How to read the Tractatus
In lieu of a proper treatment of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, I'll drop a couple details here. Eventually this page will be a full explication on why I think the book is fantastic. For now I will leave you with, "this book meaningfully changed my life on a day-to-day basis and completely shifted my philosophical outlook. I regard it as the most personally important book I have ever read."
Not only is the form of the book super cool, it plays with self-reference and... agh, I won't spoil it for you. Just go read it, or dm me about it (contact info at the bottom of my about page) if you don't feel like reading it or something.
(I'd note, though, that a part of why this book was so important for me may have been that I read it relatively early in my life — intellectual life, at least. I am very confident it is cool even if you have done a lot of philosophy, but if you don't have the peculiar missing pieces that I had at the time and are not me in general, I guess, I don't know what kind of impact it'll have on you.)
How I did it:
- Have some background in philosophy I guess, I can't remember how much I had but it wasn't that much
- Look at the book for a couple minutes and puzzle at it; don't expect to understand it, be curious
- Read or watch something that gives you context, basic ideas, and frames the jargon to make interpretation easier; I prefer lectures, I recall this one being exceptionally good though I don't remember exactly
- Go back to the Tractatus and give it a full run-through; you can probably skip a lot of the technical formal logic that is in the middle. Also, check out Gavin Leech's Showing Over Saying.
TL;DR: watch a lecture or two (or read something equivalent I guess) before you read the book; this will probably give you enough context to take the book from meaningless and impenetrable to mostly cool and interesting.
(That's how it worked for me I guess.)
If Wittgenstein has a million fans, I'm one of them
If Wittgenstein has 5 fans, I'm one of them
If Wittgenstein has 1 fan, that one is me
If Wittgenstein has no fans, I'm no longer alive
If the world is against Wittgenstein I'm against the entire world
Till my last breath, I'll support Wittgenstein
(huh?)