By Harry Tomany
At this point in this introductory series to some of Wittgenstein’s most important ideas, it is worth considering Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece: the Tractaus Logico-Philosophicus (references to it will be made using ‘TLP’). This work is the culmination of Wittgenstein’s early reflections on philosophy and what he thought of at the time (around 1918) as the solution to all philosophical problems. While Wittgenstein, starting in 1929 (after he retuned to doing philosophy), eventually came to think that there were important mistakes with it, indeed that many of the important philosophical mistakes that he identified in his later work applied to the Tractatus itself, some familiarity with this work is important for at least the following four reasons.
First, it is a brilliant work of philosophy that is worth consideration in its own right. Both the ingenuity of its ideas and its aesthetic merit attention. Second, directly related to the first point, it, unsurprisingly, occupied an influential place especially in early twentieth century philosophy. Understanding much of the philosophy of that time involves at least a cursory understanding of the Tractatus. Third, it contains important mistakes (some which have been repeated in philosophy, but could be avoided!) but also important insights – especially when viewed in terms of the development of philosophy at the time. Where there are outright mistakes or even where the insights are distorted or only partially realized, this does not imply the Tractatus – even in terms of the broad themes of its project – is best viewed as merely wrong and readily dismissed. As Wittgenstein himself explained, the Tractus was like a clock that doesn’t tell the right time, not like a bag of junk professing to be a clock (see An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy, p.78). Fourth, his later work is best understood against the background of his early work. This is the case not only with respect to the scholarly specifics about the development of his later work (which happened gradually upon his return to philosophy), but even when considering the broad themes that characterize it. It is precisely for this reason that some consideration of the Tractatus is relevant at this point in this introductory series. We can begin to better understand what some of his later ideas were a response to as well as set the stage for a better understanding of some of the central ideas we will be tackling in future installments.
The Tractatus is a highly succinct but dense work – partly because of the amount of knowledge it assumes of the reader – that consists of seven principal propositions, separated by a number of sub-propositions that provide further explanation, or support, to the main ones. They are numbered to show their relative importance to, or position in, his overall philosophical position. Rather than actually arguing for, or explaining, the details of his position, these propositions are presented as bold assertions. Thus, it is left to the reader to fill in many of the details of his position and arguments. The preface to the work lays down one of its most important claims: ‘what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence’. This is reiterated in the conclusion and in the passages leading up to it – together with the proper method for doing philosophy. That there are things that can be stated, and other things that can only be shown, is thus a recurring theme of the book. And this directly relates to one of the central aims of the Tractatus: to delimit sense from nonsense. Already here we see a continuity with his later philosophy, although how he goes about achieving this aim, and arguing for it, are substantially different.
The Tractatus lays out a view about how language works. For it is understanding this that will facilitate the above aim. This is most generally understood as the picture theory of language, which is bolstered and/or explained by his other metaphysical views. Wittgenstein asks how language – and more generally any representation whatsoever – is possible. For anything at all to represent it must have something in common with what it represents. Like a picture that is only able to represent because of its shared pictorial form with what it represents, language is only capable of representing because of its shared logical form with the world (the most general form). An important aspect of this metaphor is that, while there is a shared pictorial form between a picture and what it pictures, this form itself cannot be pictured. In the case of language, this is paralleled by the fact that language cannot state its shared logical form. The shared form between language and the world, together with a number of other types of truths, cannot be stated, but they do show themselves – make themselves manifest – in the representation (i.e., well-formed meaningful propositions of the language). Properly understanding this, and the specifics of what this entails, makes clear what is meaningful and why it is so, and makes clear what is nonsense. In some cases, what is nonsense is an attempt to say what can only be shown. As we have already seen, this is a central claim of the book.
In order for language to represent, its propositions must be bipolar (for the general characterization, and emphasis on what is important to this position, I am indebted to P.M.S. Hacker’s work, especially the paper ‘When The Whistling Had To Stop’). That is, its meaningful propositions must be capable of being true and capable of being false. This is captured by, or ‘built into’, the general form of the proposition – represented with ‘This is how things stand’ (TLP 4.5). This ‘variable’, the general propositional form, gives the essence of the proposition, all description, and, with this (because of the shared form of language and the world), the essence of the world (TLP 5.471). The essence of the proposition is to describe state of affairs; the essence of reality is to consist of the existence and non-existence of states of affairs (TLP 2.06). And it is of the essence of states of affairs to obtain or not obtain. A proposition essentially describes a state of affairs (pictures a possibility – TLP 4.01 – that may or may not be realized); if the state of affairs obtains, then the proposition is true, and if it doesn’t, it is false. In this way, the necessity of bipolarity for all meaningful propositions is explained. It is in general terms on the basis of the bipolarity requirement that many – seemingly meaningful – propositions can be said to be nonsense (or, in the case of logic, limiting cases of propositions). This includes the propositions about this very topic in the Tractatus and many other (traditionally) philosophical propositions (although more still needed to be said about why propositions in ordinary language that appear to be elementary, necessary and meaningful actually aren’t – see below). Since these involve essences, they are not capable of being true and false and thus are considered to be nonsense. But these propositions are, by the lights of the Tractatus, shown to be true by means of the well-formed propositions of the language.
Together with what was just outlined, the picture theory explanation of language required a way of explaining some of the details of the shared logical form along with other related metaphysical views (e.g. that there is a connection between language and the world that is explained by such things as his technical notions of elementary propositions and simple objects). It is by using the newly developed – mathematical – logic of the time that Wittgenstein explains many of the details of this. And it on the basis of these explanations that he is able to further explain why certain propositions in natural language are nonsense, even though they might appear to be elementary (not containing a logical connective – e.g. in ordinary language, ‘and’, ‘or’ or ‘if… then’ ), necessary, and meaningful. Molecular propositions, that is, propositions containing logical connectives, could be necessary because they could end up being true based on the combination of its constituent propositions (e.g. ‘It is raining or it is not raining’ – which is always true). But any seemingly necessary elementary proposition requires further explanation. Indeed, this includes many of the propositions in the Tractatus itself.
It is to some of these details – and further explanation about how this relates to Wittgenstein’s early method of philosophy – together with further criticisms of his early views, that we will turn in future installments.