Tractatus in context: The essential background for appreciating Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus By James C.Klagge, Routledge. 2022. xiii +408 pp. hb £135.00/pb £39.99. ISBN 978‐0367465568

This book will surely become one of the first sources that many people consult when working on the Tractatus, whether as students or as scholars. It is likely to be regarded as essential reading. In what follows, I will say more about what the book is and about concerns that some readers might have about it. The bulk of the book, almost exactly 300 pages, goes through the Tractatus proposition-by-proposition, providing information intended to help understand what Wittgenstein is saying and why he is saying it. This information includes references to similar or related points made by Wittgenstein in notebooks and other works, related points made earlier by others, notes on the translation(s) of the passage in question, some discussion of possible interpretations and explanations of relevant concepts, such as Ockham's razor and Bertrand Russell's theory of types. To a large extent, what we are given is pertinent quotations from Russell, Gottlob Frege and others, but Klagge's own elucidations are certainly prominent too. Although he does not consciously push any particular line of interpretation, Klagge does make the occasional editorial comment. For instance, he describes TLP 2.0211–2.0212 as a 'lamentably brief set of propositions' (p. 55). However, he mostly sticks to uncontroversial claims, such as that Wittgenstein may have been referring to this or that passage from Russell or Schopenhauer, say, or that the words Wittgenstein quotes come from such-and-such a work. The rest of the book consists of a short introduction, a short chapter on remarks Wittgenstein made about the Tractatus after he had finished it, and a longer appendix collecting early reviews and Russell's introduction. In the introduction, we learn that this project has been in the making since the mid-1970s. It is clear that a lot of work has gone in to it, and it would be foolish not to take advantage of these decades of labour. Klagge's pointers to relevant sources and explanations of what is most likely to be going on in each proposition of the Tractatus are very helpful. Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine some objections to a book of this kind. Of these, the biggest two might be that it could make it too easy to think that one understands the Tractatus and that this work insufficiently respects the distinction between the Tractatus and its author. Klagge does not offer an interpretation, though. He only provides help for those interested in developing their own. If one objects to being served Russell, Frege and others in bite-sized pieces, one can always go and read the whole works from which Klagge quotes. The other worry goes deeper. Proposition 6.54 of the Tractatus implies a difference between understanding the author of that book and understanding the sentences of which it consists. How much, and exactly what, to make of this difference are difficult questions to answer. One could argue that not much should be made of it at all, that Wittgenstein means only that if you understand what he has been arguing then you will realize that, technically, many of his sentences are nonsense. Or one could argue that the difference is essential to a correct understanding of the work. In that case, there remains the question of who we should understand the author to be: the historical person Ludwig Wittgenstein born in a certain place at a certain time and having lived through various experiences (fighting in the First World War, studying with Russell and so on), or, as it were, a creature of the text itself, someone essentially connected to, and locatable only in or through, that text, to whom contingencies of history are irrelevant? On the one hand, the Tractatus was undoubtedly written by a real person whose history surely might have influenced its composition. There is evidence that this person sometimes misremembered or misunderstood what others, such as Frege, had written, and that his experience in the war prompted thoughts, about death, for instance, that made their way into the book he was writing. On the other hand, the historical Wittgenstein, while not insisting that details of his biography be kept from his readers, seems to have believed such details to be irrelevant and that his book's having been written partly in the trenches could be of interest only as a possible explanation of why it was not a better book. Klagge does not take a side in this debate, and he explicitly acknowledges that the Tractatus presents 'itself as a text almost without context' (pp. 1–2), but Tractatus in Context might be regarded as implicitly rejecting acontextual interpretations of the text. Such a rejection would not be a fault if that approach to interpretation is wrong, and, even if it is right, Klagge does not prevent anyone from taking it. Nor does he say they are wrong to do so. Still, focus on the text's human author might conceivably at times impede understanding. For instance, Klagge suggests, as others have before, that 'It seems that Wittgenstein has misremembered Frege' (p. 120). Because of this, Klagge implies, Wittgenstein accuses Frege in TLP 4.063 of thinking something that he explicitly denied. The historical Wittgenstein was certainly capable of misremembering and of making mistakes, but if we want to read the Tractatus as charitably as possible or as a text independent of such contingencies, then we might prefer to try to think of how Frege could be understood as having thought what the Tractatus says he thought. Colin Johnston has shown recently that this can be done.1 The difficulty of making sense of the text might at times prompt us to look beyond it to its author's life. So, too, major events in his life might seem likely to shape the text. Klagge correctly observes that 'It is only after Wittgenstein is shot at in April 1916 that God and death are first mentioned in the philosophical Notebooks' (p. 270). Klagge goes on to note that Wittgenstein wrote in August of that year that his work had broadened out 'from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world'. Wittgenstein does not say when this broadening occurred, however, and he does not attribute it to his having been shot at. Klagge's speculation about the cause is certainly very plausible, but it is speculation. In a footnote, he quotes Wittgenstein's writing in January 1915 (before he was shot at) that his whole task consists in 'giving the nature of all facts, whose picture the proposition is. In giving the nature of all being' (p. 270). Is 'the nature of all being' a broader or even different subject than 'the nature of the world'? Klagge implies that it is, and he might be right. But that he is right on this does not seem self-evident or undeniable. Attempting to regard the author of the text as someone to be understood solely via that text creates interpretative problems, though, when something appears to have gone wrong, such as in the first sentence of the second paragraph of 5.515, which some, including Klagge and Max Black, think might have been misprinted, or when Wittgenstein might seem to have got Frege wrong, as in 4.063. Klagge is surely right to acknowledge the possibility of mistakes of this kind. The danger is that some readers might too quickly seek explanations of apparent mistakes or eccentricities in history rather than philosophy. (If they do, it is not Klagge's fault, but the danger is worth noting.). Moving on to smaller complaints, one could easily argue that Klagge has overemphasized or underemphasized this or that, made a point that was not worth making or neglected a point that could have been made. Such complaints are unavoidable. Perhaps more worth saying is that the book omits the following things that readers might hope (but could not reasonably expect) to find in it: the text of the Tractatus itself, a guide to recent secondary literature on it and more material from the 1914–1916 Notebooks. On the last of these, Klagge warns in his introduction that he has 'tended not to present relatively well-known or easily accessible material from the wartime Notebooks unless it had direct and decisive relevance' (p. 4). Rather than continue this survey of possible criticisms of the book, I should end by repeating that this is an extremely welcome and useful resource. After the Tractatus itself, it is the first place to look when seeking understanding of anything within that text. Readers will disagree about how best to think of the author of the Tractatus, as someone to be understood perhaps exclusively through the text or as someone whose biography is important. Tractatus in Context is an invaluable aid for anyone seeking to make up their mind about this and other questions about that difficult book.