ABSTRACT
Containing material (mainly on logic and language) dating back at least to 1913 when Wittgenstein was twenty-four, the Tractatus was first published in 1921. In 1922 a somewhat revised version was published with a translation by C.K.Ogden and an introduction by Bertrand Russell. The last significant correction to the German text was made in 1933. The second major English translation (by Pears and McGuinness) was published in 1960.1 It is a short, oracular book. Much of it is aphoristic; some of it, formidably technical. Few of its claims are explained or argued in any detail. Its core is a theory of language which Wittgenstein applies to topics as diverse as ethics, religion, the foundations of logic and the philosophy of science.
