Elucidating the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy of Logic and Language
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loginThe original impulse to write this book had its origins in the renewed interestin theTractatusthat was provoked by the work of Cora Diamond and JamesConant. Like many other readers of Wittgenstein’s famously obscure earlywork, I felt that Diamond and Conant gave exceptionally clear and forcefulexpression to the failings of the sort of metaphysical interpretation of theTractatusthat had come to dominate the interpretative literature. Accord-ing to the view they criticize, Wittgenstein’s early work is committed to aform of realism that attempts to ground the logical structure of our languagein the independently constituted structure of reality. The work is held topresent an account of the relation between language and the world whichentails, not only that the account itself cannot be expressed in propositions,but that the world’s structure is something that cannot be represented: showsitself in the logical structure of our language. Occasional attempts to teach acourse on theTractatushad led to a growing dissatisfaction with this style ofinterpretation, but I had very little sense of a possible alternative to it. Thealternative offered by Diamond and Conant is notoriously robust: the workdoes not contain an account of the relation between language and the world.It is rather an attempt to lead a reader from an impulse to provide such anaccount to the realization that any such attempt results in sheer nonsense.
