The Tractatus Re-examined

Abstract

There are several serious difficulties in trying to understand and apply Wittgenstein’s ideas from the time of the Tractatus. One is the paucity of examples. We can never be sure how the notions of the Tractatus are to be instantiated; what, for instance, will count as a simple object, a proposition, a state of affairs or a case of seeing the world under the aspect of eternity? A second is that the Tractatusis a thoroughgoing piece of metaphysics with its essentialist theories of the world, language, ethics and aesthetics. These two difficulties are closely connected. It has never been the practice of metaphysics to trade in examples. For one thing, metaphysical theories and concepts are usually supposed to be completely general and their application to particular cases tends to be thought irrelevant. In addition, a close look at the details of particular cases has the damaging tendency of raising sceptical doubts about the intelligibility of metaphysical claims.