SOURCE: "Ludwig Wittgenstein," in Words in Reflection: Modern Language Theory and Postmodern Fiction, The University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 8-34.

Thiher is an American writer and educator. In the following essay, he suggests that Wittgenstein's intellectual development between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations represents the "transition from modernism to a postmodern style of thought. "

Wittgenstein's Tractatus, apparently written at least in part while its young Austrian author was in the trenches during World War I, has been one of the most influential philosophical works of the twentieth century. This influence was initially due to the reception given to the work by Austrian and English positivists after the war. Today it is also due to the kind of antilanguage mysticism that, paradoxically enough, many writers have taken from the book. But, perhaps even more paradoxically, the work's influence lies in the fact that one must understand the Tractatus...