Science and lifeworld. Wittgenstein and his time

The article’s basic assumption is that Wittgenstein’s intellectual development is inseparable from the evolution of Viennese cultural milieu at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus can only be understood against the background of his wartime diaries and, in particular, his encrypted notes. These notes, which Wittgenstein was writing for over two years, demonstrate the indivisible connection between his personal, or non-philosophical, reflection and his analysis of logical and metaphysical problems. These earlier diaries contain both encrypted and plain text entries. By analyzing the principle of why some topics are encoded and others are not, it can be argued that Wittgenstein encrypts primarily the matters of personal significance and those issues which are referred in the Tractatus to as “what can’t be expressed” or “unspeakable”, that is topics on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. Some of these encrypted metaphysical ideas later appear in the Tractatus. The strong correlation of Wittgenstein’s philosophical reflections with the exceptional and extraordinary situation of war can be observed. Wittgenstein often exploits military vocabulary for describing tantalizing search for solutions to logical problems such as being “besieged” by philosophical questions and as intending to “attack the fortress”.