Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the context of "Philosophy of language"

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (/ˈvɪtɡənʃtaɪn, -staɪn/ VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; Austrian German: [ˈluːdvɪɡ ˈjoːsɛf ˈjoːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austro-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. Despite his position, only one book of his philosophy was published during his life: the 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise, 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a review of The Science of Logic, by P. Coffey; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A 1999 survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations".

"Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929) was the only academic paper ever published by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It contained Wittgenstein's thinking on logic and the philosophy of mathematics immediately before the rupture that divided the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus from the later Wittgenstein represented in the Philosophical Investigations. The approach to logical form in the paper reflected Frank P. Ramsey's critique of Wittgenstein's account of color in the Tractatus, and has been analyzed by G. E. M. Anscombe and Jaakko Hintikka, among others. In a letter to the editor of Mind in 1933 Wittgenstein referred to it as "a short (and weak) article".

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (/ˈvɪtɡənʃtaɪn, -staɪn/ VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; Austrian German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːsɛf ˈjoːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austro-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. Despite his position, only one book of his philosophy was published during his life: the 75-page Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Logical-Philosophical Treatise, 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a review of The Science of Logic, by P. Coffey; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A 1999 survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy, standing out as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations".

Frank Plumpton Ramsey (/ˈræmzi/; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein and, as an undergraduate, translated Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into English. He was also influential in persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and Cambridge. Like Wittgenstein, he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the secret intellectual society, from 1921.

Form of life (German: Lebensform) is a term used sparingly by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his posthumously published works Philosophical Investigations (PI), On Certainty, and parts of his Nachlass. It is a term widely understood to refer to the shared background of human cultural practices, activities, and ways of living that provide the context within which language and meaning operate.

Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) was concerned with the structure of language, responding to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Later, Wittgenstein found the need to revise the view he held in TLP, because he had not resolved issues concerning elementary propositions. Leading up to a revised view in his PI, Wittgenstein was still concerned with language, but he now focused on how language is used and did not insist that it has an inherent structure or set of rules. Late Wittgenstein saw language as emerging from human activity.

Ludwig Wittgenstein considered his chief contribution to be in the philosophy of mathematics, a topic to which he devoted much of his work between 1929 and 1944. As with his philosophy of language, Wittgenstein's views on mathematics evolved from the period of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, as he changed from logicism (which was endorsed by his mentor Bertrand Russell) towards a general anti-foundationalism and constructivism that was not readily accepted by the mathematical community. The success of Wittgenstein's general philosophy has tended to displace the debates on more technical issues.

His Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics contains his compiled views, notably a controversial repudiation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems.