Frontverläufe in Wittgensteins Prototractatus

Abstract: Wittgenstein’s finally published version of his Tractatus — his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung — covers material and thoughts from the years 1913 to 1922. What, deeply inspired by Frege’s works, started as collaboration with Russell in Cambridge soon developed into an independent and critical position. Main parts of Wittgenstein’s early logical system were developed during his military service in First World War, so e. g. the formulations of his famous picture theory of proposition arise during his stay in Krakau and his service on the ship “Goplana” in autumn 1914. We partly can follow this development of Wittgenstein’s ideas by reading his war time notebooks. The most important document of this time is manuscript MS 104, which contains the so-called Prototractatus, which normally is seen as an early, but fairly complete version of the Tractatus. But in fact the manuscript contains much more interesting information about the actual formation of the Tractatus itself, when it is read as a kind of log book of the ongoing composition procedure. The actual order of the propositions differs considerably from the published order and enables us to follow the step by step integration of new propositions into the growing structure of the Tractatus. The paper will give a chronological outline and an overview about the surviving pre-Tractarian sources and their setup, and it will argue for a reading of MS 104 allowing a detailed reconstruction of the textual composition as well as serving at the same time as a basis for an interpretation of the war time notebooks.