I argue that the numbering system of the Tractatus lets us see how it was constructed, in two closely related senses of that term. First, it tells us a great deal about the genesis of the book, for the numbering system was used to assemble and rearrange a series of drafts, as recorded in MS 104. Second, it helps us understand the structure of the published book, as cryptically summarized in the opening footnote. I also discuss an unpublished letter from (...) Anscombe to von Wright from 1948 which contains the very first sketch of a tree-structured reading, and what I believe is Stenius’s response to Anscombe’s proposal. The paper critically evaluates previous work on tree-structured readings and contends that we need to read the Tractatus in both the number order used in the published book and the tree order that Wittgenstein used to draft it. It also considers some of the main ways of turning this complex branching structure into a linear, printed text, and so serves as an introduction to the three tree-structured editions of the Tractatus that accompany this paper (the German text, and the translations by Ogden/Ramsey and Pears & McGuinness). (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends a way to translate Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations from a semiotic standpoint. This turn builds on Semiosic Translation. 102–130), a framework that advances the interaction of sign systems as a necessary point of departure in the translation process. From this vantage, the key term “Bild,” is analyzed, explained and retranslated into English. This term evinces high levels of complexity and variability that cannot be captured by traditional linguistic translations. In applying a semiotic (...) approach, any iteration of Bild is characterized as reflecting the author’s intentions at a given moment. This semiotic reading seeks to provide semioticians, translators, and philosophers with new conceptual tools leading to an understanding of translation as a systemic operation not confined to the realm of subjective interpretation. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work on the nature of the numbering system of the _Tractatus_ and Wittgenstein’s use of that system in his composition of the _Prototractatus_, the paper sets out the rationale for the online tool called__ __ The University of Iowa Tractatus Map. The map consists of a website with a front page that links to two separate subway-style maps of the hypertextual numbering system Wittgenstein used in his _Tractatus_. One map displays the structure of the published _Tractatus_; the (...) other lays out the structure of the _Prototractatus_. The site makes available the full text of the German and the two canonical English translations.__ __While we envisage the map as a tool that we would like a wide variety of readers to find helpful, we argue that our website amounts to a radically new edition of Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece, with far-reaching implications for the interpretation of that text. In particular, we claim that our visually compelling presentation of the book’s overall structure delivers on Wittgenstein’s cryptic claim in a letter to his publisher that it is the numbers that “make the book surveyable and clear”. (shrink)

A close investigation of Wittgenstein’s MS 104, which contains the so-called Prototractatus, has shown that the manuscript originally contained an additional folio that was later cut out and is now missing. The content of this missing folio could be partly reconstructed by a faint inverse imprint that it has left behind on page 2. The paper discusses the consequences of this discovery for the interpretation of the beginning and early formation of the Prototractatus, including the introduction and role of the (...) numbering system. The paper also provides a transcription of the deepest visible textual layers of the first conception of the picture theory. (shrink)

When Wittgenstein started writing the Tractatus in June 1915, he was convinced that he was producing a theory. Accordingly, he chose a theoretical style of expressing his thought. Wittgenstein abandoned this stance only at the end of his work of composing the book. He realized that what he is producing in not a theory but a manual for improving our language and thinking. Unfortunately, it was too late to change the architecture and the style of the book: Wittgenstein simply had (...) no time to do that. This drawback makes the Tractatus notoriously difficult to understand and is apparently the major factor that caused the so called “Tractarian Wars”. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce a semiosic translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The theoretical framework is Semiosic Translation, a theory that combines Peirce’s interpretive semiotics and Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and complex-fact. I seek to show that this approach is particularly adroit at the task of making the sometimes cryptic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein accessible to readers. To support this assertion, I compare and analyze several canonical translations of the Tractatus with possible semiosic translations. The results show that Wittgenstein’s work (...) throughout its different phases displays a continuity that reaches a genuine abductive peak in the Philosophical Investigations. This abductive, usage-based turn is, nonetheless, announced in the Tractatus in terms of a quest for semiotic accuracy. (shrink)

One of the unconventional features of Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ is its use of an elaborated and detailed numbering system. Recently, Bazzocchi, Hacker und Kuusela have argued that the numbering system means that the _Tractatus_ must be read and interpreted not as a sequentially ordered book, but as a text with a two-dimensional, tree-like structure. Apart from being able to explain how the _Tractatus_ was composed, the tree reading allegedly solves exegetical issues both on the local and the global level. This (...) paper defends the sequential reading against the tree reading. After presenting the challenges generated by the numbering system and the two accounts as attempts to solve them, it is argued that Wittgenstein’s own explanation of the numbering system, anaphoric references within the _Tractatus_ and the exegetical issues mentioned above do not favour the tree reading, but a version of the sequential reading. This reading maintains that the remarks of the _Tractatus_ form a sequential chain: The role of the numbers is to indicate how remarks on different levels are interconnected to form a concise, surveyable and unified whole. (shrink)

In her recent book, A Different Order of Difficulty, Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé uses a resolute reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to highlight similarities between Wittgenstein’s work and his contemporaries Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Franz Kafka. On the basis of this reading, she claims that Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece is a modernist work. -/- This article argues that there are profound problems with the resolute reading that she offers, and it suggests that ‘traditional’ readings of the Tractatus survive the criticisms she makes (...) of them. Nonetheless, a case can still be made that Wittgenstein’s work is a modernist one, and it is a useful exercise to compare the Tractatus with modernist works from the 1920s. -/- Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 274-296, July 2022. (NOTE: This article was mistakenly given the title 'Theologico-Philological Investigations: Is Wittgenstein's Tractatus a Modernist Work?' in the print edition of Philosophical Investigations. The online version has been corrected. (shrink)

I aim to present a solution to the apparent paradox of the Tractatus by means of a minimalist reading grounded in the idea that the correct logical symbolism alone “finally solves” in essentials the philosophical problems. I argue that although the sentences of the Tractatus are nonsensical, rules presented in its symbolism are not. The symbolism itself expresses only a priori rules of logic through schematic variables that do not say anything. I argue that this reading correctly expresses the ladder (...) structure of the book, and that it can account for Wittgenstein's critique of the Tractatus in Some Remarks on Logical Form. (shrink)