Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Odyssey: The Great War and the Writing of the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus

DoppelHouse Press Los Angeles
Edited by Radmila Schweitzer
Co-published with the Wittgenstein Initiative
240 pages fully illustrated in color
October 2023

A collectible book charting Wittgenstein’s movements, personal struggles, and intellectual development, from Vienna to Cambridge and Norway, to the battlegrounds of WWI, where he completed what was destined to become the most influential philosophy book of the 20^th century.

Essays by Ray Monk, Marjorie Perloff, Allan Janik, Martin Pilch, Ian Ground, Alfred Schmidt, Urszula Idziak, Knut Olav Åmås, and the class of 2018 of the Kundmanngasse Gymnasium Vienna.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s way to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the ground-breaking works in the history of philosophy, can rightly be termed an Odyssey. Both in terms of his movements and his intellectual development in the course of writing it, the Tractatus incorporated an exciting, improbable journey. A compendium of scholars have come together at the 100th anniversary of the work’s first official publication in 1922 to detail the main stations in Wittgenstein’s life that would entirely transform philosophy. The years 1912 to 1922 are illuminated through photos, military maps, and letters against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic periods in world history.

The complex theory of language developed by Wittgenstein In the Tractatus had an enormous influence not only on philosophy but extended also to literature, music, film, painting, architecture, anthropology, and economics. Its uniqueness and rigor challenge our perceptions to this day.