Culture | The rest is silence

A century ago Ludwig Wittgenstein changed philosophy for ever

Written in the trenches, his “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” still baffles and inspires

May 20th 2021

OF ALL THE innovations that sprang from the trenches of the first world war—the zip, the tea bag, the tank—the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” must be among the most elegant and humane. When the conflict began, this short treatise was a jumble of ideas in the head of a young Austrian soldier and erstwhile philosophy student called Ludwig Wittgenstein. By the time he was released from a prisoner-of-war camp during the Versailles peace conference, it had taken rough shape over a few dozen mud-splattered pages in his knapsack. In 1921 Wittgenstein found a publisher, and philosophy was changed for ever.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The rest is silence”