Ludwig Wittgenstein 
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) 

Ludwig Wittgenstein is widely regarded as the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length work of philosophy he published in his lifetime. Together, these two facts convey some idea of the power this work has exerted over the minds of other philosophers and over the discipline itself. In this book, Wittgenstein claims no less than to have solved all the problems of philosophy, and for a work with such a small page count, it is astonishing in its ambition. It manages to offer a radical new theory of logic, along the way addressing such problems as the foundations of mathematics, solipsism, the nature of ethics and art, and even free will.

About the author

Ludwig Wittgensteins life was marked by the same pervasive sense of conflict that characterizes his work. He was born in 1889 into the family of a wealthy Viennese industrialist but gave the bulk of his inheritance away. Although he had studied at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein enlisted as an Austrian patriot on the opposite side of the war from England; it is both incredible and appropriate that he was able to complete the
Tractatus, his theory of logic, during active combat duty.