Chapter 6

More Making Sense of Nonsense:

From Logical Form to Forms of Life*
Daniel D. Hutto

When I was in Norway during the year 1913–1914 I had some thought of my own, or so
at least it seems to me now. I mean I have the impression that at the time I brought to life
new movements in thinking (but perhaps I am mistaken). Whereas now I seem just to
apply old ones.1

Introduction

A familiar way to read the Wittgenstein corpus is to see it as split into two periods
during which two radically different accounts of the nature of language are
advanced. Such great emphasis is often placed on this shift that it is common to
speak of ‘two Wittgensteins’, the early and the late. On this reading, Wittgenstein’s
later writings are best understood as a reaction to, even a straightforward rejection
of, his early work, which culminated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.2
Crudely, he is alleged to have radically revised his understanding of how language
operates by abandoning the ‘picture theory of meaning’ and its attendant
metaphysics and semantics and advancing, in its place, the idea that ‘meaning is
use’. Amongst other things, this reading often inspires the thought that his
philosophy underwent an important shift from realism to anti-realism, when his
views changed. For convenience, I will class such readings of this sort as ‘doctrinal’
interpretations, since they promote the idea that in order to understand
Wittgenstein’s philosophy one must primarily focus on his theories about language.
This standard form of interpretation has recently been challenged by those who
seek to demonstrate that it cannot be easily made to fit with Wittgenstein’s claim
that he was not engaged in any form of philosophical theorizing at all. For example,
in a series of important papers, James Conant objects that the doctrinal
interpretation cannot accommodate the remark that philosophy, ‘...is not a body of
doctrine’.3 On such grounds, both he and Cora Diamond argue convincingly that
any simple doctrinal interpretation fails, ‘...to take seriously what Wittgenstein says
about philosophy itself’.4 Furthermore, these detractors emphasize that such claims
were made during both periods. But if there are no theories or doctrines advanced,
128 Post-Analytic Tractatus

even in the Tractatus, then familiar talk of the ‘picture theory of meaning’ and the
‘doctrine of showing’ is wrongheaded. For the fact is that it is not possible to make
sense of such labels unless it is also accepted that the book contains, ‘...numerous
doctrines which Wittgenstein holds cannot be put into words’.5 Diamond regards
such acceptance as a ‘chickening out’ response brought on by a failure of nerve,
poor interpretation or both.
Instead, they bid us to focus on Wittgenstein’s self-avowed method of
clarification by which sense and nonsense are to be distinguished. They ask us to
take heed of his warning against what would otherwise be a natural misreading. He
explicitly says:

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thought.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. (TLP 4.112)6

In line with this, we are urged to adopt a very austere reading of the Tractatus
that sees it in terms of a therapeutic project, with the purpose of ‘working on the
reader’. Wittgenstein’s aim remained constant during his early and late periods. It
was always, ‘...to take the reader from a piece of disguised nonsense to a piece of
undisguised nonsense’.7 Read in this light one can, ‘...insist upon a greater
continuity in his work than most previous commentators have allowed’.8 Yet, neither
Conant nor Diamond deny that there is ‘...an equally significant discontinuity in the
form of the investigation through which this aim is prosecuted’.9
There is much to recommend this reading – both as a corrective and especially
as a means of getting us to focus on otherwise neglected issues in Wittgenstein
studies such as the style of his authorship.10 Moreover, it makes the study of his
early writings as important as his later ones if we seek to understand properly his
views on the nature and end of philosophy. However, in its extreme form, the
therapeutic interpretation is implausible and threatens to obscure some important
aspects of the development of Wittgenstein’s thought. In this respect, used as the
sole means of reading Wittgenstein, it can be as distorting as the more popular
doctrinal interpretation.
As I have said, Diamond holds that to adopt this reading properly we must
‘resolutely’ give up the idea that Wittgenstein ever attempted to advocate any
doctrines (cf. TLP 4.112). She recommends that to the extent that any of the
remarks in the Tractatus appear to gesture towards something metaphysically
external to language they should be read in an ironic sense.11 In her view, ‘...the
notion of something true to reality but not sayably true is to be used only with the
awareness that it itself belongs to what has to be thrown away’.12 However, coming
to terms with the nature of Wittgenstein’s message in the Tractatus is tricky. In my
view we must distinguish the claim that the Tractatus is advancing some kind of
‘theory’ from the claim that it makes genuine assumptions about the nature of
language, in a way that Diamond’s reading hold it does not. Put simply, I shall
argue that we ought to adopt an anti-metaphysical reading of the work, while firmly
retaining the view that it does make assumptions about the nature of language that it
ought not. This is necessary if we want to accept that the book has an internal
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 129

tension and I will be arguing that it is only by abandoning the ironic reading and
doing so that it is possible to make best interpretative sense of it.
Let us begin by focusing on what is right about the therapeutic reading, by
considering the nature of Wittgenstein’s clarificatory project and the extent to
which he was successful in prosecuting it.

Philosophical Nonsense

To many, the Tractatus appears to be a strange, escalating series of philosophical

pronouncements. As Brockhaus suggests, it is usual for it to be viewed as an
undefended presentation of semi-independent metaphysical theses. He writes:

Compressed, presented ex cathedra without argument and in a curious vatic voice, it

offers an accelerating series of remarks on the world, logic, and the essence of language,
suddenly and quite mysteriously blossoming into cryptic claims about the will, ethics,
‘God’ and ‘The Mystical’.13

Yet I claim that rather than embodying a set of dogmatically advanced

statements, its remarks are meant to provide a kind of philosophical therapy. To
this extent I agree with Conant and Diamond, but I do not accept that these remarks
are advanced in an ironic spirit or with the intent that they should be ‘thrown away’.
They are supposed to get us to see what ought to be obvious to us all. To use the
language of the later writings, they are supposed to be mere reminders of what we
ought already to know.14 They are supposed to be redescriptions that make evident
what should be obvious to anyone not led astray by philosophical theorizing. They
offer no new information; rather they are, ‘...an attempt to draw our attention to
something that lies before our eyes’.15
Wittgenstein’s early treatment of logic provides the best and clearest example of
how philosophy can clarify matters and expose philosophical nonsense, without
advancing any kind of theory. To fully appreciate this it is useful to consider the
context in which this approach developed. He writes:

All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’....It was Russell who performed the service of
showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. (TLP
4.0031)

In praising Russell’s good work, Wittgenstein is, of course, applauding the kind
of analysis that lies at the heart of the theory of descriptions. On that approach,
troublesome definite descriptions – such as those that seemingly pick out non-
existent entities or impossible objects – are logically analysed to reveal that they
are in fact non-referring. Such items generated terrible problems for the
metaphysics of Platonic Atomism, which all too easily became committed to the
existence (or more precisely subsistence) of impossible objects simply by
mentioning them in coherent propositions. For example, it seems that we need to
posit the existence of round-squares in order to account for the fact that we can
130 Post-Analytic Tractatus

sensibly claim that ‘The round-square cannot be’. Famously, in Russell’s later
writings such propositions were analysed as asserting something quite different.
Informally, the content of (1) could be represented by (1’).

