Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Odyssey

Charts Wittgenstein’s intellectual development, personal struggles, and movements from Vienna to Cambridge and Norway, and to the battlegrounds of WWI, where he completed what was destined to become the most influential philosophy book of the 20th century.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s way to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the ground-breaking works in the history of philosophy, can rightly be termed an Odyssey. Both in terms of his movements and his intellectual development in the course of writing it, the Tractatus incorporated an exciting, improbable journey. A compendium of scholars has come together at the 100th anniversary of the work’s first official publication in 1922 to detail the main stations in Wittgenstein’s life that would entirely transform philosophy. The years 1912 to 1922 are illuminated through photos, military maps, and letters against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic periods in world history.

The complex theory of language developed by Wittgenstein In the Tractatus had an enormous influence not only on philosophy, but extended also to literature, music, film, painting, architecture, anthropology, and economics. Its uniqueness and rigor challenge our perceptions to this day. 

Who Is Afraid of Ludwig Wittgenstein? or, An Austrian Enigma by Radmila Schweitzer

What Is an Odyssey in Philosophy? by Allan Janik

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Youth

1911: First Visit to Gottlob Frege in Jena

1911–1913: Wittgenstein in Cambridge by Ray Monk

1913–1914: The Quiet Seriousness of Norway by Knut Olav Åmås

July 14, 1914: Letter from Wittgenstein to Ludwig von Ficker

1914 –1916: Wittgenstein in Polish Galicia by Urszula Idziak-Smoczyn‘ska 

Pictures, Models, and Measures by Susan G. Sterrett

1914–1918: The Emergence of the Tractatus in the first World War: Addenda to Previous Biographies by Martin Pilch

March–September 1916: Ludwig Wittgenstein during the Brusilov-Offensive in Bukowina by Martin Pilch

Finding Our Way Home: The Philosophy of the Tractatus by Ian Ground

1919 –1920: “To a Teacher's College to Become a Teacher” by Xenia Baumann and Students of the College Preparatory School Kundmanngasse in Vienna

1919 –1922: “Pearls before Swine …” The Difficult Publication History of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Alfred Schmidt

Facsimile of Wittgenstein's Personal Dedication to Arvid Sjögren

The Poetics of the Tractatus by Marjorie Perloff

Ludwig Wittgenstein: After the Tractatus

Endnotes

Abbreviations

Selected Bibliography

About the Authors