Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus-era)
1889-1929 · Philosophy of Language · Renowned
Early Wittgenstein means Wittgenstein in the phase of his first book, the Tractatus. He held there that the world is the sum of the facts, and that a sentence works like a picture, sharing a structure with the fact it describes. Whatever falls outside that structure, ethics and God included, cannot be said, only shown. His later work broke with this so far that scholars read the two periods as two philosophers.
Signature
The position Early Wittgenstein is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence
- Language
- Representation
Positions on the 4 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- leans Changing (81 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- mildly leans Inherent (63 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
16 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Early Wittgenstein refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Agnosticism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Ethics Basis
- Intention
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Time
- Block Universe
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death?