Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Research Articles

Logicality and the picture theory of language

I argue that there is tension in Wittgenstein’s position on trivialities (i.e. tautologies and contradictions) in the Tractatus, as it contains the following claims: (A) sentences are pictures; (B) trivialties are not pictures; (C) trivialities are sentences. A and B follow from the “picture theory” of language which Wittgenstein proposes, while C contradicts it. I discuss a way to resolve this tension in light of Logicality, a hypothesis recently developed in linguistic research. Logicality states that trivialities are excluded by the grammar, and that under the right analysis sentences which look trivial are in fact contingent. The tools necessary to support Logicality, I submit, were not available to Wittgenstein at the time, which explains his commitment to C. I end the paper by commenting on some points of contact between analytic philosophy and the generative enterprise in linguistics which are brought into relief by the discussion.

A Comparative Analysis of Early and Late Ludwig Wittgensteins Philosophical Thoughts

This paper examines the early and late thoughts of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein through the comparative study of two of his famous works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. A whole summary of the two works will not be presented in this paper; instead, essential concepts and ideas from the same two topics Wittgensteins view on language and reality and Wittgensteins view on logic will be summarized from the two works independently. After the summary, a discussion of Wittgensteins thought evolvements on the same topic will be delivered. The paper examines the essay with a critical analysis of the two contrary perspectives through links to historical background and an evaluation of the ideas. Even though Wittgensteins works have been extensively studied, this presentation will demonstrate them from a broader perspective. This essay aims to provide an in-depth review of Wittgensteins philosophical movements of thought in areas including meaning, logic, and the philosophy of language.

SINGULARITY AND VISUAL PERCEPTION

This paper deals with the mutations in Wittgenstein’s treatment of the notions of “generality”and of “singularity”, from his first philosophy, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, to his later maturephilosophy represented by the Philosophical Investigations. As we shall see, Wittgenstein’s philosophicalhandling of the notion of “visual perception” plays a key role in those conceptual transformations.

Significant Absences: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Silence and Joyce’s Poetics of the Unspoken


 
 
 This paper discusses an important phase in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy through a comparative examination of the profound correspondences that exist between his concept of silence and the poetics of another crucial authorial figure of the 20th century: James Joyce. Based on the hypothesis that there are striking resemblances between their early works, that is, between Joyce’s realistic short-story collection Dubliners and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the article employs mostly close-reading, analytical-interpretative and comparative methods. It argues that silence was an intentional intellectual, aesthetic and ethical choice of both these authors, their way to preserve the autonomy of metaphysics and to honour the beauty of the unspoken.
 Starting from their common critical treatment of the habitual and largely alienated speech, the discussion connects Wittgenstein’s philosophical attitudes regarding the imprecision and inadequacy of every-day language and Joyce’s notion of ‘spiritual paralysis’ of the city-life, which he saw as the main motive for writing his collection about fin-desiècle Dublin. On the grounds of their shared views about the limits of words, behind which there are worlds that cannot be properly uttered, the idea of silence – or the highly significant narrative absence – grows to permeate the work of both. In the case of Wittgenstein, it is a call for a new philosophy, or anti-philosophy, which in negating metaphysics in effect preserves its independence from a discursive speech which cannot express it, whereas in the case of Joyce, correspondingly (and almost simultaneously), it is a quest for a new literary mode that will foreground a particular Modernist allusiveness, rhetoric of omission and deliberately incomplete, gnomonical narrative structures.
 
 

Casting History in Bronze: Delving into the Political Mosaic of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Sculptures

Statues within urban landscapes serve as powerful instruments shaping the collective ethos of communities and ethnic groups, functioning as identity markers and emblematic embodiments of power and ideology. Crafted as vehicles for political messaging throughout history, statues endure as relics, actively participating in societal discourse. They represent collective imprints, embodying a community’s history and broadcasting its traditions, institutions, beliefs, and ideologies. This study explores the commemorative practices and visual rhetoric of monuments and statues, focusing on the iconic status of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Punjab. Analyzing statues in Amritsar and Ludhiana, it delves into their symbolic allure, guided by Mitchell’s Picture Theory, Roland Barthes’ conception of images as political subjects, and Stuart Hall’s “Encoding-Decoding” discourse. Unearthing the interplay of images in shaping collective memory, this research illuminates the contemporary political and cultural significance of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s statues.

