Ludwig Wittgenstein: Life, Philosophy, and the Tractatus
Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Life in Philosophy
Early Life and Education
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889, in Vienna. He was the youngest son of a wealthy family of Jewish origin, baptized into Catholicism. Wittgenstein studied at a technical school in Linz, where he received a strong foundation in mathematics and physics. During this time, he experienced personal turmoil, partly due to the suicides of three of his brothers. He abandoned his studies and later enrolled in engineering in Berlin, specializing in aeronautics in 1909. He was greatly influenced by the great philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, which decisively oriented Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
World War I and the Development of His Philosophy
In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Wittgenstein volunteered for the Austrian army. During this time, he developed the theory of figurative language, asserting that language and reality share the same structure. He also affirmed that the truths of ethics and religion are not expressed verbally but through acts of life. He began writing his great work, “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,” which he completed in 1918. Its central thesis is that only through the correct use of language can we say what can be said clearly, and what cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence.
Post-War Years and the Tractatus
After being a prisoner of war and returning to Vienna, Wittgenstein left the chair of philosophy and became a primary school teacher. He renounced his family inheritance to avoid any kind of pressure in his life. A few years later, the “Tractatus” was published in a journal.
Logical Atomism
Logical atomism is a philosophical theory developed by Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein. It intends to reach the simplest elements that compose reality. Applying logical analysis to the world, they concluded that it is composed of facts. In language, each atomic fact corresponds to an atomic sentence. Any proposition can be either true or false:
- True: If the proposition corresponds to reality.
- False: If the proposition does not correspond to reality.
The truth or falsity of a proposition is determined by the fact it expresses. There are also molecular propositions, which result from uniting various atomic propositions. Their truth or falsity depends on the atomic propositions that compose them. Thus, they concluded that the reality of facts can be expressed through natural language and logical language, which can be atomic or molecular.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The “Tractatus” directly addresses what can and cannot be said with sense. Wittgenstein affirms that many problems in philosophy arise from a misunderstanding of language, specifically from a lack of precision.
Theory of Representation
Propositions are pictures of reality; they represent reality to the extent that they can reproduce it. If they cannot, they lack sense. This means that proposition and reality share the same structure. Language has the property of representing reality, and this theory has been called the theory of isometry, linking language and the world. It integrates three fundamental concepts:
- The world is constituted by facts.
- Language is composed of prepositions or statements.
- A logical structure common to both allows correspondence and establishes the relationship between them.
Types of Propositions
Wittgenstein distinguishes three types of propositions:
- Propositions filled with sense: Empirical propositions that exist or may exist in science.
- Propositions empty of sense: These say nothing about the world but only manifest the structure of logic.
- Propositions without sense: These do not refer to any facts but to ideal essences and values. They relate to events that straddle the world and the limits of language. They are true if they can be experienced and lived, but they cannot be stated as part of reality.