(1) ‘The round-square cannot be’

(1’) ‘There is no such unique entity x which has the properties of being both round and
square’.16

In performing this kind of logical analysis Russell was able to explain the
meaningfulness of propositions like (1) without having to make ontological space
for impossible objects. The apparent name ‘round-square’ was thus treated as an
incomplete, non-referring symbol. On its own it does not name anything. However,
when we understand its use properly we can see what is being asserted by the entire
proposition. By considering cases such as these we can see why Russell drew a
distinction between what we seemingly say (grammar) and what we really assert
(logic). We can see then a definite evolution in Russell’s views on these matters
from his Platonic Atomist days, when he held that terms were the building blocks of
reality. During that period he held that we were directly acquainted with the
constituent terms of any given proposition and that language was a transparent
medium (a clear window, as it were) through which we ‘perceived’ this intellectual
reality.
Despite these developments in his understanding of language, Russell continued
to postulate the existence of logical forms, which he thought were needed in order
to account for the relations between objects and, indeed, our capacity to make
judgements about those relations. Thus he maintained that the propositions of logic
had a kind of Platonic status, as independent forms that could be described
separately from their contents. According to Russell’s logical atomism, we must
treat only the fully analysed entities and the logical components of genuine
statements as having real, metaphysical status. In his abandoned 1913 manuscript,
Theory of Knowledge, he had begun to develop the view that we must be
acquainted with logical forms, such as aRb, in making various kinds of judgements.
It was his view that discovering and charting these possible forms of judgement was
a positive and important task for philosophy.
The novelty and ingenuity of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy was to take this
account a step further and to challenge what we might call, following Peterson, the
naive representationalist view of logic. Indeed, that there are no logical objects is
his self-avowed fundamental thought (Grundgedanke).17 Thus, his analysis of the
so-called propositions of logic reveals them to be, strictly speaking, without sense.
If we crudely characterize Russell as a Platonist, then by contrast, we can regard
Wittgenstein as adopting a more Aristotelian line.18 For him, logical form is
immanent in the structure of our ordinary statements, it is not something ‘extra’ that
needs to be added or otherwise attached. To use an ordinary analogy, it is akin to
the way in which ingredients are blended together to make a cake. One does not
add the eggs, flour, sugar and so on and then add in ‘the mixing’.
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 131

In the prelude to his attack on logical objects Wittgenstein introduced the idea of
formal concepts, which are to be contrasted with proper concepts. He writes:

When something falls under a formal concept as one of its objects this cannot be
expressed by means of proposition. (TLP 4.126)

The thought is that the nature of a formal concept can only be shown in the way
that it is employed. It cannot be said (which, if we take his other remarks about
saying seriously, would involving picturing a possible state of affairs). Hence, he
writes: ‘Thus the variable name ‘x’ is the proper sign for the pseudo-concept
object’ (TLP 4.1272).
What Wittgenstein is telling us is that there is no ‘thing’ for which the apparent
name ‘object’ (or variable, x) is a proxy. There is no super-object that answers to
the name x. In this way, our understanding of the general term ‘object’ can only be
shown in the use we make of the logical variable when it is employed in relation to
genuine objects that can be substituted for it. The components of the so-called
propositions of logic are to be regarded as purely formal in this sense. Logical
‘names’ have no corresponding objects and logical ‘propositions’ picture no states
of affairs. Hence his fundamental thought amounts to the claim that the seeming
propositions of logic are, in fact, non-representational.19
This is all quite familiar, but what matters to our discussion is the way in which
Wittgenstein attempts to free our thinking on these matters. He does not simply
advance an argument or premises, nor does he put forward a theory of logic.
Rather, in large part, he presents us with an alternative notation that is designed to
show us that certain kinds of logical symbolism can obscure the fact that logic has a
purely formal character. For example, by using symbols for logical constants,
Russellian notation can mislead one into endorsing a mythological ontology,
especially if one has other explanatory commitments.
The truth tables are meant to break the spell cast by Russell’s symbolism. For
instance, ‘if p then q’ can be represented by using the truth table as a structurally
adequate formulation in which the logical constant for the conditional does not
appear at all. Consequently, when presented with truth tables, we are forced to
focus on the use of logical symbols. This alone should cure us from mistakenly
thinking of them in terms of their capacity to represent. We are told: ‘...in fact all
the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing’ (TLP 5.43).
By approaching the problem in this way, Wittgenstein holds out the possibility
of a cure for the practice of mythologizing logical objects. At the very least, he
removes at least one major temptation for thinking that there must be logical
objects represented by the logical constants.20 In playing this role the truth tables
provide paradigm examples of a formal, perspicuous elucidation. They tell us
nothing new; they merely, and quite literally, re-present that which already lies
open to view. They are well-formed elucidations that say nothing. Yet, they get us
to see things differently by showing us other possibilities. They make evident
something that we should be prepared to recognise but would, otherwise be unable
to see.
132 Post-Analytic Tractatus

Further support for this reading is provided by Peter Hylton who provides a
careful analysis of the potentially confusing passages of the TLP 5.2s, and 5.25 in
particular, in which Wittgenstein warns us not to confuse operations and functions.
To make sense of this otherwise strange contrast, Hylton convincingly argues that it
was drawn in order to distinguish Wittgenstein’s views on the nature of truth
functions and operations from those of Russell, and only incidentally those of
Frege.21 This is because, specifically in line with his views on the independent
status of logical forms, Russell held that propositional functions were used to
generate more complex representations from simple elements. This is not surprising
if we take the view that logic is representational. For example, on such an
approach, ‘...the propositional function X is wise...share[s] a structure with the
proposition that Socrates is wise: the propositional function is not a mere mapping
of objects onto propositions’.22 This, of course, was anathema to Wittgenstein and
it is precisely what his n-operator for truth functions is designed to avoid, by
demonstrating that logical operations are purely formal. It is introduced, in part, to
show how complex propositions can be formed from elementary propositions
without introducing or requiring any extra or more complex representational
resources. Thus it is not surprising that, immediately following his remarks on
logical operations, he writes: ‘At this point it becomes manifest that there are no
‘logical objects’ (in Frege’s and Russell’s sense)’ (TLP 5.4).
But, if the logical sections of the Tractatus provide the best examples of
clarification at work how do they compare with the other sections of the book?
Consider what is heralded in its opening line and early remarks:

The world is the totality of facts, not of things. (TLP 1.1)

What is the case – a fact – is the existence of states of affairs.
A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).
It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs. (TLP
2–2.011)

In order to understand the character of these remarks, it is important to consider the

context from which they emerge. If Hylton is correct in supposing that it was with
Russell in mind that Wittgenstein presented his account of the n-operator, then it is
also likely that these early remarks are meant as a critique of Russell’s ontology. In
his Lectures on Logical Atomism, Russell claimed that we could, ‘...get down in
theory, if not in practice, to ultimate simples’.23 These ‘simples’ were regarded as
the basic constituents of the world – its logical atoms. Moreover, they were the only
objects that could be given true names. Of course, Russell realized that this was
neither a satisfactory nor complete inventory of the furniture of the world. He
recognized that, ‘...the only other sort of object you come across in the world is
what we call facts’.24 Yet he qualified this by saying that facts, ‘...are not properly
entities at all in the same sense in which their constituents are. That is shown by the
fact that you cannot name them’.25 Nevertheless, according to Russell, the upshot is
that our basic ontology must be one of objects and facts.
Against this background, the Tractatus appears to challenge Russell’s claim by
suggesting that it does not follow that objects comprise an independent ontological
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 133

category, even if we accept that facts are composed of objects. For we are quickly
told that it would be impossible to imagine any ‘thing’ outside some possible
situation (that is, outside a given factual context). Consequently, objects are not
independent of facts, but nor are facts independent of objects. Objects are always in
one situation or another and, in being so, they constitute facts – which are nothing
other than the way various things stand in relation to one another.
Although the Tractatus is undoubtedly critical of Russell’s views in this respect,
there are two importantly different ways of thinking about the nature of this
criticism. On the one hand, Wittgenstein might be seen as offering a straight
theoretical or metaphysical adjustment to Russell’s position in the hope of simply
‘building a better mousetrap’. Thus he may be thought to be attempting to improve
on the theories that Russell and Frege had already established. Read in this way, the
opening remarks, and those that constitute the so-called picture theory, are
primarily correctives offered with the same philosophical spirit and end in mind.
More radically, these remarks can be taken as a wholesale rejection of the entire
project of philosophical theorizing. That is, Wittgenstein can be seen as rejecting
Russell’s approach to, and vision of, philosophy. On an anti-theoretical reading,
although the same criticisms are being made, they are not advanced as part of a
developing theory with its own set of new and improved posits. Instead of replacing
Russell’s ‘things and facts’ with his ‘facts’, Wittgenstein could have been trying to
discourage this entire style of approach. If he was doing this, then he was both
trying to get us to see things correctly and critically responding to Russell’s type of
metaphysical posturing. Marie McGinn gives an excellent account of the status of
these remarks, in defending the idea that there is an elucidatory core of the work,
which is not composed of mere attempted statements of fact.26 She writes:

The principal application he makes of the concrete image of a world of facts which
consists of objects in combination with one another is to use it as a means to make clear
the distinction between content (objects), structure (the arrangement of objects in
determinate relationships to one another in facts) and form (the possibility of objects
entering into these determinate relationships).27

Although Wittgenstein necessarily uses language to clarify these points, his

sentences, ‘...are not putting forward a theory of the proposition or a speculative
account of the relationship between language and the world’.28 Read in this light,
even TLP 1.1 sets its face against philosophical theorizing as such.
In line with his understanding of logic, this would also account for
Wittgenstein’s silence on the question of how things must be combined in states of
affairs and what kind of things there are. As Lynette Reid writes:

One of the anti-metaphysical strands of the Tractatus is that logic cannot judge in
advance what the internal articulation of fully analyzed propositions will be: contrary to
Frege and Russell, who think it essential to the nature of representation that a proposition
segment into subject and predicate of some sort, the Tractatus denies that there is any
point in discussing in advance whether elementary propositions will consist of names
and concept-expressions, or n-termed relation-expressions, or anything else.29
134 Post-Analytic Tractatus

This would explain why Wittgenstein provided no examples of ‘objects’ or

‘elementary propositions’. Although this has long puzzled commentators who adopt
a theoretical reading, in accepting that his purpose was not the scientific one of
providing a metaphysical inventory of reality or of articulating the true logical
structure of the world, it becomes clear why he did not provide any such
examples.30

The Revocation

There is an apparent tension in the Tractatus, which is notoriously identified by

Wittgenstein at its very close. He writes:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me

eventually recognises 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). (TLP 6.54)

On the doctrinal reading these remarks suggest that, as a work of philosophy, the
Tractatus attempts to say what cannot be said. It appears to be a series of
intelligible propositions that, unlike genuine propositions, employ pseudo-concepts,
such as object, fact and so on.31 Yet being so, by its own account, it must be
condemned as nonsense. For the book itself tells us that all propositions serve to
picture facts and must have the potential to be true or false, depending on whether
or not things happen to be as they say. This condition must hold in order for a
proposition to have a sense. As this is the general form of propositions, then no
proposition can say anything necessarily true. Yet, if we understand (and accept)
what its propositions seemingly say – especially those concerning the way in which
propositions picture reality – then we will realize that the entire book is an attempt
to say what cannot be said. Its propositions are improper if we regard them as
unargued theoretical pronouncements. They are, strictly speaking, nonsensical
because we cannot imagine a possible (Tractarian) world in which they do not hold
true. They seemingly tell us things like: the substance of the world resides in
simple, indestructible objects; these objects combine to create states of affairs; the
states of affairs that actually hold are the facts of the world and so on. Put directly,
if we treat such ‘propositions’ as meaningful then we must at the same time reject
them as meaningless.
However, armed with the idea that the apparent philosophical statements are
supposed to be merely clarifactory elucidations, things look different. Despite their
outward form, those elucidations are merely pointers designed to remind us of what
we ought already to know. In this respect, Wittgenstein specifically contrasts them
with the kind of factual statements that are meant to typify the corpus of the natural
sciences. As he sees it, it is the business of science to tell us exactly which states of
affairs contingently obtain in the world. In this respect, reality is its exclusive
concern. Consequently:
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 135

The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of
the natural sciences). (TLP 4.11)

But, in what might otherwise appear to be an attitude of deference to science on

matters of importance, Wittgenstein denies that we ought to be interested in reality
per se. It is possibility, not reality that is his concern. Logic alone, which says
nothing, defines the limits of possibility and also the limits of thought. Indeed, even
as late as 1930, we find him endorsing this view. He writes:

It is all one to me whether or not the typical western scientist understands or appreciates
my work, since he will not in any case understand the spirit in which I write. Our
civilisation is characterised by the word ‘progress’. Progress is its form rather than
making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with
building an ever more complicated structure. I am not interested in constructing a
building, so much as having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.
So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different
from theirs.32

The contrast between logic and science and their respective spheres helps
illuminate the difference between philosophical elucidations and ordinary
propositions. Yet, most of his elucidations are ill-formed given that they should,
like logic, say nothing. It repays us to attend to the remark that proceeds the
revocation, where he says:

The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except
what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science – i.e. something that has nothing
to do with philosophy.... (TLP 6.53)

Yet, even if we adopt this anti-metaphysical elucidatory reading, the paradox

remains. Whereas it can shown that there are no genuine propositions of logic, the
elucidations concerning the essential nature of propositions, thought and language
are meant to be necessarily true, yet contentful observations. If Wittgenstein’s
elucidations concerning sense and content hold fast, then no contentful proposition
could serve as a philosophical elucidation. To serve such a purpose they would
need to say the unsayable. Consequently, on either reading, what is written in the
Tractatus is in violation of its own account of sense.
In this light, it may appear to be a virtue of the purely therapeutic reading that it
resolves this internal paradox. Both Conant and Diamond challenge the idea that
Wittgenstein seriously wished us to recognize something which is ‘nonsensical but
significant’, even in his early period.33 For them, from beginning to end,
Wittgenstein regarded all nonsense as ‘garden-variety’ gibberish.34 Thus they
maintain not only that Wittgenstein’s aim to do away with philosophical nonsense
remained constant throughout his philosophical career, but, more strongly, that his
understanding of nonsense remained constant as well.
On their approach, we have the means to make sense of Wittgenstein’s plea that
we ‘must throw away the ladder’ without committing ourselves to the idea that the
work culminated in an irreconcilable contradiction. We are asked to focus on the
136 Post-Analytic Tractatus

fact that he self-consciously employs a ‘strictly incorrect’ method for therapeutic

purposes.35 The recognition of the paradox is yet another means of getting his
readers to see the impossibility of traditional philosophy. First, it lets them imagine
they can find sense in its pseudo-propositions and then it pulls away the rug by
showing that endorsing such a view leads to no good end. To effect the cure
properly requires giving the patient enough rope.36 On this view, the self-
destructive character of the Tractatus is intended as part of the therapy. Thus,
Diamond sees the key to unlocking Wittgenstein’s remarks of TLP 6.54 in the
sentence, ‘...anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as
nonsensical’. She makes great play of the fact that he writes about understanding
him as opposed to the understanding the propositions of the Tractatus itself.37
Furthermore, she claims that the remarks in the preface and in the last section act as
part of the book’s frame: they provide instructions for reading the rest. Those at the
beginning tell us that the project is to set a limit to what can be said wholly from
inside the bounds of sensible language. Similarly, the closing remarks are a final
reminder of this message – for those who might be tempted, despite his rare asides,
to misunderstand his true project and purpose.
But this reading is only superior if we think it best to resolve the tension. I am
not convinced that it is. There are good reasons to think that the Tractatus is best
seen as an imperfect attempt to offer elucidations precisely because some of them
are both ill-formed and infected with faulty assumptions about the nature of
language and the limits of sense. The major assumption that needs to be rejected is
that all propositions serve to represent facts and that all sensible language shares
this uniform function. Indeed, this view underpins the bulk of the book and infects
the remarks in sections other than those concerning logic, such that they are failed
attempts at clarification.
Indeed, the scene for the revocation only makes sense if we understand it against
the backdrop of Wittgenstein’s uniform and restrictive vision of the function of
propositions, for it was this that gave definition to his early accounts of sense and
nonsense. There is no such tension in the later writings because his views about
sense became more liberal as they developed. On the standard account, he went on
to reject the family of views associated with logical atomism, including the ideas
that propositions have a general form and that they are determinately, and
independently, true or false. Instead of these views, he came to favour the idea that
to understand the functions of language we must look to its contexts of use. Indeed,
it is only by recognizing this that we can gain insight into the important similarities
and differences that exist between his early and mature philosophy.
On this important point I agree with doctrinalists. For it would be difficult to
deny that his views on the nature of sense did so evolve. How else can we interpret
what he tells us in the preface to the Investigations when he remarks that, ‘...since
beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been
forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book’?38 If the book
was not trying to ‘say’ anything at all then what mistakes could be present in what
he had written in it?39 Moreover, there has been important scholarship that appears
to successfully identify the cause of this shift in his views. For example, Jacquette
traces the main catalyst for this to Wittgenstein’s inability to deal adequately with
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 137

the colour incompatibility problem, which Ramsey brought to his attention.40 My

point is that if we were to adopt an overly strong therapeutic reading we would be
unable to make sense of this transitional phase for, on such a reading, there should
be no such transition.41
Furthermore, accepting that such a change took place has other potential
explanatory virtues. For example, it may help to explain the dramatic changes in
Wittgenstein’s writing style. From what we know of him, such changes would not
be philosophically trivial. As McDonough notes, ‘Wittgenstein regarded himself as
an artist as well as a philosopher. [He] was obsessed with stylistic questions, as
well as questions about the origin of his own style’.42 Thus the fact that in the
Tractatus his remarks have the outward form of tightly compressed propositions in
a numbered sequence is hardly surprising if he took seriously the idea that this was
the only true form for the expression of thoughts. Nevertheless, given his
therapeutic aim, he was self-conscious that his style was ‘strictly’ incorrect. In his
later work, as his view of thought and language became more open, his style, too,
became more natural and free. We find therein a host of aphorisms and
comparisons in the form of ordinary sentences, questions, paragraphs and short
passages. Numbered propositions have disappeared.43
Given this, we should read his remark at TLP 6.54 not as a note of guidance, but
as a recognition of a genuine tension. For, although he had a firm view about how
philosophical problems had to be solved, the fact was that the Tractatus failed to
provide the basis for completely satisfactory solutions. That Wittgenstein
recognized his method to be ‘strictly incorrect’ also fits well with the fact that he
expresses himself by asking his readers to understand him or his intention, rather
than what is written in the book. In accepting that the work was meant to be
therapeutic, we need not hold that he made no erroneous assumptions or that he
was successful in prosecuting his intended end. Although he wished the Tractatus
to be a work of clarification, in large part, it failed this purpose. This is important,
for if we view the revocation as highlighting a tension that is genuinely present in
his work we can regard it as the seed for the future development and refinement of
his philosophical views and style.44
In this light, even though there is something right about the therapeutic reading it
should not be fully endorsed. Rather, what is required is a reading according to
which it is possible to acknowledge the continuity of Wittgenstein’s clarificatory
aim and method, while at the same time allowing that his thought developed and
matured. I believe that such a reading is available to us if we focus on his
replacement of logical form with forms of life as the governors of sense.

From Logical Form to Forms of Life

In my view, the ways in which Wittgenstein thought philosophy, logic and ethics
and aesthetics ‘say nothing’ were importantly different. We have already
considered the cases of logic and philosophy but, before considering ethics and
aesthetics, it is important to mark the changes in his views concerning sense and
nonsense. The crucial change was the replacement of logical form as the
138 Post-Analytic Tractatus

transcendent basis of language by forms of life. Famously, in the Investigations, in

contrast to the idea that all propositions have a common essence underpinned by
their logical form, we are told that, ‘...to imagine a language means to imagine a
form of life’.45 Elsewhere we are instructed that ‘Here the term “language-game” is
meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of a language is part of an
activity, or a form of life’.46
My claim, in this section, is that, despite some important differences, forms of
life play essentially the same role in the later writings that logical form played in
the Tractatus. Crucially, both govern ‘the bounds of sense’ and must remain
outside the scope of the explicable, strictly sayable or articulable. Neither logic nor
grammar can make any pronouncements, as they are the transcendental limits to
sense. For this reason, these limits cannot be stated or positively charted. Evidence
of this similarity of role is found in what Wittgenstein says about these two
notions.47 For example, consider his ill-labelled ‘doctrine of showing’, as it makes
an early appearance in the TLP 4s. We are told that:

Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must
have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it – logical form.
What expresses itself in language we cannot express by means of language.
What can be shown cannot be said. (TLP 4.12–4.1211)

By insisting that what can be shown cannot be said, Wittgenstein was preparing
us for the idea that we cannot say anything about the logical form of propositions.
Yet, as we can see by Russell’s remarks, the standard opinion was that nothing in
principle should prevent this. All that is required is the construction of an
appropriate meta-language. Hence, Russell writes:

In my introduction to the Tractatus, I suggested that, although in any given language

there are things, which that language cannot express, it is yet always possible to
construct a language of a higher order in which these things can be said.48

As we have already seen, the Russell–Wittgenstein debate about saying and

showing is not an idle one: it is yet another expression of their different attitudes
concerning the status of logical propositions. For Wittgenstein, logic had no objects
and no content, it could not inform us about the nature of the world. The apparent
statement ‘P iff Q’ is not a claim about how things stand; rather, it specifies how
two facts must be related or structured.49 But to accept this is to put to the sword
the very idea that there could be any higher-order language that could express that
which is unsayable. In suggesting otherwise Russell failed to fully grasp the radical
character of the Tractarian position and its view of logic. Nevertheless, some
remarks in the Tractatus concerning the transcendental priority of logic appear to
go against this reading. Thus, we are told: ‘Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a
mirror image of the world. Logic is transcendental’ (TLP 6.13). However, although
Wittgenstein regarded logic as transcendental, he did not see it in the Russellian
sense of being separate but rather in the sense that it was the limit of sensible
language; the stopping point. Consider that he also says:
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 139

