Wittgenstein Publishes Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

In 1921, Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most remarkable works of 20th-century philosophy. Written partly in the trenches of World War I, the Tractatus argued that the world consists of facts, that language pictures facts, and that what cannot be expressed in language must be passed over in silence. Its famous final proposition — "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" — declared that the deepest questions of ethics, aesthetics, and the meaning of life lie beyond the reach of language. Wittgenstein believed he had solved all philosophical problems; he later returned to demolish his own work in the Philosophical Investigations.