ladder 25, May 2000 - January 2001

Draft, comments welcome: thomas.wallgren@helsinki.fi

Throwing Away the Ladder, and Keeping It Too

1. Since its inception Western philosophy has harboured a vision of transcending worldly contingency and human fragility by putting us in touch with certainty, with the completely universal and with the essence of things, perhaps even with the divine. These promises to a large extent define what philosophy has been in our culture, how it has been seen, equipped with what hopes people have made it their life. Hence, the sense of scandal when, or if, Wittgenstein holds that logic has a "mundane character", and when, or if, he rejects general thesis and metaphysical aspiration in philosophy. Hence, also, the sense that one is in touch with something deep when one investigates Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. But what is this depth? What is its import, its particular features?

It is in relation to this kind of question that the idea of a "new Wittgenstein", pioneered by Rush Rhees, Peter Winch and Stanley Cavell, championed by Cora Diamond, and seconded by James Conant, Warren Goldfarb, Michael Kremer, Thomas Ricketts and others, is important. In the "traditional" reception of Wittgenstein his work is seen as offering two distinct contributions, that of the early works up to the Tractatus and that of the late, post-Tractarian works. The traditionalists maintain that both contributions are at heart constructive, problem-focussed and problem-solving, even if highly original, contributions to the theory of meaning, the philosophy of logic and other closely related, established fields of philosophy. The new Wittgenstein is one whose early and late philosophy are more continuous with each other than the traditionalists have realised. It is a Wittgenstein whose views on ethics and on our times are internally linked to his views on logic. It is, above all, a Wittgenstein whose work on the topics recognised by the traditionalists leads him to redefine our understanding of these topics, of what it is to work on them. The idea of a "new Wittgenstein" is the idea of Wittgenstein as one who threatens, or promises, to change our understanding of philosophy, of its place in culture and in the lives of philosophers.

This is all general and vague. Here I shall do the following. I shall introduce some of the important claims and contributions in Diamond’s discussions of Wittgenstein. I then go to a critical discussion of some details in Diamond’s reading of the Tractatus as well as in that of two of her close followers, i.e. Conant and Kremer. The line of criticism I shall pursue starts with the obvious. What I intend to show is that the obvious responses to my obvious criticisms lead to further problems. The problems are of a peculiar nature. Diamond et al. try to get the Tractatus right. They want the work to cohere. That is what leads them wrong. If we see their shortcoming clearly we will, however, not land in the camp of the traditionalists again, nor will we be presenting yet another Tractatus. Our main gain will be a new piece of understanding concerning continuity and difference between the conceptions of philosophy of the early and the late Wittgenstein.

2. Cora Diamond’s discussions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy range over all phases and most major dimensions of Wittgenstein’s thought. The relation between the range she covers and what she has to say is intimate. It is through discovering in the earlier Wittgenstein what many have thought is there only in the later Wittgenstein, if at all, that she invites us to see both the young and the old Wittgenstein in a new light.

Diamond’s central article on the younger Wittgenstein is her "Throwing Away the Ladder". According to Diamond’s rendering of the young Wittgenstein in this and consecutive articles the "Kantian", foundational and problem-solving idea of philosophy that Wittgenstein inherited from Frege and Russell had, by the time the Tractatus was completed, been transformed into a new idea of philosophy as a peculiar kind of trafficking in nonsense with therapeutic or ethical goals.

Diamond’s discovery of a "new Wittgenstein" is arrived at by way of criticism of a particular reading of the Tractatus the mistake of which she finds instructive. Elisabeth Anscombe, who is a central target of Diamond’s criticism writes:

Diamond’s thesis is that the view Anscombe here attributes to the author of the Investigations is in fact already the view of the author of the Tractatus. Diamond claims that the author of the Tractatus does not use nonsense in order to show what can’t be said, he uses nonsense in order to help us overcome the philosophically tempting illusion that there are deep truths which philosophy can gulp but not say.

How does Diamond argue her case? There are two arguments which take off from evidence provided by the text of the Tractatus and there are some stage-setting considerations.

Diamond’s first and key argument is that those who, like Anscombe, read the Tractatus as showing our way to ineffable proposition-like truth fail to take the trope of the ladder in the 6.54 seriously. The most striking claim of Tractatus 6.54 is that we should throw away its propositions as nonsense. Wittgenstein writes:

Anscombe does not make much of this. When she claims that according to the Tractatus "there is something that our sentences try to speak out, but gulp on" this reveals, Diamond claims, that Anscombe thinks of Wittgenstein as intending his readers not to overcome the Tractarian ladder but rather to cling to it as the key to the deep truths conveyed by his book. Anscombe’s Wittgenstein is one who invites us to read much of what goes on in the Tractatus as meaningful by way of showing, not saying. This reading of the Tractatus is characterised by Diamond as "chickening out". Diamond has listed five interdependent doctrines which she claims that Anscombe and other readers who follow her line of interpretation typically read into the Tractatus; (i) that some metaphysical features of reality itself, "a realm of necessities" underlie "our capacity to make sense as we do"; (ii) that the logical syntax of a sentence can be identified independently of our understanding of what sentence it is; (iii) that we can violate logical syntax by trying to make statements about the assumed necessities of reality, thereby trying to say things which can only be shown; (iv) (a variant of (iii)), that there is a specific something, which it is impossible for us to do in language (namely speak out about the necessities which serve as the ground for the possibility of language); (v) that the goal of philosophy is to uncover a certain kind of necessity, an "underlying" or "metaphysical" necessity, "imagined as fact" - a view which Wittgenstein "throughout his life ... aimed to free us from". All of this Diamond finds implausible from the point of view of Tractatus 6.54. Nevertheless, for her detailed characterization of what chickening out involves she does not rest solely on the 6.54 but also on Tractatus 5.473 to 5.4733, In these remarks, "the 5.473's", Wittgenstein writes that if a "possible proposition" "has no sense", "that can only be because we have failed to give a meaning to some of its constituents". Diamond stresses that the irresolute readers of the Tractatus write as if the Tractatus would invite us to see also another way in which sentences can lack sense. This second form of nonsense would come about through constructing sentences in a way which contradicts some underlying logico-syntactical or metaphysical necessity, or some other "it", which may be ineffable but which philosophy may nevertheless identify. That second form of nonsense is what the irresolute readers need for their Tractatus to cohere but what the 5.473's tell us they can’t get.

Diamond also argues by way of what we might call stage-setting. The major part of "Throwing Away the Ladder" interprets Frege’s and Russell’s views and explains how the Tractatus can be seen as taking off from where Frege and Russell had reached and as going beyond them. Diamond insists that anyone who reads the Tractatus simply as clinging to Fregean and Russellian views of what the problems of philosophy are like and what philosophical work on them must be like will risk giving a flat reading of it. That is an interesting suggestion. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the Tractatus itself must provide the actual argument for Diamond’s conclusions. Otherwise, how could we tell whether and in what sense the young Wittgenstein was successful in his effort to improve on or transform the work of his forerunners? This simple hermeneutic point is where Diamond and others who support her main line of argument run into a characteristic difficulty. Diamond claims that the Tractatus is nonsense all through. So there can be no argument about the meaning of individual passages: the only way to get any passage of the Tractatus right is to show its nonsensicality. But is not Diamond herself chickening out? Is she not claiming that she gets some passages of the Tractatus right including at least the 5.473's and the 6.54? Must we not say that she steps back on the Tractarian ladder, that she only claims to throw away the ladder but in fact keeps it, or parts of it, too.

The mistake I attribute to Diamond is so simple and outright that it is impossible that she should have failed to notice it. So what is her response? This obvious question determines the course of the rest of this paper. I will start with a discussion of the 5.473's. We will then find reason to move on to a discussion which involves the 6.54.

3. Diamond’s response to my criticism might run as follows. She does not consider the 5.473's in the Tractatus which I claim that she considers to be meaningful and true to be meaningful. She considers them in the same way as Wittgenstein does in the Tractatus; as nonsense which is seemingly true. Could she stick to this? ­ Perhaps. Diamond might argue as follows: When she turns to the 5.473's in the Tractatus her aim is only to lay bare that there is in the Tractatus no scope for a distinction between sentences which are simply nonsensical and others which while being nonsensical have the function of showing something determinate, deep but ineffable. It may appear at first that this reading of the 5.473's presupposes that the remarks are considered to be meaningful. But that is an illusion. Diamond first notes that the 5.473's engage with the idea of there being two kinds of nonsense and say, or appear to say, that there is only one kind of nonsense. By doing so, by drawing a limit, the remarks go along with the Münchhausen-project of defining in language a limit beyond which language cannot possibly go. But this is nonsense because when we say that there is this limit it is as if we first said that there is something beyond the limit, namely the things we can’t speak about or the sentences we can’t give meaning to and then went on to say that there is nothing beyond the limit, in which case there never was a limit in the first place. So, the 5.473's themselves are nonsense. They appear to say something but when we try to make clear what they say we realise that they say nothing. Hence, the austere doctrine of nonsense is no doctrine which says that, according to the Tractatus, there is only one form of nonsense, namely mere nonsense, it is only the illusion of a doctrine. ­ Why does Diamond then speak about the "austere view of nonsense" in the Tractatus? ­ Well, only to guide us towards the point at which we can throw away the notion of there being an austere view of nonsense in the Tractatus as one more case of sheer nonsense. To say that there is only one kind of nonsense as opposed to several different kinds of nonsense is not to say anything at all. But it is a kind of saying which can, in the right context, rightly used, elucidate. It elucidates if it brings us to the point at which we can see that any effort to distinguish between semantically determinate forms of nonsense will produce only more of the same, namely, sheer nonsense.

The argument just given appears satisfactory with respect to the 5.473's. But then we are reading the 5.473's from the point of view of the 6.54. In 6.54 Wittgenstein suggests that his sentences are nonsense and that they elucidate. The suggestion is enigmatic.

It is the work done in response to this challenge, to the question "what can nonsense do?" that has made Diamond’s "new Wittgenstein" blossom. The reflections on the 5.473's just offered gives some idea of the possible gains of using the 6.54 as a methodological guide to the Tractatus. In this case the spiritual reward of elucidation, of the shift from seeing the 5.473's as presenting an interesting thesis to seeing the remarks as nonsensical, is rather slim. By contrast the work done by Diamond and others on the significance of Tractarian nonsense is often both imaginative and edifying. Yet, in it they pass over some questions concerning the relation of the 6.54 as they read it to the rest of the Tractatus too lightly.

We get at one difficulty if we ask by what criteria we are to tell good, elucidating use of nonsense from bad use which sustains illusions? Tractatus 6.54 gives us some clues. Wittgenstein suggests that elucidation has been achieved when we have arrived at an understanding of him and have thrown away his nonsensical sentences. There is also the further claim that the elucidated reader will "see the world alright". Diamond and her followers often turn to the Preface of the Tractatus in order to find instructions for how to read the book which complement the guidance provided by 6.54. If we follow them and turn to the Preface we find there the suggestion that the "value of this work consists" in showing "how little is achieved" in it (even though the work brings "the final solution of the problems"). There is tension between that and the bold claim in the 6.54 that those who throw away the ladder and understand the author of the Tractatus will see the world alright. There is surprisingly little systematic discussion in the work of Diamond et. al. of whether, to what extent and how Wittgenstein’s suggestions about what his work achieves fit together. Often it seems that the Tractatus they arrive at is so richly rewarding ethically that it becomes difficult to fancy why on earth Wittgenstein would have claimed in the Preface that the purpose of the book "would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person". In section 6 below we will touch upon this topic again. But before getting there we will develop our views on another kind of difficulty in how Diamond et. al. place the 6.54 in relation to the rest of the Tractatus. To wit, we might say that the difficulty arises from the insufficient attention paid by Diamond et al. to what sense can do.

We saw that Tractatus 6.54 is central to Diamond’s Wittgenstein. Her focus, we noted, is on Wittgenstein’s suggestion that his sentences are nonsense and that they elucidate. Now, let us ask some questions. If we say that some sentences are nonsense, does it imply that other sentences are not nonsense, that they have sense? Does it imply too that there is a way of telling sense from nonsense? Are there criteria for telling sense from nonsense? What gives sense to a sentence or: What is a meaningful sentence? What about Tractatus 6.54? Is it meaningful or nonsense? Can we tell which one it is? If we can tell, on what, if any, basis do we tell? What is the source of normativity or of validation which guides our judgment or decides whether a sentence is meaningful or not?

It seems to me that the alternative of saying that Tractatus 6.54 is nonsense (and that all sentences are) is not entertained by Diamond et al. I, too, will not discuss that option. That leaves us with those of our questions which revolve around the fact that at least in one case, i.e. in the case of Tractatus 6.54, Diamond et al. do not consider a remark of the Tractatus to be nonsense.

Let us now introduce some convenient jargon and call those sentences of the Tractatus which Diamond et. al. do not consider to be nonsense sentences belonging to the frame of the work and when taken together, "the frame", and call the other sentences in the Tractatus sentences belonging to the body of the work and collectively, "the body". Using this terminology and our earlier observations we can say that according to Diamond et. al. at least 6.54 belongs to the frame and (or, because) it has sense. Most other sentences or perhaps even all other sentences of the Tractatus belong to its body and these sentences are sheer nonsense. Now, let us insist on asking: What, according to Diamond et al. belongs to the frame of the Tractatus and of what kind are its sentences?

We may be inclined to give a very simple answer. We first repeat the formula: the sentences that form the body of the Tractatus are sheer nonsense. We then say that, by way of contrast, the sentences which are not nonsense are sheer sense and that the framing sentences in the Tractatus are of this kind, i.e. they are sheer sense, or simply, meaningful sentences. But what does that mean?

Diamond does not directly confront the issue, but it seems to me that we can gather a particular response to our query from her work. This answer involves taking much of the Tractatus views on the philosophy of logic as good money. It leads back to the kind of philosophical theorizing that Diamond teaches us that Tractatus teaches us to discard. Michael Kremer and James Conant have upfront discussions of our questions. Both maintain that our questions are illegitimate. Kremer claims that the questions and the answers to them are trivial and that any effort to discuss the issues constitutes an effort to bring in philosophical questioning where it has no legitimate role. Conant claims that the answers to our questions are given by what individuals decide to do and that our questions wrongly make it look as if there would be some other way of answering them. Let us call these the answer from the logic of language (Diamond), the self-evidence answer (Kremer) and the recognition answer (Conant) and discuss them in this order in sections 4a­c.

4.a. Given Diamond’s "resolute reading" of the Tractatus, what is it for a sentence to have sense?

Here is a quote from Diamond’s pivotal article. "It obviously makes a great change in Wittgenstein’s views that he got rid of the idea that you replace philosophical thinking by carrying out a kind of complete analysis of sentences in which the essential features of sentence sense as such are totally visible." The quote does not determine exactly when Diamond suggests that Wittgenstein held that earlier view. Possibly the author of the Tractatus is intended. If that is right Diamond ascribes to him the view that there are such things as "a kind of complete analysis of sentences", "essential features of sentence sense" as well as the total visibility of sentence sense. That brings to mind key passages of the Tractatus, which entertain notions such as "the essence" of a sentence and the complete analysis of a sentence and also the entire discussion of picturing with all its visual metaphors. Earlier Diamond has invited us to throw away this nonsense resolutely, now when she ascribes a certain "idea" to Wittgenstein she relies on it. That is puzzling. Neither in the quote from Diamond nor in the passages in the Tractatus in which Wittgenstein speaks of "essences" ("Wesen") and of what is essential ("wesentlich") can I detect the kind of philosophical distancing, that characteristic, silent move of the later Wittgenstein, which shifts ­ if we are willing to follow ­ our attention from taking talk of essences as something important that we should testify for or against to taking that same talk as something the roots and significance of which we might wish to ask questions about. The puzzle deepens when we turn to Diamond’s article "Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus". On the second page of the article we have the following table:

Diamond introduces the table in order to discuss the middle and right side of it. But our concern is the left side. If the Tractatus is (mostly) nonsense with what right does Diamond attribute, implicitly at least, to its author an acceptance of the categories "what can be spoken about" and "straightforwardly intelligible sentences". Indeed, again, in the Tractatus there are remarks which suggest, or seemingly suggest, that some sentences are straightforwardly intelligible, namely those which show their sense or simply describe. (Tractatus 4.022 and 4.023 and other places.) But, if these remarks in the Tractatus guarantee the legitimacy of the left side of Diamond’s table, is she not bringing us back to the ladder? That disturbing question arises again when we read, a page down:

In the brief reflection that follows there is no effort to explain to the reader how these statements by Diamond of what is in the Tractatus could be taken as rungs on a ladder leading us to see them as statements we should be taken in by at first in order to throw away later. We are still left with the impression that Diamond reads a full-blown theory (an "account") of logic and of sense (in terms of "comparability of propositions with reality") into the Tractatus.

The fullest elaboration of our topic is in Diamond 2000. Central there is a discussion of the particular way in which the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of language are the same in the Tractatus. Diamond again gives great emphasis to the notion that logic, according to her reading of the Tractatus, is not something external to language, it is "what joins together the sentences of the language which I do understand". The language I understand is not something alien, it is the "everyday language" and it is "in perfect logical order". However, as Diamond stresses, from the fact that everyday language is in perfect logical order it does not follow that it is always clear to us what this order is. For every sentence there is one and only one complete analysis (Tractatus 3.25). In philosophy we clarify sentences, we find out what sentence a sentence is. (Tractatus 4.112) The logical analysis is not a quarrel with the sentence as it was before the logical analysis, it is simply a new presentation of it in "completely perspicuous form". The function of the logical analysis according to Diamond’s reading of the Tractatus is (i) that it makes us see that all sentences are constructed logically from what Wittgenstein called elementary sentences, (ii) that it makes clear what possible situations are represented by any sentence and (iii) what inferential relations the sentence has. All these features can, in Diamond’s quasi-Tractarian language, be summarized by saying that through logical analysis "we become clear what our sentences mean by becoming clear what place within logical space they determine". Here we have the core of Diamond’s idea of the Tractatus idea of meaning and there is no difficulty in connecting this to what she says about nonsense. If a sentence has meaning it occupies a place in logical space which the logical analysis will define. If a sentence has no meaning there will be no such thing as a logical analysis of it determining its place in logical space. The fact that no logical analysis is available is the fact that it has no meaning. What logical analysis shows in the case of nonsense will always be of the same kind; it shows that there is no such thing as making clear what sentence the nonsensical sentence is, because it is no sentence.

