This renewed edition of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, exactly a
century after Wittgenstein’s release, presents the text in a
hierarchical manner, “which is the way in which the book was
composed and in which Wittgenstein arranged (selected and
supplemented) the best of the philosophical remarks that he had been
writing since 1913” (Peter Hacker). That tree-like reading is
recommended by Wittgenstein himself in the sole footnote of his book,
in which he suggests that the inner logical structure of the text is
set by the decimal numbers of its propositions. “They alone – the
Author will add – give the book perspicuity and clearness, and
without this numbering it would be an incomprehensible jumble”.
Indeed, the compact and intricate sequence of the traditional
presentation is only a rigorous logical bet, but only a logical
machine or a robot can unravel the tangle: for an ordinary human
understanding that does not exploit its numbering, the book remains
“an incomprehensible jumble”. In the present disposition, instead,
all horizontal and vertical references become directly manifest and
any reader can enjoy the fine architecture and the elegant reasoning
of Wittgenstein's work. Every page is an actual reading unit,
perfectly coherent and complete. The Tractatus becomes comprehensible
also to unskilled readers, of course at more or less deep levels,
while a scholar or a more practised reader can detect suggestions and
meanings that had remained, until now, completely hidden. A historical
note shows in which manner the new structural perspective sheds new
light also in the compositional manuscript we have, which “writing
units” are very similar, actually, to the pages of the present
edition. Besides, this allows to rebuild the list of “Supplements”
(here in the Appendix) that Wittgenstein gathered after he roughly
finished his manuscript, but that he used very little in the final
book. Printing the Tractatus following Wittgenstein's decimal
prescriptions required meticulous philological care and some
discretional conventions: for instance, at the top of each page the
commented-upon proposition is printed again, to make the sight
complete and self-sufficient. On the other hand, some forcing of the
text by the translators in their sequential reading could be
eliminated, restoring a more literal translation. Also the famous and
intriguing picture of the eye and its visual field (5.6331) has been
restored as Wittgenstein drafted it, making the entire page perfectly
understandable and coherent. This documented and editorial work on one
of the most referenced books of the last century was conceived to
obtain, and in fact gained, a perspicuous and crystal clear text,
philologically faithful and relaxingly readable at the same time.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781785276583
Publisert
2021
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Anthem Press (NBN)
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter