HICO LECTURE: The Tractatus as a War Book

Marie McGinn (University of York)

Lecture by Marie McGinn (York University): Wittgenstein's Tractatus as a War Book

Tuesday 27 October, 4pm

Faculty Room, Blandijn

Abstract
Although Wittgenstein formulated many of the problems that are the focus of his logical reflections in the Tractatus before the war, the Tractatus is drafted and then written in its final form entirely within the context of the First World War. Not only that, but the nature of the text was fundamentally changed by experiences and intellectual influences, particularly his reading of Tolstoy on the Gospels, that Wittgenstein underwent during the conflict. In the summer of 1916, immediately after Wittgenstein had been through some of the greatest challenges of the war, in three weeks of fierce fighting at the front during a major Russian offensive, the text shifted from the purely logical text of the earliest draft of the Prototractatus to a text which includes reflections on ethics. The change is so profound that Wittgenstein could write of the Tractatus, in a letter to von Ficker: “The book’s point is an ethical one.” The remarks on ethics that eventually found their way into the Tractatus, had their origin in remarks in the Notebooks that bear the clear mark both of Tolstoy’s influence and of the profound experiences that Wittgenstein had just been through at the Russian front. My aim in this talk is to see how looking at them in the light of the context in which they were written illuminates them and affects our interpretation of them.

This lecture is organized by the Centre for the History of Philosophy and Continental Philosophy (HICO) at Ghent University, Belgium. 

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