Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation in Bloomington, MN

"The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up until now has intangibly weighed down our consciousness." Would Wittgenstein have been willing to describe the Tractatus as an attempt to find "the liberating word"? This is the basic contention of this strikingly innovative new study of the Tractatus. Matthew Ostrow argues that, far from seeking to offer a new theory in logic in the tradition of Frege and Russell, Wittgenstein viewed all such endeavors as the ensnarement of thought.