| Tractatus Logico-Pilosophicus, the only book published during Ludwig Wittgenstein's lifetime (in 1921), has since attracted the imagination of generations of philosophers as a work of great philosophical genius. Nonetheless, even today, more than eighty years later, philosophers are struggling to reconcile its diverse themes within a single, coherent picture. The present work is an attempt to meet this challenge.;Wittgenstein considered the single proposition as a concrete model for the fact. The challenge is to show how a system of propositions can serve as a model of reality. My work concentrates on three pillars of the logic of the Tractatus: (1) the picture theory, (2) negation as "reversal of sense," (3) the independence of elementary propositions. Using a simple scenario of the ordering of objects or letters on a line, I examine the conflict generated by the attempt to adequately accommodate all three themes and offer my own solution. My solution brings implications to the problem of negation (perhaps, the central question of logic) and to the Tractatus's thesis that the possibilities of logical space are spanned by the possible configurations of the ultimately simple objects. One such implication, which stands in contrast to the common reading, is that in atomic facts we have 'complex objects' as constituents.;The resolution offered, furthermore, exposes an intrinsic difficulty in the Tractatus, for which I have reserved the term arbitrary choice. The difficulty is manifested in the lack of assurance---from the perspective of logic---that a concept-word will preserve its 'standard' meaning when it is reapplied or when its scope of application varies. In this I uncover the seed of central themes in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, e.g. the rule-following argument, as present already in the Tractatus.;In the concluding chapter, I suggest a new account for the nature of the proposition by connecting the analysis offered in the Tractatus with the subject of time and motion. The picture with which the work concludes then considers language not as corresponding to reality, but as engaged or synchronized with reality---if you will, it is a picture of language and reality in a dance. |
