Great Mirror : An Essay on Wittgensteins Tractatus

Contents: Preface. Foreword/D.P. Chattopadhyaya. Introduction. 1. The beginnings and the sources of Wittgenstein\'s early philosophy. 2. Wittgenstein and Russell: founding logic and metaphysics. 3. Wittgenstein and Frege: the Linguistic turn. 4. Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer and Kant: the transcendental roots of the Tractatus. 5. Philosophy, Metaphysics and the critique of language. 6. The structure and limits of sense. 7. Language and reality: towards the possibility of a picture theory of language. 8. Logic, logical form and logical necessity. 9. The metaphysics of the world: essence and existence. 10. Self, will and the world. 11. Free Will, determinism and ethics. 12. In defence of the mystical. Select Bibliography. Index.

"This book proposes to examine the central doctrines of Wittgenstein\'s Tractatus from a transcendental point of view. Wittgenstein has been treated for long as an empiricist and positivist thinker. This has resulted in a total distortion of Wittgenstein\'s philosophy in the Tractatus. I have tried to rectify the distortion by showing that Wittgenstein has argued for a transcendental point of view which sets the limits of language and scientific thought. Wittgenstein does not take the scientific way of understanding reality as fundamental to philosophy, because science does not represent the whole of reality. Philosophy, according to him, sets limits to science and scientific thought and allows for religion and ethics which introduce the higher realms of thought not expressible in scientific language. Hence, Wittgenstein\'s plea for the transcendental and the mystical.

The book brings Wittgentein\'s thought closer to that of the Vedanta by showing that Wittgenstein echoes the Vedantic idea that the ultimate reality is beyond language and intellect." (jacket)