Wittgenstein's first published work. Should be as famous for Russell's misunderstanding of it, made obvious in his introduction, as for it's effect on the positivists and modern philosophical logic. Absolutely essential reading for studying Wittgenstein's later work. The Investigations can be read as a refutation of the Tractatus, and thereby, as a refutation of much of contemporary philosophy of language. While Wittgenstein doesn't help his readers with either references or explanatory preamble, the effort of reading this book will be well rewarded to anybody studying contemporary issues in philosophical logic, philosophy of language or philosophy of science. Whatismore, Wittgenstein's poetic style is a joy to read and many of his aphorisms will come back to you in other studies.

Those not familiar with the proprositional calculus may not like the symbolic logic involved, but it is worth understanding because it is quite simple and makes the rest of the text very easily understandable. Wittgenstein's most important terms like 'elementary proposition' come essentially from viewing natural languages as an imperfect version of the propositional calculus. This idea is quite wrong, in fact even Wittgenstein himself was struck by his own naivety in believing that all language did was put forward propositions capable of truth or falsity. His later view that to understand language you must look at it, seems blindingly obvious, but he was just reacting to the general view of the logical positivist who only saw meaning in propositions capable of truth or falsity, which does not in any way match up with how we actually use language in everyday life. The idea of "pictoral form", a mysterious connection between the object relations of the real world, and the grammatical structure of the sentence is a beautiful and impressive idea, but lacks any real grounding in fact.

Many would disagree, but I say ignore the numbered paragraphs and just read it through, Wittgenstein was just using a technique he learnt from engineering textbooks, and the structure doesn't help understanding. Many people will be frustrated by the lack of argument, and its almost biblical tone, but trust me, anyone familiar with Wittgenstein's life will know that he thought over these problems for a long time.

Philosophical Investigations is a more important work, but shares nearly all the concerns of the Tractacus. Read the section in the Investigations on broomsticks and logical atomism, it will show the bankruptcy and arbitraryness of atomism in linguistic practise.

Wittgenstein is the all-time father of logical philosophy, save Bertrand Russell. Read Russell, Whitehead and Frege if you want to get into complex mathematical formulas and neverending inquiries, but read Wittgenstein for better understanding. Wittgenstein showed his genius of analytical and logical philosophy in TLP. (As well as his genius of analyzing linguistic philosophy. C'est parfait!

I enjoyed Pears' works on Wittgenstein (The False Prison) but this book really was more irritating than informative. The topic, to be sure, is of prime importance and is also not very well handled considering how the term "rational" is tossed about these days. However, this book really appears to miss both the crucial points by simply staying within the tight boundaries of a very dry discussion.

That is, Pears doesn't really advance the concept of irrational behaviour very far. He spends the first part of the book exploring 'akrasia' (that's right, we're right back to Socrates even after a few thousand years) and some of the side arguments related to this explanation of irrational behaviour. Then he criticizes Freud and Davidson for their expansion on this idea.

But all the way through the book there is really little to be learned and the language, straight out of a thesis paper, is not really a pleasant read. This could be forgiven if there were some good ideas but ultimately that is not the case. This is rather odd, too, since one would think that Pears would bring some of his expertise on the limitations of thought to bear on this subject.

Ultimately I believe there is a lot more to be understood here before we even start asking the correct questions.