Georgy Filatov gave a talk "In the beginning were the facts: Logical Holism and Metaphilosophical Quietism in Early Wittgenstein’s Philosophy"

The 102nd meeting of the "Formal Philosophy" research and theory seminar was held on October 22.

Abstract

Historically, the first interpretation of the ontological structure of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" was the atomistic reading proposed by Bertrand Russell in his introduction to the first English edition of the book. Russell’s position proved highly influential and continued to shape subsequent scholarship, remaining virtually unchallenged for many decades. The situation changed in the final decades of the twentieth century with the emergence of texts offering the holistic interpretation of the "Tractatus" (P.M.S. Hacker, D. McCarty, D. Pears et al.). Although this approach entered the broader landscape of Wittgenstein studies, it never became mainstream.

We reconstruct the main theses and arguments of both atomistic and holistic interpretations, and show how the perspective of the latter aligns with the core intuitions of contemporary quietist readings of Wittgenstein. Within this framework, special attention is given to the negative metaphilosophical remarks in Wittgenstein’s writings, which reveal a striking continuity from the "Tractatus" to the "Philosophical Investigations".