---
aliases:
  - tractatus
  - TLP
author: '[[thoughts/Wittgenstein|Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'
category: philosophy
date: '2025-10-07'
description: wittgenstein develops a picture theory of propositions, draws the limits of factual language, and ends by treating ethics as something language cannot state.
finished: 2025
id: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
language: german
layout: technical-tractatus
modified: 2026-06-05 15:08:00 GMT-04:00
pdf: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf
posters: '[[library/posters/tractatus-logico-philosophicus.jpg]]'
seealso:
  - '[[thoughts/Wittgenstein]]'
  - '[[thoughts/Compositionality]]'
  - '[[library/On Certainty]]'
status: evergreen
subcategory:
  - languages
tags:
  - philosophy
title: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
translator:
  - C. K. Ogden
year: 1921
authors: '[[thoughts/Wittgenstein|Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'
created: '2025-10-07'
published: '2025-10-07'
pageLayout: technical-tractatus
slug: library/Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/library/Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus.md
generator:
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full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
The _Tractatus_ is built from seven numbered propositions and decimal comments on them. Its argument moves from the structure of the world to the structure of propositions, then to the limits of what propositions can say.

## facts and objects

Proposition 1 says that the world is everything that is the case. Proposition 1.1 restates this as a totality of facts rather than a collection of things. A fact is the existence of a state of affairs. A state of affairs is a possible combination of objects (§2.01).

Objects supply the stable possibilities within this system. Which combinations actually obtain determines the world. Wittgenstein calls the space of possible combinations logical space.

## pictures and propositions

A picture represents a possible situation by arranging its elements in a structure. Its elements stand for objects, while their arrangement presents one way those objects could be related. The picture and the situation must share logical form for representation to occur (§2.18).

A proposition is a logical picture of a fact (§4.01). Its names correspond to objects, and its syntax presents a possible arrangement. The proposition has sense before anyone checks whether it is true. Reality then agrees or disagrees with the situation it depicts.

This account is compositional. The sense of a proposition depends on how its parts are arranged. It also explains why a proposition divides possibilities: it is true in the cases where the depicted situation obtains and false in the cases where it does not.

## logic and truth conditions

Complex propositions are truth functions of elementary propositions. Logical operators alter truth conditions without naming extra objects in the world. A tautology is true under every assignment, and a contradiction is false under every assignment. Wittgenstein therefore treats both as lacking factual content while still belonging to the symbolism of logic.

Logic does not describe another layer of reality. Its form appears in the lawful use of signs. This is the basis of the book’s distinction between saying and showing.

## saying and showing

Section 4.1212 states, “What can be shown cannot be said.” A proposition can state how things stand within the world. It cannot step outside every possible proposition and state the logical form that makes representation possible. That form is shown in meaningful symbolism.

The same limit shapes the closing discussion of value. Section 6.421 calls ethics transcendental. Ethical value, aesthetics, and the sense of the world do not appear as facts among other facts in the book’s system. Wittgenstein marks their importance by placing them outside factual speech.

## the ladder

Section 6.54 compares the book’s own propositions to a ladder that a reader discards after climbing it. The final proposition follows: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The ending creates a deliberate strain because the book uses propositions to clarify the limits of propositions.

The later [[library/Philosophical Investigations]] rejects the assumption that language has one underlying form. Read together, the change is visible. The _Tractatus_ seeks the general structure of representation. The later work studies the different jobs words perform in ordinary practices.

source: [C. K. Ogden’s English translation at Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf)