“Variations on Silence: Reading the Tractatus” is a version of Jan Zwicky’s introduction to Alexander Booth’s new translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, recently published by Penguin Classics. It was published in Brick 112, the Winter 2024 issue, by kind permission of Penguin Random House.

Translations of passages from the Tractatus draw on translations by Alexander Booth or D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, often with minor alterations.

The notes that follow are cued to page number and phrase in the printed text. Full bibliographic details are provided in a list of sources below these notes.

Page 31:

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote to Ludwig von Ficker: Breife an Ludwig von Ficker, 32–34, my translation.

(almost certainly Gottlob Frege) and (almost certainly Beiträge zur Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus): G. H. von Wright, “The Origin of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,” 114, n. 37.

Page 32:

a subject Wittgenstein claimed did not exist: Wittgenstein to Ogden, 23 April 1922, in Letters to C. K. Ogden, 20.

“[I]t will probably be helpful”: Breife an Ludwig von Ficker, 35, trans. Bruce Gillette in “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, 82–98 at 94–95.

Page 33:

“As far as I’m concerned”: Breife an Ludwig von Ficker, 37, trans. Bruce Gillette in “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, 82–98 at 95.

“What causes hesitation”: Russell’s introduction prefaced both the version of the Tractatus that appeared in 1921 in Annalen der Naturphilosophie and the 1922 English edition from Kegan Paul, translated by C. K. Ogden; it was reprinted with the 1961 Pears and McGuinness translation, from Routledge & Kegan Paul, and with the Centenary Edition, edited by Luciano Bazzocchi and published by Anthem in 2021. The remarks quoted here appear at the end of the antepenultimate paragraph.

Sketch of a Life: There are two excellent biographies of Wittgenstein: Brian McGuinness’s Wittgenstein: A Life: Young Ludwig (1889–1921) and Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Material in this section that is not otherwise referenced in a note draws on these accounts.

Page 34:

“played with great musical feeling”: Hermine Wittgenstein, “My Brother Ludwig,” trans. Michael Clark, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 1–11 at 9.

His repertoire included: See Fania Pascal, “Wittgenstein: A Personal Memoir” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspective, 23–60 at 59, n. 5; see also Paul Englemann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 89; and David Pinsent, A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Young Man, 78.

he whistled the entire viola line: Paul Englemann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 89–90.

Either at Manchester or earlier: Ray Monk and Brian McGuinness give differing accounts of the development of Wittgenstein’s interest in the foundations of mathematics. Monk, 30; McGuinness, 73–75.

“Once I said to him”: Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1911–1944. Vol. 11, 99.

Page 35:

he continued to wear his old army tunic: Paul Englemann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, 90.

carried [his clarinet] around in an old sock: Hermine Wittgenstein, “My Brother Ludwig,” trans. Michael Clark, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 1–11 at 9.

“So I see that intelligence counts for something in gardening too”: Reported in M. O’C. Drury, “Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Rush Rhees, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein, 97–171 at 123.

“brought [him] into more settled waters”: Rush Rhees, “Postscript” in Rush Rhees, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein, 172–209 at 173. For background regarding the confession, see Monk 367–372.

Page 36:

the design and construction of a house for his sister Gretl: For a detailed account, see Bernhard Leitner, The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein insisted on raising the ceiling: Bernhard Leitner, The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein, 66.

“In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament”: Rudolf Carnap, “Memoirs of Wittgenstein. 11” in K. T. Fann, ed., Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy, 33–39, at 34, 35 & 36. (Excerpted from Rudolf Carnap, “Intellectual Autobiography” in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. 11 [Open Court: La Salle, Ill., 1963], 1–84.)

Page 37:

“What is the logical form of that?”: Reported by Norman Malcolm, “A Memoir” in Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 21–81 at 57–58. Malcolm notes that G. H. von Wright claimed to have heard a different version of the story from Wittgenstein; in von Wright’s version the notion under discussion was “grammar,” not “logical form” (“A Memoir,” 58, n. 3).

“Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”: Reported in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, 579, based on conversations with Mrs. Bevan. (See note to p. 576, “How lucky,” Monk, 639.)

“What cannot be said, can be not said!” (“Was sich nicht sagen läßt, läßt sich nicht sagen!”, my translation): Ludwig Wittgenstein, Geheime Tagebücher 1914–1916, entry of 7.7.16, 69. A different German text is given in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Private Notebooks 1914–1916, ed. and trans. Marjorie Perloff (New York: Liveright, 2022), 178. But see the authoritative Bergen Nachlass Edition, at http://wittgensteinsource.org, which includes a facsimile of the notebook in which the entry occurs.

