Reference: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Being only partially through the introduction by Michael Beaney, it strikes me as a good time to articulate some of my intentions and expectations with respect to this book. A few things draw me to this book: first, because it seems like a solid example of discursive architecture, what with Wittgenstein applying unique identifiers to each item in the discourse; second, because I am interested in better understanding the intellectual history of the analytic tradition; and thirdly, for the plain challenge of it.
All that said, these intentions don’t seem to amount to much in terms of establishing what could be called a ‘driving inquiry’ or a central curiosity or question, or complex thereof, to serve as the ‘nucleating agent’ for one’s retention of knowledge and insights derived from the text. This is quite important, for, in lacking such a driving inquiry, one’s retention would seem to drop of dramatically.
My auto-didactic methodology is evolving nicely, involving now a more robust note-taking sensibility (e.g. articulating questions or uncertainties around areas of ‘salient incomprehension’, developing guiding/driving questions to promote a practical context for understanding the text, etc.) and I’ve seen palpable improvements across the last several readings. For example, while reading The Federalist Papers and The Constitution of Liberty, I only sporadically took notes and mostly just highlighted key excerpts. Before that, for Discourses on Livy, I only did highlighting and took virtually no notes. Whereas most recently, with The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, I took extensive and incisive notes which did well to map out my understanding of the text as I engaged with it. Here, with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I shall take a similar approach, with a view yet toward further methodological refinement.
