The Tractatus and the First Person

The Tractatus and the First Person

Maria Van Der Schaar

My aim in the talk is to contrast Wittgenstein’s method of philosophy with Russell’s scientific method: Wittgenstein’s method in the Tractatus is first- personal. The primary understanding of judgement is not through belief- attribution, as Russell took it to be, but through what one does as a first person by using a significant sentence. How does this approach exclude nonsense judgements? How does it prevent psychologism? And how does it relate to what is said about the philosophical I in the Tractatus? Is modern analytic philosophy to gain something from such a first-personal approach to philosophical questions?