James C. Klagge
Tractatus in Context
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is one of the most important philosophical works of the Twentieth Century, yet it is brief and offers little orientation for the reader. This causes two problems: The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and often leaves off reading in frustration after a few pages. The scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. This paper recounts selected material from my forthcoming book Tractatus in Context. While the book includes familiar material from Wittgenstein’s notebooks and letters, the paper will focus on lesser-known material such as untranslated correspondence and notebook entries, later lectures and dictations, notes from Ramsey, and previously unknown reviews. Some of the topics to be examined are: simple objects, atomic facts and elementary propositions, limits and boundaries, the N operator, superstition, belief statements, the shape of the visual field, living in the present, and silence. In addition, I’ll discuss the original publication of the Tractatus and the so-called resolute reading. Given the occasion, I’ll also focus on some ways in which conversations with the Vienna Circle help illuminate obscure passages in the Tractatus.
James C. Klagge is Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech and the author of Wittgenstein in Exile (MIT Press, 2011), Simply Wittgenstein (Simply Charly, 2016), Wittgenstein’s Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry (MIT Press, 2021) and Tractatus in Context: The Essential Background for Appreciating Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (Routledge, 2021). He is coeditor with Alfred Nordmann of two collections of Wittgenstein's writings, Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951 (Hackett, 1993) and Public and Private Occasions (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and editor of the essay collection Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001). His next project is editing Wasfi Hijab’s book manuscript “Philosophy Revisited: A Personal Exposition of Wittgenstein.”