Abstract

In the Preface of the Tractatus Wittgenstein presents his proposal of “drawing limits” separating sense from nonsense as a way to get rid of philosophical problems caused by “misunderstandings of the logic of our language.” Such limits, we will later discover, will be drawn by means of a method which allows one to determine whether a given projection of a strings of signs was made in accordance with the rules of logical syntax, or else violated them, thus generating metaphysical propositions. Notwithstanding its centrality for the Tractatus, the idea of drawing such limits seems to be in tension with Wittgenstein’s actual procedure in most of the book, which from its very first numbered proposition introduces “metaphysical” theses again and again in order to achieve the results programmatically indicated in the Preface—hence the need for the self-undoing message of 6.54, urging the reader to recognize those propositions “as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them.” That tension creates some of the most challenging questions in the debate about how to read the Tractatus—questions such as: how are we supposed to use Wittgenstein’s propositions as “steps in a ladder”? What exactly does “throwing the ladder away” amount to? And what does it mean to “see the world aright” after “overcoming” those propositions? This paper attempts to answer those questions by means of a close reading of an exemplary set of propositions dealing with solipsism and the limits of language. Although limited in scope, the hope is that such reading might stand as a test case for parallel readings of other parts of the book.