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Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  Kyle Ferguson,
Philosophy  Kyle Ferguson  Ludwig Wittgenstein s (1889-1951)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is arguably the most important
text of twentieth-century philosophy. It shook analytic
philosophy to its foundations when published in German in 1921
and in English the following year. The work concerns the
relation between the logical structure of our statements and
thoughts about the world and the world itself, and it argues
that philosophy’s traditional problems only arise from
misunderstanding that relation. The Tractatus’ most striking
textual feature is its complex decimal-numbering system (See
Appendix A for samples from the text): Wittgenstein assigned to
each proposition a unique number–sometimes extending
several decimal places (e.g., 1, 2.1, or 5.47321)–and he ordered
them so as to indicate their relative logical importance and
interrelations. As he explained, “The propositions n.1, n.2, 