Posted by Jehanus Terrianus on November 04, 1999 at 12:02:50 PM EST:
In Reply to: Jean Terrien voudrait qu'on lui réponde sur le fond posted by observatoire de téléologie on November 02, 1999 at 06:34:44 PM EST:
Period of the "Tractatus." Throughout the war, Wittgenstein worked on problems of logic and philosophy, writing his thoughts in notebooks that he carried in his rucksack. When he became a prisoner of the Italians at the end of the war, he had a completed manuscript, which he sent to Russell in England. After his release, Wittgenstein tried in vain to find a publisher for his book. Its eventual publication, due to Russell's influence, occurred in 1921 under the title Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). The Tractatus is universally accepted as novel, profound, and influential. The book is a series of remarks, carefully ordered and numbered in a decimal notation. Although only 75 pages, it sweeps over a vast range of topics: the nature of language; the limits of what can be said; logic, ethics, and philosophy; causality and induction; the self and the will; death and the mystical; good and evil. The central question of the Tractatus is: How is language possible? How can a man, by uttering a sequence of words, say something? And how can another person understand him? Wittgenstein was struck by the fact that a man can understand sentences that he has never previously encountered. The solution that burst upon him was that a sentence that says something (a proposition) must be "a picture of reality." "A proposition shows its sense," he wrote; it shows a situation in the world. His picture theory seemed to explain the "connection between the signs on paper and a situation outside in the world." Not realizing that propositions are pictures comes from failing to consider them in their "completely analyzed" form, in which they are arrangements of simple signs that are correlated with simple elements of reality so that "the picture touches reality." (See meaning, analytic proposition.)
One of the most striking features of the Tractatus is its conception of the limits of language. Not only must a propositional picture contain exactly as many elements as does the situation that it represents but, furthermore, all pictures and all possible situations in the world must share the same logical form, which is at once "the form of representation" and "the form of reality." But this form that is common to language and reality cannot itself be represented. "Propositions can represent the whole of reality," he wrote, "but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it--logical form." "What can be said can only be said by means of a proposition, and so nothing that is necessary for the understanding of all propositions can be said."
There are other things that cannot be represented ("said"): the necessary existence of simple elements of reality; the existence of a thinking, willing self; and the existence of absolute value. These things are also unthinkable, since the limits of language are the limits of thought. Thus Wittgenstein's remark, "Unsayable things do indeed exist," is itself something that cannot be said or thought; it may give insight, but it is actually nonsensical and eventually must be "thrown away." The final sentence of the book ("Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent") is no truism. It is a highly metaphysical remark that attempts to convey the unsayable, unthinkable doctrine that there is a realm about which one can say nothing.