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Copyright 2002 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

A Poem by Ludwig Wittgenstein

David Rozema

In the Fall term of 1911 the 22-year-old Ludwig Wittgenstein presented

himself to the Cambridge philosopher of mathematics, Bertrand Russell, as a

prospective student of philosophy. Wittgenstein had left off his studies as a prom-

ising young aeronautical engineer because, in the course of his engineering stud-

ies, he had become obsessed with problems in the foundations of mathematics,

the very problems Russell himself had tried to solve in hisPrincipia Mathematica,

a work he had completed just the year before. Wittgenstein, it seems, did not

consider Russells work to be the end of the matter, and so he had planned a book

of his own on the subject. Although this work never materialized, Wittgensteins

interest in philosophy grew under his studies with Russell. And although

Wittgensteins early work in the philosophy of mathematics and logic were the

initial impetus for his interest in philosophy, the events of his life soon led him

back to the concerns which have always been central to the spirit of philosophy:

How ought a man to live? What constitutes the good for man? What sort of life

is a worthy or a beautiful one?

It is likely that Wittgensteins concern with these questions was heightened

by what he saw in Russell, who followed a notoriously loose way of life outside

of his academic studies.1 If Wittgenstein ever wondered whether or not there was

any connection between Russells philosophical commitments and Russells way

of life, he never directly confronted Russell with the question. Russell was, after

all, his benefactor, his mentor, and the source for his initial interest in philo-

sophical problems.2 Nevertheless, I maintain, Wittgenstein did confront Russell

indirectly: he confronted the part of himself that was like Russell and, by at-

1 Russells unrestrained appetites, especially for women, and his accompanying shame-

lessness, are well-documented by Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell(New York,

1976), and Ray Monk,Bertrand Russell: The Solitude of Spirit(New York, 1996).2 Wittgenstein never thought well of any of Russells nonmathematical works. See, for

example, Monk,Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York, 1990), 294, 471.


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346 David Rozema

tempting to describe it in writingthe Tractatus Logico-Philosophicushe dis-

covered its barrenness. Insofar as such an act of writing is elucidatory of apersons soul in what and in how it pictures, it can legitimately be called a kind

of poetry, for it bears the essential feature of all poetics: it serves to shape,

through catharsis, the passions.

Thus, though Wittgenstein neither considered the Tractatus to be a poem

nor intentionally wrote it as a poem, it turned out to be a kind of poem in the

sense that its form fits its content, both of which, in turn, accurately picture a

specific form of life, and the passional result of this poetic construction is (and

was, for Wittgenstein) a certain appropriate disdain for the form of life it pic-

tures. This is what I suggest with regard to the Tractatus: it is most helpful and

is best read as a poem. I will also try to show that this is how Wittgenstein

himself came to think it should be read, which in turn helps to explain why heinitially allowed and later continued to allow its publication.

What does it mean to read the Tractatus as a poem picturing the form of life

implicated by a philosophy like that of Russells? In this poem Wittgenstein

takes the fundamental principles of Russells philosophythat all words are

signs that stand for objects or kinds of objects and that all meaningful proposi-

tions represent a possible arrangement of these objectsand draws out the full-

blown implications of these principles. In the last section of the poem Wittgenstein

shows the practical consequences of a life lived on these principles, concluding:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.3 The two-edged nature

of this remark carries the force appropriate to the last line of a poem, for it is

both descriptive and imagistic. It describes Wittgensteins own thought when herealizes that, because of his Russellian philosophical commitments, he has noth-

ing to say with regard to the good, the truth, and the beauty of life; and it is an

image of the necessity that a good, true, and beautiful life be lived and not just

theorized, hypothesized, or verbalized.

So in the Tractatus Wittgenstein draws a picturea logical picture. The

propositions in it are not really propositions, they just look like propositions:

they are drawn like propositions, but they tell us nothing, and Wittgenstein makes

no propositions with, through, or in them. The importance of them is not what is

in them but what they are in: the drawing. What they say is nonsensei.e., they

have no significance taken outside of the drawing; one cannot look at them indi-

vidually and determine their meaning or use. They are like the individual strokesof the artists pen. You cannot see what the artist is after by just looking at the

individual strokes; rather, you must see the work as a whole in order to make

sense of it. Wittgenstein knows this, though he does not explicitly mention it

until the second to the last remark in the Tractatus: My propositions are

elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as sense-

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, tr. C. K. Ogden (London, 1922),

prop. 7.


