NOS 35:1 ~2001!

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The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense*

Michael Kremer University of Notre Dame
To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it without right. ~ Wittgenstein, 1958, 289!

I. Wittgensteins closing remarks in the Tractatus have long puzzled his readers. His propositions, he tells us, are nonsense, and to understand him is to recognize this. Yet how can recognizing his pronouncements as nonsense count as a kind of understanding? Of what value could this understanding be? We can recognize Jabberwocky as nonsense, and in doing so we can perhaps achieve some sort of understanding of Lewis Carroll. However, Jabberwocky does not open with a claim to deal with the problems of philosophy and to bring them to a definitive resolution. Moreover, Jabberwocky wears its nonsensicality on its sleeve; it is obvious nonsense and we recognize it as such from its first sentence. The typical reader of the Tractatus, on the other hand, will begin by supposing herself to be reading a book of philosophy, intended as a straightforward communication of intelligible thought. This thought may appear difficult and its expression highly compressed; the reader may struggle to come to an understanding of the authors point of view; but if the reader persists and makes it to the end of the book, it may surprise her to learn that she is to dismiss as nonsense what she had taken herself to understand. She may infer that she has understood nothing at all, and throw the book awayyet not in the way seemingly intended by Wittgensteins image of the ladder which one throws away after climbing itfor this reader will not have been transformed in any interesting way by the experience, except perhaps in acquiring a distaste for certain kinds of philosophy. I recently encountered an example of such a reaction in a readers review of the Tractatus posted by the Internet bookseller Amazon.com. The reviewer 1 writes, under the heading A lot of bloated nonsense:
2001 Blackwell Publishers Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK. 39

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Wittgenstein must be the most over rated philosopher who has ever lived. Because of the work ~and marketing! of a few devoted students, the rest of us have been led to believe that he is one of the great ones. The truth is nothing of the sort. He couldnt write clearly. The result is much undeserved attention has been given to some very ambiguous epigrammatic statements of his. Much of his work is unreadable and of no use or interest to anyone but a few hard core positivist philosophy professors. If you really want to read some good philosophy, do not be unjustifiably taken in by the weird mystique of the Wittgenstein name. It is all P.R. work by some ivy league philosophers who do not even care anymore if philsophy @ sic # has anything useful to say to people who live in the real world. As long as they can continue to collect their salaries and analyze their little language puzzles in the privacy of their faculty offices, they are happy-and irrelevant to the lives of anyone who actually works outside of a university. Save yourself the bother of trying to decipher this guy; It isnt worth your trouble.

A more determined reader may, however, wish to hold onto the thought that he has understood something in reading the earlier sections of the Tractatus. He may discern there a theory of metaphysics, or of language, or of the mind, which attracts or repels him. He may see in the work arguments for and against important positions, which can be elaborated, defended or refuted. He may expend great energy on these tasks. He may even conclude that Wittgenstein has shown, through important arguments, that certain views or theories are founded on nonsense and irredeemably confused. Yet in thus concluding, he will take Wittgenstein himself to have presented a philosophical view, which may itself be mistaken in whole or in part, and may even involve various confusions, but is not simply nonsense. Most commentators have implicitly taken this approach to reading the Tractatus, in attempting to explain Wittgensteins doctrine on this or that philosophical issue. Peter Carruthers is more explicit, claiming that the doctrine of philosophy as nonsense may simply be excised from @the Tractatus #, without damage to the remainder, attributing this doctrine to Wittgensteins having over-generalized a theory of semantic content...adequate...for factual ~ broadly scientific! discourse...to cover discourse of all kinds, including...philosophy. ~Carruthers 1990, 5!. To read the Tractatus in this way is to take Wittgenstein to have made at least one major error in classifying his own propositions as nonsense, and to suggest that at a certain fundamental level Wittgenstein did not properly understand his own activity or accomplishment. For interpreters such as Carruthers, we can best appreciate Wittgensteins achievement by simply dismissing the self-destructive climax of the Tractatus. In contrast, the resolute interpretation of the Tractatus, so-called by Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts, forcefully developed by Cora Diamond and James Conant, insists that we take seriously Wittgensteins claim that his propositions are nonsense, that they constitute a ladder that we are to throw away.2 Diamond suggests, following Wittgensteins advice to Ficker ~ Wittgenstein 1979a, 95!, that we look to the Preface and closing sections of the book, which

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she calls its frame, for indications as to how to read the work. ~ Diamond 1991, 55!. The Preface tells us that the book will draw a limit not to thought, but to the expression of thought, in language. What lies on the other side of the limit will be einfach Unsinnsimply nonsense. ~ Wittgenstein 1933, p. 27 !.3 The penultimate section of the work itself tells us that to understand Wittgenstein, we must recognize his propositions to be nonsense, so that we can climb through them, on them, over them, in the end discarding them entirely. ~6.54!. The book is not a textbook, according to the Preface ~ p. 27 !; the philosophy that it teaches us is not a doctrine, but an activity of clarification in which we make explicit the content that is already completely present and in order in the propositions of ordinary language. ~4.112, 5.5563!. At the same time, this activity of clarification can help us to see how ordinary language makes possible various ambiguities and confusions, ~3.323! which allow, through what Wittgenstein calls the misunderstanding of the logic of our language the formulation of the apparent but unreal problems of philosophy. ~ p. 27, 3.324, 4.003!. In becoming aware of these confusions and the illusions they generate, we unmask the problems of philosophy as consisting not of errors but nonsense. Thus we solve them in a way more definitive than any philosophical argument could provide. Diamond initially introduces the idea of the frame of the book, in accordance with the implicit spatial metaphor, as comprising the Preface and final propositions of the Tractatus. However, as the above summary makes clear, the resolute interpretation also takes its cue from propositions occurring in the rest of the work. Conant explains that the distinction between what is part of the frame and what is part of the body of the work is not, as some commentators have thought, simply a function of where in the work a remark occurs ~say, in the beginning or near the end of the book!. Rather, it is a function of how it occurs. The place of a proposition in the frame or the body is determined by its role in the work. ~Conant forthcoming, 151, fn. 195!. Thus Conant counts several passages from the middle of the work as parts of the frame rather than the body.4 While such framing propositions are not among those proclaimed in the end to be nonsense, they are also not part of an elaborate philosophical theory that the book sets forward. They are instructions for reading the book. Our ability to understand these instructions does not depend on our grasp of a complex theoretical reconstruction of such notions as sense and nonsense, thought and truth. Rather, it is based on our ordinary understanding of these notions, our ordinary use of these words. On the resolute reading, as I understand it, Wittgensteins view of meaning, sense and nonsense in the Tractatus is simply this: meaningful linguistic expressions are those that have a use in the language.5 The most basic use which we make of language is to say something; expressions that have the same use, or can be used to say the same things, have the same meaning, while expressions that have no use in saying things are meaningless. ~3.328, 5.47321!. Nonsense arises when we construct apparent sentences containing meaningless wordswords for which we have failed to make

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a determination of meaning. ~5.473!. When we come to recognize the propositions of the Tractatus as nonsense, we realize that these propositions have not been given a use in which they say anything, because they contain words that have not been given a determinate meaning, a use in combinations of signs that say something. This realization is not the conclusion of an elaborate argument based on a theory of meaning. It is the result of the attempt to grasp the meaning that the sentences purport to have, and of the disintegration of any sense that there is such a meaning, in the process of trying to think through what that would involve. Yet not all Wittgensteins propositions succumb to this disintegration; the frame apparently survives unscathed. This can seem mysterious if we insist on seeing the Tractatus as incorporating a real argument to the conclusion that its propositions are nonsense. For then we seem to have to conceive of these propositions as initially making sense, but in some way depriving themselves of this property by being deployed in reasoning ending in the conclusion we are nonsense. It is then hard to see why the corrosive effect of this argument should not extend to the frame itself, as an acid might eat away at a beaker containing it. However, on the resolute interpretation, the propositions of the Tractatus do not begin by making sense, only to be gradually reduced to nonsense. They are nonsense all along. The only thing that is corroded is our view of ourselves as making sense of them. We start under the illusion that we understand certain strings of signs. Under this illusion we conceive of these strings as constituting a philosophical theory of meaning, sense, nonsense, thought, and truth. We manipulate these strings logically so as to arrive at other strings, led by apparent structural similarities to sensible argumentation.6 As we follow out the seeming logic of the argument we come upon ~illusory! conclusions that so puzzle us that we lose our grip on the idea that we were ever making sense at all, so also that we were following an argument. For these conclusions undercut the very status as intelligible discourse of the argument that led to them. It is in this light that I read the Tractatus as providing no theory of meaning, sense and nonsense. This may seem too revisionary. Where is the famous picture theory? Where the isomorphism between propositions and states-of-affairs? The answer is that the Tractatus has shown all that talk to be nonsense, by providing the resources for constructing a pseudo-argument ~string of seemingly logically interrelated propositional signs which are actually all nonsense! moving from the statement of the picture theory, through the idea of logical form as that which can only be shown and not said, to the pseudo-claim the picture theory is nonsense which tries to say what can only be shown, since it tries to talk about logical form, which cant be done ~another self-undermining bit of nonsense!. In this pseudo-claim the word nonsense is supposed to be functioning in a way specified by the picture theory. But when we reach this pseudo-conclusion we simply withdraw our assent to the idea that any of this

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made sense. We declare it nonsense. In so declaring we are not using nonsense in some technical way whose meaning is defined by the picture theory or any other theory. We are using the word nonsense in a pre-theoretical, common-sense way. We are simply saying, lo and behold, none of this actually made any sense! In short: if we are to recognize the Tractatus propositions as nonsense, we have to recognize the purported account of sense and nonsense in the body of the work to be nonsense as well. But in doing so we cant be relying on the meaning of nonsense that we thought we could derive from the account of sense and nonsense found in the body of the book! We must be using sense, nonsense and other such words here in other ~ pre-theoretical! meanings. In so doing, however, we find that we are able to understand, to make sense of, such claims as He who understands me recognizes my propositions as nonsense. Some of the propositions of the Tractatus, then, do not succumb to the corrosive effect of the self-refuting theory and argument putatively developed therein. The propositions which survive this disintegration of an illusion of sense, then, are simply those that we can still make sense of at the end of the day. Ultimately this is the test of what to count as frame and what as ladder to be discarded.7 II. I have contrasted here the resolute reading of the Tractatus, which sees Wittgenstein as consistently taking his own propositions to be plain nonsense, with dismissive views that do not even try to take seriously this claim. The resolute interpretation, however, is not so-called to contrast it with such readings, but with a way of approaching the Tractatus that was developed in an effort to do better by Wittgensteins closing remarks. We can trace this line of interpretation, which has by now become virtually standard, at least as far back as Elizabeth Anscombes Introduction to Wittgensteins Tractatus ~Anscombe 1971first published in 1959!. According to this view, we must understand the apparent self-immolation of the Tractatus closing remarks in the light of a fundamental distinction between that which can be said in language and that which can only be shown. Wittgenstein teaches that propositions express their sense through sharing with reality a logical form; propositions cannot describe this logical form, however. We cannot use propositions to say what this logical form is. To do so, we would need to step outside logical form, but this would be to step beyond the bounds within which meaningful discourse can occur. Nonetheless, this logical form exists; only propositions show it, they make it manifestand what can be shown, cannot be said. ~4.12 4.1212!. Once we have appreciated this saying 0showing distinction, we can understand the peculiar character of Wittgensteins writing, according to Anscombe. Wittgenstein wants to convey to us insight into the things that can only be shown and not said. These are, she says, things that would be true if they could be

