Ludwig Wittgenstein was an influential Austrian-British philosopher known for his work in logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. He is considered one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. There were two stages to his thought - his early work focused on logic and language in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, while his later work in Philosophical Investigations criticized traditional philosophy and focused on ordinary language. Wittgenstein had a significant influence on analytic philosophy and various fields such as logic, ethics, and psychology.

1. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
BIOGRAPHY
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British
philosopher who worked primarily in the areas of logic,
philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and
philosophy of language. Considered by some to be the
greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein
played a central and controversial, role in 20th-century
analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current
philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and
language, perception and intention, ethics and religion,
aesthetics and culture.

2. There are two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein's
thought — the early and the later. The early Wittgenstein is
epitomized in his Tractatus Logic-Philosophical.
By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics,
via language, he provided new insights into the relations
between world, thought and language and thereby into the
nature of philosophy.
In the stage , later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the
Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary
step in critical all of traditional philosophy including its climax
in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is
heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still
conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of
traditional problems.
Works of Ludwig Wittgenstein :
WORKS MOST IMPORTANT OF WITTGENSTEIN
Age Work
1921 Tractatus Logic-Philosophic us
1953 * Philosophical investigations
1953 * Annotations on the foundations of the
mathematical
1958 * Notebooks blue and brown
1961 * Philosophical newspaper 1914-1916
1965 * Philosophical observations
1965 * Readings of Ethics
1966 * Readings and conversations on aesthetics,
psychology and religious beliefs
1969 About the certainty
*

3. The main Book : “The Tractatus”
In a letter to Bertrand Russell from 1919, Wittgenstein says of
his Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus (TLP):
Now I'm afraid you haven't really got hold of my main
contention to which the whole business of logical propositions
is only corollary. The main point is the theory of what can be
expressed by propositions, i.e., by language (and, which
comes to the same thing, what can be thought) and what
cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown; which I
believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy. This
corresponds to the Preface where he writes:
The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the
following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
Those things that cannot be expressed in words make
themselves manifest; Wittgenstein calls them the mystical
(6.522). They include everything that is the traditional subject
matter of philosophy, because what can be said is exhausted
by the natural sciences.
Influences: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Influence for > Arthur Schopenhauer - Baruch Spinoza -
Bertrand Russell - Friedrich Nietzsche - Georg Christoph
Lichtenberg - Immanuel Kant - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- León Tolstoi - San Agustín - Soren Kierkegaard - William
James
Influence to > Friedrich Hayek - Karl Popper - Paul Auster
Both his early and later work have been major influences in
the development of analytic philosophy. Former colleagues

4. and students include Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Gilbert
Ryle, Friedrich Waismann, Norman Malcolm, G. E. M.
Anscombe, Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik von Wright, Peter
Geach and the Buddhist scholar K.N. Jayatilleke.
Contemporary philosophers heavily influenced by him include
Richard Rorty, Michael Dummett, Donald Davidson, P.M.S.
Hacker, John R. Searle, Saul Kripke, John McDowell, David
Pears, Hilary Putnam, Anthony Quinton, Peter Strawson, Paul
Horwich, Joseph Owens, Colin McGinn, Daniel Dennett, D. Z.
Phillips, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, James F. Conant,
Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Anthony Kenny, Jürgen Habermas
and Jean-François Lyotard.
With others, Conant, Diamond and Cavell have been
associated with an interpretation of Wittgenstein sometimes
known as the New Wittgenstein. Saul Kripke has published his
own interpretation of Philosophical Investigations in Wittgenstein on Rules and
Private Language, which came to be dubbed by critics
"Kripkenstein".
Wittgenstein has also had a significant influence in the social
sciences. Patrick Lynch's thinking as an economist was
deeply influenced by Wittgenstein's visits to Ireland and the
holidays they spent with friends in the west of the country on
the wind swept shores of the Atlantic. As Ireland emerged
from hundreds of years in the intellectual wilderness, the then
Irish Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera had entrusted Patrick Lynch
with developing the relationship between Wittgenstein and an
emerging Irish intellectual set of academics. Psychologists
and psychotherapists inspired by Wittgenstein's work include
Fred Newman, Lois Holzman, Brian J. Mistler, and John
Morss. American anthropologist Clifford Geertz heavily