Logic is prior to every experience – that something is so. It is prior to the question
‘How?’, not prior to the question ‘What?’ (TLP 5.552)

This is a reminder that although logic is transcendental, in that it constitutes the

limits of what is possible, thinkable and sayable, it says nothing about the nature of
what is found in the world. Logic is at one and the same time built into the nature of
things and the nature of language; it is their common link. Exactly how things can
be arranged, in fact, is determined by the nature of the things themselves. This is
their logic. Therefore it could not be something additional.
Wittgenstein is certainly not saying that the scaffolding of the world is separable
from it or that we can describe it independently. Hence, ‘Logic pervades the world:
the limits of the world are also its limits’ (TLP 5.61). Logic cannot exist
independently, for it has a merely structural character. It follows from this that there
could be no distinct ‘science of logic’, as logic is not something that can be
articulated. Nor could it be a source of explanatory laws of inference, for we are
told that:

Our fundamental principle is that whenever a question can be decided by logic at all it
must be possible to decide it without more ado. (TLP 5.551)
Logic must look after itself. (TLP 5.473)

We must accept this if we are to avoid an infinite regress. For, if the

propositions of logic did say something about the world then they too would have
to be underwritten by some kind of superior logic. If the propositions of such a
superior logic were to say something then they would also need to be underwritten
by a yet more superior logic, and so on. In this way, if logic underwrites all saying
it must not say anything itself. For this reason we are told that: ‘Clearly the laws of
logic cannot in their turn be subject to the laws of logic’ (TLP 6.123).
For our immediate purposes, what is interesting about these remarks concerning
logical form is the parallel that can be found between them and those that he makes
about language games, grammar and forms of life. As with logic, we are advised to
‘[l]ook on the language game as the primary thing’.50 We are also told: ‘What has
to be accepted, the given, is – so one could say – forms of life.’51
Furthermore, we find a parallel to the idea that logic cannot provide
explanations of inference echoed in his later treatment of rule-following. There he
bids us to consider the positive role that ostensive teaching plays in enabling us to
set standards in order to avoid an infinite regress. To make this case fully would
require a great deal more space, but a few suggestive comparisons should suffice to
make the initial point. Consider that, at base, rule-followers do not rest their
interpretations on other interpretations. For this reason, learning how to use
concepts does not require any knowledge in the initial stages. Instead, it
presupposes that there are certain capacities and abilities that are common to both
the teacher and student and that the latter is willing to blindly obey authority. We
are told that:
140 Post-Analytic Tractatus

Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order. We are trained to do so; we react to

an order in a particular way....52

Crucially, the regress is blocked because learning to follow a rule does not
presuppose the kind of intellectual capacities that such training is meant to
engender. The novice becomes an autonomous speaker by learning a skilled
technique within a social medium. Furthermore, the problem of multiple
interpretations is also tamed for, in the process of such training, a shared sense of
the obvious is developed, which is based on, but not confined to, our common
natural reactions.53 Given this, we develop a communal second nature via training,
as Aristotle once proposed.54 It is this social stage-setting that makes meaning and
rule-following possible. If we fail to understand this then we will be plagued by
unworkable and misleading philosophical pictures that fail to satisfy.55 Hence, just
as there can be no laws of logic that can explain or externally justify our inferences,
so there can be no rules of language use that can provide explanations or
justifications of our linguistic practices. Wittgenstein anticipates our tendency to go
wrong just here when he writes:

Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as a
‘proto-phenomenon’. That is, where we ought to have said: this language-game is
played.56

In this light, we may wonder what has really changed. It appears that the real
difference between the early and late periods is that instead of objects fixing logical
possibilities, and in turn determining what can be sensibly said, in the later writings
it is grammar that performs this function. Thus:

Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.

Essence is expressed by grammar.57

There are still more similarities. For just as there was no way of charting the
limits of logic independently, there is no point in trying to understand forms of life,
language games or grammar from on high. There is no getting behind, beneath or
above grammar for the philosophical purpose of providing some kind of overview.
Instead, we are reminded that:

The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe a fact which
corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence without simply repeating the sentence
(This has to do with the Kantian solution to the problem of philosophy).58

Even more importantly, these similarities are not accidental. They can be
explained if we consider that in both periods he was steadfastly engaged in
grammatical investigations, always with the aim of clarifying and getting a clear
view.59 His aim was ever to prevent the bewitchment of our intelligence by
language.60 Nor is this surprising if the ‘fundamental thought’ of the Tractatus was
still driving the later Wittgenstein. Considered thus, the move from logical form to
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 141

forms of life was a natural, almost irresistible consequence of his growing interest
in the distorting effects not just of logical constants, but also of other forms of
symbols, such as ordinary words and names. We can regard the approach in the
later writings as a wider application of the proper method for treating philosophical
problems, as exemplified by the elucidations concerning logical symbolism. Read
in this way, the development of this early approach paved the way for the kind of
case by case analyses that populate the later writings.
In abandoning the idea that propositions have a general form, it also becomes
necessary to abandon the monolithic conception of logical form that supposedly
underpinned them. For example, something dramatic happens to the early account
when we remove the view that propositions are essentially representative – that is, a
certain picture of logic loses its place as the ground for sense. Hence,
unsurprisingly, in the Investigations he writes:

But what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here. – But in that
case doesn’t logic altogether disappear?...The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences
and words in exactly the sense we speak of them in ordinary life when we say e.g. ‘Here
is a Chinese sentence’, or ‘No, that only looks like writing; it is actually just an
ornament’ and so on. We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of
language, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm.61

With logic no longer playing a foundational role we need to look elsewhere to

find the crucial link between language and the world, and what governs sense. That
is precisely why forms of life come to replace logical form as the ground for
connecting language and the world. Moreover, once freed of his one-dimensional
vision of the function of language, Wittgenstein was forced to give careful attention
to the operation of other forms of language as well. Although these are important
changes, they are often misrepresented in such a way as to cause us to overlook the
continuity in his overall method. We still find him trying to overcome the traps set
by the misleading character of symbols by focusing on the use of language.
Consider his early remarks in the Philosophical Investigations in which he
famously writes:

It will prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching
a label to a thing.62

His treatment of names echoes his treatment of the logical constants. For, just as
logical symbols mesmerize us, so can ordinary names. He wants to make us aware
of how much we presuppose when we employ the picture that language is a system
of signs that stand for, or represent, objects. He reminds us that:

Naming is so far not a move in the language-game – any more than putting a piece in its
place on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been done, when a
thing has been named.63
142 Post-Analytic Tractatus