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said but that are nonetheless unsayable. ~Anscombe 1971, 162!. They are unsayable because their opposites are unthinkable; their opposites are incoherent and confused and it would not be right to say that they would be false if they could be said. The nonsense propositions of the Tractatus arise from the attempt to say what can only be shown; yet they can help us to see that which is shown by ordinary propositions that do make sense. They have in them less darkness and error than sentences that try to deny the things that would be true if only they could be said. Anscombes explanation of Tractarian nonsense strongly suggests that there is a realm of many itemslogical relationships among propositions, distinctions of logical type, and so on, but also ethical principles, the truth of solipsism, the existence of the worldwhich can be shown and not said, and that some of these items are something like propositions, such that they would be true if they could be saidquasi-truths like that one proposition implies another, that concepts and objects differ in type, that some actions are intrinsically valuable, that I am my world, that the world exists. Her account also suggests that the point of the Tractatus is to get us to know these quasi-truths although the mode of knowledge here is not that of ordinary propositional thought, but rather some kind of seeing or insight. Thus Wittgenstein tells us that those who understand him will see the world rightly. ~6.54!. Peter Hacker gives a reading of the Tractatus that develops these aspects of Anscombes account. Hacker distinguishes between misleading nonsense, which characterizes pre-Tractarian philosophy, and illuminating nonsense, which characterizes the Tractatus. Misleading nonsense is generated by the failure to grasp the principles of logical syntax, which engenders the illusion that one can say things which can only be shown. ~ Hacker 1986, 19!. Wittgensteins own remarks similarly violate the rules of logical syntax, but do so self-consciously, to direct our attention both to those rules and to the ineffable truths which logical syntax showswhat Wittgenstein means by these remarks...is, in his view, quite correct, only it cannot be said. ~ Hacker 1986, 26!. Again we encounter quasi-truths, items that would be true if they could be said, that can be meant if not said and can be quite correct if not true. Such readings of the Tractatus attribute a view to it that is, at bottom, incoherent. For, as Russell pointed out in his Introduction to the Tractatus, Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said. ~ p. 22! Famously, Ramsey quipped that what cant be said cant be said, and cant be whistled either. ~ Ramsey 1931, 238!. Nonetheless, Hacker, in a paper entitled Was He Trying to Whistle It? has recently defended the answer yes. Still, Ramsey and Russell are surely right in pointing out that there is an incoherence in the very attempt. Moreover, as Warren Goldfarb has pointed out, this incoherence is not hidden or deeply buried, but easy to see. ~Goldfarb 1997, 64!. The idea that there are things that would be true if they could be said only gets its content from examplesbut to provide examples is precisely to say the things we are not supposed to be able to say. Thus Hacker is led to say things like this:

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What Wittgenstein is saying to Russell when he denies that one can say that there are 0 objects is precisely...: if there are, all right, only that there are has to be expressedhas to be shownin another way, namely by features of our symbolism. ~ Hacker 2000, 364!. Yet what Hacker here has Wittgenstein saying is obviously incoherent: if we can say if p then q then we can say p. It is self-refuting to say if p, then p cant be said and to take yourself to have said something. It is no help to say that this too cant be said, but can only be shown; the same problem simply arises again. Thus, readings of the Tractatus like that of Hacker and Anscombe, dissolve into incoherence if pushed slightly, as Diamond argues. ~ Diamond 1995b, 195!. Moreover, they make it look as if the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus either was singularly dense or suffered from a remarkable philosophical blind spot. This is not a promising interpretive starting point. Authors like Hacker and Anscombe characteristically try to finesse this issue by using language like the following: Apparently what someone means or intends by a remark can be grasped even though the sentence uttered is strictly speaking nonsense. ~ Hacker 1986, 26!. Thus they stick to the letter of the doctrine that Wittgensteins teaching cannot be said, and his pronouncements are nonsense, but hold onto the opposite thought as well, disguising this by saying that while his pronouncements do not say anything, do not express any thought, and are not true, they convey what he means or intends, and this meaning or intention is quite correct. Here there is a less than full-hearted recognition of Wittgensteins propositions as nonsense; Cora Diamond calls this chickening out, ~ Diamond 1995b, 194! and approves of the label irresolute for such readings of the Tractatus. ~ Diamond 1997, 78!. Irresolute readings disguise the incoherence they attribute to Wittgenstein through chicken terminology like means, intends, quite correct; the resolute reading sees this maneuver for what it is and refuses to go along with it. This is the chief prima facie advantage of the resolute readingalthough I believe that Diamond and Conant have developed this reading in sufficient detail to show that it has advantages beyond the simple point that it seems required if we are not to treat Wittgenstein as a bumbling fool. III. However, the resolute interpretation faces a key difficulty: it has to explain why Wittgenstein wrote a book consisting almost entirely of nonsense. What did he think he could accomplish through doing this? Irresolute readings have a ready answer: through writing a book of nonsense, Wittgenstein conveys insight into those things that can be shown but not said, and thereby reveals deeper truths than anything that can be put into wordswhile showing that whenever we say anything, such truths are present in what we say, shown in it. This answer, however, is not available on the resolute reading, which must eschew the idea that there are quasi-propositional items that are, if not sayable, meanable, and if not true, correct, and are shown in the act of saying things. As we will see, even

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the resolute reading needs to accommodate the idea that the nonsense sentences of the Tractatus convey truth; after all, Wittgenstein says as much in the Preface. However, on the resolute reading this truth cannot be the correctness of a quasi-proposition reporting on a quasi-fact. Similarly, the resolute reading has to accommodate a sense in which there is indeed the inexpressible which shows itself, as Ogdenscorrecttranslation of 6.522 has it. Again, however, the resolute reading cannot accept the idea that there are many distinguishable things which are inexpressible which make themselves manifest, as Pears and McGuinness translation suggests. How then can the resolute reading explain Wittgensteins purpose in writing the Tractatus? In what sense can a book of plain nonsense convey an insight, indeed a truth? How can it lead us to a right view of that which shows itself? These are the questions to which I will address myself in this paper. I aim to develop an account of the purpose of Tractarian nonsense within the confines of the resolute reading. The view that I will develop is, I think, suggested by scattered remarks in Diamond and Conants many writings on the Tractatus. Still, I think it is fair to say that neither of them has attempted a unified account of the purpose of Wittgensteins use of nonsense.8 It is possible that they would reject any such attempt as misguided. In any case the view that I will present here is not intended to be an exposition of their interpretation but rather my own suggestion as to how to develop their reading in the direction of an account of the purpose of Tractarian nonsense. I am not the first to attempt this task: Thomas Ricketts and Warren Goldfarb have both tried to understand the workings and point of Tractarian nonsense. Both have made language, and our understanding of the workings of language central in their accounts. Goldfarb suggests an answer...along Fregean lines Wittgensteins nonsense serves as an urging to adopt his logical system, a Wittgensteinian Begriffsschrift. ~Goldfarb 1997, 72!. Goldfarb, however sees this answer as problematic since the Tractatus provides neither a description of such a Begriffsschrift nor instructions for constructing one. He concludes that there is a deep difficulty in trying to attain a resolute understanding of the Tractatus. Ricketts suggests that the incoherence of Wittgensteins rhetoric...draws us away from the illusory goal of saying what can only be shown to the activity of saying clearly what can be said, the activity of philosophy. For Ricketts, the Tractatus imagines an attempt to think through at the most general level what a conception of sentences as logically interconnected representations of reality requires. The experiment leads us to reject as illusory the quest for a general account of what this conception...demands of language and the world... without however rejecting the conception of truth as agreement with reality. Rather, we understand what this conception comes to, when we appreciate how what can be said can be said clearly. ~ Ricketts 1996, 94!. I do not think that these suggestions of Ricketts and Goldfarb are completely wrong. Any account of the point of Wittgensteins use of nonsense must have something to do with language. Yet exclusive attention to language is bound

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to lead to a misrepresentation of Wittgensteins aim. In a well-known letter to Ludwig Ficker, Wittgenstein maintained that the point of the book is ethical. ~ Wittgenstein 1979a, 94!. Our account of Wittgensteins use of nonsense must bring this ethical point of the book to the fore and relate it to the works overt focus on language. Thus the suggestions of Goldfarb and Ricketts are, at best, incomplete. We can obtain a sense of this incompleteness by reconsidering Ricketts thought that Wittgenstein draws us away from an illusory goal of saying what can only be shown. Ricketts tells us that when we abandon this goal, in saying clearly what can be said, we serve the interests that had led us to aspire to a general description of the constitution of the world. One might wonder, though, what those interests are and how they might have led us to take as our goal saying what can only be shown. Similarly Diamond suggests that the Tractatus aim will be achieved when the self-understanding of those attracted to philosophy leads to their losing that attraction. ~ Diamond 1991, 72!. Yet this leaves one wondering what the source of this attraction is, and why bringing about the end of such an attraction is the aim of a book with an ethical purpose. My account of Tractarian nonsense will help to answer some of these questions, by incorporating and depending upon an account of the works ethical aim. Before presenting my thoughts on the point of Tractarian nonsense, however, I am going to make what might seem to be an irrelevant digression into early Christian thought, specifically the writings of St. Paul and St. Augustine. I find in their writings two problematics that I think illuminate what Wittgenstein is up to in the Tractatus. These center around St. Pauls teaching that justification is by faith and not by works, and St. Augustines teaching that pride is the root of all evil. In reading Wittgenstein in the light of St. Paul and St. Augustine I hope to shed light on his claim that, although he was not a religious man, he could not help but see every problem from a religious point of view.9 IV. In the letter to the Romans, St. Paul famously argues that obedience to the Mosaic Law cannot provide justification before God, but only condemnation.10 Justification is not through works under the law, but through faith.11 On a superficial level, Pauls point might seem to be that as sinful creatures we find it impossible to obey the law, so in trying to obey it we inevitably will fail, sin, and be judged accordingly. Thus to pass judgment on another is to bring condemnation on oneself, for all are guilty of the same actions; as all sin, all will be judged, whether under the law or apart from it. Obedience to the law cannot justify us before God; the only justification is through faith, apart from the law. ~ Romans 2, 3!. Yet this superficial reading, suggesting that faith itself is something we can do, a work we can perform in accordance with a new commandmentaccept

