ABSTRACT
The central concern of the Tractatus is the status of propositions, 1 yet the work begins with a discussion of the character of the world. To many commentators this seems backwards, since it is often maintained that Wittgenstein derives his basic ontology from commitments concerning the nature of language. Certainly a case can be made for this reading, but at the start, at least, I think that we will do better to avoid heavy reconstruction of the text. In any case, Wittgenstein’s order of exposition is natural in one way: it begins with the claim that the world is all that is the case (the totality of facts) and then proceeds to consider a centrally important subset of this totality; i.e., those facts that are used to represent other facts. Wittgenstein calls such facts “pictures.” Thus in whatever direction the argument may move, the exposition of the picture theory presupposes the exposition of the theory of facts. I shall therefore begin at the beginning.
