The problem with this is that in order to demonstrate this, one would have to stand outside of language and, as Wittgenstein argues, such a perspective is simply not available to us. how, as one eminent scholar put it, language and the world can be ‘nailed’ together. One has, in other words, to demonstrate how a ‘fit’ occurs between propositions and the world, i.e. Fundamentally, the issue that must be broached for any representational theory to be persuasive is the question of how language and the world are conjoined.

From the fact that Wittgenstein went on to abandon this view of language in his later writings it is clear that it has many problems. The Tractatusends with Wittgenstein telling us that the work itself should be treated like a ‘ladder’: once one has climbed this ladder it is best to cast it to one side.Ī key problem that the Tractatus aims to address is the issue of how it is possible for language to represent reality. Thus, what the Tractatusargues is, taken in rigorous terms, nonsense, for what the text is telling us about cannot strictly be said at all. Famously, he tells us that the limits of our language constitute the limits of our world. To put it another way, Wittgenstein claims it is impossible to stand ‘outside’ language, since language makes our world what it is. But since this structure makes meaningful talk possible it cannot actually be referred to in language. In other words, the logical structure that language and the world share in common shows itself to us by way of the representational function of language. According to this distinction, what can be shown cannot be said. This admission takes the form of the ‘showing’ and ‘saying’ distinction. Given that the aim of the Tractatus is to talk about the logical form of language, which grounds the possibility of its representational function and hence meaning, Wittgenstein is driven to admitting that it is strictly speaking impossible to talk about language in the way he is.

Since all other propositions can be understood in terms of them, it follows that all propositions are functionally dependent upon the truth-values expressed in atomic propositions. Since all atomic propositions refer to the world they have a truth-value, i.e. When we assert complex propositions, Wittgenstein says, we are effectively combining various components of language in such a way that any proposition refers back to the fundamentally representational function that all atomic propositions share in common. This structure is referred to as ‘logical form’. Both language and the world are held to share a common structure. Language, in other words, is fundamentally a medium that mirrors the world. It is these propositions that are regarded by Wittgenstein as picturing reality. Language reflects this, in so far as it contains basic propositions that are likewise irreducible - ‘atomic propositions’. An atomic fact cannot be analysed down into constituent parts and is not dependent upon the existence of any other atomic fact.

There are, Wittgenstein holds, fundamental facts or ‘atomic facts’. The world, or reality, it is argued, is nothing more than the totality of’facts’ that can be asserted about it. Language is viewed by Wittgenstein as ‘picturing’ the world, and the aim of the text is to point out what must be true both of language and of the world alike in order for this picturing (representation) to be possible. The Tractatus is a work that concentrates primarily upon elucidating an account of language, which is conceived in terms of its representational function. All of his other writings, including the Philosophical Investigations (1953), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), The Blue and Brown Books (1958) and On Certainty (1969) appeared posthumously. Wittgenstein published only a single work during his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). In 1929 he became a research fellow at Cambridge, and subsequently Professor of Philosophy. Wittgenstein served in the Austrian army during the First World War and subsequently gave up studying philosophy for ten years. In 1912, he went to Cambridge and became a student of one of the founders of the analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) originally studied engineering.

Ludwig wittgenstein gay