas (i.e., fact, thought, picture, proposition, internal property, composite name, sign, etc.) This may be a problem you just have to read the book to understand. When he states something like: "An elementary proposition consists of a nexus of names," where he's previously assigned arbitrary values to "proposition," "nexus," and "name,"--which have been defined by even MORE arbitrary terms--things get very garbled and inconceivable about 1/3 of the way through. It's almost too concise and blunt for its own good, as Wittgenstein offers NO examples, contexts, pretenses, or elaborations... at all!
The book accomplishes what it sets out to do, albeit in an inefficient manner. But honestly, I found the 600-page "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," by Locke to take less effort and to be more comprehensive and effective than the 90-page Tractatus.
Some people swear by this book though, and I suppose it comes down to what kind of thinker you are. If you are a very logical thinker that is willing to sit down and digest every sentence for 5 minutes, then you might get something out of this book. This NOT a book that is meant to have a page turned more than every 10 minutes.
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