Elucidating the Tractatus

by Marie McGinn

"Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: the metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line. This rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality. However, it allows, in contrast to the resolute reading, that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions."--Jacket.