The Status of the Propositions in the Tractatus

Extract

It is indeed an odd work of philosophy which is prefaced with the remark that the author believes that he has found the final solutions to all philosophical problems and which concludes with the remark that the propositions found in the work must ultimately be regarded as nonsensical. Yet Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is just such a work. And for the reader, who has probably spent a good deal of time filling in gaps in important arguments and mastering a new vocabulary, the concluding remarks must leave him more dismayed than puzzled. Perhaps one of the most challenging tasks involved in the understanding of the Tractatus is that of making sense out of proposition 6.54 where we are told that the propositions of the Tractatus are 'elucidations' which, once understood, must be recognized as nonsensical, discarded like a unnecessary ladder and, finally, 'transcended'. But if the groundwork for this sort of concluding remark is nonsensical why should we be content with the sense of this remark; indeed, why shouldn't we keep the ladder and scurry down it before it, and our newly obtained elevated platform, crumbles under our feet ?