Max Black
A Companion to Wittgenstein's "Tractatus".
Cornell University Press, 1970. Third printing. xv/450 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in red cloth, with gilt-lettered black spine compartment. Book is in fine condition. Price-clipped dust jacket shows light shelfwear. Dust jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" is an unquestioned philosophical masterpiece. It is a work of extreme compression. Within a compass of twenty thousand words, and in cryptic and elliptical sentences, Wittgenstein writes of the nature of the universe, the essence of language, the foundations of logic and mathematics, theories of probability, philosophical method, and the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. Finding it difficult, if not distasteful, to force philosophical thoughts and insights into a linear deductive order, Wittgenstein also makes scattered comments about the philosophy of science, ethics, religion, and mysticism.
In "A Companion to Wittgenstein’s "Tractatus,"" the distinguished philosopher Max Black provides students with a collocation of scattered passages and a close commentary on the text. This brilliant book allows readers to fully apprehend the value of "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" as both a unique text and as the foundation for much subsequent work in philosophy."