Reading Tractatus, Understanding Wittgenstein

Danielle Macbeth

doi:10.5281/zenodo.7953196

Danielle Macbeth Haverford College, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7953196

Keywords: Cora Diamond, ineffability reading, nonsense, resolute reading, Tracatus wars

Abstract

At 6.54 of Tractatus, Wittgenstein writes: “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.” A task is thereby set for the reader, that of learning to read the Tractatus so as to understand its author. Two ways of reading are of concern here, the “ineffability” reading and the “resolute” reading, neither of which is without problems. The aim is to diagnose key confusions underlying these readings and to begin to outline a viable alternative.

Author Biography

Danielle Macbeth, Haverford College, USA

Danielle Macbeth is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, USA. She is the author of Frege’s Logic (Harvard UP, 2005) and Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and Knowing (Oxford UP, 2014), as well as many essays on a variety of issues in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and other topics. She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto in 2002 – 3, and has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Burkhardt Fellowship as well as a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

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Reading Tractatus, Understanding Wittgenstein

Abstract

Author Biography

References

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