We are urged to think of words not as mere labels but akin to the handles and knobs
in locomotives. These all have many different jobs that must be understood in
relation to one another.
Furthermore, attention to the early work sheds light on his use of alternative
language games as a philosophical tool.64 In such cases, we are asked to imagine
situations in which ‘others’ use concepts differently than we do for the express
purpose of getting a clear view of the grammar of our own language.65 Consider,
for example, why he introduces us to the possibility of other language games that
might surround the concept pain, as in the extreme case described in Zettel66 where
he conjures up a tribe which employ two different concepts of pain: ‘...one is
applied where there is visible damage and is linked with tending, pity and so on.
The other is used for stomach-ache for example, and is tied up with mockery of
anyone who complains’.67 Accordingly, unless members of this tribe can locate
some kind of outer bodily damage they will not regard the person as experiencing
what-we-would-call-‘pain’. Their notion of what counts as pain cuts much more
finely than would ours. Or, as Wittgenstein puts it, they, ‘...have concepts which cut
across ours’.68 I claim that at least one crucial aim of these exercises in imagination
is to get us to realize that ‘We are not analysing a phenomena (e.g. thought) but a
concept (e.g. that of thinking), therefore the use of the word’.69 For example, this
helps to break us of our natural temptation, if we hold that language serves to name
objects, to try to observe the processes that go on when we are thinking. That is, we
try to observe some thing that the word thinking names. Thus, he notes:

In order to get clear about he meaning of the word ‘think’ we watch ourselves while we
think; what we observe will be what the word means. – But this concept is not used like
that.70

He tells us: ‘What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives us the
correct idea of the use of the word “to remember”’.71 But in denying that there is
some process or thing that the term ‘thinking’ designates, Wittgenstein is
emphasizing what should be of interest to us when we wish to investigate the nature
of our psychology. He writes:

[W]e forget that what should interest us is the question: how do we compare these
experiences; what criterion of identity do we fix for their occurrence?72

We are reminded that ‘We learn the word “think” under particular
circumstances’73and also that ‘The surroundings give it its importance’.74 It is
precisely for this reason that our use of language is not arbitrary, relative or merely
conventional. This is why ‘One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look
at its use and learn from that’ and why he urges us to, ‘Let the use of words teach
you their meaning!’.75 This use of language games is reminiscent of his use of truth
tables in the Tractatus. In this light the later writings are natural evolutions from his
early work.
This is not to deny that there are important differences in the early and late
periods. Indeed, these also need to be emphasized. But this is only possible by
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 143

giving detailed attention to the effects of the move from logical form to forms of
life.
Usefully, in considering to what extent Wittgenstein ought to be thought of as a
transcendental philosopher, Meredith Williams compares and contrasts his
philosophical approach with that of Kant. The similarities are clear. Both are
concerned with issues concerning the bounds of sense such that it makes it look as
if Wittgenstein’s grammar could be a substitute for Kantian synthetic a priori
categories. But the key difference between them is that, even in his early
philosophy, logical form, which says nothing, could not be equated with Kantian
categories, if these are regarded as defining a positive limit to the bounds of sense.
Even more so, the later Wittgenstein had an obviously fluid vision of what
drives conceptual change and what underlies the boundaries of sense. Accordingly,
in his famous discussion of the concept of ‘game’, we are told that, ‘...the extension
of the concept is not closed by a frontier....For how is the concept of a game
bounded?...Can you give the boundary?’.76 Thus:

We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw
a boundary for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at
all.77

Concepts get their lives from our practices, not vice versa. This is why it is
mistaken to treat ‘communities’ or ‘grammar’ as fixed. Since these practices
develop and evolve, there can be no transcendental setting of limits to sense in
advance or once and for all. It is for this reason that philosophers cannot theorize
from the general to the particular, but must instead merely describe and be vigilant
of transgressions of sense. In this he, ‘...inverts the Kantian order of priority’.78
Bearing these points in mind, we are now better armed to consider the nature of
his remarks on ethics at the end of the Tractatus.

Remarks on Value

We can throw light on Wittgenstein’s early remarks concerning ethics, aesthetics

and religion by focusing on his changed views about the nature of sense. This is
vital, since these remarks are regularly identified as being the very heart of the
work.79 As with logic, we are told that these domains are both transcendental and
nonsensical. But, as Peterson notes, they are non-representational in a different way
than logical ‘statements’. He rightly insists that they involve ‘what lies outside of
language’ whereas logic concerns what is internal to it (given the Tractarian
view).80
In advancing her strong therapeutic reading, Diamond claims that Wittgenstein’s
understanding of nonsense in both periods is uniform, and effectively equates to the
‘technical’ sense of nonsense, found in the Tractatus. Therefore given that his
remarks on ethics are designated as nonsensical they must be treated just as any
other kind of nonsense. But, as we noted earlier, for Diamond there is only one
kind of nonsense.
144 Post-Analytic Tractatus

One paradox that emerges in advancing this view is that in order to take
seriously Wittgenstein’s early views on nonsense it seems we must also take
seriously his remarks on propositions serving as pictures of facts. But this would
require us to read those sections of the Tractatus non-ironically, against the counsel
of the therapeutic reading. Even more seriously, the strong therapeutic reading
makes it difficult to see why he places such importance on the final sections of the
work if they are simply nonsensical remarks to be overcome and thrown away.
Diamond, to her credit, attempts to circumvent this problem by distinguishing the
attractiveness of speaking ethical nonsense as opposed to speaking other forms of
nonsense. She treats, ‘...cases of understanding a person as saying in his heart
something that makes no sense, [as] something which we have the imaginative
resources to grasp as attractive where that imaginative capacity is tied to our own
capacities as moral agents’.81 She writes:

...if we read the Tractatus right, the upshot of the book will be different in regard to the
two sorts of utterers of nonsense. The attractiveness of philosophical sentences will
disappear through the kind of self-understanding that the book aims to lead to in
philosophers; the attractiveness of ethical sentences will not. But if we understand
ourselves, ourselves the utterers of ethical nonsense, we shall not come out with ethical
sentences under the illusion that we are talking sense.82

But if all speaking nonsense is really on a par – that is, it is all like saying
‘piggly-wiggly’ – then how can uttering one bit of nonsense be more attractive than
uttering another?
Diamond is right in that to think that Wittgenstein was suggesting that there
could not be ethical ‘doctrines’ or ‘propositions’. However, what we should not
lose sight of is that her reading also rules out a more sophisticated understanding of
the ethical remarks – one which makes sense of Wittgenstein’s evolving conception
of language. For example, the fact that he regarded ethical remarks as strictly
nonsensical but nonetheless important is best seen as a vital insight into the essence
and function of ethical language, albeit a negative one. That is, Wittgenstein
realized that they, too, are non-representational in that they do not serve to
represent facts.83 Yet, he saw that the silence of ethics was pregnant in a way in
which the silence of logic was not. That is, he struggled to maintain that ethics had
a profound status, despite being nonsensical in Tractarian terms. His emphasis was
on its profundity. This was tied to the fact that ethics is nonsensical only to the
extent that he recognized that it did not involve factual statements. The problem
was that, given his uniform account of sense and nonsense, he did not have the
resources in his early philosophy to properly develop his positive view of ethics.
This was a source of genuine tension for him. Yet, as Wittgenstein’s views on the
essence of language evolved this and other important arenas of discourse no longer
had to be regarded as nonsensical merely because they lay outside the bounds of the
factual. He came to recognize that boundaries may be drawn for, ‘…various kinds
of reason’.84 Once freed of the Tractarian vision of the function of language, the
later Wittgenstein was better able to explicate his views concerning the nature of
nonsense itself. On this reading he was aware from the outset, even if only
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 145

