Wittgenstein’s Grundgedanke as the key to the Tractatus

This paper argues that the key to unlocking the philosophical significance of the Tractatus is what Wittgenstein calls his Grundgedanke, his fundamental thought or basic idea. The interpretational strategy that takes the Grundgedanke as its starting point is con-trasted with two traditional (Anscombe and Hacker) and one more recent (therapeutic) interpretational approach that appear unable to do justice to the novelty of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy on which its relevance for contemporary philosophy arguably depends