The Method of the Tractatus

Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 11:139-41 (2003)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A few years ago, a group of American philosophers, Cora Diamond and James Conant among them, suggested a resolute, or radical reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. These two authors claim that the Tractatus has a body, and a frame. Wittgenstein minded the frame seriously, whereas all the remaining propositions of the Tractatus, which belong to its body, are written tongue in cheek. To the frame of the work belong the Preface, 3.32, 3.326, 4.003, 4.111, 4.112 and 6.53, 6.54. In it Wittgenstein gave meta-theoretical instructions how to treat the rest of the book. The main idea of the frame is expressed in 6.54 which reads: "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them 'as steps' to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)" This was the real message of the Tractatus.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,217

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Ethics, imagination and the method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.Cora Diamond - 2000 - In Alice Crary & Rupert J. Read (eds.), The New Wittgenstein. New York: Routledge. pp. 149-173.
Wittgenstein, Nāgārjuna and relational quantum mechanics.Michael A. Peters - 2022 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 54 (12):1942-1951.
The new Wittgenstein: A critique.Ian Proops - 2001 - European Journal of Philosophy 9 (3):375–404.
What Does the Wittgensteinian Inexpressible Express?Jaakko Hintikka - 2003 - The Harvard Review of Philosophy 11 (1):9-17.
Solipsism and the Limits of Sense in the Tractatus.Jônadas Techio - 2014 - Philosophical Topics 42 (2):339-369.
On a tension in diamond's account of tractarian nonsense.Ben Vilhauer - 2003 - Philosophical Investigations 26 (3):230–238.
On the 'resolute' reading of the tractatus.John Koethe - 2003 - Philosophical Investigations 26 (3):187–204.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-11-17

Downloads
104 (#207,545)

6 months
1 (#1,778,245)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Was he trying to whistle it?Peter Ms Hacker - 2000 - In Alice Crary & Rupert J. Read (eds.), The New Wittgenstein. New York: Routledge. pp. 353-388.

Add more references