Our original naive criticism of Diamond is difficult to do away with. What we have found in the discussion above is a rather conventional Diamond reading most of the philosophy of logic and the connected semantic theory in the Tractatus as meaningful. We find in her reading the notions of language here and reality there, of logical form shared by the two, of complete analyzability and other notions which are in a classical sense metaphysical. We can see why this happens. Central to Diamond is the attribution of an austere conception of nonsense to the Tractatus and also the avoidance of those suspect metaphysical implications which she thinks that we are forced to take on board if we don’t stick to the austere conception of nonsense. Diamond does produce a vital difference between her Tractatus and that of the "chicken". The difference is in how the relation between logic and (ordinary) language is defined. Diamond’s Tractatus does not think of logic, e.g. of the logical syntax of a sentence, as something that can be understood independently of our understanding of what sentence it is. It does not see logic as underlying language. This is an important contribution. Nevertheless, I think we must say that Diamond’s arrives at her important idea at the cost of giving up large parts of her initial programme. The leading suggestion at the very beginning of the article written in 1984/85 was:

After all her effort Diamond remains a far cry from realizing this programme as far as the Tractatus is concerned. Her resolute Tractatus is resolute only partly. Given what we said about the 5.473's it can be called resolute on the nonsense part. But on the sense part it seems as irresolute as the traditional interpretation, only in a different way.

4b. Kremer and Conant both differ from Diamond in addressing upfront our problems, in particular the problem of how to distinguish sense from nonsense in the Tractatus on Tractarian terms without undermining the programmatic ambition of throwing away the ladder. We consider Kremer’s response first. He writes that he "realises" that it "can seem mysterious" how the sentences of the frame can preserve their meaning once we have accepted the idea that all of the body of the Tractatus is nonsense. He tries to dissolve the fog around the mystery by saying that (i) the frame is not proclaimed to be nonsense, (ii) the frame is not part of "an elaborate philosophical theory". (iii) the sentences of the frame rely only on "our ordinary understanding of such notions as sense and nonsense, thought and truth" not on some "theoretical reconstruction", (iv) the framing sentences "survive" the "disintegration of an illusion of sense" which the sentences of the body do not survive. Their characteristic is that they are the sentences which "we can still make sense of at the end of the day", i.e. when we have worked our way through the Tractarian elucidations and discarded most of the Tractatus as nonsense. In all this Kremer relies on the suggestion that (v) "Wittgenstein’s view of meaning, of sense and nonsense in the Tractatus is simply this: meaningful linguistic expressions are those that have a use in language. The most basic use which we make of language is to say something".

So, Kremer answers our question about how to keep frame and body in the Tractatus apart by answering the question of what we can say about sense after we have thrown away the ladder. His view is that the sentences that form the body of the Tractatus are sheer nonsense and we come to realise that they are sheer nonsense when we see that they are no sentences at all. The sentences that belong to the frame can be made sense of and we know that they can because they satisfy the criterion of meaning in that they can be used to say something. This is the crucial characteristic which the frame of the Tractatus shares with all meaningful language. So, the sentences of the frame are, simply, exemplars of ordinary, meaningful sentences.

Kremer is eager to do away with mystery in order to get to what is of real interest to him, namely, to the question what nonsense can do, which he sees as the really challenging issue for those who want to defend the resolute reading of the Tractatus. I suppose it takes that eagerness not be puzzled by his position.

I will do two things in response to Kremer. First, I shall argue that his position is not consistent. Then I shall suggest that the inconsistencies I point out may seem to him to be shallow. I shall suggest an imagined response from Kremer to this effect and discuss it in later sections.

Consider Kremer’s (iii) and (v). Individually and jointly they raise a number of questions. In (v) there is the expression "meaningful linguistic expression" and in (iii) there is the expression "ordinary understanding". Both expressions function here in the context of a rather specific philosophical investigation and are frequent in 20th century philosophy. Still (iii) asks us to forget about theoretical reconstruction when we discuss the frame of the Tractatus. ­ Let us now ask: What are we supposed to do in order to achieve what (iii) asks us to achieve, i.e. turn to ordinary understanding of these expressions and remain there, innocent of all theory? How can we make sure that we accomplish such an ordinary reading of the frame of the Tractatus? How do we protect ourselves from surrendering, unwittingly perhaps, at any point to "theoretical reconstruction"? ­ Let me be blunt: I do not have the vaguest idea of what Kremer wants me to do. The only thing I know is that if I do what he asks me to do, the effect will be magical. I will be taken from seeing paradox in the Tractatus to a plane where I can read some of the book as plain sense and others parts as plain nonsense. And the book will leave me with no difficulty.

Let us discuss just one difficulty in Kremer’s views: In Kremer’s (v) there is the triad: meaning, to use, to say. Clearly these are ordinary words if any words are. But does that mean that they are words which have ordinary use? Perhaps it does? But is their use in (v) an ordinary use, such as required in (iii)? Or is it a use which involves the forbidden "theoretical reconstruction"? How are we to tell? (If we say that the use is ordinary because it survives the test of (iv) we will be moving in circles: the test of what is ordinary is that it is ordinary.) Remember: to Kremer the use must not be philosophical, because then we are back in reading theory into the Tractatus. Kremer wants nothing of that. So he must claim that (v) has this triad in a non-philosophical sense. (v) must, so to say, remain innocent with respect to the way the notion of use enters the Tractatus, e.g. in 4.123, with respect to the role played by the saying/using distinction in later-day speech-act theory, with all its Wittgenstein references, as well as to the fact that two members of the triad were brought into the most intimate contact in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Kremer must in short claim that when he sticks to (v) he sticks to something which is so trivial as to have no philosophical interest beyond the fact that it helps save the framing sentences of the Tractatus by showing how they have a non-technical, philosophically innocent sense. But can we give a trivial reading of (v)?

With the first part of (v) we might admit that he is only facing small problems. If we say: "meaningful linguistic expressions are those that have a use in language" we may perhaps get to something trivial by eliminating the emphasis on use and the words "are those that"? But when Kremer goes on to write, "the most basic use" he is asking for trouble. The question of what is more and what is less and what is most basic to anything is rarely uncontroversial. In the philosophy of language heads have clashed over what is most basic since Plato. When Kremer goes on to claim that saying something is using language he finds himself in the midst of one of the big philosophical controversies of the 20th century. What is it to use language? How does "using" identify, qualify or explain saying? How exactly is saying different from other kinds of using language for instance from the use of (linguistic?) nonsense to elucidate? ­ Kremer might respond by throwing up his arms and saying "this is all ordinary, nothing to do with philosophy"? But does that help?

In the Tractatus there is a discussion of meaningful use. Wittgenstein writes:

Kremer can either buy nothing of this into his (v) or he must claim that these remarks are part of the frame. In the latter case he takes on the burden of proving how "sign", "symbol", "logical form" etc. are used when they are not used for "theoretical reconstruction" (whatever that is). In the former case he must explain why what he says in (v) although it has some key words, and perhaps some key ideas, in common with these Tractarian remarks have nothing to do with them. Kremer does not discuss the topic. That is surprising if already because Diamond claims that for Wittgenstein of the Tractatus "use" means "logico-syntactical use". Diamond does not refer at this point to 3.326­3.327. But what reason would there be to accept Diamond’s claim unless we read Tractatus 3.326­3.327 as its basis? Given Diamond’s import to Kremer and given that Kremer’s (v) and Tractatus 3.326­3.327 use the same words and also that for Kremer it would be important to establish that his use in (v) is completely different from the use in the Tractatus one might have expected some clarification of the issue but no clarification is offered. This observation, too, adds to the implausibility of Kremer’s claim to come up with a philosophically innocent explanation of how we are to tell sense from nonsense and frame from body in the Tractatus.

What is the root of Kremer’s error? I have located the error in the tension between his insistence that what sense is is trivial and the theoretically loaded explanation he gives of what sense is. All this suggests that the root of the error is that his position requires that he explains what sense is and how we can tell sense from nonsense although it also requires that he gives up all resources to provide such explanations. But perhaps this way of attributing error to him creates a difficulty which takes us in an unfruitful direction.

Let us imagine the following amendment to Kremer’s position. We simply drop the requirement that we should try to explain what sense is and how to tell sense from nonsense. We do this because we realise, thanks to the Tractatus, that any attempt to explain or articulate or define what sense is or how it can be identified will involve the theorizing forbidden by (iii). (The motivation for (iii) is that we have been elucidated by the Tractarian nonsense and thrown away the ladder.) Then we also drop Kremer’s (v). The new solution to our problems offered by the "amended Kremer" is that the criterion for something’s being a sentence is "simply" "that we can ... make sense of it". The word "simply" (lifted out of the (v) in the real Kremer) contains the amended Kremer’s correction not only to the real Kremer, but also to Diamond. Diamond’s account suggested that analysis can tell in any given case whether a sentence in the Tractatus is part of the frame, i.e. a sentence, or not. And that was problematic because she also asks us to discard the idea that the Tractatus could contain any theses or doctrines, e.g. about analysis and about sense (or anything else). The amended Kremer avoids this dilemma by claiming that there is no need to turn to analysis to determine whether a sentence makes sense.

There is a question, however, whether Kremer’s idea that things are "simple" take us back to the philosophical position Wittgenstein early on identified as the unacceptable feature of Russell’s work on the philosophy of logic, namely the position in which you are told, at the end of the day, to agree because something is "einleuchtend", to use Wittgenstein’s word. Wittgenstein wrote:

A few days later Wittgenstein writes:

The above notes are reflected in Tractatus 5.4731. Wittgenstein writes:

The attraction of Diamond’s position, with her insistence that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus maintained the idea that we can carry out a kind of complete analysis of sentences in which the essential features of sentence sense as such are totally visible, resides in its promise of showing a way to keep Wittgenstein’s programme from 1914 and abandon resort to self-evidence. Diamond’s Wittgenstein is one who finds logic or "language itself" telling us what is a sentence and what is not a sentence. But that line of thinking brings her to the difficulty we recorded earlier. Kremer sees this. But does he, then, fall back in the Russellian self-evidence Wittgenstein reacted against when he maintains, in his (iv), that what we "we can still make sense of at the end of the day" is our last resort in questions of meaning? Perhaps not. Kremer’s (ii) can be seen as bringing in a distinction between what we can make sense of at the end of the day in philosophy and what we can make sense of. This distinction is, arguably, the advance of Kremer’s Tractatus as compared with the views held by Russell, which the author of the Tractatus reacted against. Russell places self-evidence at the heart of a philosophical argument in which he seeks rational justification for fundamental philosophical theses. Self-evidence becomes for him (as for many before and after him) the ultimate source of validity in rational debate. Kremer’s Wittgenstein, according to our present terms of discussion, moves self-evidence away from at the heart of philosophy where the young Wittgenstein thought, with Frege, that it is illegitimate. He places it before or outside philosophy. And he might say: what we can make sense of in philosophy at the end of the day is the same as what we can make sense of in philosophy at its inception and all along the way, namely nothing. This we should keep apart from what we can make sense of. That covers a whole lot of things including what we can make sense of at the end of the day.

Does this "amended Kremer" give us a consistent interpretation of the Tractatus? I will discuss this question in section 6 .

4c. James Conant’s key text for us is his article "The Method of the Tractatus". Its central topic is Tractarian elucidation. The "method" of the Tractatus which Conant seeks to clarify is the method of using nonsense (of a particular kind, perhaps) in such a way that it elucidates (in a particular way, perhaps). For us it suffices to consider some of the last steps in Conant’s argument.

We begin with his considerations about how to tell frame from body (and, thereby, sense from nonsense) in the Tractatus. Conant says that how a sentence occurs decides whether it belongs to the frame of the Tractatus or to its body. Then he asks: How are we to tell how a given sentence occurs? He writes: "The question presupposes that certain strings are intrinsically either cases of Unsinn or cases of Sinn. But the Tractatus teaches that this depends on us: on our managing (or failing) to perceive (erkennen) a symbol in the sign."

Conant rejects the question whether a certain string is intrinsically Sinn or Unsinn. Why? Because of something the Tractatus teaches! What is this teaching? And where can we find it? Conant finds it essentially in Tractatus 5.4733 and 6.53. The aim of Tractarian elucidation, according to Conant, is to "demonstrate to /the interlocutor/ that he has given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions". The criterion of success in elucidation is that "the interlocutor arrives at the point at which he is able of his own accord to acknowledge that he has given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions", i.e. "when the interlocutor ‘recognizes’ his propositions as Unsinn... in the sense of Unsinn specified in § 5.4733".

So, Conant gathers a "teaching" from some remarks in the Tractatus. He also says that the teaching is that how we locate sense depends on us. In the following I will show that this is paradoxical.

The way elucidation works is described by Conant as follows:

One conspicuous feature of Conant’s definition of the aim of Tractarian elucidation and of his description of how it works is this: Conant assumes that the author of a work designed to elucidate has authority. He presents the elucidating author of the Tractatus as one who knows where the reader should be going, where elucidation ought to take him. How can the author have this authority? Presumably, because he has already travelled the journey himself, and arrived at the point at which the interlocutor also will inevitably arrive. That final point is identified as the point at which a criterion of sense or nonsense is met: this is, as we have seen, described as the point at which the interlocutor "is able of his own accord to acknowledge that he has given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions".

How, if at all, can the Tractarian philosopher know that there is a point with the above character at which his interlocutor will arrive?

Conant’s text suggests two different answers to our question. First, that he can know because of the logic which the Tractatus teaches us that is inherent in language. This answer is basically the same as Diamond’s answer "from the philosophy of logic" and it runs into the same kind of difficulty. There is however one additional consideration concerning the frame/body distinction, which is important because it answers to the criticism I mounted against Diamond, or at least creates an appearance of doing so. Conant writes:

There is something irritating in this. What happens with the resoluteness of Conant’s reading if he goes about taking one remark of the Tractatus after the other as meaningful and adds, whenever we ask him how he can do that, that he is only talking about the frame of the work? And what happens to the programme of not reading doctrines into the Tractatus? How is Conant’s notion that no strings (of signs) are intrinsically either cases of Unsinn or cases of Sinn not a philosophical doctrine?

To get from a sense of irritation to an insight into the incoherence of Conant’s view we need to note the tension between two traits in the quotation just given. Conant writes that framing sentences "work by providing the framework within which the activity of elucidation takes place. Some of them do this by saying things about the work as a whole (and offering instructions for how the work is to be read), others by saying things with the aim of helping us to see what is going on in some part of the work." Conant also says that "many of the sections of the Tractatus ... belong to the frame of the work" and can only do their work "if recognized as sinnvoll".

The former part of the last quote implicitly assumes that a sentence either belongs or does not belong to the frame, that sentences are sinnvoll or are not sinnvoll independent of our recognition. That is: Conant implies that the remarks of the work divide into two objective categories and that we can get the division right or wrong. But that contradicts his other view that how we divide the work depends on us, on what we recognize as sinnvoll. (If it did depend on us, only on us, we might find e.g. that nothing belongs to the body; that all remarks belong to the frame. - But what then with Tractatus 6.54?)

Now let us consider one last quote from Conant, from the very end of his last substantial endnote:

There is reliance here on post-Tractarian notions of language users. If we ignore that we can take the main contention to be that there is not such a thing for the sentences which constitute the remarks of the Tractatus as of either being sentences or not being sentences. The claim is then (as in endnote 191) that sentences in the Tractatus do not in any obvious and uncontroversial or in any absolute, objective or determinate way belong to the meaningful frame or to the nonsensical body. In all cases it is individual recognition, something "that will depend on an individual", that decides what is frame and what is body, what carries meaning and what does not. This sounds like a straightforward "subjectivist" or "decisionist" notion of meaning. Our confidence in attributing this view to Conant (as his view of the Tractatus) is, however, undermined by other aspects of the quote. In it Conant speaks about "progress" and "the course of ascent" in the determination of meaning. These are valorising terms. But who valorises? On what grounds? If meaning is wherever I recognize it, how can there be progress in how or where I recognize meaning? I can say that there is progress. But how does it matter whether I call the changes in how I confer meaning ­ onto the sentences of the Tractatus or onto any other sentences ­ progress or regress or just change? Finally, if whatever I recognize as meaningful is meaningful, what about the conception of meaning as something determinate?

I have suggested that Conant entertains two different notions of how we can tell frame from body in the Tractatus. One is based on reading logico-semantical doctrine into the Tractatus. The other draws on the idea that the capacity to keep frame and body apart inheres in our "recognition". I have claimed that neither suggestion finds a coherent articulation. There is also tension between the two ideas and the tension is not discussed by Conant. In fact there is no notice of it. That calls for an explanation. Let us venture one.

Conant is committed to the view that the author of the Tractatus shared with Frege the determination to oust anything which is not objective from logic, or, in Wittgenstein’s case, from philosophy. (So far I have no objection.) He is also committed to the view that the author of the Tractatus arrives at views which satisfy this requirement that everything that is not objective be ousted from philosophy. (That is where I think Conant goes wrong.) Because of this latter commitment Conant is satisfied to think that the "Klarwerden" of propositions and our (subjective) determination of sense will run the same course thus guaranteeing, before the fact as it were, that the process of elucidation will come to a halt at the same point for the philosopher and his interlocutor. This conviction-before-the-facts has no legitimate basis, but it explains why Conant may consider his interpretation of what belongs to the frame and what to the body of the Tractatus satisfying. It also explains why Conant says that there may be progress and ascent on the ladder, not only change in the way meaning is recognised, when readers work their way through the Tractatus. Conant’s commitment to the idea that a philosophy which ends with stating that individual recognition is the ultimate criterion of meaning will also be able to guarantee agreement is perhaps nowhere clearer than when he writes:

We see here that Conant remains committed to the notion that we can get the Tractatus right or wrong, i.e. that it is not individual recognition alone which has authority in how to read it. The work, Conant claims, has a purpose and there is a sign which tells us whether we have understood it or not. The sign is that we have thrown away the ladder. Which ladder? The ladder which we have recognised as the ladder, not the frame which we have recognised as frame! ­ As we have seen, this suggestion leads to a paradox and Conant does not help us get out of it.

5. We have moved, with Diamond, Kremer and Conant in circles. It is time to move beyond them and to try to get a sense of why these circles have been so difficult to break out of.

In Tractatus 5.4731 Wittgenstein writes that "self-evidence can become dispensable in logic only because language itself prevents every logical mistake". But can self-evidence become dispensable? In 5.5563 we find the following: "all the propositions of our everyday language ... are in perfect logical order". If we read 5.4731 and 5.5563 together we arrive at the view that self-evidence is dispensable because our sentences are in order! But which are our sentences? We are back at a new formulation of our key question to Diamond et. al.

Interestingly, while Diamond, Kremer and Conant all have paid much attention to the 5.473's and some attention also to Tractatus 5.5563 none of them pay attention in our context to what happens in the Tractatus right after 5.5563. That is curious, because the passages that follow immediately address our concern, or at least they seem prima facie to do so. In 5.6 Wittgenstein says bluntly: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" and in 5.62: "The world is my world...the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world".

This seems to confirm Conant’s earlier suspicion, which he drew out of the Tractatus 5.473s, that it is not for the sentence to tell whether it is a sentence or not. Recognition decides about that. The novelty in the 5.6's is the solipsistic understanding of recognition. But, if we consider this suggestion for a moment, what happens to the idea Diamond, Kremer and Conant all impute to Wittgenstein that he ­ in Tractatus 6.54 ­ speaks with authority to his interlocutors? It falls apart. The solipsism of the 5.6's tells us that we cannot turn to something else, e.g. to the logic of language, or to the result of a logical analysis, or to the author of the Tractatus, or to everyday language, or to self-evidence to find a basis for judging whether a sentence sign is a (meaningful) sentence or not. The I of the 5.6's is the sole authority to determine what is and what is not a proposition.

If we take the 5.6's as a key to Tractatus views about sense and nonsense it follows that the entire distinction which was so important for Frege, and which Conant assumes is crucial to Wittgenstein too, the distinction between the psychological, or subjective, and the logical or objective, collapses.

Can this be right? Well, what we gather is by no means philosophically trivial. First we say that the determination of meaning takes place on solipsistic terms. We look at Frege’s first principle, his determination to keep the subjective and the objective apart, from there and find that we now cannot think of it as true or false but see that it is meaningless. But then this claim (that Frege’s first principle is meaningless) is, again, not something we can accept as a meaningful sentence because if we think of it as meaningful to say that Frege’s first principle is meaningless we have already presupposed that we can make a distinction between the meaningful and meaningless. But how can this now be done? ­ If whatever we claim to recognize as a sentence is, thereby, a sentence then the suggestion in the Tractatus 6.54, that the sentences of the Tractatus are nonsensical (and, possibly, that 6.54 is not nonsensical) is arbitrary. We seem, once more, to be moving in circles here. ("See how high the seas of language run here!")

Our reading is in a sense in tune with the programme of Diamond et al. It starts with trying to give sense to the 5.6's and ends with showing that they have no sense. We might say that we are repeating Conant’s "recognition interpretation", but without his prejudice that we can do this and keep talking about such things as progress in interpretations and ascent of the ladder and understanding "the purpose" of the Tractatus.

This is the typical feature of the Tractatus: whenever we think we have climbed the ladder which is the Tractatus to the point of 6.54 where we can throw away the ladder we find ourselves clinging to one further rung of the ladder which we will again have to recognize as meaningless. The one rung of the ladder which the Tractatus cannot help us throw away, the one rung which we always rely on if we are to throw away the ladder, is always the same: it is the notion that we can distinguish ­ or that there is a distinction there, or to be made ­ between sense and nonsense in such a way as to produce a difference between ascending the ladder rightly and wrongly. The paradox then is: we claim the capacity to make a distinction and to apply it correctly and we throw away, as a matter of principle, all resources for validating our trust that we can claim such a capacity. The idea of a guaranteed harmony in outcome when meaning is determined and separated from nonsense, whether in the Tractatus or elsewhere, is the metaphysical residue which haunts the new Wittgenstein as it did already haunt the Tractatus.

6. What about the amended Kremer? ­ He might suggest the thesis:

I wish to distinguish between four reactions to T’. First, we react affirmatively and say that this is the end of philosophy. Second, we react affirmatively and say that this is the end of a philosophical discussion of semantics and logic but not the end of philosophy because we can still continue philosophy via nonsense, i.e. by putting nonsense to elucidating use. Third, we react affirmatively and say that this is the end of a philosophical investigation of semantics and logic as we know it, but not the end of a philosophical investigation of semantics and logic and other classical areas of philosophy. Fourth, we reject T’. As our discussion serves the narrow purpose of advancing our analysis of Diamond’s, Kremer’s and Conant’s "new Wittgenstein" I will not dwell on imprecisions in T´ or discuss the fourth proposal here.

Diamond et al. and "the amended Kremer" support the second proposal. They take Tractatus as showing our way out of philosophy-as-theorizing-that-seeks-to-establish-theses-and-doctrines and a way into philosophy-as-a-therapeutic-engagement-with-nonsense. Can this be a correct reading of the Tractatus? My thesis is that it cannot. If I am right there will be consequences for how we relate the early to the later Wittgenstein. Here two sets of considerations for my thesis will be provided. The first considerations are based on textual evidence considered by Diamond et. al. as belonging to the frame of the Tractatus, the latter considerations focus on the relation between the early and the later Wittgenstein.

(i) Tractatus 6.54 is for Diamond et al. the best key to the Tractatus. Wittgenstein there insists that those who get the Tractatus right will understand "him", the author. What would it be to understand the author? That question is too large for us here. But a smaller question will suffice: Can understanding the author be what Diamond et al. claim it is (on the assumption that Diamond et al. support our second proposal above)? I think not. Wittgenstein did not continue philosophical work in the way of Tractatus after he had completed the book. He abandoned philosophy. That is more in tune with the Wittgenstein of our first proposal than with the Wittgenstein of Diamond et al. Important support for attributing the first proposal rather than the second to the author of the Tractatus is also provided by the emphatic claim in the Preface that the Tractatus solves all the problems of philosophy. If that is so, why then keep on philosophizing (by way of elucidation, or by any other way)? Finally, how can Diamond et al. explain that the Tractatus achieves very little, and that it will, while solving all problems of philosophy, achieve its purpose if it gives pleasure to one person? All these remarks point in the same direction. The first proposal is more effortless than the second from the point of view of the text and judging from what we know about where Wittgenstein went in his life after completing the Tractatus.

