Volume 33, Issue 2, July 2017
Nikolay Milkov
Pages 197-212
The Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Toward a New Interpretation
This paper introduces a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, a work widely held to be one of the most intricate in the philosophical canon. It maintains that the Tractatus does not develop a theory but rather advances an original logical symbolism, a new instrument that enables one to “recognize the formal properties of propositions by mere inspection of propositions themselves” (6.122). Moreover, the Tractarian sign-language offers to instruct us on how better to follow the logic of language, and by that token stands to enhance our ability to think. Upon acquiring the thinking skills that one can develop by working with the new symbolism, one may move on and discard the notation—“throw away the ladder” (6.54), as Wittgenstein put it.