Wittgenstein’s Enchanting Analogy: Or, Navigating the Tractatus Wars by Looking Again at Pictures
Abstract
No Tractatus reader could fail to notice the apparent centrality of the connection between sentence/proposition (Satz) and picture (Bild) that it seemingly endorses. However, it is often assumed that Wittgenstein must have either been trying to propound a “theory” of the Satz-Bild connection (per “ineffabilists”) or leading us to see that no such theory can be established (per “resolute readers”). In this paper, I develop a different reading of the Satz-Bild connection as an enchanting, though ultimately perspective-narrowing, analogy. I start by exploring the nature of analogies (contrasted with arguments, theses, metaphors, and similes) and eliciting exegetical evidence for my reading. The analogy elucidates 3 distinct “morals” (semantic; syntactical; and pragmatic, respectively) that aim to avoid distinct logical paradoxes by guiding how we see language. As such, the analogy is not argumentatively innocuous or “literally meaningless” but neither is it substantive nonsense “whistled” to reveal important truths about logic. Rather, like all good analogies, it reveals only by also obscuring; it helps us avoid paradoxes only by generating another one (§ 6.54). Finally, I explore how the conclusion Tractatus-Wittgenstein appears to endorse in light of this —walking away— transformed in the 1930s with his development of new, liberatory (language-game, language-tools) analogies.
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