Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (6.5) - Tractatus 1-2

Tractatus 1-2

• 1 "The world is all that is the case.
• 1.1 "The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

These famous propositions, starting from 1, and ending at 7, are striking for their simplicity and ambition.

Proposition 6.5 (and its consequence) can not be understood until one realizes that Wittgenstein was a son of a family at the apex of Viennese culture, the capital of an empire (now vanished). In today's terms, the answer 6.5 is that from a man who some might view as possessed of the highest intellect, moral discrimination, and worldly wealth. He literally could do anything he wished. But his father, Karl, thought him untalented, in comparison to the rest of the family, which included musicians, and artists. He was schooled at home until age 14 (he later imposed his ideals on his hapless students after he had completed Tractatus, and had undertaken training as a schoolteacher (1920)). He was assigned to study engineering and undertook the curriculum of a mechanical engineer at Berlin Technische Hochschule (1906).