Jaap Van Der Does

Passed over in Silence. on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Its System (Studies in Logic) Jaap Van Der Does

A hundred years ago, October 18th 1911, young Wittgenstein rushed into Russell's room to start studying with him. Seven years later he had finished the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; a highly original ethical deed that involved presenting a logical system in literary fashion.
              This book aims for a strong interpretation of the Tractatus, both philosophically and technically. It makes clear how Wittgenstein's early views on ethics and logic are related to his symbolic turn. The symbolic nature of contingent propositions is charted in detail, and logical propositions are characterized as empty forms. Apart from treating of the relationship between ethics and the symbolic turn, the book gives insight into how objects compare with typed-entities; into the nature of signs in logical space; into the different ways in which the notion of projection can be interpreted; into the nature of truth-operations and how they compare with truth-functions; into the notion of sense for contingent and logical propositions; into the niceties of logical consequence; into substitution in a representation of sense; into how the tractarian system solves Russell's paradox. The finite system is covered but also an infinite generalization that the text just hints at. It is argued that Wittgenstein anticipates the elegant tableaux methods developed much later; his treatment of quantification is shown to be correct.
             Still, all that is of value in life is inversely related to the system and its ontology, which purports to give a clear view on what can be said and what must be passed over in silence.