Q0085

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
Thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein
School Analytic Philosophy
Source Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54
Theme Understanding
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54, within the tradition of Analytic Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of understanding, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Ludwig Wittgenstein. (n.d.). My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0085

MLA: Ludwig Wittgenstein. “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0085.

Chicago: Ludwig Wittgenstein. “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0085.

Same thinker

More from Ludwig Wittgenstein

  1. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
  2. What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
  3. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
  4. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
  5. The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

All quotations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Same theme

More on understanding

  1. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
  2. What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.
  3. To be great is to be misunderstood.
  4. I shall endeavor not to laugh at human actions, nor to weep over them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
  5. It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards.

Browse the understanding theme