Two Kantian Issues within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: Autonomy of the Will and Duty

The aim of the article is to analyze Wittgenstein’s Tractatus starting from proposition 6.422, which deals with the question of moral duty in the form of the categorical imperative, “Thou shalt”, in the light of Kant’s doctrine of the autonomy of the will. It focuses especially on three Kantian assumptions: the idea of the will as the only foundation of obligation, the idea of a non-empirical subject of the will, and the inseparability between the idea of freedom and the concept of autonomy. These assumptions will be considered in comparison with Wittgenstein’s treatment of the problem of causality within the frame of the picture theory and the idea of a metaphysical subject as bearer of values.

WITTGENSTEIN DESPRE SENSUL LUMII ÎN TRACTATUS 6.41 – O ANALIZĂ CRITICĂ

The following text constitutes a critical analysis of 6.41, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. As I have understood it, the paragraph contains an argument (central to Wittgenstein's book) meant to support the conclusion at 6.421: "It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. (...)". In what follows I aim to do three things. First, I will talk about the context of 6.41. Then I will try to reconstruct the argument of 6.41 such that its logical structure becomes apparent. Finally, I will consider several critical reactions which could target the argument in its reconstructed form and try to claim that a critical evaluation of Wittgenstein's argument is nowhere near an end.

Трактат в обличье поэмы: пограничный жанр и особенности его языковой организации

The hybrid genre of poetic treatise occupies a somewhat marginal position within the lit­erary genres landscape. Nonetheless, it holds particular interest as a realm of interaction be­tween artistic and scientific discourses, sometimes intertwining with everyday speech. In the twentieth century, the interplay between scientific and poetic texts, as well as between verse and prose, took on new experimental forms. Western literature saw the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his philosophical treatise form on artistic practices, including poetry. Witt­genstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" left a significant imprint on poets associated with the ‘language school’ in the USA. Furthermore, Wittgenstein's treatise and its interpre­tation by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko continue to reverberate in contemporary Russophone poetry, particularly within the objectivist line. The research material encompasses texts of poetic treatises from the Russian avant-garde (Ivan Terentyev, Daniil Kharms, and Yakov Druskin), contemporary Russophone objectivist poetry (Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Ale­ksandr Skidan, and Nikita Safonov), and American ‘language writing’ (Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, and Bob Perelman). The article scrutinizes the linguistic charac­teristics of such discursive interaction within the experimental form of a ‘treatise disguised as a poem’. Specific linguistic traits of the treatise genre, typically found in scientific and philo­sophical works, are transposed onto poetic texts. These include discourse words and expres­sions conveying metatextual deixis and the process of argumentation, a distinct I-We subjec­tivity characteristic of scientific discourse, a pronounced focus on propositionality as a deter­minant of truth or falsity, and a clearly delineated, mathematically ordered division of state­ments.

ЗАВЕРШЕННАЯ НЕЗАВЕРШЁННОСТЬ ПОЭМЫ Н. В. ГОГОЛЯ «МЕРТВЫЕ ДУШИ» В «ГОГОЛИАНЕ» В. ОТРОШЕНКО

The article is devoted to the consideration of the mythologizing receptive model in relation to the fact of the creative biography of N. V. Gogol, the unfinished poem “Dead Souls”, in the cycle of essays by the modern writer V. Otroshenko “Gogoliana”. The author analyzes V. Otroshenko’s reliance on the complex of ideas of the philosopher L. Wittgenstein during the creation of the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” based on the understanding and reconstruction of the causes of Gogol’s creative crisis. The ontological aspect of the interpretation of the relationship between Gogol’s creative consciousness and language, proposed by Otroshenko, is revealed.

Redefining the Status of Philosophical Statements

In his foreword to the Philosophical papers by Hans Hahn, Karl Menger mentions a controversy about the possibility or impossibility to speak about language within the Vienna Circle in the early 1930’s. He then adds: “Waismann proclaimed that one could not speak about language. Hahn took strong exception to this view. Why should one not – if perhaps in a higher-level language – speak about language? To which Waismann replied essentially that this would not fit into the texture of Wittgenstein’s latest ideas.”1 Thanks to the publication of the protocols of the Vienna Circle by Friedrich Stadler in his book The Vienna Circle – Studies in the origins, development and influence of logical empiricism, we have access to some discussions within the circle in the years 1930 and 1931, that allow us a partial reconstruction of the controversy. In these minutes we attend a very lively discussion on the topic of ‘talking about language’. We would like to make more explicit the tenets of this controversy, starting from the discussions within the circle. We will then focus on the evolution of the positions of different members of the Circle, that reflect different attitudes towards this problem, that are expounded in articles published until 1936. Although its members strived to stay the closest, they could to the landmarks laid down by the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, some of its members broke with them in many respects. The need to admit the possibility of talking theoretically about language became more pressing as the works of Tarski and Godel began to exert an influence on the researches of its members. Two options emerged: talking about a language in another language (Hahn) or in the same language (Carnap). Hahn’s positions, despite their originality, stand close to those of Carnap, who presents in 1931 his meta-logical project. Disagreements with Waismann occured frequently. Neurath remained skeptical about such a development that could, according to him, lead back to metaphysical considerations. The protocols by Rosa Rand give us precious insights on the premises of this debate, symptomatic of the diversity of the positions and of the fruitfulness of the exchanges within the Vienna Circle at that time. However, this debate takes place in a broader setting, namely the discussion of the status of philosophical statements once the rejection of metaphysics is accomplished. The answers provided reflect strong dissenting currents within the circle. For Neurath, to conceive of philosophy as providing elucidations is mistaken. Science shall take the form of an encyclopedia, that contains heterogeneous discourses – exact formulated sentences, as well as piece of ordinary language – and is taken in a dynamic process. No discourse outside science can be accepted. For Schlick and Waismann, there is still room for philosophy as providing elucidations about language. For Carnap, the aim is to attain a logically suitable language for science; discussions in a natural language have only a provisional role, in order to attain an adequate language, in which the logic of science can be formulated.

Bachmann und Wittgenstein. Versuch einer Annäherung

The following contribution focuses on Ingeborg Bachmann’s reception of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, particularly the central theses of his famous Tractatus logico-philosophicus, published in 1922. Her two radio essays from 1953, Sagbares und Unsagbares – Die Philosophie Ludwig Wittgensteins, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Zu einem Kapitel der jüngsten Philosophiegeschichte show Bachmann’s deep understanding of essential aspects in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy. Bachmann was also responsible for the German publication of Wittgenstein’s Werkausgabe Band I, including the Tractatus and his second masterpiece Philosophical Investigations in 1960. On several occasions Bachmann mentions the influence Wittgenstein had on her. The text will focus on selected topics of his philosophy that also had a strong impact on Bachmann, such as his famous concept of the unsayable, the limits of language, or his understanding of the Western civilization and culture at his times.

Traumatic Female Gaze: Julia Pirotte Looking at the Kielce Pogrom

In this article, I analyze Julia Pirotte’s photographs of the immediate aftermath of the Kielce pogrom as a resource for conceptualizing the relationship between trauma and photography, gendered ways of seeing, memory and trauma, body and archive, vision and death, death and the archive, images and history, survival, and destruction. These specific atrocity pictures make a difference to contemporary conceptions of trauma photography and the female gaze in relation to racist, political violence. I work with theories that go beyond thinking about trauma and photography based on the Lacanian concept of tuché on the one hand, and Barthes’ punctum on the other. I investigate to what extent Pirotte’s documentation of the Jewish victims and survivors of the pogrom can be read as a belated encounter with the trauma of the Holocaust, and what it reveals about survival at the site of violence. The article is a work of a feminist academic oriented at reclaiming a space within the narrative on visual violence; the reflection on the female traumatic gaze is an element of a broader gesture aimed at reorienting the theory of atrocity pictures and documentations of political violence, as well as photography of trauma.

