Logic and language in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

I undertake an historical investigation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of logic and language. I aim to show that the Tractatus can be read as an insightful critical work, which reveals genuine problems in the conceptions of logic and language developed by the Founding Fathers of analytic philosophy: Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. I argue for a reassessment of the respective influences of these philosophers on the early Wittgenstein. In my view, the current vogue for treating the Tractatus as the culmination of a number of Fregean lines of thought is unwarranted by the texts, and, more worrying, has tended to obscure the depth of Wittgenstein's involvement with Russell's philosophy.;In the first chapter I show how Wittgenstein's conception of logic--as a body of sentences lacking in sense--arises from his dissatisfaction with the "universalist" conception of Frege and Russell. I explain why it can be coherent for Wittgenstein to claim that logic is not nonsense, despite lacking both sense and truth value.;In the second chapter I examine Wittgenstein's attack on the notion of "logical assertion." I argue that although the Tractatus's criticisms are developed within the framework of a faulty "Russellized" reading of Frege, they are nonetheless prompted by a genuine incoherence in a conception of the proposition espoused both by the Frege of Begriffsschrift and by the early Russell--a view that Wittgenstein successfully criticizes in his war-time Notebooks.;In the third chapter I explain how Wittgenstein's "picture theory" of the proposition is connected with his insight into the "creative" aspect of language use. I argue that Wittgenstein's conception of the proposition furnishes one possible solution to the problem of the unity of the proposition.;In the fourth chapter I consider the Tractatus' claim that Frege's and Russell's "laws of inference" play no role in justifying inferences. After canvassing and rejecting a range of interpretations of this claim, I argue that Wittgenstein's true target is Russell's early (ca. 1905) "proof-theoretic" analysis of entailment. I explain Wittgenstein's criticisms of this view, and end by locating them within a general framework for understanding the philosophical method of the Tractatus.