Discussions with Russell
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He attended Gottlob Frege's lectures, but only very briefly. Seeing his student's interest in the foundations of mathematics, Frege advised him to attend Russell's lectures. This led to the two men's first meeting in Cambridge in 1911, followed by two years of passionate discussion.
Wittgenstein did not return to Cambridge until 1929. In the meantime, he had written his major work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book draws on Russell's conception of logic, but its author breaks with his mentor by holding that logical truths are nothing more than tautologies. He hints that Russell and Frege's concern with grounding mathematics in logic is ridiculous. Nevertheless, Russell agreed to write a preface… which Wittgenstein disliked and described as "treacle".
The Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921)
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein, Russell's most famous student, addresses problems in philosophy. Yet, as he says in his preface, "the reason why these problems are posed lies in a misunderstanding of the logic of our language". As Russell notes in his introduction,
Wittgenstein begins by addressing the logical structure of propositions and the nature of logical inference (deduction). He then turns to the theory of knowledge, the principles of physics, ethics and, finally, mysticism.