Kantian Motives in Work of Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is proved that the basic framework of the premises and reasoning of Wittgenstein's “Tractatus Logico-philosophicus” corresponds quite well to the transcendental method (as formulated by H. Cohen). Whereas Kant’s philosophy proceeds from the fact of existence of mathematics and mathematised natural science and investigates their conditions of possibility, Wittgenstein proceeds from the fact that propositions of language describe reality and reveals the conditions of possibility of such descriptions. Kant, answering the question about the conditions of possibility of the named sciences, comes to the idea of the transcendental subject and the distinction between the world of phenomena and the thing in itself. Wittgenstein's investigation of the conditions of possibility that the world is described by propositions leads to the assertion that both the world and language are together in logical space. The latter constitutes the a priori and transcendental condition of the possibility that language “reaches out” to reality. For both the theories - in the “Critique of Pure Reason” and in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” - the idea of the boundary is important. In the “Critique of Pure Reason” it is the boundary of possible experience and cognition, while in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” it is the boundary of what can be thought and expressed by meaningful propositions. Related to the different definitions of the boundary is the difference in the treatment of mathematised natural science. For “The Critique of Pure Reason” was created in the era of unconditional acceptance of Newtonian mechanics. And the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” was created at the time of the crisis of the Newtonian paradigm and its replacement by other notions of time and space. However, the idea of boundary, which is present in both doctrines, determines closeness in the attitude towards metaphysics between the author of “The Critique of Pure Reason” and the author of “The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. The study also shows that Wittgenstein did not follow logicism in his philosophy of mathematics. For him, both mathematical objects and propositions of logic are constructions. The conviction about the constructive character of mathematical and logical objects shows an affinity with the Kantian tradition in the philosophy of mathematics.

The Failure of Imagination and its Redemption: John Banville‘s The Book of Evidence

ABSTRACT This article focuses on John Banville’s The Book of Evidence in which art serves as an intrinsic thematic concern for the narrating character Freddie Montgomery who becomes captivated by a 17th century Dutch portrait, tries to steal it, and savagely kills the servant who interrupts him. Besides offering a story of crime and punishment, the confessional monologic form inexorably establishes a particular ekphrastic narration, showing a fascination for the rhetorical and imaginative possibilities of art. While the novel has been frequently noted for its invigorations of self and authenticity, little attention has been given to redemptive power of art evoking ethical questions with a focus on the other. Banville oscillates between an aesthetic and an ethical framework through which framing the portrait as a source of inspiration, he deploys a further layer of ekphrasis which is found in W. J. T. Mitchell’s picture theory situating ekphrasis in three crucial steps; the ekphrastic indifference, hope and fear denoting emulations between the visual and verbal representations.

The picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood

Symbolic representation is a central facet of human development that enables people to depict experiences and communicate meaningful information with others. Participation in social interaction relies on graphical symbols, gestures, and symbolic artifacts to form relationships, acquire language, and represent the world. However, substantial theoretical differences between cognitive and social-constructivist accounts of the development of symbolic representation prevent a unified model from forming. Thus, the task of this work is to introduce a theoretical model for symbolic development in early childhood. Throughout this work, Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language is empirically grounded with nascent, cross-cultural research in iconicity and experimental semiotics in order to propose a picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood. Last, this work critically reformulates current debates regarding the representational facets of symbolic development and offers novel insights that bridge philosophy of language and cognitive anthropology.