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Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and you will be redeemedmisses the point entirely. The repentance Paul calls for is not something we can do by obeying some or other command; it is an inner conversion that has to be brought about in us by Gods grace. The law condemns us not just because we are unable to obey it, but because our need to justify ourselves through obedience to it is itself a sign that we are sinful. As sinful, we are indeed unable to obey the law; we find ourselves suffering from a fragmentation of self in which we struggle with ourselves unsuccessfully to do that which we know to be right. We view our own actions as if they were the actions of another, the actions of sin dwelling within us, and we are powerless to set things right. This state of internal disharmony, struggle and powerlessness is the state of sin that the law both reveals and condemns. Justification before God, a setting things right in which harmony and peace are restored, is accomplished not through faith in the sense of voluntary assent but rather through Gods grace, which transforms our lives by bringing faith into them. ~ Romans 7 !. This faith does not nullify the law, but rather frees us to do as the law commandsnot, however, because it is what the law commands, and so will save us, but because, as saved, we desire only to do what is good. ~ Romans 3: 31, 6: 12!. St. Augustine elaborates this Pauline conception of, and response to the human predicament. For Augustine, the most basic fact about human beings is that we are creatures and God is our creator. We are thus placed in a fundamentally asymmetrical relationship with God. Faced with this fact, he thinks, we can take one of two fundamental attitudes, pride and humility. Pride is envy of Gods creative power and sovereignty, and the desire to usurp Gods place and become the center and ruler of the universe. Humility is the acceptance of ones place as a creature and gratitude to ones creator for ones existence. ~Augustine 1984, 571572!. It is pride that is the root of all evil for Augustine, and the source of that disharmony of self that Paul so tellingly describes. By rejecting the one who is the source and ruler of our lives, we become incapable of ruling our own lives. Our own actions cease to accord with our better judgment; we are no longer able to control our bodies but are at the mercy of desires that we recognize to be leading us astray. ~Augustine 1984, 522523!. At the same time, in our pride, we enter into conflict with those around us, seeking to rule and master them. Thus we lose our highest good, which Augustine identifies as both eternal life and peacepeace not in the sense of a mere cessation of struggle but rather a positive, harmonious life. ~Augustine 1984, 852ff, 865866!. This peace in life eternal can only be restored by a return to humility and gratitude before the creator of us all, for Augustine. While it may seem that pride is self-love, and humility, self-hatred, Augustine maintains to the contrary that humility is properly placed self-love, while pride is in fact a form of selfhatred. ~Augustine 1984, 572-573!. Pride is the desire to be something more than human, founded in the belief that as there is something greater than being human, namely being God, being human cannot be good enough. Thus, the creature resents the Creator for not making the creature equal to the Creator; pride

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judges that God could have, and so should have, made me better than I am, second-guessing Gods wisdom and trying to replace it with human wisdom. Humility, on the other hand, is acceptance of what I am as good enough. This is combined with gratitude to the Creator for my existence, an attitude that implies the recognition that if God saw fit to create me, I must have been worth bringing into existence. This same attitude allows me to live at peace both with myself and with others. Augustine remarks that in the great commandments to love God, and to love ones neighbor as oneself, there are three objects of love: God, neighbor and self. For Augustine, true love of both neighbor and self demands first humility and the love of God. ~Augustine 1984, 873!. Augustine examines the efforts of pagan philosophers to devise systems of ethics by which to regulate our lives; such attempts are for him instances of the sin of pride. ~Augustine 1984, 852!. They represent the false hope that human beings can on their own power discover how the universe must be ruled and put this into effect. Such ethical systems are always, in effect, disguised manifestations of the will to power which is pride. Yet there is a danger that Augustines own proclamation of the virtues of humility and charity will be read as a similar ethical command: If you would save yourself, become humble. This involves a double misunderstanding. First, humility is not something we can simply choosewe have to be humbled; more profoundly, humility involves giving up the aspiration to save oneself and thereby allowing oneself to be saved. To choose to value humility or charity in this way is to persist in the prideful thought that one can manage ones own happiness, resulting in the humility of a Uriah Heep or the unselfishness, described by C.S. Lewis, of those who live @s# for othersyou can always tell the others by their hunted expression. ~ Lewis 1943, 135!.12 True humility, like St. Pauls faith, is not something that one brings about, but rather a gift of Gods grace that recognizes itself as such; the truly humble person is the one whose gratitude to God encompasses and includes her own humility. Now, you may well be saying, this is all very interesting, but what in the world does it have to do with Wittgenstein, the Tractatus, and nonsense? Paul and Augustines rhetoric exhibits a paradoxical structure which can help us to understand the paradoxical use of nonsense in the Tractatus.13 As we have seen, it is all too easy to be misled by their words into viewing faith as a new law which we can obey, or humility as a new value which we can choose. By some sort of necessity they are driven to use misleading formulations which they then have to work to cancel. This paradoxical rhetoric of spirituality is clearly exhibited in the saying, which appears in all four of the Gospels in one form or another: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 14 It can seem here that we are being offered a paradoxical reason for self-sacrifice, namely that it is the only means to self-preservation. However, as a reason for selfsacrifice this makes no sense. What we are really being told is that the game of

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self-preservation is one which we cannot win. What is required of us is a transformation of the way in which we live our lives, a transformation in which we abandon the imperative of self-preservation and place our value elsewhere. It is the one who loses his life for me and for the Gospel who will save itbut to lose ones life for Christ is not something one does in order to save ones life. The answer to the question what must I do to save my life? is take up your cross and follow mean answer which rejects the question, refusing to provide a rule to be obeyed in order to win salvation. All that is offered is an example to be imitated and a path to be taken, but without exhibiting the end of the path as the achievement of salvation in the sense involved in the question. To take this path is to re-think salvation itself, identifying it with the activity of carrying ones cross. The text can make it appear as if the value of self-sacrifice as a means to saving ones life is a reason for following Christ; yet it subtly cancels this appearance as well. Thus the Gospel seems at first sight to be yet another ethical system, a new commandment.15 But its aim is to teach us how to live without trying to save ourselves through obedience to any commandment. What we are shown in the life and death of Christ is a life which is its own salvation, in its willingness to lose itselfa cross not taken up as a means to ones salvation. It is only through in the first place appearing as what it is not that the Gospel can hope to achieve its aim of bringing about a transformation in our conception of salvation, in our sense of what we need in our lives. Only by offering what seems to be a means of salvation, but one which we can see makes no sense as a means, can it shake us up, make us think anew what our lives are for, and for whose sake we should be living them. Here we have a structure which is duplicated in the Tractatus: in order to get us to rethink what we are doing in philosophizing, Wittgenstein presents what at first sight seems to be a complex philosophical theory. Yet the Tractatus aims to transform our understanding of the activity of philosophy itselfwe are to conceive philosophy as an activity of clarification rather than a theory of the constitution of the world, or language, or the mind. It tries to bring about such a transformation through first appealing to our tendency to theorize in philosophy and then undermining this tendency by showing us how we are here involved in a game which we cannot win. By tempting us to see the Tractatus as the final philosophical theory, and then showing us that we have no understanding of what this theory purports to be saying, Wittgenstein shakes up our conception of philosophical activity and of what it is for. Furthermore, this deconstructive act of the Tractatus has an ethical point, or it might be better to say, a spiritual significance. This significance can be further illuminated by a comparison with the thoughts of Paul and Augustine sketched above. For although Wittgenstein did not have a conventional faith in God, he did claim to see every problem from a religious point of view. I believe that his religious point of view had a great deal in common with the concerns of Paul and Augustine, and that it informed the ethical, spiritual, per-

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spective which, in some sense, Wittgenstein wanted to communicate in the Tractatus. I will sketch out the basic idea first, and then try to flesh this out with some textual evidence. V. I take Wittgenstein to have shared with St. Paul and St. Augustine a sense that we are troubled by a need to justify ourselves, our thoughts, words and deeds. We feel ourselves to be out of harmony, not at peace, with ourselves, others, or our world. We try to relieve this unhappiness through a search for justification. We construct systems of logical and ethical propositions with this in mindyet the very need we feel for such justification reveals that we lack the requisite humility, gratitude and wonder, to achieve a true and lasting peace. The Tractatus aims to relieve us of this need for ultimate justification by revealing that all such justificatory talk is in the end meaningless nonsense. I say meaningless here to highlight the important connection between nonsense and meaninglessness in the Tractatus: nonsense arises when we have failed to give a word meaning; but a word lacks a meaning when it has not been given a determinate use, when it serves no purpose. Attempts at ultimate justification are meaningless in this sensethey cannot serve the purpose for which they are intended. For any system of ethical or logical propositions will itself stand in need of justification, as will our adherence to it. For this reason, such systems are also incoherent in the further sense of involving a kind of bad faith like that of prideful humility mentioned above. Insofar as such systems claim to justify without needing in turn to be justified, they turn out to be thinly disguised manifestations of the will to power, the will to place oneself at the center of the universe. Faced with this quandary, we may seek to have our justificatory cake and eat it too, through the showing 0saying distinction. No external justification of our words and deeds can satisfy us, for such a justification consists simply in more words, themselves in need of justification. We conclude that the justification we seek must be internal. The features of our language that justify it, reveal it to be perfectly in order, must show themselves in language and the world. They cannot be further facts that language could express. Similarly, the aspects of my life that justify it ethically must make themselves manifest in my life and my world. They must be present unspeakably in what I do and what I say. Only I must avoid trying to put these things into words, as this would sap them of their justificatory power. We can bring out the allure of this doctrine through a consideration of the familiar problem of justificatory regresses. This is a standard topic in epistemology, but such regresses can arise in other contexts as well. For example, Lewis Carrolls parable of Achilles and the Tortoise shows how a form of justificatory regress can arise in logic. More generally, the issue of justification arises whenever there is something which can be brought into question, for which it seems we need to provide an account. The sorts of things that can be brought

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into question include propositions, claims, assertions and beliefs. However, we may ask for an account of other things as well, such as particular non-linguistic actions or more general systems of thought or action. We can seek to justify a language, or a conceptual scheme, or a life. Still, in every case, the demand for justification arises when something is put into question, and the typical form of an answer to this demand will be a proposition or system of propositions. The difficulty is that such an answer is just the sort of thing that can itself be brought into questionso that it seems that we can never be secure in our justifications. To stop the looming regress we seem to need something sufficiently like a proposition to serve as a justification, an answer to a question, yet sufficiently different from a proposition to need no further justification, to raise no further questions in turn. The doctrine that there are things that can be shownand so can be meant, grasped, and communicated, and can also be quite correctbut which cannot be saidand so cannot be put into question seems to fit the bill. The thought is that by appeal to such ineffable things we can solve our problems of justification once and for all. The Tractatus tempts us with this thought, only to reveal to us in the end that this temptation is founded on illusion, confusion, and nonsense. Only by rejecting the demand for justification, and thus the temptation to satisfy that demand in the realm of the shown, can we resolve our difficulties. VI. I suggest that it is this problematic of justification that unifies the diverse topics that Wittgenstein associates with the showing0saying distinction. Consider, for example, his oft-repeated linking of logic and ethics. Logic provides principles by which we hope ultimately to justify our language, thoughts, and reasoning. Similarly, ethics provides principles by which we hope ultimately to justify our actions and our lives. However, such principles cannot play the role of ultimate justifiers if we take them to be propositions in the ordinary sense. If we try to appeal to them as justifications through saying them, asserting them, we make them vulnerable to question and challenge, in a way that undercuts their function as ultimate justifiers. So we must remain silent, and let logic, and life, speak for itselflet the justification for what we think and do show itself. Thus Wittgenstein emphasizes that Logic must take care of itself. ~5.473!. He criticizes Whitehead and Russell for relying on definitions and primitive propositions in words. He tells us that this would need a justification but that there...can be none for the process is not actually allowed. ~5.452!. Now in Principia Mathematica, as in Freges logical works, ordinary language is used for certain particular purposes. Among the propositions expressed in words are, for example, explanations of fundamental logical distinctions such as that between function and object in Frege, or that between different logical types in Russell and Whitehead; explanations of the meanings of the primitive terms of the system; stipulations concerning which strings of symbols are to count as

The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense 53

meaningful and which are not; informal arguments for the correctness of basic logical axioms; and statements of rules of inference. All these can be seen in one way or another as bearing justificatory weight, and all are dismissed by Wittgenstein as attempts to say what can only be shown.16 Consider, for example, rules of inference like modus ponens. Frege writes of such rules in the Begriffsschrift that they cannot be expressed in Begriffsschrift because they form its basis. ~ Frege 1964, 25!. Similarly, Russell and Whitehead assert that the process of the inference cannot be reduced to symbols. ~ Whitehead and Russell 1962, 9!. Wittgenstein comments Laws of inference, whichas in Frege and Russellare to justify the conclusions, are senseless ~ sinnlos ! and would be superfluous. ~5.132!.17 His ground for this is that the relation of logical implication is internal, can be perceived from the structure of the propositions alone, and expresses itself in relations between the forms of the propositions. ~5.13-5.132!. While Wittgenstein characterizes rules of inference here as senseless, I do not think that he is equating them with tautologies. Tautologies, he tells us, are senseless, but not nonsense since they are part of the symbolism. ~4.461-4.4611!. Here Wittgenstein uses senseless in a way that embraces both tautologies and nonsense. Thus he has to make clear that tautologies, while lacking sense since they do not divide the space of possibilities into those with which they agree and those with which they disagree, are nonetheless not nonsense since they are built up out of expressions that have a determinate meaning, or use, in the language. On the other hand, rules of inference, if taken as justifying our inferences ~ Schlsse !, are senseless and superfluous. They not only lack sense, they lack a use in the language, and so are literally meaningless nonsense. ~5.47321!. Wittgenstein repeated this point in his lectures shortly after his return to Cambridge: that p q follows from p{q is not a proposition: it has no use. What justifies the inference is seeing the internal relation. No rule of inference is needed to justify the inference, since if it were I would need another rule to justify the rule and that would lead to an infinite regress. 18 ~ Wittgenstein 1982, 56!. One might argue that if justification is taken in the narrow sense of formal proof, Frege and Russell already forswore the justification of evidently sound rules of inference and of evidently true logical axioms. Thus in one sense Frege and Russell already rejected the project of justifying logic. 19 Yet their writings contain detailed discussions of the nature of logic, which can be seen as attempts at the justification of their logical systems in a more general sense. We must recall that their logical innovations were not primarily a matter of coming up with new systems of logical principles and rules; their most fundamental achievement was to devise new logical languages within which logical principles could be codified and logical inferences carried out. Both Frege and Russell thought it important to argue that these new languages were improvements on ordinary language not only in lacking ambiguity and vagueness, but also in the perspicuity of their very grammar. Frege, in particular, wrote several polemical essays arguing for the superiority of his Begriffsschrift over the

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rival notations of Boole and Peano; one of his earliest pieces of purely philosophical writing was titled On the Scientific Justification of a Conceptual Notation. ~ Frege 1964, 106114!. Frege was justly proud of the quantifier-and-bound-variable notation which he had devised for generality. This notation depended on his innovative analysis of sentences into function and argument, rather than subject and predicate. Mirroring this analysis of sentences Frege erected a fundamental ontological distinction between function and object, and emphasized the way in which this distinction is reflected in the distinct syntax of function-names and object-names. As is well known, however, Frege faced a difficulty in trying to express this most basic distinction. In saying such things as functions are not objects we end up treating functions as objects after allthat, is we end up treating functionnames as if they could fill the argument-place of the predicate ~ ! is an object, which can only be filled by object-names. Even more problematically, the predicate ~ ! is a function itself has the syntax of a first-level predicate, suited to express a first-level concept true not of functions, but of objects. Frege took the view that a certain inappropriateness of linguistic expression prevents him from expressing his thought directly here, but that there is nonetheless a thought to be conveyed, a distinction of the highest importance, founded deep in the nature of things. This thought, however, has to be communicated indirectly through the use of words which literally miss their aim. ~ Frege 1967, 177178, 142!. He tells Russell that Sometimes this is just unavoidable. All that matters is that we know what we are doing, and how it happens. ~ Frege 1976, 218!. Jim Conant has emphasized that Freges position here depends on an attitude towards nonsense analogous to that attributed to the Tractatus by irresolute interpreters. ~Conant forthcoming !. I see this as necessitated in part by Freges desire to justify his logical language, his Begriffsschrift, as superior to ordinary language, with its misleading subject-predicate grammar. Wittgenstein responds to this Fregean predicament by distinguishing proper concepts from formal concepts or pseudo-concepts, such as object and function. ~4.126, 4.1272!. That anything falls under a formal concept, he tells us, cannot be expressed by a proposition. But it is shown in the symbol for the object itself. Words that seem to express formal concepts, like object and function, when rightly used, will be replaced in Begriffsschrift with variables of appropriate type. But when such words are used as proper concept word @s#, there arise nonsensical pseudo-propositions. Here Wittgenstein tempts us with Freges way out of his difficulty. The Begriffsschrift, we are led to say, shares with reality that which every picture must share with reality in order to depict it, logical formbut that language and reality share this form cant itself be depicted, but must be shown. ~2.17, 2.172!. The attempt to put this shared feature of language and reality into words results in nonsense, but we may want to hold onto the thought that it is shown in the Begriffsschrifts very structure, and thereby grounds our languages meaningful character.20

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In his lectures in 1930, Wittgenstein returns to this line of thought, although he expresses himself in terms of rules of grammar rather than logical form. He says What is common between thought and reality must already be expressed in the expression of the thought. You cannot express it in a further proposition, and it is misleading to try. He goes on to ask Can we give a description which will justify the rules of grammar? and answers: Our justification could only take the form of saying As reality is so and so, the rules must be such and such. But this presupposes that I could say If reality were otherwise, then the rules of grammar would be otherwise. But in order to describe a reality in which grammar was otherwise I would have to use the very combinations which grammar forbids. The rules of grammar distinguish sense and nonsense and if I use the forbidden combinations I talk nonsense. ~ Wittgenstein 1982, 37, 47 !.21 VII. Turning now from logic to ethics, we can see the significance of Wittgensteins remark that ethics, like logic, is transcendental. ~6.13, 6.421!. When Wittgenstein asserts that ethics cannot be expressed, ~6.421! that there are no ethical propositions, ~6.42! that In @the world# there is no valueand if there were, it would be of no value, ~6.41! we must connect this to his claim that The first thought in setting up an ethical law of the form thou shalt... is: And what if I do not do it? ~6.422!. In setting up an ethical law we are trying to establish a principle that can serve as both a guide and a justification for our lives. Yet as soon as the principle is set up as a proposition it can be called into question; as a proposition it ceases to have value for us, since it becomes simply another thing that can be intelligibly asserted but also intelligibly denied. If true, it is only contingently true, and therefore it cannot determine for us what we must doit cannot make what we do non-accidental. ~6.41!. Yet if it cannot show that what we do, we do because we must, it loses its power to justify our actions. Thus Wittgenstein is again led to the thought that we are dealing with something that cannot be expressed in language, something that cannot be said but only shown. There must be some sort of ethical reward and punishment, but this must lie in the action itself. ~6.422!. The ultimate justification of our actions is not to be found in an ethical principle but in internal features of our lives that show themselves: good or bad willing changes...the limits of the world, not the facts, not the things which can be expressed in language...the world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy. ~6.43!. Yet, as we have seen, this way out dissolves into incoherence as soon as we try to adopt it in a serious way. To do so we at least have to think, if not say, the doctrine of showing and saying. Yet this doctrine can only get its content from examples, and in giving such examples we immediately contradict the very doctrine that we are trying to flesh out. The truth is that the doctrine of show-

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ing and saying is yet another piece of justificatory nonsense, yet another meaningless attempt to use words to secure our happiness. No solution to our problems lies this way. Rather, we will find what we sought only by abandoning the search for justification altogether, and with it the prideful hope that we can give meaning and value to our lives. In this way we will be awakened to the value and meaning that was there all along.22 It is not merely a linguistic accident that we use the same word, meaning, in speaking of both language and life.23 I have claimed that linguistic meaning, in the Tractatus as well as in Wittgensteins later works, can be equated roughly with use. This applies equally to meaning in a broader existential sense of significance. Occams razor signifies that if a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless; signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless. ~3.328, 5.47321!. Wittgenstein told his friend David Pinsent that he had felt ashamed of never daring to kill himself: he put it that he had had a hint that he was de trop in this world that is, that he was superfluous and so did not deserve to live. ~von Wright 1990, 6!. My reading allows us to express what he was saying to Pinsent as the thought that his life was meaningless. Suicide would be a simple application of Occams razor to himself. Yet at the end of the Notebooks Wittgenstein characterizes suicide, the denial of the meaningfulness of ones life, as the elementary sin. ~ Wittgenstein 1984, 91!. Suicide is the attempt to render my life meaningful through a desperate act of self-rejection based on a recognition of my meaninglessness. But this attempt is in bad faith; it undercuts itself. If I could inject meaning into life in this way, there would be no imperative to end it. Suicide is no more a solution to the problems of life than would be temporal immortality. ~6.4312!. If we seek Augustines eternal life in peace, we will only find it in the here and now: he lives eternally who lives in the present. ~6.4311!. The Tractatus aims to return to us a sense of our lives as meaningful, as having a purpose, a usea sense of which the demand for justification robs us. This is the ultimate ethical point of the Tractatus, as I see it. While the discussion of ethics in the 6.4s suggests a mysticism in which we hold onto the thought that there is a higher realm of value that we can grasp in thought though we cannot put it into words, with which we can slake our thirst for justification, in the 6.5s Wittgenstein unmasks this conception as yet another form of nonsense. We began with a question, the question of justificationhow are we to give an account of ourselves, our thoughts, words and deeds? We have arrived at a mystical answer which is no answer at all. The very attempt to use it as an answer requires that we put it into words and so abandon it. Yet if there is no answer, then there is also no question. ~6.5, 6.52! The riddle does not exist...The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. ~6.52, 6.521! Here is the ultimate solution to the problems of philosophy promised in the Preface. There are no such problems, and coming to realize this frees us from the burden of feeling that we must solve them. How-

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ever, this solves not only the problems of philosophy but also the problem of life. 24 VIII. This reading of the Tractatus ethical point illuminates the Prefaces summing up of the whole sense of the book: What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. ~ p. 27 !. The two parts of this aphorism nicely correspond to the third-to-last and last propositions of the Tractatus, 6.53 and 7. 6.53 describes a right method of philosophy: the philosopher is to say only what can be said, and wait for someone else to say something metaphysical. He will then show that the person has not given a meaning to some of her words ~and so has uttered nonsense!. 7 then repeats the seeming conclusion: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. However, between these two echoes of the Preface we find the notorious 6.54, which reveals that the right method of 6.53 is to be contrasted with what the Tractatus itself does. The Tractatus is a book of nonsense whose purpose will be achieved through our recognizing it as such. We will climb over its nonsense to achieve a right view of the world. 7 then seems to say that, having achieved this view, we will cease to make nonsenseWhatever can be said, can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. It might then appear that the graduate of the Tractatus, the one who has climbed its ladder, will become the practitioner of the correct method of 6.53. Yet there is something curious about 7. It is common to read 7 as forbidding somethingpresumably the making of nonsense. However, 7, understood as a proscription, seems to depend on the saying 0showing distinction, and, like that distinction, dissolves into nonsense. 7, understood as a proscription, forbids us to speak of that whereof one cannot speak. Yet in so doing, it speaks of that whereof one cannot speak. This is incoherent nonsenseunless there simply is no such thing as that whereof one cannot speakin which case 7 becomes a harmless tautology. In either case, 7, strictly speaking, forbids nothing. The point of the Tractatus, as I see it, is not to stop us from producing nonsense, as if Wittgenstein wanted to eliminate the Ogden Nashs and Lewis Carrolls of the world. The point is to change our relationship to nonsense, to get us to stop wanting certain kinds of nonsense in certain kinds of ways and for certain kinds of reasons.25 In a similar way, there is something curious about 6.53s description of the right method of philosophy. Like the positivists verification theory of meaning, it appears to violate its own strictures. The right method, we are told, would be to say nothing except what can be said, therefore propositions of natural science, therefore something that has nothing to do with philosophy. Yet this proclamation is not a proposition of natural science, nor does it have noth-

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ing to do with philosophy. In fact, in prescribing a right method it is yet another attempted rule by which to live and to justify ourselves. 6.54 claims that those who understand Wittgenstein will recognize his propositions as nonsense. We now see that we are to recognize 6.53 and 7, the propositions closest to 6.54, as nonsense as well. These propositions, along with the doctrine of saying and showing itself, are the last attempt at self-justification. In recognizing them to be nonsense, we understand Wittgenstein, and come to see how to live. It would be a mistake to conclude that in showing us how to abandon the search for self-justification, and so the search for ethical principles by which to rule our lives, Wittgenstein means to free us to do as we please and so give license to unbridled self-gratification, or to a kind of ethical anarchy. For St. Paul, faith frees us from the law not by freeing us to sin, but rather freeing us to do what the law commands. For St. Augustine, humility transforms our basic attitude towards our condition as creatures, and so makes it possible for us to act out of true concern for others. Similarly, Wittgenstein aims at a conversion which will free us not only from the need for justification but from the conflicted and impossible desires which this need both engenders and signifies. As our motivations and desires are transformed, so will be our lives and actions. There are many things that those who have learned the lesson of the Tractatus will not, in fact, do, simply because they lack any desire to do them. A similar point is made by B.F. McGuinness, in The Mysticism of the Tractatus. McGuinness, responding to the criticism that Wittgensteins ethical ideal implies that the happy man @is# exempt from all law and might do whatever he would, even the most atrocious crimes, without affecting his happiness, says: I believe this to be largely a mistake. It is like confusing St. Augustines Ama Deum et fac quod vis with Rabelaiss Fay ce que vouldras. ~ McGuinness 1986, 335-336!. McGuinness, however, attributes to Wittgenstein a mysticism of the sort which I see the Tractatus as overcoming. McGuinness reads the ethical ideal of the Tractatus as one in which all facts are indifferent, and argues that one who has attained such a state will lack such motives as to promote his own happiness at the cost of anothers. But it is unclear how one in such a state would possess any motives to do anything at all. McGuinness takes it to be common ground that the happy man must be indifferent to the success or failure of his efforts and with this I would agree, but it is hard to see on his view what the source of the happy mans efforts would be. In contrast, I take the Tractatus to be aimed at inculcating such virtues as humility, and the love of ones neighbor, which I, with Augustine, would see as a virtual corollary of humility. Such virtues will provide one with motives to do certain thingsto produce works for the glory of God for example, to give expression to ones gratitude for the gift of existence, possibly also to help others, to avoid harming others and so on. This might, however, be taken to conflict with Wittgensteins view of the will in the Tractatus.26 On a standard reading of the Tractatus account of the will, the will as subject of ethical appraisal is

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unable to affect the world; the facts are independent of it. All that it can affect is the limits of the world, by taking up an attitude to the world as a whole, for example of acceptance or rejection. Within this realm the will is absolutely free. This account of the will fits with McGuinness conception of the ethical ideal of the Tractatus. What happens in the world is indifferent to me because I recognize that fundamentally it has nothing to do with meI cannot affect it, but neither can it affect me, nothing can happen to me. The resulting view of the human person is a perfect image of that radical disharmony of self which St. Paul describeswhat I will does not in any way have to be reflected in my actions, which are merely factual events in the world and therefore independent of my will. On this view I become as a spectator to my own life and the only question is of what attitude I will take to this life ~and to the world !. However, Peter Winch, following Elizabeth Anscombe, has pointed out that in the Notebooks, Wittgenstein hits upon a different conception of the will, in which to will is simply to act. Winch asks why this conception of the will does not make its appearance in the Tractatus, and answers that it is quite flatly and fundamentally at variance with the whole conception of the relation between language, thought and the world, which the Tractatus expresses. For the Tractatus, our only contact with the world is representational, through our activity of picturing the world. A conception of will as action requires quite a different view of our relation to the world. ~ Winch 1986, 121124!. In my view, although the conception of the will which Anscombe and Winch find in the Notebooks does not appear explicitly in the Tractatus, it is ultimately required by the final message of the book. The book itself undermines the conception of the relation between language, thought and world which it seemingly expresses, and shows the way to a quite different conception. In particular, the standard interpretation of the Tractatus account of will is based principally on the 6.4s, which we have seen Wittgenstein deconstruct in the 6.5s. The account of the will in the 6.4s is more self-undermining nonsense. Of the will that is the subject of the ethical we cannot speak ~6.423! is nonsenseto say we cannot speak of x is to speak of x. There is nothing of which we can say that we cannot speak of it. The solution of the problems of life lies in realizing this. But this is not to realize that there is the ethical will, which shows itself. It is rather to realize that we have lives to live. There is no riddle; there is just life. We can be tempted by the vision of the 6.4s out of a desire to justify ourselves. By separating ourselves from our actions we can maintain the purity of our selves no matter what our bodies do. Thus we avoid responsibility for our lives, since the only thing we are responsible for is the choice of our attitudes which is purely up to us. We can think that we can make ourselves happy by simply deciding to live happy! as Wittgenstein exhorts himself in the Notebooks. ~ Wittgenstein 1984, 75, 78!. But this solution to our problems, however tempting, is in bad faith. We can live happily only by giving up trying to

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make ourselves happywhich is not something we can do in order to make ourselves happy. Those to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear ~6.521! cannot put that sense into words because their clarity is reflected in their living their lives without thinking about what the sense of life is. The view of the will typically attributed to Wittgenstein on the basis of the 6.4s depends on the idea that we can achieve a perspective on the world as a limited whole, sub specie aeterni, as 6.45the culmination of the work, prior to its overturning in the 6.5sputs it. It is only from such a perspective that we can take up a stance to the world as a whole, whether of acceptance or rejection. Yet as Conant has argued, the Tractatus aims to free us from the illusion that we can achieve such a perspective. ~Conant forthcoming, 82-87 !. In freeing us from this illusion, the Tractatus is also freeing us to live in the world, rather than detaching ourselves from it. While indifferent to the success or failure of our actions, we cannot be indifferent to the quality of those actions themselves. It is a mistake to think that we climb up the ladder of the Tractatus propositions to a position above the world, from which we can view the world sub specie aeterni. Rather we climb out through them, on them, over them. ~6.54!. My image is this: we are in a pit of our own making. The ladder of the Tractatus leads us not higher and higher above the world, but out of the pit into the world, in which we are now free to live.27 IX. I have here sought to provide a reading of the point of Tractarian nonsense in line with the resolute interpretation of that work. I will conclude by showing how this reading can help to answer some of the many textual challenges mounted against the resolute interpretation by its critics, especially Peter Hacker and Lynette Reid. ~ Hacker 2000; Reid 1998!. The objections to which I will address myself are three:28 ~1! The resolute reading conveniently leaves out crucial aspects of the frame, particularly the Prefaces claim that the book expresses thoughts and speaks truth, and 6.522s claim that the mystical, the inexpressible, exists. ~2! The resolute reading is incompatible with Wittgensteins discussion, in a letter of April 9, 1917 to his friend Paul Engelmann, of a poem by Uhland, which Wittgenstein commends in these terms: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will beunutterably contained in what is uttered! ~ Engelmann 1968, 7 !. ~3! The resolute reading is also incompatible with Wittgensteins explanation of the point of the Tractatus in a letter to Russell of August 19, 1919. There, he complains that Russell has not got hold of his main contention, his main point, the theory of what can be expressed...by prop @osition# s...and what can not be expressed by prop @osition# s but only shown. ~ McGuinness and von Wright 1995, 124126!.

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As to ~1!, Wittgenstein does say in the Preface that thoughts are expressed in the Tractatus, and insists on the truth of the thoughts communicated here. ~ p. 29! In one sense this is easily handled on the resolute reading, for one can take this remark as commenting on such framing propositions as that philosophy is not a theory but an activity. ~4.112!. Yet I think that we should also admit a deeper sense in which the Tractatus is concerned to communicate a truthonly not a truth in the sense of something propositional or quasipropositional.29 The sense of truth I have in mind here is Biblical, found in passages such as these: Show me your ways O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me... ~ Psalm 25: 45!; I am the way and the truth and the life... ~John 14: 6!; ...whoever does the truth comes into the light... ~John 3: 21!.30 As this last example shows most dramatically, this truth is not something we might be tempted to think of as expressible in a proposition. It is rather a way to be followed, a path for life.31 However, this is not to be equated with some set of principles or commandments. It is not communicated through a linguistic act that expresses it, but through a living example. Wittgenstein aims to provide us with such an example in writing the Tractatusan example that we can follow in coming to a new way of life, if we understand him.32 It is this truth which Wittgenstein calls the mystical at 6.522. Pears and McGuinness translation There are indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical, cited by Hacker, gives aid and comfort to the irresolute interpretation. Ogdens more literal translation There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical makes clear that the mystical is not some realm of showable, but not sayable, quasi-facts, items that would be true if we could say them.33 The mystical is rather something unitarya way of life, into which the Tractatus initiates us. It is this truth to which we will be introduced when we come to see the world rightly having discarded the ladder of the Tractatus. Our grasp of this truth will show in our lives, and I think it would not be inappropriate to consider the resulting life to be one ruled by faith rather than by law. We will know how to live without a justificationbut to live without a justification does not mean to live without right. It may be objected that I have made use of the terminology of showing in suggesting that a truth, a way of life, can be shown in a life.34 This use of showing must be kept sharply distinct from the use required by the irresolute reading. According to the irresolute reading, what is shown is something very much like a proposition. On my view, what is shown is not even the sort of thing we could be tempted to take for a proposition. Cora Diamond, in comments on an earlier version of this paper, speaks of a feature of Wittgensteins style of thought, what you might call the importance of making the difference deep enough. She points out, following Tom Ricketts, that Wittgenstein criticized Russell for not making the difference between relations and objects deep enough, in treating them as two sorts of entities, spe-

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cies of a common genus. ~ Ricketts 1996, 72!. The irresolute interpretation fails to make the difference between saying and showing deep enough, by treating them similarly as species of a common genus. What is shown, on the irresolute view, although not technically a proposition, is enough like a proposition that we almost inevitably express its unsayability using a that-clause ~that there are two objects cannot be said!. On the view developed here, however, saying and showing are not contrastive terms at all, although the structure of our language may lead us to think of them in that way. In a similar way, the structure of our language may lead us to think that the truth of fact-stating propositions and the truth communicated by the Tractatus must be in some sense the same sort of thing; but again this is to not make the difference deep enough.35 It is useful to compare the saying 0showing distinction to Ryles well-known distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that. The language here may make it look as if we have two species of a common genusknowledge. But this way of thinking again fails to make the difference deep enough. It tempts us to reduce knowledge-how to knowledge-thatimplicit knowledge which could be made explicit ~although perhaps not all at once!. I suggest that the Tractatus is concerned to communicate knowledge-how. To understand this book and its author is to learn how to live. The book shows us how to live, but does not tell us this. It is significant that the introduction of the terminology of showing at 4.022 ~A proposition shows its sense! is embedded in a discussion of understanding. To understand a proposition is to know what is the case, if it is true. ~4.024!. However this should not be seen as an instance of knowledge that. To understand a proposition p is not to know another proposition of the form p is true if and only if q. Clearly knowing such a proposition presupposes understanding p and cannot explain it. Rather, understanding is a form of knowledge-how. One understands a proposition by knowing how to use itwhen to assert it and when to deny it. From this point of view, we can see that when a proposition shows its sense, what is shown is how we are to go on using it. To grasp what is shown is to possess an ability, an instance of knowledge-how. In this light it becomes clear that in one sense Ramseys famous line that what cant be said, cant be whistled, is obviously false. ~One only need whistle the Air on a G-String to refute it.! Ramseys quip depends for its force on the irresolute reading of showing, on the idea that what is shown ~whistled! is something very much, only not quite, like what is said. But as in whistling I can exhibit an ability to make music and communicate a tune, showing others how to join in, so in living my life I can make manifest a way to live, and invite others to follow. In this sense, we can see that indeed Wittgenstein was trying to whistle it, though not in the sense Hacker intended. As to ~2!, we must consider more carefully than is usually done what the unutterable might be which is said to be unutterably contained in the poem by Uhland. It is worth quoting the poem in full: 36

The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense 63 Count Eberhards Hawthorn Count Eberhard Rustle-Beard, From Wrttemburgs fair land, On holy errand steerd To Palestinas strand. The while he slowly rode Along a woodland way; He cut from the hawthorn bush A little fresh green spray. Then in his iron helm The little sprig he placd; And bore it in the wars, And over the ocean waste. And when he reachd his home. He placd it in the earth; Where little leaves and buds The gentle Spring calld forth. He went each year to it, The Count so brave and true; And overjoyd was he To witness how it grew. The Count was worn with age The sprig became a tree; Neath which the old man oft Would sit in reverie. The branching arch so high, Whose whisper is so bland, Reminds him of the past And Palestinas strand.

Surely, Wittgenstein did not value this poem merely for its ability to show logical features of language and the world. It might be suggested that what the poem shows is something ethical. I think this is rightif we do not take it to mean that the poem conveys some ethical principle. Engelmann in fact puts his finger on what the poem shows when he says that it gives in 28 lines the picture of a life ~ Engelmann 1968, 85! and I believe models a way of life that Wittgenstein admired and aspired to. The Count of the poem is called by Uhland brave and true but he does not seem to be troubled by concern about his own virtue. Through the hawthorn bush that he brings back from his wanderings, plants and tends to, he establishes a continuity and unity to his life that corresponds to Wittgensteins ideal of living eternally by living in the present. ~6.4311!. The counts journeys followed by his return home may even remind us of those to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear who could not then say wherein this sense consisted. ~6.521!. This may seem an implausible reading of the poem in its details; but the general

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point is clear enough.37 One cannot argue that in saying that the unutterable is unutterably contained in this poem, Wittgenstein is leaning on a saying 0 showing distinction of the sort required by irresolute interpretations, without explaining in detail how this poem shows quasi-facts which cannot be said; and it is very unlikely that this can be done. As to ~3!, in responding to Russells queries, Wittgenstein does say Im afraid that you havent got hold of my main contention...the main point is the theory of what can be expressed by prop @osition# s...and what can not be expressed by prop @osition# s, but only shown... However, he adds: which, I believe, is the cardinal problem of philosophy. ~ McGuinness and von Wright 1995, 124!. The description of the saying 0showing distinction as a problem of philosophy contains a significant hint that Russell never picked up on. For the Tractatus claims to deal with the problems of philosophy by showing that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. ~ p. 27 ! According to Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus these problems have in essentials been finally solved, in a way that shows how little has been done when these problems have been solved. ~ p. 29! Therefore if the showing 0 saying distinction is a problem of philosophy, the Tractatus must have solved it by showing how it rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. And if it is the cardinal problem of philosophy, then we will find the key to the resolution of all the problems of philosophy in its dissolutionin line with the reading developed here. Wittgenstein goes on, in the letter, to deploy the saying 0showing distinction in answering some of Russells queries about the Tractatus. Thus in response to Russells complaint that it is awkward not to be able to speak of the cardinality of the universe, Wittgenstein responds This touches the cardinal question of what can be expressed by a prop @osition#, and what cant be expressed, but only shown. I cant explain it at length here. Just think that, what you want to say by the apparent prop @osition# there are two things is shown by there being two names which have different meanings... ~ McGuinness and von Wright 1995, 126!. This is the sort of passage which irresolute interpreters point to as clear-cut evidence for their reading. Yet to read this passage literally, as the irresolute interpretation requires, is to convict Wittgenstein of philosophical blindness. While he may seem here to escape from the mistake of saying directly that which he claims cant be said, the retreat to the formal mode does not solve the problem. For there being two names having different meanings is equally something which, according to the Tractatus, cant be said, but can only be shown. This is a consequence of the doctrine that propositions and the reality that they depict must share logical form, and that logical form cannot be depicted. ~2.1722.174, 4.12 4.1212!. Thus, according to 4.124, the existence of an internal property of a possible state of affairs...expresses itself in the proposition...by an internal property of this proposition. It would be as nonsensical to ascribe a formal property to a proposition as to deny it the formal property.

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What we see here is that name and proposition are as much formal concepts as object and fact. Wittgensteins admonition to Russell to just think points beyond a literal reading of his answer to an undertone of irony. If one thinks at all hard about Wittgensteins answer, one is bound to come upon the difficulty outlined above. The same irony must be seen in his reply to Russells claim that It is necessary also to be given the prop @osition# that all elementary prop @osition# s are given: This is not necessary, because it is even impossible. There is no such prop @osition#! That all elementary propositions are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given. ~ McGuinness and von Wright 1995, 126!. Here not only does Wittgenstein seem to say that which he claims cannot be said but only shown; further that which is said to show seems to differ only verbally from that which is said to be shown. It is significant here that earlier in the same letter, in answer to Russells suggestion that The theory of types is...a theory of correct symbolism: ~a! a simple symbol must not be used to express anything complex; ~ b! more generally, a symbol must have the same structure as its meaning, Wittgenstein had replied Thats exactly what you cant say. You cannot prescribe to a symbol what it may be used to express. All that a symbol CAN express, it MAY express. This is a short answer but it is true! ~ McGuinness and von Wright 1995, 125!. In claiming that we cannot say that which is shown, Wittgenstein might seem himself to be prescribing to our symbols what they may express. But in fact he is doing no such thing, because there is nothing which we can try, but fail, to express. It is nonsense to say all elementary propositions are given and so it is nonsense to say it shows itself that all elementary propositions are given. Nothing is forbidden by the injunction not to say that all elementary propositions are given, as nothing is forbidden by the injunction not to pick up Sherlock Holmes at the airport. Russell, however, missed the irony, and failed to take the hint. Instead he read Wittgenstein as directing him toward the irresolute reading. He saw Wittgenstein as seriously deploying the showing 0saying distinction in order to have his mystical cake and eat it too. Yet at the same time he perceived the incoherence of this attemptwithout grasping Wittgensteins real point, that is without grasping what Wittgenstein took to be the source of the allure of the distinction and the consequences of abandoning it. When he and Wittgenstein met to discuss the book in December of 1919, Russell came away from their discussion still convinced that Wittgenstein had penetrated deep into mystical ways of thought and feeling. 38 The result was that in his Introduction to the Tractatus Russell takes very seriously the distinction between showing and saying, treating it as the central key to the book, while stressing the intellectual discomfort which it causes. ~ p. 22!. On the irresolute reading of the Tractatus, it is hard to see what if anything is wrong with Russells discussion of the mystical in the Introduction to the Trac-

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tatus. Yet Wittgenstein described the Introduction as a brew with which I dont agree ~ Engelmann 1968, 3031, my translation! and decided that when it had been translated into German All the refinement of your English style was, obviously, lost, and all that remained was superficiality and misunderstanding. ~ McGuinness and von Wright, 154!. Russell persisted in viewing Wittgenstein as a mystic, hankering after ineffable truths. When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929 and defended the Tractatus as his doctoral thesis, Russell, according to Monk, advanced his view that Wittgenstein was inconsistent in claiming to have expressed unassailable truths by means of inexpressible propositions, to which Wittgenstein replied Dont worry, I know youll never understand it. ~ Monk 1990, 271!. Yet on the irresolute reading, it seems that Russell understood the Tractatus all too well, better than Wittgenstein himself. Thus in the end, the irresolute reading, like the dismissive readings it aimed to replace, leaves us with the conclusion that at a fundamental level Wittgensteins conception of what he was up to in that work was flawed. I hope in this paper to have begun to show how the resolute interpretation can help us to avoid that conclusion, and yet find in the Tractatus a work that speaks to the human condition and to life, not merely to logic-chopping professors isolated in ivory towers. Notes
*Thanks are due to Jim Conant, Cora Diamond, Ken Sayre, Patti Sayre, Michael DePaul, David Burrell, Tom Ricketts, and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to audiences at the University of Notre Dame ~ February 1999! and at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association ~ May 1999!, for helpful discussions. I also owe a debt, which is hard to locate precisely, to Eli Friedlanders remarkable book, Signs of Sense ~ Friedlander 2001!, which I reviewed for Harvard University Press in the fall of 1998, after having already completed much of the work towards this paper. I have indicated the most important points of contact between our readings in note 24 below. ~Some of the most important points of Friedlanders reading of the Tractatus can also be seen in ~ Friedlander 1998! in less developed forms.! 1 Identified by E-mail address but not by name. 2 Diamond first develops the resolute interpretation in ~ Diamond 1995b!. See also ~ Diamond 1995c! and especially ~ Diamond 1991!. Conants most important papers include ~Conant 1989, 1991, forthcoming!. Goldfarb introduced the terminology of resolute and irresolute interpretations in ~Goldfarb 1997 ! attributing the terminology to an unpublished manuscript of Thomas Ricketts. 3 All references are to the Ogden 0 Ramsey translation unless otherwise indicated. I will cite the text of the Tractatus by numbered proposition, Russells introduction and the Preface, by page number. 4 For example: 3.323.326, 4 4.003 and 4.111 4.112. ~Conant forthcoming, 151, fn. 195!. 5 Thus I reject interpretations of Wittgenstein which locate a decisive break between the Tractatus and the Investigations in the latter works adoption of the slogan meaning is use. For some argument in support of my interpretation here, see ~ Kremer 1997 !. 6 Compare Propositions are pictures; pictures are facts; therefore propositions are facts with Dogs are mammals; mammals are vertebrates; therefore dogs are vertebrates or To depict its form, a picture would have to place itself outside its form; but no picture can place itself outside its form; therefore no picture can depict its form with To fly, a pig would have to grow wings; but no pig can grow wings; therefore no pig can fly.

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7 An anonymous referee has urged that the overall interpretive approach of this paper is compatible with a complete abandonment of the frame 0 body distinction and a consequent relegation of the entirety of the Tractatus to the status of nonsense. However, surely at least the claim that the propositions of the Tractatus are to be recognized as nonsense ~6.54! must survive as more than nonsensical, and once one sees how this is possible, it becomes likely that other propositions of the Tractatus can similarly be counted as frame rather than body. But there will be no simple criterion ~such as location in the work! to distinguish frame from body. Rather, we have to go on our capacity to understand, or failure to understand, each proposition, in the context of the overall understanding we have achieved of the purpose which the author of the work has set for himself. The referee further suggests that my reading of the ethical point of the Tractatus is in some ways at odds with some of the propositions which Diamond and Conant locate as the frame. I think there is something to this, and I touch on it briefly with respect to the Preface in note 22 below. As I indicate there, this reveals a genuine difficulty within the Tractatus, and indeed within Wittgensteins own person and life, which should not be interpreted away. 8 The discussion which comes closest to the view I develop is probably that in ~Conant 1991!. 9 Reported by M. OC. Drury. ~ Drury 1984, 79!. 10 Quotations from the Bible are from the New International Version ~ Barker, 1985! and will be cited by book, chapter and verse. 11 It should not be thought that in rejecting the idea that salvation is achieved through works, Paul saw himself as rejecting the importance of the law. Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather we uphold the law. ~ Romans 3:31! Nor did he see himself as deviating from the tradition handed down from the patriarchs and the prophets. Paul cites Abraham as an example of someone justified by faith, rather than by obedience to the divine command. Abrahams circumcision was the sign of his righteousness through faith and the seal of the divine promise to his descendants rather than the condition of this promise or an act which made him righteous. ~ Romans 4! When Moses presented the law to the people, he set before them a blessing and a curse salvation if they obeyed the law, and condemnation if they strayed from it. ~ Deuteronomy 11: 26 28! But the blessing requires not mere obediencethe fundamental command for Israel is not to do this or that, but to love God. ~ Deuteronomy 6: 45! The divine law must be inscribed in our hearts. ~ Deuteronomy 6: 6! Yet ultimately it is God who must write it there. ~Jeremiah 31: 33! Moses, using a dramatic image, tells the people to circumcise your hearts. ~ Deuteronomy 10:16; compare Leviticus 26: 41, Jeremiah 4: 4, 9: 2526! Yet it would be as difficult to circumcise ones own heart as to circumcise ones own body. Hence, Moses also promises that The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts... ~ Deuteronomy 30: 6! Paul likewise insists that a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. ~ Romans 2: 29! 12 See also ~ Lewis 1943, 71ff ! on the danger of taking pride in humility. 13 Tom Ricketts made me think more explicitly about this analogy, and my reflections on it are indebted to correspondence with him. 14 Mark 8:345; see also Matthew 10:379, 16: 245; Luke 9:23 4, 14: 26, 17: 33; John 12: 25 6. 15 Jesus does claim to give a new command: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ~John 13: 34!. But as a commandment in the sense of a rule to be followed this does not provide much guidance. What is offered is an examplewe are to love each other as we have been loved. Thus Jesus enunciates his new command after showing the full extent of his love ~John 13: 1! by washing his disciples feet. ~John 13: 117 !. 16 This topic involves complex and delicate exegetical and philosophical issues. What follows is only a sketch of some examples; I hope to develop this discussion more fully in a subsequent paper. 17 Wittgenstein mentions both Frege and Russell in 5.132, but their discussions of inference do not match neatly. The interpretation of 5.132 depends on whether we take Frege or Russell as Wittgensteins target. In the Begriffsschrift, Frege takes modus ponens as the basic mode of inference

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~ Schlussart, Schlussweise !, reflected in a rule ~ Regel ! for the use of our signs which he says cannot be expressed in Begriffsschrift. He reduces other modes of inference to modus ponens through positing axioms of conditional form. ~ There are several exceptions, including rules of universal generalization and substitution.! ~ Frege 1964, 9, 21, 25!. In his later Grundgesetze, Frege takes more modes of inference as basic, but again carefully distinguishes basic logical laws ~ Grundgesetze !, expressed in Begriffsschrift, from rules ~ Regeln ! expressed in words, which codify the modes of inference ~ Schlussweisen ! of his logical system. He uses special transition-signs ~ Zwischenzeichen ! to mark inferences drawn in accordance with his rules. ~ Frege 1962, 60 62!. In contrast, Russells primitive propositions include both modus ponens in the form *1.1 Anything implied by a true proposition is true and such axioms as the principle of addition, *1.3 q. . p q. He distinguishes *1.1 from if p is true, then if p implies q, then q is true, which, he says, does not allow us to draw the conclusion that q is true, concluding that we cannot express @*1.1# symbolically. Symbolic principles like *1.3, on the other hand, are called general rules by Russell. He argues that in inference, the general rule is not typically used as a premiss, but only a particular instance of it: The principle of deduction gives the general rule according to which the inference is made, but is not itself a premiss of the inference. If we treated it as a premiss, we should need either it or some other general rule to enable us to infer the desired conclusion. In such cases, Russell cites the general rule to remind the reader how the inference is drawn. However, in other cases, the rule of inference may...occur as one of the ordinary premisses... ~ Whitehead and Russell 1962, 94 6, 106; a similar discussion can be found in Principles of Mathematics.! If Frege is the primary target of 5.132, it is plausible that laws of inference refer not to Freges basic laws, but to his rulesas my reading of 5.132 suggests. This reading is reinforced by Wittgensteins remark that the method of inference ~ Art des Schlusses ! is to be understood from the two propositions alone earlier in 5.132. The phrase Art des Schlusses is reminiscent of Freges Schlussarten 0 weise. On the other hand, while in the Begriffsschrift ~ Frege 1964, 25! Frege speaks of his rules as transforms ~ Abbilder ! of laws ~ Gesetze ! which cannot be expressed in Begriffsschrift, he nowhere uses the phrase laws of inference ~Schlussgesetze! for his rules. One might therefore argue that the primary target in 5.132 is not Frege but Russell, and object that Wittgensteins laws of inference are not what we would now call rules of inference, like modus ponens, expressed in words rather than symbols, but rather axioms such as the principle of addition. If he is discussing such principles at 5.132, then in calling them senseless, he is simply calling them tautologies. For the present purposes, however, not much hangs on this issue. If Wittgensteins target is Frege, then my interpretation fits. If his target is Russell, though, Wittgenstein would have to ask whether in rules of inference such as addition, the symbol is meant as a truth-operation or a relationsign. In the first case we have only a tautology, which cannot be used to justify an inference. Russell, in treating addition as a rule of inference, however, thinks of as expressing a relation of implication between propositions. In this case, for Wittgenstein the rule of addition is nonsense, not a mere tautology; for logical relations are internal and cannot be expressed by relationsigns. ~4.0312, 4.122 4.125, 5.135.131, 5.45.42, etc.! Wittgenstein came close to putting matters in this way in his lectures at Cambridge in 19345. Asking what use tautologies might be, he says Let us examine one which has played a role in logic: p q.p. .q. Here we have a tautology...although it seems to say something, inasmuch as we make inferences in accordance with it. By itself it is not a rule of inference, for a rule should say something, and p q.p. .q says nothing. That it seems to say something is because the second sign of implication seems to say something the first does not, something having to do with the word follows. Inferring is connected with the second sign, not the first. ~ Wittgenstein 1979b, 137-138!. This is a curious discussion, since the particular tautology in question was never taken as an axiom by either Frege or Russell. Still, the point is clear: in treating a tautology as a rule of inference we treat not as mere truth-operation, but rather as a relation-sign. Thereby we reduce the apparent tautology from ~mere! senselessness to nonsense.

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18 Wittgensteins talk here of internal relations which are seen may suggest that in these lectures his attitude towards nonsense, and the showing 0saying distinction, is that ascribed to the Tractatus by the irresolute interpretation. This in turn may be claimed as evidence for the irresolute reading of the Tractatus itself, since apparently Wittgenstein persisted, on his return to philosophy, in talking in ways that, on the resolute interpretation, he should have abandoned after writing the Tractatus. Yet, that he would speak in such ways, when he first began to teach philosophy, is to be expected, on the resolute reading. It is not surprising that the pedagogy of Wittgensteins lectures should recapitulate the paradoxical method of the Tractatus, a method which requires the production of nonsense that the student is brought to recognize as such ~6.54!, and which, unlike the socalled right method in philosophy of refraining from nonsense, will leave the student feeling that she has been taught philosophy ~6.53!. Thus precisely nothing follows about the preferability of the irresolute over the resolute reading, either of the Tractatus or of the lectures of the early 30s, from the persistence of transitional modes of talking in those lectures. 19 This point was urged by an anonymous referee. 20 I believe that a similar story can be told about Russells theory of logical types, but will not attempt it here. 21 My attention was first drawn to these and similar passages by David Pears discussion of showing in The False Prison. ~ Pears 1987, 142152!. However, in spite of Wittgensteins repeated talk of justification in these lectures, Pears takes his focus to be on the problem of providing an explanatory account of language. ~ Pears 1987, 145!. He thus misses the way in which the problem of justification links the topics Wittgenstein discusses under the heading of showing, writing that What holds together the variety of things that can only be shown is their negative point of similarity: they are things that cannot be expressed in factual language. It is profitless to search for a unified theory of the mystical to unify the whole field of these he rejects. ~ Pears 1987, 146!. 22 Thus, the Tractatus preaches humility. Yet, as an anonymous referee pointed out, the framing propositions which tell us how to read the book can on one salient reading, voice yet another form of the self-assertion that the Tractatus is meant to still. The author of the Tractatus did not fully achieve the humility which his book inculcates. It is a symptom of his continuing hubris that he was able to think of himself as having constructed one ladder which he could climb and discard once and for all, which would solve all the problems of philosophyso that he could then abandon his philosophical vocation and take up a career of service as a village school teacher. As I see it, Wittgensteins return to philosophy was occasioned by his realization that the edifice of @his# pride had still to be dismantled. ~ Wittgenstein 1980, 26!. A key transition from Wittgensteins early to his later works is found in his coming to accept his inability to achieve a simple and neat resolution of all philosophical difficulties at one fell swoop. A comparison of the prefaces of the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations will reveal how far Wittgenstein had come in quieting his vanity by the end of his life. 23 In accordance with German usage, Wittgenstein speaks of the sense ~Sinn! of life, rather than its meaning ~Bedeutung!. I do not attach importance to this difference, since, as I argue in ~ Kremer 1997 ! linguistic Sinn is simply one form of linguistic Bedeutung in the Tractatus. 24 The reading developed here of the purpose of Tractarian nonsense resembles in certain respects Eli Friedlanders interesting interpretation of the Tractatus. ~ Friedlander 1998, Friedlander 2001!. Nonetheless there are important differences between our views, perhaps the most fundamental of which appears in our respective understandings of the Tractatus conception of meaning. On my view, we can best understand the Tractatus talk of meaning in the light of the later slogan that meaning is ~approximately! use. Friedlanders view is closer to the more traditional reading which ties meaning to the representing ~ vertreten ! of objects. More precisely, he interprets meaning as showing the form of objects. Friedlander and I both see strong analogies between linguistic meaning and what might be called existential meaning, meaning in a broader sense of significance for life. We both see the Tracta-

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tus as aiming to allow us to recover an unobstructed view of meaning, both linguistic and existential, in part through our recognition and acceptance of the groundlessness of meaning. For both of us, this recognition of groundlessness is tied to a sense of a lack of ultimate justification. In spite of these structural similarities between our views, however, we give quite different detailed readings of these points, which can be seen as determined by the different conceptions of meaning mentioned above. For Friedlander, we recover meaning, both in language and in our lives, by taking up a standpoint beyond grounds, beyond logic, in which the objects which combine in states-of-affairs are revealed in their essential nature. This is a perspective on reality which is non-propositional, though it retains a connection to the propositional perspective of logic since the objects which we recover are defined by their possibilities of combination with one another in states-of-affairs ~ Sachverhalten !. These possibilities of combination in turn in some fashion reveal to us our possibilities as subjects, possibilities for action. It is these possibilities which show themselves in the showing of meaning which is the showing of ~the form of ! objects. I see thinking in this way of the meaning which we recover as a non-propositional awareness of objects and their possibilities of combination as a form of the irresolute reading of nonsense in the Tractatus; possibilities of combination look like quasi-propositions of a peculiarly modal nature. But as Warren Goldfarb has argued, the Tractatus early talk of possibility must be seen as transitional mode. ~Goldfarb 1997, 65-66!. Furthermore, to suppose that the recovery of meaning requires taking up a standpoint beyond logic misunderstands the nature of logicas if it were a ground or source of justificationin precisely the manner espoused by the irresolute reading. Logic itself is, I maintain, beyond grounds. It is neither a source of justification nor something to be justified. It is not a theory or principle, but an ability which pervades both our thinking and our acting, our taking-true and making-true, without serving as a ground for either. To posit a standpoint on the world which is non-propositional and beyond logic is, moreover, to miss the force of Wittgensteins adherence to Freges context principle ~3.3! that names have meaning only in the context of a proposition. Even names, which do have meaning by representing objects, are meaningful only in the context of a proposition with sense; all awareness of objects, even all dealing with objects on a practical level, is propositional in form. On my view, in contrast, the recovery of meaning is the recovery of our sense of the use and value of our lives. Thus the mystical which shows itself is not a realm of objects whose true nature is obscured by the logic of propositional, fact-oriented, language and thought. It is rather a way of life. The Tractatus does not aim to communicate ineffable quasi-truths about the form of objects, but rather to point us on a path which we can follow. 25 Part of the desire of which we need to be cured is the very thought that there are intrinsically, or logically, distinct kinds of nonsensemisleading or elucidatory, silly or important. If the nonsense of the Tractatus is logically important, we may feel that in recognizing it as nonsense, we grasp ineffable features of reality which show themselves and which can ground our language and our lives. Once we have abandoned this thought, and the desire in which it is implicated, we see that we can only distinguish kinds of nonsense relative to the effect that nonsense can have on our lives. In this sense the nonsense of the Tractatus can be important for us, here, now, because the activity of working through its pretensions to meaningfulness brings about a transformation in our lives. In recognizing it as nonsense, we do not grasp something conveyed by the nonsense itself. Yet the communicative purpose of the author of the Tractatus is accomplished in this act of recognition. 26 I address this topic briefly here. A full discussion would require another paper. 27 These reflections are indebted to correspondence with Patti Sayre. 28 I choose these three objections because they arise either from the text of the Tractatus itself or from letters written close to the time of the completion of the Tractatus. Hacker ~ Hacker 2000! builds much of his case against the resolute reading on Wittgensteins earlier Notebooks and on his later assessments of the Tractatus. While I would ultimately like to answer these objections as well, they seem to me to have less persuasive force than the points addressed here. In my opinion one

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has to be very careful in deploying Wittgensteins earlier and later writings in interpreting the Tractatus. For some evidence for this with respect to the Notebooks and the Prototractatus see ~ Kremer 1997 !. 29 I owe this point to my colleague David Burrell. 30 The NIV paraphrases this as whoever lives by the truth, comes into the light... The King James translation But he that doeth truth, cometh into the light... is more accurate here. 31 Truth in this sense plays an important role in Tolstoys The Gospel in Brief ~ Tolstoy 1997, 64 65, 8687, 134135, 138, 159, 208!, a book which Wittgenstein told Ficker virtually kept me alive during the war. ~ Wittgenstein 1979a, 91!. 32 It is in this sense that I understand Wittgensteins remark to Ficker that the important part of the book is the part which I have not written and that in the Tractatus the Ethical is delimited from within. ~ Wittgenstein 1979a, 9495!. The important part of the book, which is not written in the book, is the process, the activity of writing it. The book delimits the Ethical from within by being an ethical act, while remaining silent about it ~a remark which implies that the 6.4s cannot be taken as presenting Wittgensteins ethical view!. The ethical can ONLY be delimited in this way because to attempt to delimit the ethical in words is precisely to encourage the continuing identification of the ethical with obedience to a system of ethical principles. Wittgenstein does not provide us with such principles but attempts to provide a model of an ethical deed. 33 Friedlander also points out the preferability of Ogdens translation to Pears and McGuinnesss. But his sense of the mystical which makes itself manifest according to 6.522 is, I think, different from mine. 34 In speaking of the Tractatus as showing a way of life, I follow a suggestion of James Baillie: All that really mattered to him, that is, how to live a moral lifewas literally unsayable. Wittgenstein could never be said to have believed in the literal truth of Christian dogma. For him, Christianity was a practice, a way of life, which could only be shown by doing it, not talking about it. ~ Baillie 1997, 75!. 35 Of course there must be analogies between the two truth-discourses, as well, as is shown by our use of the same term. I cannot explore this topic here. 36 Translated by A. Platt, quoted in ~ Engelmann 1968, 83 4!. 37 A similar reading of Uhlands poem, with a nice prose translation, is found in ~ Brenner 1999, 151152!, a book animated by a spirit similar to that which guides this paper. 38 Russell to Ottoline Morrell, quoted in ~ Monk 1990, 1823!.

References
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Diamond, Cora. ~1995a! The Realistic Spirit ~Cambridge: MIT Press!. Diamond, Cora. ~1995b! Throwing Away the Ladder, ~19845!, in The Realistic Spirit. Diamond, Cora. ~1995c! Wittgenstein and Metaphysics, Introduction II to The Realistic Spirit. Diamond, Cora. ~1997 ! Realism and Resolution: Reply to Warren Goldfarb and Sabina Lovibond, Journal of Philosophical Research 22, 7586. Drury, M. OC. ~1984! Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein, in R. Rhees, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein ~Oxford: Oxford University Press!. Engelmann, Paul. ~1968! Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein. With a Memoir ~ New York: Horizon Press!. Frege, Gottlob. ~1962! Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, ~ Hildeshelm: Olms!; translated by M. Furth as The Basic Laws of Arithmetic ~ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964!. Frege, Gottlob. ~1964! Begriffsschrift und Andere Aufstze, I. Angelelli, ed. ~ Hildeshelm: Olms!; translated by T. W. Bynum as Conceptual Notation and Related Articles ~Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972!. Frege, Gottlob. ~1967 ! Kleine Schriften, I. Angelelli, ed. ~ Hildeshelm: Olms!; translated by M. Black et al as Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, B. McGuinness, ed. ~Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984!. Frege, Gottlob. ~1976! Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, G. Gabriel et al., eds. ~ Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag!, translated as Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, B. McGuinness, ed., H. Kaal, trans. ~Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980!. Friedlander, Eli. ~1998! Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein: Much Ado About Nothing, in A. Biletzki and A. Matar, eds., The Story of Analytic Philosophy: Plots and Heroes ~ London: Routledge!, 226237. Friedlander, Eli. ~2001! Signs of Sense, ~Cambridge: Harvard University Press!. Goldfarb, Warren ~1997 ! Metaphysics and Nonsense: On Cora Diamonds The Realistic Spirit, Journal of Philosophical Research 22, 5773. Hacker, P.M.S. ~1986! Insight and Illusion, second edition ~Oxford: Clarendon Press! Hacker, P.M.S. ~2000! Was He Trying to Whistle It?, in Alice Crary and Rupert Read, eds., The New Wittgenstein ~ London: Routledge!. Kremer, Michael. ~1997 ! Contextualism and Holism in the Early Wittgenstein: from Prototractatus to Tractatus, Philosophical Topics 25 0 2 ~ Fall 1997 !, 87120. Lewis, C.S. ~1943! The Screwtape Letters ~ New York: Macmillan!. McGuinness, B.F. ~1986! The Mysticism of the Tractatus, in ~Canfield 1986!. McGuinness, B.F. and von Wright, G.H. ~1995! Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters, eds. ~Oxford: Blackwell!. Monk, Ray. ~1990! Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of a Genius ~ New York: The Free Press!. Pears, David. ~1987 ! The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgensteins Philosophy, Vol. 1 ~Oxford: Clarendon Press!. Ramsey, Frank P. ~1931! General Propositions and Causality, in R. B. Braithwaite, ed., The Foundations of Mathematics ~ London: Routledge and Kegan Paul!. Reid, Lynette. ~1998! Wittgensteins Ladder: the Tractatus and Nonsense, Philosophical Investigations 21, 97151. Ricketts, Thomas. ~1996! Pictures, Logic and the Limits of Sense in Wittgensteins Tractatus, in H. Sluga and D. Stern, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein ~Cambridge: Cambridge University Press!. Tolstoy, Leo. ~1997 ! The Gospel in Brief, I. Hapgood, trans., F.A. Flowers III, ed. ~ Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press!. von Wright, G.H. ~1990! A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Young Man: From the Diary of David Hume Pinsent, 19121914 ~Oxford: Blackwell!. Whitehead, Alfred North, and Russell, Bertrand. ~1962! Principia Mathematica to *56 ~Cambridge: Cambridge University Press!. Winch, Peter. ~1986! Wittgensteins Treatment of the Will, in ~Canfield 1986!.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1933! Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, C.K. Ogden, trans. ~ London: Routledge and Kegan Paul!. Also translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness ~ London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961!. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1958! Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. ~ New York: MacMillan!. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1979a! Letters to Ludwig Ficker, in C.G. Luckhardt, ed., Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives ~ Ithaca: Cornell University Press!. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1979b! Wittgensteins Lectures: Cambridge, 19321935, A. Ambrose, ed. ~ Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield !. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1980! Culture and Value, G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman, eds., P. Winch, trans. ~Chicago: University of Chicago Press!. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1982! Wittgensteins Lectures: Cambridge, 19301932, D. Lee, ed. ~Chicago: University of Chicago Press!. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ~1984! Notebooks 19141916, second ed., G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, eds., ~Chicago: University of Chicago Press!.