Posted: 2010-11-21 11:35:15 UTC+01.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is hailed as one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century, but it appears more to be the student's scribbled notes in the margin of his textbook. The problem is:

• They are mostly obscure, incoherrent and only understood by the student himself, and never intended to be read by anyone else.
• They are not self-contained and only understood if at all in the context of the textbook.
• They seldomly present any deeper insights, but on the contrary demonstrate the students lack of same.

Wittgenstein refuse to give specific references, but does refer to the works of Fregge, Russell and Whitehead, ocassionally mentioning Russell and Whiteheads' Principia Matematica without being specific. The reader must be very proficient in their work in order to understand and appreciate Wittgenstein's Tractaus.

Wittgenstein does not appreciate the importance of the identity relation, in fact he says, "a=a" not only does not bring any new knowledge, but cannot be written at all (only that he just did so). While the identity relation may be rather boring in it self it is fundamental for defining equivalence relations and thus equivalence classes. Since the origin of man, identification and classification makes up the bulk of human knowledge, equivalence classes are fundamental to our understanding of the world. Only philosophers engage into long discussions of what makes a table a table. The rest of us live rather undramatic lives pracmatically applying the "table-function" when serving tea.

While reading this text I couldn't but think of the Emperors new clothes: It leaves the impression that Wittgenstein has fallen victim to the misunderstood intelecturalism that if only what you write is sufficiently obscure people will assume you are brilliant as nobody dare to admit that it doesn't make sense at all. I find comfort in the second last paragraph: "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, ...".

Title: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0-415-25408-6