Ontology of Substances and Ontology of Facts: back to Comparison

The purpose of this work is to characterize clearly the early Wittgenstein’s position in context of the contemporary discussions between the adherers of classical ontology, based on the notion of substance, and its detractors. The Aristotle’s ousiology is usually regarded as a locus classicus of substantial ontology. A noticeable tendency in the contemporary philosophy is the rejective stance towards the notion of substance and towards the vision of the reality as the ‘totality of things’ ( summa rerum ). This trend goes through the 20th century (B. Russell, etc.) and is prominent in the philosophy of the 21th century. Wittgenstein, who calls the world the totality of facts, not of things, is sustainably regarded in the secondary literature as a herald of a non-classical way of thought, presented in his ontology of facts - a radical alternative to substantial ontology. However, how can this claim cohere with the active usage of the classical substantialism terms, going back to Aristotle, in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”? In order to answer this question, it’s advisably to address, as the starting point of the analysis, the work of B. Wolniewicz comparing Wittgensteinian ontology to Aristotelian ontology and pointing out not only difference, but also parallelism between them. In the present paper, it’s shown that some of Wolniewicz’s remarks are valuable, but the overall view of the problem should be corrected and supplemented taking into account nuances of both Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian ontologies. Having in mind the results of this analysis, one can read the early Wittgenstein’s philosophy as a statement about the role of the classical forms of thought for a philosopher proposing a non-classical worldview, which helps to elucidate the structure of the contemporary ontological discussions.

Allegory as Language Game: Spenser with Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein’s early philosophical masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, builds to a logical picture of the whole world and asks what words can give us pictures of. Broadly speaking, this “picture-theory of language” exposes the underlying assumptions of allegory. Rejecting logic in his late work, especially the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein asks what, in the vast array of human circumstances, words are used for. Meaning is no longer a spectral picture inside the head; it is out in the world, woven into all our interactions. Similarly, when we interpret The Faerie Queene, we are not constructing models of what each of us alone (in competition with everyone else) pictures as the true meaning. We are interacting with the text and with one another in the delicate web that is the poem’s field. All, or almost all, such interpretations are illuminating, but none of them is final, comprehensive, or in any simple sense true.

Hoe de auteur verdween uit Wittgensteins Tractatus

How the Author Disappeared from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus In this essay, I investigate the status of the written word in the (early, mostly) work of Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein tends to imagine language as written rather than spoken. This focus on writing goes together with a sense that the author is absent from the text. I argue that the problem is not with writing in general but specifically with books, and more specifically with the fantasy of a book of everything, the importance of which to Wittgenstein’s early work was brought out by Eli Friedlander. On my account, such a book, by pretending to contain the whole world, leaves no place for an author. Since the early Wittgenstein imagines subjectivity in the form of a book of everything, he is unable to place subjectivity – subjects: you and I – in the world. I end by briefly suggesting that in his later work, Wittgenstein gives up on the fantasy of a book of everything and is in a better position to address the problem of finding subjectivity in the world.

Het complexe verhaal van de wiskunde in de Tractatus

The complex story of mathematics in the Tractatus In this paper some thoughts are presented about the treatment of mathematics in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein. After introducing a metaphor for the mathematical ‘building’, we look at the scattered ideas about mathematics in the Tractatus itself. Although the general consensus is that Wittgenstein rejects the entire ‘building’, there are recent insights that suggest that a more coherent view of ‘Tractarian’ mathematics can be presented, if we are willing to leave behind a foundational form of thinking. What this means will be outlined in some detail. The concluding general assessment is that the final word on the status of mathematics in the Tractatus is still pending.

De Tractatus lezen. En waarderen

Reading the Tractatus. And appreciating it The reception history of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus displays an impressive and persistent diversity. This paper explores possible sources of that diversity and locates them in different takes on the text and its context of origin, and in different perspectives of the readers. This hermeneutics is illustrated by a comparison of two views on the importance of ethics for an understanding of the Tractatus: that of Cora Diamond and the one developed by the authors in previous work.