Ware - Dialectic of the Ladder: Wittgenstein, the Tractatus and Modernism

For Sarah

Also available from Bloomsbury

Portraits of Wittgenstein , edited by F.A. Flowers III and Ian Ground

Wittgensteins Form of Life , David Kishik

Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations: A Readers Guide , Arif Ahmed

Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: A Readers Guide , Roger M. White

Contents

The ideas in this study have occupied me, in one way or another, for a long time, during which I have incurred more debts than I can fully acknowledge here. John Westmoreland first introduced me to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ; and Roger White showed me how I might begin to take this strange little book seriously. I would like to thank Ken Hirschkop and Tony Crowley for encouraging my early ideas for this project; and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing financial assistance. I wish to express my gratitude to Howard Caygill, Julian Dodd, Terry Eagleton and Janet Wolff, who read through the manuscript at various stages, offering numerous helpful suggestions for improvements. Daniela Casellis support for this project never faltered: her advice, enthusiasm and good will were invaluable at every stage. At Bloomsbury, I would like to thank Liza Thompson and Frankie Mace, whose hard work helped steer the manuscript through to publication. Finally, I offer sincere thanks to both of my parents; and, above all, to Sarah. Without her love, labour and understanding, this work would not have been possible.

Abbreviations refer to Ludwig Wittgensteins writings listed in alphabetical order.

Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has fascinated and perplexed readers since its publication in 1922. It is a short but intense work, made up of a series of highly compressed remarks or propositions. These remarks, governed by a strict decimal numbering system which Wittgenstein considered vital to securing the books overall clarity, deal with a range of topics: the relation between language and reality, the nature of logic, solipsism and subjectivity, the role of ethics and its connection with aesthetics, mysticism, and the aim of philosophy. Whilst there is nothing philosophically obscure about these themes, the book itself is notoriously difficult for readers to understand. Wittgenstein himself anticipated this difficulty in a letter to Bertrand Russell in March 1919:

Ive written a book called Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung containing all my work of the last six years. I believe Ive solved our problems finally. This may sound arrogant but I cant help believing it [] [O]f course [] nobody will understand it; although I believe, its all as clear as crystal.

Wittgensteins fear that his book would not be understood proved, initially at least, to be correct. The manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers (a [financial] risk that no publisher in Austria today can afford to take, as one put it); Although Russell eventually wrote the Introduction that would pave the way for the works publication, this was itself taken by Wittgenstein as evidence that his book had not been understood:

[W]hen I got the German translation of the introduction, I couldnt bring myself to have it printed with my work after all. For the

In this study, I draw attention to two features which make the Tractatus particularly challenging for readers. The first is the style in which the book is written. To Ludwig von Ficker, editor of the modernist journal Der Brenner , Wittgenstein explained: For the present I will say this much: the work is strictly philosophical and at the same time literary : but theres no gassing in it.

The second difficulty for the reader concerns an apparent dissonance within the Tractatus itself. Despite appearing to put forward logical, linguistic and meta-philosophical theories in the body of the text, Wittgenstein writes, in the books penultimate section:

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsense, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

(6.54)

What, then, is one to make of these baffling sentences? How is it possible to understand a work which concludes that its own propositions are nonsense ? Why would Wittgenstein have laboured to compose such an intricate philosophical work only to have it self-deconstruct so dramatically at the end? And, moreover, what precisely does it mean to throw away the ladder (of nonsensical sentences) in order to see the world rightly? Things are complicated even further once we take into account Wittgensteins claim that the books point is an ethical one, and, more specifically, that:

My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing , I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it.

In what follows, I put forward a reading of the Tractatus which treats as central the meta-philosophical, ethical and literary questions raised by the work. My argument, simply put, consists in the following claims. (1) The Tractatus does not aim to advance philosophical doctrines and theories, nor does it seek to communicate ineffable truths; rather, it is a dialectical work which aspires to therapeutically dissolve certain illusions of thought. (2) The Tractatus is an ethical work; and its ethical point is intimately bound up with its literary and aesthetic dimensions. (3) Placing the Tractatus in the force fields of modernism and modernity provides an invaluable framework for exploring the works dialectical, literary, and ethical strands. To some of Wittgensteins more traditional exegetes, this latter claim will no doubt sound controversial. Surely, they will argue, the real context of the Tractatus is the great works of Frege and the writings of [] Bertand Russell: the names mentioned by To this, my reply is straightforward: examining the Tractatus in the contexts of modernism and modernity is not intended to disregard existing (and at times valuable) analytical readings; rather, it is to suggest a new way of seeing the early work, one which strives to grasp it under a changed aspect . The Tractatus , as I understand it, demands that we meet it in a radical spirit : one that is unafraid to ask challenging questions not only about what and how it says , but also about the framework within which it is read. Establishing new patterns of family resemblance by blasting the Tractatus out of its traditional genre, can, I would argue, be a liberating reading strategy one that can potentially save us from the philosophical dogmas into which we so easily fall.