Page 38:

“absolutely hopeless,” “tendency in the human mind,” and “would not for [his] life ridicule”: The quotations in this sentence are from the conclusion of a lecture Wittgenstein gave to a general audience in Cambridge in 1929. See “Lecture on Ethics” in Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, 36–44 at 44.

Philosophical Context: Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna is an indispensable guide to cultural and philosophical influences on Wittgenstein’s thought.

Gestalt insight often arrives in wordless form: For testimony from Albert Einstein, see Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, 228, n. 7, second paragraph; see also Appendix 11 in Jacques Hadamard, The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, 143, Section (B). For testimony from Francis Galton (and Jacques Hadamard himself), see discussion in Hadamard, 69–70. For a general discussion, see Jonathan Schooler and Joseph Melcher, “The Ineffability of Insight.”

Page 39:

regarded Søren Kierkegaard as the most profound thinker: M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 76–96 at 88–89.

“possibly ‘the most serious book ever written’”: M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, Oxford University Press, 1984, 76–96 at 90.

“only two European writers” and “over and over again”: M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 76–96 at 86.

“this book virtually kept me alive”: Breife an Ludwig von Ficker [24.7.25], 28, trans. Bruce Gillette, in “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, 82–98 at 91.

To Drury, he recommended: M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 76–96 at 86.

coming to appreciate Klopstock’s poetry: Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Lectures on Aesthetics” 1.12 in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology & Religious Belief, 1–36 at 4.

Page 40:

“The poem by Uhland”: Paul Englemann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967, 7. The poem was “Graf Eberhards Weissdorn” by Johann Ludwig Uhland.

“A poet’s words can pierce us”: Zettel §155.

“I believe I summed up my view”: Culture and Value, 24, my translation.

“Often enough, when a thing is seen clearly”: Robert Hass, “Images” in Twentieth Century Pleasures, 269–308 at 274–5.

Page 41:

“In a Station of the Metro” in Personæ: The Collected Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound, 109. Copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber and Faber.

Necker cube: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.5423.

internal relations: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.122, 4,125–4.1252, 5.232.

Page 42:

as Galileo said: “Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures.” In “The Assayer,” trans. Stillman Drake, in The Controversy of the Comets: Galilio Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler, 183–4.

There is a story: Reported by G. H. von Wright in “A Biographical Sketch,” 8. See also Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916, entry for 29.9.14, 7/7e.

Page 43:

as numerous scholars have argued: See, for example, Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna; P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion; Peter Barker, “Hertz and Wittgenstein”; and Andrew D. Wilson, “Hertz, Boltzmann and Wittgenstein Reconsidered.”

Hertz’s notion of dynamical models: See Heinrich Hertz, Die Prinzipien der Mechanik in neuem Zusammenhange dargestellt, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley as The Principles of Mechanics Presented in a New Form.

“implicitly contradict”: The Principles of Mechanics, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley, 2.

Hertz also expressly limits: The Principles of Mechanics, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley, 36.

“too simple and too narrow”: The Principles of Mechanics, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley, 38.

“It seems to me that this is not a disadvantage”: The Principles of Mechanics, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley, 38, my italics.

Another influence that Wittgenstein acknowledges: Culture and Value, 19e.

Page 44:

Boltzmann’s account: See Essays 1 (“Über die Methoden der theoretischen Physik”), 10 (“Über die Unentbehrlichkeit der Atomistik in der Naturwissenschaft”), and 11 (“Nochmals über die Atomistik”) in Populäre Schriften, 1–10, 141–157, 158–161; English translations (“On the Methods of Theoretical Physics,” “On the Indispensability of Atomism in Natural Science,” “More on Atomism”) in Brian McGuinness, ed., Ludwig Boltzmann: Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, 5–12, 41–53, 54–56. The clearest statement of Boltzmann’s view that physical systems are to be described as multidimensional spaces is given in Vorlesungen ueber die Principe der Mechanik, Theil 1, 3; English translation in McGuinness, ed., “From Lectures on the Principles of Mechanics,” 222–265 at 226.

“determines a place in logical space”: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 3.4.

Boltzmann was also explicit: Populäre Schriften, Essay 19 (“Über statistische Mechanik”), 345–363; English translation (“On Statistical Mechanics”) by Paul Foulkes in Brian McGuinness, ed., Ludwig Boltzmann: Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems, 159–172 at 167.

“When I ‘have done with the world’”: Culture and Value, 9e.