negatively, that ethical talk is not a form of ‘factual discourse’. This fits well with
his more mature position concerning language games that relate to particular
domains and the attention he demands that we give to the context of our activities.
If we focus on the changes in his account of sense as he moved from logical forms
to forms of life, we can see how he advanced from a mere recognition that ethical
language was non-representational and began to focus more positively on the
contexts in which such remarks occur.
However, seeing these developments in his thought is ruled out by a reading that
doesn’t allow us to take his views on the general form of propositions seriously.
When we consider the links and breaks between the early and later writings, it
becomes clear that it is a mistake to think that all that is regarded as nonsensical in
the Tractatus can be treated alike.86 As Reid puts it, in this light we can see, ‘...a
strong warning from the perspective of his later thought that the frame of the
Tractatus is not the expression of a clear grasp on the part of the author of the
Tractatus of what it is to label some use of language “nonsense”...’.85 Moreover,
the very fact that Wittgenstein was prepared to allow for the existence of profound
forms of nonsense in his early work, despite being unable to incorporate this idea
seamlessly into his thinking, is vital to an understanding of the man, what he found
important and how his thinking progressed.

Notes

* I would like to thank Jo Wolff for allowing me to reuse and expand upon material from
my section of the paper, ‘Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein’,
written jointly with John Lippitt, and published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
XCVIII (3).
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, ed. G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. P.
Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 20e.
2 An example of this kind of view is inherent in Marie McGinn’s claim that these works
are ‘...both clearly by the same author, but one whose conception of his philosophical
task undergoes a profound change’ (Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical
Investigations, London: Routledge, 1997, p. 2, emphasis mine). Or similarly, according
to Hacker, ‘...what is much more important is that the Investigations as a whole stands
opposed to the philosophical spirit of the Tractatus’ (P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein’s
Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, p. 98, emphasis
mine).
3 James Conant, ‘Must We Show What We Cannot Say?’, in R. Fleming and M. Payne
(eds), The Senses of Stanley Cavell, Bucknell Review (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University
Press, 1989), pp. 248, 266.
4 Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), p. 18.
5 Ibid., pp. 181–82; cf. also p. 194. For this reason she is openly hostile to standard
readings because, ‘...the attempt to take the Tractatus as metaphysical in a straightforward
sense (as in Norman Malcolm’s Nothing is Hidden: Wittgenstein’s Criticism of his Early
Thought, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) yields plain nonsense or plain self-contradictions’
(Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, op. cit., n. 4, p. 19).
146 Post-Analytic Tractatus

6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F.

McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1922). Referred to throughout text as TLP.
7 James Conant, ‘Putting Two and Two Together: Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and
the Point of View for Their Work as Authors’, in T. Tessin and M. von der Ruhr
(eds), Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995),
p. 250. Cf. also Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. R. Rhees and
G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §§ 119,
464.
8 Conant, ‘Must We Show What We Cannot Say?’, op. cit., n. 3, p. 246.
9 Conant, ‘Putting Two and Two Together’, op. cit., n. 7, p. 249. Prima facie support is
lent to Conant by Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘There is not a philosophical method, though
there are indeed methods, like different therapies’ (Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 133).
10 Conant, ‘Putting Two and Two Together’, op. cit., n. 7, pp. 269–71.
11 See Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, op. cit., n. 4, p. 19, p. 201.
12 Ibid., p. 182.
13 Richard R. Brockhaus, Pulling up the Ladder: The Metaphysical Roots of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (La Salle: Open Court, 1991, p. 1–2
14 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, §§ 127, 89 and 90.
15 Marie McGinn, ‘Between Metaphysics and Nonsense: Elucidation in Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus’, Philosophical Quarterly, 49, 1999, p. 501.
16 Cf. Bertrand Russell, ‘On Denoting’, reprinted in R.C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and
Knowledge, London: Unwin, 1956, p. 54.
17 Cf. Donald Peterson, Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy: Three Sides of the Mirror
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 48; Brian McGuinness, ‘The
Grundgedanke of the Tractatus’, in Understanding Wittgenstein, Royal Institute of
Philosophy Lectures, 1972/73, vol. 7 (London: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 49–50; Henry Finch,
Wittgenstein: The Later Philosophy: An Exposition of the ‘Philosophical Investigations’
(New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1977), p. 5.
18 Pears tells us that Wittgenstein’s ‘picture theory’ gave him ‘...a platform to criticise
Russell’s Platonic Theory of logic. The platform is Aristotelian in this sense: it brings down
sentential forms from Russell’s transcendent world and treats them as immanent in this
world’: David Pears, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein’s
Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 29.
19 Cf. Peterson, Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy, op. cit., n. 17, p. 47.
20 Cf. ibid., pp. 36, 40; also Pears, The False Prison, op. cit., n. 18, p. 29.
21 Cf. Peter Hylton, ‘Functions, Operations and Sense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in W.
Tait (ed.), Early Analytic Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), p. 97.
22 Ibid., p. 96.
23 Bertrand Russell, ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, reprinted in R.C. Marsh (ed.),
Logic and Knowledge (London: Unwin, 1956), p. 270.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 McGinn, ‘Between Metaphysics and Nonsense’, op. cit., n. 15, p. 497.
27 Ibid., p. 500.
28 Ibid., p. 148. One important difference between McGinn’s reading and mine, is that she
adopts the traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s views on analysis and elementary
propositions, whereas I do not. See McGinn, ‘Between Metaphysics and Nonsense’, op. cit.,
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 147

n. 15, p. 498. Cf. Lynette Reid, ‘Wittgenstein’s Ladder: The Tractatus and Nonsense’,
Philosophical Investigations, 21 (2), pp. 109–12.
29 Reid, ‘Wittgenstein’s Ladder’, op. cit., n. 28, p. 122.
30 Reid gives a useful account of Wittgenstein’s views on issues concerning the end and
nature of philosophical analysis that she contrasts with what he had written in the Notebooks
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914–1916, ed. G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1969). See Reid, ‘Wittgenstein’s
Ladder’, op. cit., n. 28, pp. 110–11. For example, whereas some examples of elementary
propositions are attempted in the Notebooks, there are none in the Tractatus. She is right
that one cannot simply move from what was written in the Notebooks to illuminate the
Tractatus.
31 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 134.
32 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, op. cit., n. 1, p. 7e.
33 Conant, ‘Must We Show What We Cannot Say?’, op. cit., n. 3, p. 244. Conant stands
opposed to those who maintain that ‘...for the Tractatus the propositions of ethics and
religion – as well as either all or only the most important propositions of the Tractatus itself
– are both nonsensical and deeply significant’: ibid., p. 247. See also Conant, ‘Putting Two
and Two Together’, op. cit., n. 7, p. 252.
34 Conant remarks on the impossibility of there being different types of nonsense (cf.
Conant, ‘Must We Show What We Cannot Say?’, op. cit., n. 3, pp. 252, 253, 261).
Diamond, for her part, says ‘...for Wittgenstein there is no kind of nonsense which is
nonsense on account of what the terms composing it mean – there is as it were no positive
nonsense’ (Diamond, The Realistic Spirit, op. cit., n. 4, pp. 106, 112). She goes on: ‘I
should claim that [this] view of nonsense...was consistently held to by Wittgenstein
throughout his writings, from the period before the Tractatus was written and onwards’
(ibid., p. 107).
35 Cora Diamond, ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in
R. Heinrich and H. Vetter (eds), Bilder der Philosophie, Wiener Reihe 5 (Vienna:
Oldenbourg, 1991), p. 65.
36 Koethe notes, ‘On [Diamond’s] account, the Tractatus does not attempt to articulate a
metaphysical and semantic theory of the nature of language...Wittgenstein’s aim is to subject
the notions figuring in that ostensible articulation – states of affairs, objects, logical form,
and so on – to “a destablization from the inside” in a effort to demonstrate their literal
incoherence’: John Koethe, The Continuity of Wittgenstein’s Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1996), p. 37.
37 Diamond, ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method’, op. cit., n. 35, pp. 57, 55.
38 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, p. viii.
39 Ibid., §§ 89, 92, 96, 98, 105, 107–8, 114–15.
40 Dale Jacquette, ‘Wittgenstein and the Colour Incompatibility Problem’, History of
Philosophy Quarterly, 7 (3), p. 353.
41 This period is of great interest precisely because, as Finch notes, ‘Judging from the
posthumously published Philosophical Remarks and Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein
moved with almost agonizing slowness to the new position that language makes sense only
as it is altogether intertwined with different kinds of activities’ (Finch, Wittgenstein: The
Later Philosophy, op. cit., n. 17, p. 4).
42 Richard McDonough, ‘A Note on Frege’s and Russell’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus’, Russell, 3 (14), 1994, p. 42. Cf. also McGinn, ‘Between Metaphysics and
Nonsense’, op. cit., n. 15, pp. 2, 4, 9–10.
148 Post-Analytic Tractatus

