The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), the bible of the philosophical movement of logical analysis that dominated the 1930s, established the turn towards language as the very object of philosophical inquiry.

The seven main positions, numbered by their author, are:

The world is all that is the case. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of states of affairs.

Thought is the logical picture of facts. Thought is the meaningful proposition.

The proposition is a function of the truth of elementary propositions. The general form of a truth function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)].

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

In this work, which is also the only one he published (aside from a short article in 1929), Wittgenstein attempted to provide a “definitive” answer to the Kantian-type question: “How is language and thought possible?”. His comprehensive and original answer was based (1) on an individualistic understanding of language and the world as a totality (of random) facts and (2) on a pictorial theory of meaning: the logical syntax of language was the great mirror of the essence of the world.

The foundation of language – and the essence of the world – is the “simple”, the necessary and indestructible elements that, combined in a certain way, constitute facts. The point of contact of the word with the world is the name. “The name signifies the object. The object is its meaning.” The proposition, as a combination of names, depicts the fact.