“Philosophy,” Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, “should actually be written only as poetry.” That Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—Wittgenstein’s masterwork, and the only book he published during his lifetime—endures as the definitive modern text on the limits of logic, inspiring artists and philosophers alike, comes as no surprise. Consisting of 525 hierarchically numbered declarative statements, each one “self-evident,” Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is imbued, as translator Damion Searls writes, with the kind of “cryptic grandeur” and “awe-inspiring opacity” we might expect—might want—from such an iconic philosopher. Yet previous translations, in their eagerness to replicate German phrasing and syntax, have a stilted, even redolently Victorian air. With this new translation and an important introduction on the language of the book, prefaced by eminent scholar Marjorie Perloff, Searls finally does justice to Wittgenstein’s enigmatic masterpiece, capturing the fluid and forceful language of the original without sacrificing its philosophical rigor—indeed, making Wittgenstein’s philosophy clearer than ever before in English.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had an enormous influence on twentieth-century philosophy even though only one of his works, the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was published in his lifetime. Beyond this publication the impact of his thought was mainly conveyed to a small circle of students through his lectures at Cambridge University. Fortunately, many of his ideas have survived in both the dictations that were subsequently published and the notes taken by his students, among them Alice Ambrose and the late Margaret Macdonald, from 1932 to 1935. These notes, now edited by Professor Ambrose, are here published, and they shed much light on Wittgenstein's philosophical development. Among the topics considered are the meaning of a word and its relation to common usage, rules of grammar and their relation to fact, the grammar of first person statements, language games, and the nature of philosophy. This volume is indispensable to any serious discussion of Wittgenstein's work.

'what can be said at all can be said clearly; and of what one cannot talk, about that one must be silent' Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in German in 1921 and in English translation in 1922, is one of the most influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century. It played a fundamental role in the development of analytic philosophy, and its philosophical ideas and implications have been fiercely debated ever since. This new translation improves on the two main earlier translations, taking advantage of the scholarship over the last century that has deepened our understanding of both the Tractatus and Wittgenstein's philosophy more generally, scholarship that has also involved discussion of the difficulties in translating the original German text and the issues of interpretation that arise. Michael Beaney's translation is accompanied by two introductory essays, the first explaining the background to Wittgenstein's work, its main ideas and their subsequent development and influence, and some of the central debates, and the second providing an account of the history of the text and the two earlier translations. It is accompanied by detailed notes, explaining key points of translation and interpretation, a glossary, chronology, and other editorial material designed to help the reader understand the Tractatus and its place in the history of philosophy.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921, has had a profound influence on modern philosophic thought. Prototractatus is a facsimile reproduction of an early version of Tractatus, only discovered in 1965. The original text has a parallel English translation and the text is edited to indicate all relevant deviations from the final version.

While the published works of Ludwig Wittgenstein reveal the final, coalesced thoughts of this philosophical giant, Wittgenstein's diary reveals his process of doing philosophy. Only in his private writing does Wittgenstein's philosophical practice fully come to light. In particular, Wittgensten's diary entries from the 1930s reveal themselves as a first-person spiritual epic. Wittgenstein agonizes over his relationship with Marguerite Respinger and tries to come to terms with its failure. He relates and interprets several of his dreams. He comments on his philosophical colleagues Frank Ramsey and G.E. Moore. He comments on musicians such as Beethoven, Bruckner and Brahms, and authors such as Kraus, Mann, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard. He struggles to make confessions to a number of friends and family. He relates in painful detail his spiritual crisis in Norway in the late winter of 1937. From a man who once recommended silence about spiritual matters, we find here an honest and searing articulation of his attempts to believe and live what he finds in the Bible. Here are the raw materials for what could have been one of the great spiritual autobiographies of the twentieth century. It is available here for the first time in an affordable edition, with updated and expanded editorial notes to help the reader understand Wittgenstein's many allusions, and with a new Introduction by Ray Monk, which places the diary in the larger arc of Wittgenstein life.

"Major Works" is the finest single-volume anthology of influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's important writings. Featuring the complete texts of "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for 'Philosophical Investigations, '" and "On Certainty," this new collection selects from the early, middle, and later career of this revolutionary thinker, widely recognized as one of the most profound minds of all time.

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 1930s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. C.K. Ogden's translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has a unique provenance. As revealed in Letters of C.K. Ogden (1973) and in correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement, Wittgenstein, Ramsey and Moore all worked with Ogden on the translation, which had Wittgenstein's complete approval. The very name Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was of Ogden's devising; and there is very strong feeling among philosophers that, among the differing translations of this work, Ogden's is the definitive text - and Wittgenstein's version of the English equivalent of his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung.

During the pandemic, Marjorie Perloff, leading scholar of global literature, found her mind ineluctably drawn to the profound commentary on life and death in the wartime diaries of eminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Upon learning that these notebooks, which richly contextualise the early stages of his magnum opus, the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, had never before been published in English, the Viennese-born Perloff determinedly set about translating them. Beginning with the anxious summer of 1914, this historic, en-face edition presents the first-person recollections of a foot soldier in the Austrian Army, fresh from his days as a philosophy student at Cambridge, who must grapple with the hazing of his fellow soldiers, the stirrings of a forbidden sexuality and the formation of an explosive analytical philosophy that seemed to draw meaning from his endless brushes with death. Much like Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief, Private Notebooks takes us on a personal journey to discovery as it augments our knowledge of Wittgenstein himself.

In this 1921 opus, Wittgenstein defined the object of philosophy as the logical clarification of thoughts and proposed the solution to most philosophic problems by means of a critical method of linguistic analysis. Beginning with the principles of symbolism, the author applies his theories to traditional philosophy, examines the logical structure of propositions and the nature of logical inference, and much more. Definitive translation. Introduction by Bertrand Russell.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the greatest and most fascinating philosophers of all time. His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, composed in a series of remarkable numbered propositions, was the only book he published in his lifetime. He tackles nothing less than the question of whether there is such a thing as a logically perfect language and, armed with it, what we can say about the nature of the world itself. Pushing the limits of language, logic and philosophy, the Tractatus is a brilliant, cryptic and hypnotic tour de force, exerting a major impact on twentieth-century philosophy and stirring the imagination today.

With a new foreword by Ray Monk.

'Beautifully strange ... an icy, gnomic, compact work of mystical logic.' - Steven Poole, Guardian

From his return to Cambridge in 1929 to his death in 1951, Wittgenstein influenced philosophy almost exclusively through teaching and discussion. These lecture notes indicate what he considered to be salient features of his thinking in this period of his life.

The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 1930s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. C.K. Ogden's translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has a unique provenance. As revealed in Letters of C.K. Ogden (1973) and in correspondence in The Times Literary Supplement, Wittgenstein, Ramsey and Moore all worked with Ogden on the translation, which had Wittgenstein's complete approval.

In 1931 Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his famous Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough," published posthumously in 1967. At that time, anthropology and philosophy were in close contact - continental thinkers drew heavily on anthropology's theoretical terms, like mana, taboo, and potlatch, in order to help them explore the limits of human belief and imagination. Now the book receives its first translation by an anthropologist, in the hope that it can kickstart a new era of interdisciplinary fertilization. Wittgenstein's remarks on ritual, magic, religion, belief, ceremony, and Frazer's own logical presuppositions are as lucid and thought - provoking now as they were in Wittgenstein's day. Anthropologists find themselves asking many of the same questions as Wittgenstein - and in a reflection of that, this volume is fleshed out with a series of engagements with Wittgenstein's ideas by some of the world's leading anthropologists, including Veena Das, David Graeber, Wendy James, Heonik Kwon, Michael Lambek, Michael Puett, and Carlo Severi.

Peter Winch's translation of Wittgenstein's remarks on culture and value presents all entries chronologically, with the German text alongside the English and a subject index for reference.
"It was Wittgenstein's habit to record his thoughts in sequences of more or less closely related 'remarks' which he kept in notebooks throughout his life. The editor of this collection has gone through these notebooks in order to select those 'remarks' which deal with Wittgenstein's views abou the less technical issues in his philosophy. So here we have Wittgenstein's thoughts about religion, music, architecture, the nature of philosophy, the spirit of our times, genius, being Jewish, and so on. The work is a masterpiece by a mastermind."--Leonard Linsky

An essential resource for students of Wittgenstein, this collection contains faithful, in some cases expanded and corrected, versions of many important pieces never before available in a single volume, including Notes for the 'Philosophical Lecture', published here for the first time. Fifteen selections, with bi-lingual versions of those originally written in German, span the development of Wittgenstein's thought, his range of interests, and his methods of philosophical investigation. Short introductions, an index, and an updated version of Georg Henrik von Wright's The Wittgenstein Papers situate the selections within the broader context of the Wittgenstein corpus and the history of its publication.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a succinct yet wide-ranging exploration of language and logic, science and mysticism, which has inspired generations of thinkers, artists and poets. In a series of short, bold statements, Wittgenstein seeks to define the limits of language, its relation to logic, its power and its inherent failings. Originally published in the early 1920s, it is the only book-length work the renowned philosopher published in his lifetime. In this thrilling new translation, Alexander Booth displays an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtle influence on Wittgenstein's gem-like prose - at once specialist and, often, remarkably plain-spoken - of his background in mechanical engineering, while highlighting the underlying poetry of this seminal text.