43 Mayer convincingly argues against the view that the numbering was meant to be in the
style of a musical score or an intuitive rhythm. Indeed, she employs evidence from the
Prototractatus to reveal that the sub-propositions of the Tractatus are for the most part, just
as Wittgenstein claimed, meant as elaborations or comments upon earlier remarks. Thus, she
likens the work to ‘an architectonic construction’ and claims that its numbering system
‘...reflects primarily a method of construction’ (Verena Mayer, ‘The Numbering System in
the Tractatus’, Ratio, 6 (2), 1993, p. 112). This is at least consistent with the idea that these
‘statements’ were meant as elucidations.
44 Cf. Daniel Hutto, ‘Was the Later Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist?’, in P. Coates
and D. Hutto (eds), Current Issues in Idealism (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), p. 147.
45 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 19.
46 Ibid., § 23.
47 Cf. Koethe, The Continuity of Wittgenstein’s Thought, op. cit., n. 36, p. 2.
48 Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development (London: Routledge, 1959), p. 114.
49 Anscombe attempts to illustrate this point when she writes ‘I once bought toffees with
the names of the flavours “treacle”, “Devon cream” and so on printed on the papers and was
momentarily startled to find one labelled “fruit or nut”. It cannot be “fruit or nut”, I said. It’s
fruit or it’s nut. Any attempt to say what the truth-functional constants like “or” mean must
fail: we can only shew it’ (G.E.M Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), p. 164).
50 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 656.
51 Ibid., p. 226.
52 Ibid., § 206.
53 Meredith Williams, Wittgenstein’s Meaning and Mind (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.
222, 180.
54 Ibid., p. 210.
55 Williams notes that by stressing the social character of meaning and the importance of
training, Wittgenstein produces ‘...a dynamic rather than a static account of the rule-
governed practice’ (ibid, p. 168).
56 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 654. Cf. also idem, Last
Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I, ed. G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman,
trans. C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), § 873.
57 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, §§ 373, 371.
58 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, op. cit., n. 1, p. 10e.
59 TLP 4.0031; Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 122. Cf. also Koethe, The
Continuity of Wittgenstein’s Thought, op. cit., n. 36, p. 60.
60 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 109.
61 Ibid., § 108.
62 Ibid., § 15.
63 Ibid., § 49.
64 In 1948 Wittgenstein writes, ‘...Nothing is more important for teaching us to
understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones’ (Wittgenstein, Culture
and Value, op. cit., n. 1, p. 74e).
65 Wittgenstein reminds us that, ‘The language games are rather set up as objects of
comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of
similarities, but also of dissimilarities’ (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit.,
n. 7, § 130; cf. also § 122).
66 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, 2nd edn, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), § 380.
 More Making Sense of Nonsense 149

67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., § 379. For a fuller discussion of this case and the use of these imaginary language
games see Hutto, ‘Was the Later Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist?’, op. cit., n. 44, pp.
128–29.
69 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 383. This way of
understanding his later approach makes sense of his wholesale rejection of the view of
psychological language as representational which sponsors a mistaken picture of the reified
mind. For a fuller discussion of this see Hutto, ‘Was the Later Wittgenstein a
Transcendental Idealist?’, op. cit., n. 44, pp. 467–68, 474–77; also Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, §§ 194, 196.
70 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 316.
71 Ibid., § 305.
72 Ibid., § 322.
73 Wittgenstein, Last Writings, op. cit., n. 56, § 41.
74 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 583.
75 Ibid., § 340; Wittgenstein, Last Writings, op. cit., n. 56, § 856. Or, as he famously
writes: ‘To repeat: don't think, but look...’ (Philosophical Investigations, § 66).
76 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, § 68.
77 Ibid., § 69; cf. §§ 79–80.
78 Williams, Wittgenstein’s Meaning and Mind, op. cit., n. 53, pp. 76, 177.
79 He writes in his undated letter to von Ficker, ‘...the point of the book is ethical. I once
wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which,
however, I’ll write to you now because they might be a key to you: I wanted to write that my
work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not
written. And precisely this second part is the important one.’ Taken from C.G. Luckhardt
(ed.), Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), pp. 94–95.
80 He claims that Wittgenstein’s preface to the Tractatus misleads on the issue of
nonsense by suggesting a fourfold schema, when it should describe a sixfold one. Cf.
Peterson, Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy, op. cit., n. 17, p. 7, and especially p. 8. Another
good account of the various senses of nonsense in the Tractatus can be found in Cyril
Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), esp. pp. 24–
25.
81 Diamond, ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method’, op. cit., n. 35, p. 84; cf. also p. 80.
82 Ibid., p. 74.
83 If they could, ethical statements could not be absolute. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘A
Lecture on Ethics’, reprinted in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951,
ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 39.
84 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., n. 7, §§ 499–500. On the basis of
these remarks I would endorse Reid’s claim that in the later writings, ‘...what it is to exclude
something as nonsense can vary’: Reid, ‘Wittgenstein’s Ladder’, op. cit., n. 28, p. 146.
85 Reid, ‘Wittgenstein’s Ladder’, op. cit., n. 28, p. 146.
86 As Koethe writes, ‘...we should expect this attitude towards [the domains regarded as
nonsensical] to persist beyond the Tractatus. If on the other hand, their construal as
nonsensical in the Tractatus is an artefact or consequence of the picture theory, then we
should expect such concepts and discourse to survive the abandonment of that theory and to
occur in his later writings in ordinary, unconceptualised forms’ (Koethe The Continuity of
Wittgenstein’s Thought, op. cit., n. 36, p. 39). Despite our different characterizations of the
so-called ‘picture theory’, I think, as does Koethe, that it is the second scenario which is
realized.