[tiberious726]

Exactly this, but even more so. Wittgenstein believed the purpose of philosophy is to "prevent the bewitchment of our senses by means of language". Throwing the ladder away is important, else the reader might mistakenly interpret the tractatus as being the ultimate systemization of reality, rather than a critique of all such projects.

Fantastically, our modern obsession with truth-tables when studying logic comes from exactly this misreading! (Which also lead to Wittgenstein quitting philosophy for years.)

[glenstein]

Wittgenstein was initially received by Bertrand Russell, and by the various positivists of the time as a possible intellectual giant who could champion their various projects. But he sews the seeds in the end of the Tractatus of the criticisms that would be developed more fully in his Philosophical Investigations, which is sometimes read as a repudiation of his own earlier work.

I don't think he intended with his ladder metaphor to fully repudiate the Tractatus, I think the purpose of the Tractatus evolved over the course of him writing it. Otherwise the second half of his philosophical career would have just been an endorsement of the Tractatus rather than retrospective criticisms of it.

[tiberious726]

The tractatus isn't like the blue and brown notebooks, where we just grabbed random notes of his after he died and published them for future generations to study. It's an intentional published work. He means everything he says in it the moment it is published.

He _definitely_ evolves the view presented throughout the course of the tractatus, but this is intentional, walking the reader up the ladder, the last step of which is throwing the ladder (the tractatus) away.

The relation between early and late Wittgenstein more complex than outright repudiation. Immediately after the tractatus he thought he solved the problems of philosophy, and later came to realize simply destroying the positivist project was not ask there was the problem of philosophy.

On Russell, hilariously, he would organize readings of the tractatus with the Vienna circle. Wittgenstein would be so furious with their interpretation he would sit the room with his back to them and talk Indian poetry aloud.