1922: Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Frazer's Golden Bough: Intersections

1922: One Hundred Years Later Series

The Humanities Center continues its commemoration of the literary "miracle year" of 1922 by focusing on three great texts produced in that year: Eliot's The Waste Land, Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and the abridged edition of Frazer's The Golden Bough. In these two events, the extraordinary influence of these works will be considered, as will their historical context, namely the end of the First World War.

Session 1: Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Frazer's Golden Bough: Intersections

Brian R. Clack, PhD | Department of Philosophy and A. Vassiliadis Director of the Humanities Center
Tyler Hower | Department of Philosophy

Among the astonishing publications of the annus mirabilis of 1922, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus stands as the most significant philosophical production, casting its shadow over the subsequent hundred years of philosophical work. In this session, Brian R. Clack and Tyler Hower (faculty members in USD’s Department of Philosophy and co-authors of Philosophy and the Human Condition) will discuss Wittgenstein’s groundbreaking work and his response to a book that, in its popular abridged form, constituted another notable publishing feat of 1922: Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.