Tractatus

1 The world is all that is the case.
- 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
- 1.2 The world divides into facts.
2 What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.
- 2.1 We picture facts to ourselves.
- 2.2 A picture has logicopictorial form in common with what it depicts.
3 A logical picture of facts is a thought.
- 3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.
- 3.2 In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of the thought.
- 3.3 Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning [Bedeutung].
- 3.4 A proposition determines a place in logical space. The existence of this logical place is guaranteed by the mere existence of the constituents--by the existence of the proposition with a sense.
4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.
- 4.1 Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
- 4.2 The sense [Sinn] of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and nonexistence of states of affairs.
- 4.3 Truth-possibilities of elementary propositions mean [bedeuten] possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs.
- 4.4 A proposition is an expression of agreement and disagreement with truth-possibilities of elementary propositions.
- 4.5 It now seems possible to give the most general propositional form: that is, to give a description of the propositions of any sign-language whatsoever in such a way that every possible sense can be expressed by a symbol satisfying the description, and every symbol satisfying the description can express a sense, provided that the meanings of the names are suitably chosen.
  It is clear that only what is essential to the most general propositional form may be included in its description--for otherwise it would not be the most general form.
  The existence of a general propositional form is proved by the fact that there cannot be a proposition whose form could not have been foreseen (i.e. constructed). The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.
5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)
- 5.1 Truth-functions can be arranged in series.
  That is the foundation of the theory of probability.
- 5.2 The structures of propositions stand in internal relations to one another.
- 5.3 All propositions are results of truth-operations on elementary propositions.
  A truth operation is the way in which a truthfunction is produced out of elementary propositions.
  It is of the essence of truth-operations that, just as elementary propositions yield a truth-function of themselves, so too in the same way truth-functions yield a further truth function. When a truth-operation is applied to truth-functions of elementary propositions, it always generates another truth-function of elementary propositions, another proposition. When a truth-operation is applied to the results of truth-operations on elementary propositions, there is always a single operation on elementary propositions that has the same result.
  Every proposition is the result of truthoperations on elementary propositions.
- 5.4 At this point it becomes manifest that there are no "logical objects" or "logical constants" (in Frege's and Russell's sense).
- 5.5 Every truth-function is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the operation

"(-----T)( ,....)".

This operation negates all the propositions in the right-hand pair of brackets, and I call it the negation of those propositions.

5.6 The limits of my language mean [bedeuten] the limits of my world.

6 The general form of a truth-function is [p, , N(X )].
This is the general form of a proposition.
- 6.1 The propositions of logic are tautologies.
- 6.2 Mathematics is a logical method.
  The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore pseudo-propositions.
- 6.3 The exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law. And outside logic everything is accidental.
- 6.4 All propositions are of equal value.

6.41 The sense [Sinn] of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists--and if it did exist it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be any propositions of ethics.
Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
- 6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
  Ethics is transcendental.
  (Ethics and aesthetics are one.)
- 6.422 When an ethical law of the form "Thou shalt...", is laid down, one's first thought is "And what if I do not do it?" It is clear however that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms. So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant.----At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself. (And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)
- 6.423 It is impossible to speak about the will insofar as it is the subject of ethical attributes.
  And the will as a phenomenon is of interest only to psychology.
6.43 If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts--not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
- 6.431 So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.
  - 6.4311 Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
    If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
    Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.
  - 6.4312 Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.
    (It is certainly not the solution of any problem of natural science that is required.)
- 6.432 How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.
  - 6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution.
6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.
6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole--a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole--it is this that is mystical.

6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.

6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
- 6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.
  (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)
- 6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy--and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one.
6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.