Wittgenstein came to have doubts about this claim: See the first four paragraphs of “Some Remarks on Logical Form” in Philosophical Occasions, 28–35. It is the assumed independence of elementary propositions that is driving many of the remarks about the “anumericality” of logical form in the Tractatus.

Page 45:

He was contemptuous: “Lectures on Aesthetics” 11.2 & 11.35–36 in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology & Religious Belief, 1–36 at 11 & 17.

“simple signs,” “elementary propositions,” and “names in immediate combination”: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 3.202, 4.21–4.221.

“incomparable essence”: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, §97. The phrase there is “the incomparable essence of language.” But the sentences preceding it concern thought and its “essence,” logic. That Wittgenstein identified them at the time he was writing the Tractatus is confirmed in his letter to Russell of 19 August 1919, as well as by numerous passages in the Tractatus. §97 also claims that he thought the order of the world and logic must be “utterly simple.” See Tractatus 5.4541.

logical form . . . is something that all pictures possess: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 2.18.

Page 46:

“the great mirror”: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.511.

Wittgenstein’s address to a paradox: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 3.333.

Page 47:

“I am . . . of the opinion”: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a combination of the translations of Alexander Booth and that of D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness.

“It is impossible”: M. O’C. Drury, “Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein” in Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees, 76–96 at 79.

debate about the image of the ladder: For the view that no claims about logic can be attributed to Wittgenstein, see, for example, Cora Diamond, “Throwing Away the Ladder: How to Read the Tractatus” in her book The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 179–204; Cora Diamond, “Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” in The New Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Read (London: Routledge, 2000), 149–173; or James F. Conant, “Must We Show What We Cannot Say?” in Richard Fleming and Michael Payne, eds., The Senses of Stanley Cavell (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell, 1989), 242–283. For the view that Wittgenstein did believe the basic claims about logic presented in the Tractatus, see P. M. S. Hacker, “Was He Trying to Whistle It?” in The New Wittgenstein, ed. Alice Crary and Rupert Read (London: Routledge, 2000), 353–388; P. M. S. Hacker, “Wittgenstein, Carnap, and the New American Wittgensteinians,” Philosophical Quarterly 53.210 (January 2003), 1–23; or Hans-Johann Glock, “Perspectives on Wittgenstein: An Intermittently Opinionated Survey” in G. Kuhane, E. Kanterian, and O. Kuusela, eds., Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 37–65. There has also been speculation about the source of the ladder image itself. Ladders appear in both Schopenhauer and Fritz Mauthner, and they are associated with Kierkegaard through his use of the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. But Wittgenstein mentions Mauthner in the Tractatus only to disagree with him [4.0031], and we find the image of the ladder in Hegel as well, whom no one has suggested might be its source for Wittgenstein. It is conceivable that Wittgenstein had in mind the passage in The World as Will and Representation where Schopenhauer says, “for the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him one step, he leaves it behind” (Vol. 11, 80); but it’s also possible that the image occurred to him without an intermediary. It is a common trope in the history of Western thought.

debate about the numbering system: For the view that Wittgenstein’s numbering system is absurd, see, for example, David Antin, “Wittgenstein Among the Poets,” Modernism/modernity 5.1 (January 1998), 149–166. In 1919, Ludwig von Ficker enquired if the numbers were necessary: see Wittgenstein’s reply in Briefe an Ludwig von Ficker [5.12.19], 39, trans. Bruce Gillette in “Letters to Ludwig von Ficker” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, 82–98 at 97. For a defence of the intelligibility of Wittgenstein’s system and its importance, see Luciano Bazzocchi’s foreword to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Centenary Edition, ix–xxvii. Brian McGuinness offers the striking observation that it is possible to view the book as “a kind of systole and diastole around proposition 4, where the most basic propositions of its argument are to be found” (Wittgenstein: A Life, 304).

Page 48:

“Each of the sentences”: Culture and Value, 7e.

Wittgenstein himself offers a critique: See Philosophical Investigations §§90–120 passim. Sections specifically mentioned here are 108, 97 (“crystalline”), and 103.

Pages 48–49:

[forms of life] are the bedrock: Philosophical Investigations Part 11.xi, p. 226e; §§19, 217.

Page 49:

Both G. H. von Wright and Bertrand Russell mention purity: Russell, Autobiography Vol. 11, 99; von Wright, “Biographical Sketch,” 17. The word purity is also used by Fania Pascal in “Wittgenstein: A Personal Memoir” in C. G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, 23–60 at 43.

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