Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Published 1921 · 312 pages · 31,896 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to read?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus scores 32 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Logical and philosophical terminology.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Abstraction: 78 out of 100
- Extreme logical and metaphysical abstraction.
- Information density: 68 out of 100
- Every proposition is compressed to maximum density.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- Numbered propositions. Strictly logical.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- Language itself as the central symbol.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- The book says what it claims cannot be said.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The silence at the end is the ultimate withholding.
- Structural complexity: 32 out of 100
- Numbered tree of propositions. Unique structure.
How Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is regarded
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus holds a literary regard score of 73 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism
Placed by a full reading of the text (64 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus scores 88 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.
- Mode: Ironic
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them.
- Symbol: Literal & Descriptive
The proposition is a picture of reality.
- Mythos: Irony and Satire iii (irony iii)
Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless.
- Genre: Anatomy + Confession
The propositions n.1,n.2, n.3, etc., are comments on proposition No. n; the propositions n.m1, n.m2, etc., are comments on the proposition No. n.m; and so on.
Where the story of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus takes place
- Logical space: an argument with no narrative setting, the main setting
5 things that are true of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, with the passage for each
The numbered argument opens with the one-sentence proposition that the world is everything that is the case.
The world is everything that is the case.
The preface says the author believes the problems of philosophy have been finally solved.
I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved.
The last numbered proposition, number 7, is a single sentence urging silence.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Wittgenstein tells the reader to throw away the ladder of his propositions after climbing it.
He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.
A footnote explains that the decimal numbering marks the logical importance of each proposition.
The decimal figures as numbers of the separate propositions indicate the logical importance of the propositions, the emphasis laid upon them in my exposition.
Scenes in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that Frye would name
6 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:
- Anagnorisis, untitled
he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them.
The reader's pivotal recognition is that the propositions themselves were nonsense.- Point of epiphany, untitled
He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.
The ladder is a ascent-image where the saying ends and the seeing of the world 'rightly' begins.- Anatomy, untitled
(T T T F) (p, q) in words: p or q. [pvq]
The exhaustive catalogue of all sixteen truth-functions is the anatomy's encyclopedic list.- Anatomy, untitled
The propositions n.1,n.2, n.3, etc., are comments on proposition No. n
The decimal tree of commentary, plus the appended index, is the form of an encyclopedic systematic work.- Confession, untitled
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
The first-person identification of self and world is the book's introverted, confessional moment.- Apocalyptic imagery, untitled
The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole.
The mystical vision of the whole world is the book's nearest approach to an apocalyptic image.
Books that share these scenes with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Anagnorisis: Jane Eyre, The Reader, The Wasp Factory
- Confession: The Color Purple, The Door, Lolita
- Anatomy: Waiting for Godot, Don Quixote, 1984
- Point of epiphany: King James Bible, The Wind in the Willows, The Idiot
- Apocalyptic imagery: Jane Eyre, King James Bible, Howl and Other Poems