Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a book of aphorisms

Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward
Date: 12 August 2026
This document consists of four brief texts on PhilPapers, mostly about someone trying to read Wittgenstein's first book as a book of aphorisms.
Note to self: add cooking and CDBroad

1. Let's imagine that someone picks up Wittgenstein's first book, The Tractatus, as we refer to it for the sake of brevity. They start reading it and wonder whether it is a book of aphorisms. They would like to read a book of aphorisms, on life, on love, etc. But is this a book of aphorisms? We today do not think of it like this and our imaginary reader is also having some trouble with doing so, despite not having been on any course or even having heard of Wittgenstein before. But some of the remarks do seem as if they could be in a book of aphorisms. However, even these concern our reader, our hypothetical reader, our imaginary reader. In a book of aphorisms, one does not expect an argument to be made in detail and even forgives no argument, if one can fill out the argument from one's experiences, at least making an aphorism seem probable, seem plausible, seem likely, if not simply true. Our reader reads this one: whatever can be said can be said clearly (4.116, see also Preface). He or she is not sure about this. They remember being lost for words or saying something in an awkward way, before being able to communicate the same message better on a later occasion. But can one always improve the communication in this way, given more chances? Our reader is not sure, whereas Wittgenstein is. But then our reader thinks, "Assume the proposition is true - assume that whatever can be said can be said clearly. If so, this book has presented me with an important truth." Then the reader thinks, "Assume instead it is not true. Then perhaps I must be patient with this obscure book and learn what mysterious knowledge it is trying to convey." Our reader concludes, "Either way, there is some reason not to put this book down." And decides to purchase it. Do you think this was on purpose, from the Viennese master? Anyway, even if not, it is interesting. (PhilPapers asked me to confirm this is my text. It is, but I took the question personally: am I the reader imagined? is this how I would think? My initial reaction is that I am not clever enough to think all this when first encountering a book by a stranger, but I am not so sure actually. In Paris, where I have been for around a month, there are books of aphorisms in some restaurants. You can contemplate them while waiting for a meal or afterwards, reluctant to step out into the heat so soon. It is plausible, likely, I would analyse an aphorism in some detail, going beyond quick impressions - I don't know what number to put on likelihood here, 50%.)
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2. Imagine that a reader picks up Wittgenstein's first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. They have never heard of the author, but they observe its brief remarks and wonder whether it is a book of aphorisms. They would like to read a book of aphorisms on life, on love, etc. briefly conveying the author's wisdom, or purported wisdom. Can the Tractatus be read like this? It initially does not seem so. But consider its famous second remark: the world is the totality of facts not things. Our hypothetical reader is puzzled but reflects a little. Consider a room. What is in the room? There is a table, a bed, a chair, a radio, and two people. These are the things in the room, the reader is prepared to say, (though in ordinary conversation we are uncomfortable about referring to people as things; but we need some general word for what is being listed). But, as Julian Dodd conveyed to "us" as undergraduates, the things in the room can be in different relationships. The two people could be themselves surveying the contents of the room. Or they could be dancing, etc. And then the world is different, no? Same list of things in the room, but the world is different, because they are related to each other differently: two people surveying, dancing, etc. Our reader says, "Yes, the world is the totality of facts not things. It is not simply a set of things, of contents, because that omits the relationships that obtain, or do not. This is about love surely, this aphorism!"
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3. Imagine a reader who is interested in a book of aphorisms, more specifically brief remarks about life, love, maybe the nature of genius, etc. They pick up Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in a bookshop. We do not read this book as a series of casual observations, of brief scatty remarks, on such matters, as is probably made by someone who wanders the streets of Paris. We read it as a highly systematic work of metaphysics and philosophy of language, in light of developments in formal logic. But can it be read this way, with some remainder perhaps: some ice cream with chocolate chips, metaphorically - the hard logical ingredient? Some remarks are encouraging, for example, "The world of the happy man is different from that of the unhappy man." But is this not too trivial to put in a book of aphorisms? If "world" means the emotional world, then it is obviously true in virtue of the differences in their emotional states, or more generally temperaments: the happy man and the unhappy man. How can our reader extract any value from this? Here is a thought. The aphorism is drawing our attention to characters who seem extremely similar, in various respects. We fail to realize that one is the happy man and the other is the unhappy man and their worlds are so different therefore. To illustrate (with an example from philosophy): it is the mid 20th century. Someone similar to myself is given a book by Kant - Kant on ethics - to assess, and likewise C.D. Broad. Broad grumpily thinks, "Well, of course it is wrong. He's a German. What would a German know about ethics." But he does not write that. That would look extremely prejudiced and so probably self-defeating. He studies Kant carefully and writes a chapter of his book on types of ethical theory where he does not let the British side down, all the time worrying about this possibility. And this person similar to me reads it and thinks, "This is a wonderful fund of puzzles to work on," much like someone who gets a sudoku book as a present. They write a set of essays addressing Kant's categorical imperative, how to interpret it, his examples (the promising example, etc) and then makes document summarizing the essays, for anyone lazy to go through each one or wanting an aerial view of the findings. The documents produced by Broad and me look much the same, but the temperaments of the people involved are different. (I am not sure how accurate this is as a picture of our divergent psychologies - what would I know of such a person's thinking actually. Sometimes I have reputational worries myself, but not worried about letting Cambridge or the British side down specifically.) 
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4.I presume Francis Bacon was compulsory reading for philosophers once upon a time, right up to the twentieth century. If I may be permitted a long quotation, in his essay Of Friendship he writes, "We know diseases of stoppings, and suffocations, are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true friend; to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. It is a strange thing to observe, how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship, whereof we speak: so great, as they purchase it, many times, at the hazard of their own safety and greatness." Various physical substances open various parts of the body, but only a true friend opens you to tell your real thoughts and emotions, Bacon sort-of says. The words "whereof we speak" remind us today of Wittgenstein: his famous words in Frank Ramsey and C.K. Ogden's translation "Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent." These come late on in his 1922 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Now the familiar portrait of Wittgenstein is that he was friends with Bertrand Russell when he wrote this book and later a severe rupture occurred, and he produced Philosophical Investigations. There is famously the early and the later Wittgenstein. But I interpret Wittgenstein as alluding to Bacon's Of Friendship. On my interpretation, Wittgenstein is conveying, "Russell, I have produced this quite closed book, rather than a pleasant conversational work on the topic, because you are not my friend."
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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922 (translated by C.K. Ogden and Frank Ramsey). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Kegan Paul. Available at:
https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp.pdf