5. grounded his development of linguistic symbolism in
Wittgenstein's work ; while the influential French sociologist,
Pierre Bourdieu, stated that "Wittgenstein is probably the
philosopher who has helped me most at moments of difficulty.
He's a kind of saviour for times of great intellectual distress"
Wittgenstein's influence has extended beyond what is
normally considered philosophy and may be found in various
areas of the arts.
Conclusion
It is fundamental to point out an important difference in the
attitude of Wittgenstein and that of the rest of philosophers
that they are included in the average neopositivist; the
characteristic note of this movement was the hostility to the
traditional philosophical speech and the same topics of the
philosophy. In the case of Wittgenstein we find a more similar
attitude to the Kantian: the traditional metaphysics objects
exist, but of them it doesn't fit the knowledge: the mystic thing
exists (God), the metaphysical fellow, the moral and aesthetic
values but they are beyond what one can say. Contrary to
Kant, Wittgenstein doesn't present a resource that links us
with the metaphysical thing clearly (for Kant it was the ethics
and the reflection on the moral behavior), but in some texts
and in particular conversations Wittgenstein seems to affirm
its existence; the metaphysical thing is shown but it cannot
be, of the metaphysical thing alone it fits the silence: “On
what one cannot speak, he should stay silence.”
(“Tractatus”, 7)
Recommendations

6. We can conclude that the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein with
all their deficiencies, it has been important historically
because it raised a new interest for the language and to leave
open many questions as the truth, the sense, the relationship
between logic and ontology, etc. Some interpreters have
compared their philosophy to the doctrine Kantian: as well as
Kant put a limit to the use of the reason that took him to
eliminate the philosophy like science, transferring it to the
plane of the practical reason, Wittgenstein in this work would
put limits to the language transferring the big metaphysical
contents to the environment of the ineffable that is shown.
This is partly true, but be maybe more effective in definitive to
consider Wittgenstein in an own way, starting from that him
same he has said, without carrying to an extreme the
comparisons with other authors. He doesn't get lost this way
their characteristic originality and the danger of a false
interpretation is avoided.
ARCHE
The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the
illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations
of natural phenomena. Thus people today stop at the laws of
nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and
Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both were right
and both wrong; though the view of the ancients is clearer
insofar as they have an acknowledged terminus, while the
modern system tries to make it look as if everything were
explained
— Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.371-2

7. ANNEXES
VOCABULARY
1. Illusion : desire, yearning, security, fee
2. Intellectual: thinker, academic, brain , scholar , rational,
logical
3. Logic : reason, judgment, sense ,common sense
4. Metaphysics: basic, esoteric, essential, eternal,
fundamental, general, ideal, intellectual, philosophical,
profound, speculative, spiritual, subjective, universal.
5. Mystical: spiritual, mystic, numinous, magical,
supernatural, magic.

8. 6. Phenomena : exceptional, extraordinary, fantastic,
marvellous, miraculous, notable, outstanding, prodigious,
remarkable, sensational, singular, stellar , uncommon,
unique, unparalleled, unusual, wondrous (archaic or
literary)
Glossary
1. Analytic Philosophy: Analytic philosophy (sometimes,
analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of
philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking
countries in the 20th century
2. Natural Sciences: In science, the term natural science refers
to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe,
which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural
origin.
3. Perception: In philosophy, psychology, and cognitive
science, perception is the process of attaining
awareness or understanding of sensory information. ...
4. Social Sciences: The social sciences are the fields of
academic learning which explore aspects of human
society. Social sciences may draw upon empirical
methods and attempt to emulate the standards of
conventional scientific practice. ...
5. Sociologist : a social scientist who studies the institutions
and development of human society.

9. QUOTES
 “Anything is as difficult as not to be deceived. “
Difficult
 “A new word is like a fresh seed that hurtles to the land
of the discussion.”
Word
 “To work in philosophy -like to work in architecture, in
many senses - it is in fact a work on oneself. On the own
interpretation. On the own way of seeing the things -y
that that one wait of them –“.
Philosophy
 “In philosophy the winner of the career is that that
knows how to run more slowly; or the one that arrives
last.”
Philosophy
 “The philosophy is a fight against the charm of our
intelligence for the language.”
Philosophy
 “The philosopher is not civic of any community of ideas.
This is what makes it be philosopher. “
Philosopher
 “It is always good in philosophy to outline a question
instead of giving an answer to a question. Because an
answer to a philosophical question easily can be

10. incorrect; I didn't seize their liquidation by means of
another question. “
Philosophy
 “Our life is as a dream. But in the best hours we wake
up enough like to realize that we are dreaming. Most of
the time, however, we are deeply sleeping.”
Our life
 “We don't realize the prodigious diversity of daily
language games because the external lining of our
language makes that it seems all equally. “
Language
 “Although all the possible questions of the science
receive answer, they would not even touch the true
problems of the life.”
Science
 “The limits of my language are the limits of my world. “
Language
 “The sense of the world has to reside outside of him
and, besides, outside of the significant language. “
World

11. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Tecnos 2007
 Investigaciones Filosoficas Wittgenstein, Ludwig Critica
2008
LINKOGRAPHY
 http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/
 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
 http://www.deperu.com/web.php?
sitioweb=antropograf.blogspot.com/2010/04/ludwig-
wittgenstein-tractatus-logico.html