(ii) How do we understand the relation between the early and the later Wittgenstein? Diamond et al. emphasize continuity. Their broad thesis is that our second proposal above gives a rough idea of Wittgenstein’s views, early and late. That creates several difficulties. First, if Wittgenstein all along accepted a conception of philosophy along the lines of our second proposal there is the difficulty of explaining not only why he left philosophy but also why he came back to it. His return has a natural explanation if we see the difference between the early and the later Wittgenstein in terms of a shift from the first to the third of our proposals. The suggestion is that the shift that leads to the return comes about thanks to a discovery of a (at least partly) new conception of philosophy. By contrast, the second proposal leaves little room for understanding Wittgenstein’s return to philosophy as a rational gain. Second, can we have the second proposal and the notion that there are no theses or doctrines in philosophy? Perhaps, but then we face the difficulty of explaining how the claims of T’, including the claim that sense is trivial and no suitable subject of philosophical theorizing, does not involve any theses. Third, in the Investigations Wittgenstein has the remark: "The great difficulty here is not to represent the matter as if there were something one couldn’t do." In the Tractatus this remark has no equivalent.. But our second proposal flies in the face of that. So, it obliterates an interesting difference between the two textual corpuses. Finally, why does Wittgenstein say in his later philosophy but not in his early philosophy that we should try "not to represent the matter as if there were something we couldn’t do"? My suggestion is that the claim is, above all, a comment on the Tractatus. The Tractatus, according to our first proposal concludes that there are things we cannot do, namely discuss the classical topics of philosophy philosophically. In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein has discovered a new way of doing philosophy, which provides new tools for dealing with all the issues in the Tractatus and any other issue in philosophy without leading back to Tractarian nonsense. Our proposals (i) and (ii) have in common that they will leave anyone who has thought of classical philosophy as something important in human life with a sense of disappointment. The disappointment is the disappointment of one who is taught that what he thought was a route to paradise­ a route to certainty, insight into essences and so on ­ is entirely illusory. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus that is the whole story: Wittgenstein’s contribution to philosophy is comparable to the contribution by the person who set the Alexandrian library on fire. For the later Wittgenstein that is not the whole story. We can not here give a full account of the other part of the story but we can provide some suggestions in the concluding remarks.

7. I have argued that the "new Wittgenstein" is, in the case of the Tractatus, an incoherent Wittgenstein. Does this bring us back to the "old", "irresolute" Wittgenstein of Anscombe and others? Nothing of what I have said points in that direction. The criticism Diamond and her followers have ushered against irresolute readings of the Tractatus remains intact: given the 5.473's and the 6.54 of the Tractatus it is difficult to see how the irresolute reading could be right. So we have two competing readings, both problematic. What to do? ­ Here is my suggestion. We accept the new Wittgenstein, in particular the amended Kremer’s version of it, as a good reading of the Tractatus but we correct it in one important respect. Instead of seeing the new Wittgenstein as getting the Tractatus right by giving it a coherent reading we see the new Wittgenstein as an interpretation that gets the Tractatus right by leading us to the point where we can see its shortcomings clearly.

As we have just seen our suggestion gives us a basis for rethinking the understanding Diamond et al. have of continuity and rupture in Wittgenstein’s life and work. Our amendments will also have implications for how we place Wittgenstein in relation to the classical understanding of philosophy as metaphysics and/or as a foundational undertaking.

In the Philosophical Investigations and in other later writings Wittgenstein does exactly what our first and second proposal (in section 6 above) both exclude: he engages in philosophical investigation of the topics of the Tractatus including meaning and logical truth and in discussion of other classical philosophical topics. The discussion is not philosophy of the theorizing kind the author of the Tractatus thought it would have to be in order for it to count as philosophy. But it is also not a philosophy which is hostile to metaphysical or foundational aspirations in philosophy. The author of the later work does not dismiss notions such as the essence of thought or language and the general form of a sentence. He engages with them. Similarly, there is no question for the later Wittgenstein of rejecting philosophical investigation of the distinction between sense and nonsense. On the contrary, the topic is discussed with great energy in the Philosophical Investigations, in particular in the sections often referred to under the rubric "the Private Language Argument". But that does not mean that the later Wittgenstein discusses the distinction in the ways in which the author of the Tractatus thought philosophers would always be bound to discuss it. We have seen that the 5.5's and 5.6's in the Tractatus entertain (and undermine) the solipsistic idea that individual recognition is the criterion for meaningful language. In the Private Language Argument Wittgenstein returns to this problem of "meaning solipsism". But he does not proceed to develop a theory according to which there either are or are not objective or logical criteria of meaning. Contrary to a common perception he also does not advance communal agreement or forms of life as new touchstones which will enable us to tell the meaningful from nonsense. The new position he finds would be rather unattractive if it would imply that the distinction between sense and nonsense is unimportant, or that it is impossible to make or sustain. But I do not think this is an implication of the later view: i.e. I do not think that we should read the later Wittgenstein as a philosophical nihilist or relativist. The main innovation of the later Wittgenstein, presented paradigmatically in the Private Language Argument and in key passages in his On Certainty, is that he finds a way of investigating meaning and other classical philosophical problems in a way which can satisfy our metaphysical craving without succumbing to the temptation to see it as a task for philosophy to give us the last word about how to tell sense from nonsense. More generally: Pace the work of Rorty, Putnam, McDowell and others I think we should not read the work of the later Wittgenstein as a "philosophy to end all philosophy" or as some pragmatically or historically moderated Kantianism or weak transcendental philosophy. If we wish to apreciate fully the novelty of Wittgenstein’s later conception of philosophy we will need to articulate how his early "Kantian" notion of laying foundations, setting limits and legislating through philosophy is in the later work replaced with a new conception of philosophy, which resists the enlightenment blackmail of demanding us to take a stand in the disputes over relativism vs. universalism, transcendentalism vs. contextualism, and so on, without leaving us with a sense that we are compromising the commitment to reason in philosophy. But to argue that would take me far beyond these remarks on what is wrong with Diamond’s new Wittgenstein.

Thomas Wallgren

Academy of Finland

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