An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus
Anscombe's 1959 'Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' — the standard mid-twentieth-century English commentary
Tradition: Analytic philosophy / Wittgenstein scholarship / Catholic philosophical thought
Anscombe's 1959 'Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' — the standard postwar English commentary
Published by Hutchinson in 1959 (with substantial revisions for the 1971 second edition, plus a 1996 paperback reprint by St Augustine's Press), 'An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus' is Anscombe's commentary on the 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' (1921). Anscombe — Wittgenstein's literary executor (alongside Rush Rhees and G. H. von Wright) and translator of the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953) — was uniquely positioned to write the commentary: she had been Wittgenstein's student in Cambridge, was one of the three executors of his Nachlass, and had become the leading Anglophone interpreter of his philosophy by the mid-1950s. The book argues against the prevailing logical-positivist reading of the Tractatus (Carnap, Ayer, Russell) and emphasises the work's metaphysical, ethical, and mystical dimensions. Anscombe's central interpretive claim: the picture-theory of meaning is not a positivist verification-criterion but a genuine ontological-semantic claim about how language reaches the world; the famous concluding propositions (6.4-7) on ethics, value, and the mystical are not 'meaningless' in the positivist sense but indicate what the picture-theory itself cannot express. The book is the standard mid-twentieth-century English-language commentary on the Tractatus and shaped the post-1960 Wittgenstein scholarly community in fundamental ways — opening the path to the 'new Wittgenstein' readings of Cora Diamond, James Conant, and the later resolute-reading school.
Editions cited
- An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Hutchinson University Library, London, 1959)
- 2nd revised edition with substantial additions (Hutchinson, 1971)
- Paperback reprint: St Augustine's Press, 2001 (with new foreword by Peter Geach)
- Critical context: Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit (MIT, 1991); James Conant, 'The Method of the Tractatus', in From Frege to Wittgenstein (Oxford, 2002)
School Embodiments
Defining mid-twentieth-century Wittgenstein commentary.
"The Tractatus is more than a logical-positivist tract." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ch. 1)
Major treatment of the picture-theory of meaning.
"The picture-theory: propositions picture states of affairs." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ch. 5)
Logical-philosophical methodology.
"The logic of the Tractatus must be taken seriously on its own terms." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ch. 7)
Anscombe's Catholic-philosophical perspective informs her ethical-mystical reading.
"The Tractatus's mystical conclusion is genuinely religious." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ch. 11)
Emphasises Wittgenstein's mystical sevens.
"What can be shown cannot be said." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, on the unsayable)
Scholastic-analytic methodology applied to a contemporary text.
"Distinguish the picture-theory from the use-theory." (Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus)
Internal Tensions
The standard mid-twentieth-century English-language commentary on the Tractatus. Continuously read and debated; the 'new Wittgenstein' or 'resolute reading' school of the 1990s-2000s (Diamond, Conant, Kremer) developed positions that Anscombe's commentary had prepared the way for.
I. Time
1959 first edition; 1971 substantially revised second edition. Anscombe was 40 at first publication.
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II. Space
Oxford / Cambridge. Anscombe had moved from Oxford (where she had become Bertrand Russell's adversary in the early 1950s through her vigorous defence of double-effect doctrine) to Cambridge in 1970, taking the chair Wittgenstein himself had held.
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III. Matter
Single commentary book (~180 pages). Form is monographic-introductory: chapters proceed through the Tractatus's seven main propositions and their numbered sub-propositions, with attention to philosophical interpretation rather than line-by-line gloss.
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IV. Observer
Mid-Anscombe. The observer is the Wittgenstein executor and translator, uniquely positioned to know what Wittgenstein had thought about his own early book.
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V. Energy
Commentary-philosophical energies. Anscombe's distinctive voice — direct, doctrinally serious, philosophically uncompromising — pervades the book.
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VI. Information
Single short book. The 1971 second edition's additions on the picture-theory of meaning and on the ethical-mystical material constitute substantial additions to the original.
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How An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.