Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

I can see why this is such an influential work of philosophy: it is not every day that an individual attempts to disassemble an entire field of human endeavour and thought. This is, in some ways, the philosophical equivalent of the Dada movement in art that sought to emphasize the nonsense of everything. The core of Wittgenstein's argument is essentially that philosophy can only say something of significance outside of formal logic, as anything logical is a tautology, and therefore says nothing of substance.

And the final line... Well... This book does not end with without controversy.

Admittedly only made it twenty pages or so into this thing. An intolerably obtuse book wrapped in a guise of simplicity. The entire premise of "if a perfect language could exist, this is what it would look like" is absurd and approaches the realm of egomaniacal. Even Wittgenstein later thought he was wrong.

The ingenious work which, had it been true, would have provided a firm foundation for Positivism and provided justification for Philosophy's existence. It also would have pretty much been the last word on the nature of and philosophical limits of language. Instead Wittgenstein repudiated this view and put a nail in the coffin with P.I.

Elegant, minimal, logically crystalline. And mostly wrong.