philosophy · 1918 – 1922
Whereof One Cannot Speak
Writing in the last year of a war, Wittgenstein concludes that most of what people want to say about the world cannot be said in propositions at all. The book that hands language models their prompt-shaped aphorisms also supplies the sharpest available warning about them: fluency is not intelligibility, and the boundary of the sayable is exactly where systems of our kind are most confident.
“What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.”
Advances
- A structural account of what a proposition can do
- The limit-statement about ethics, which the work declines to cross
- A criterion for clarity that makes confident nonsense visible as nonsense
Landmarks
1918 CE
Completed in the war
Drafted while serving on the Austrian front; forced to work on proofing presses.
1921 CE
German edition
Published without the author's name, in the series he edited himself.
1922 CE
Englished by Russell
D. R. Phillips translates it; Wittgenstein resists, and writes the preface himself.
Who was arguing
Alignment stack at 1922 CE (0 of 20 techniques)
Techniques introduced in this era: