Abstract

Wittgenstein’s doctrines of what can be said and of what cannot be said but only shown, and the paradoxical conclusion of the Tractatus that the sentences of the book are nonsensical, are outlined. Professor Cora Diamond’s interpretation of the Tractatus is sketched. It is criticized as inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus, on the one hand, and with everything that Wittgenstein said about the Tractatus, both while writing it and thereafter, on the other.