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347Ludwig Wittgenstein

less, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to

speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmountthese propositions: then he sees the world rightly.4 To fail to see them as sense-

less, then, is to both misunderstand Wittgenstein and to see the world wrongly.

Just as all other works of art have their medium and form, so, too, does the

Tractatus. As a picture its medium is propositional language; as a piece of

literature its form is, perhaps, philosophical, but it might be seen as a kind of

poetry, too. Absurd poetry: poetry that doesnt look like poetry, and was not

originally intended to be poetry. It is closest to what Plato has doneletting us

see indirectly the souls of living menbut more specifically directed to a certain

moral disposition: viz., the disposition to think that there can be progress in

philosophy, or in any of the humanities.5 Wittgenstein shows us the Logical

Atomists (and Positivists) real stripes. He reveals such a creatures inhumannature by drawing a flawless picture of him, one in which we can now see and

feel such a life as the fraudulent or confused (but in either case unhappy) one

that it is. Merely telling us would not work: we need a picture.

The picture Wittgenstein draws in the Tractatus is of language as a picture,

a picture of a certain sort of reality: language as a logiciansuch as Russell

sees itevery word a sign, every sentence a claim. This picture shows what

cannot be said,6 but it shows it in the medium of saying, i.e., in what looks

like propositional language. Just as a poem shows what it says in its form, thereby

distinguishing itself as art, the Tractatus shows itself in its form to be saying

something other than what it says. Wittgenstein says his aim in the Tractatus

is to draw a limit ... to the expression of thoughts, and that it will thereforeonly be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of

the limit will simply be nonsense. But the whole of the Tractatus itself is sense-

less when taken for what it appears to bea set of propositions. The Tractatus,

read as a set of propositions, therefore, lies on the other side of the limit of

the expression of thoughts, despite the fact that Wittgensteins thoughts are

expressed in it.7 So Wittgenstein, through nonsense, expresses his thoughts; he

draws a limit ... to the expression of thoughts from the other side of the

limit; he expresses his thoughts by failing to express any thoughts. He shows

this.

Wittgenstein says that he hopes someone will understand it, and that it will

give pleasure to the one who understands it.8 In other words, Wittgensteincomes to see that it is nonsense, but he continues to write it to the end and allows

it to be published as it is because he also sees that the only sensible way to deal

4Ibid., prop. 6.54.5 See Caleb Thompson, Wittgensteins Confessions, Philosophical Investigations, 23

(2000).6Tractatus, prop. 4.1212.7Ibid., Preface.8Ibid.


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348 David Rozema

with people who cannot tell sense from nonsense is to see what they do with a

piece of nonsense. If they can tell that it is nonsense, then, after playing with itfor awhile, they will throw it away, and move on to more important things. On

the other hand, if they cannot tell that it is nonsense, they will busy themselves

with it as if their lives depended on it, perhaps making a lifelong study of it. They

will be like those who, when told that certain thingslike pain, or grief, or

thoughtcan only be known from personal, private inner experience, proceed

to lookfor the unique and elusive nature of this experience. The illusion, says

Wittgenstein, is in thinking that we use these wordspain, grief, ideas, thoughts,

etc.as names of hidden, unknown (perhaps even unknowable) objects, states,

or processes. Those who are under the illusion search for these things like those

who look for the beetle in the box.9 They try to make sense of non-sense. So

Wittgenstein hopes that there will be at least some readers who understand theTractatus to be nonsense. These would be the ones who throw away the lad-

der. After its publication he was extremely disappointed to have it show how

few were those readers who understood it.

The only person close to Wittgenstein at the time of his writing the Tractatus

who came close to understanding that it ought to be read poetically was his

friend Paul Engelmann. It was with Engelmann that Wittgenstein discussed some

of his deepest hopes and fears and his most personal thoughts on religious faith,

purity of conscience, and the meaning and beauty of art. They shared a love of

the poetry of Uhland and Keller and would often read these poems together.

Engelmann clearly sees that the positivists had all misunderstood it:

Positivism holdsand this is its essencethat what we can speak about

is all that matters in life. Whereas Wittgenstein passionately believes

that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view,

we must be silent about.10

And insofar as Russell and Frege could be described as holding to the picture

theory of language given in the Tractatus, the same failure to understand it can

be attributed to each of them. Engelmann sums up his understanding of the

Tractatus in this way:

Even iflanguage were nothing but a depiction of sensually perceptiblereality together with the conclusions obtained from it by abstraction,

and if accordingly it were impossible to speak in any language about the

higher sphere (as science and a philosophy conducted by scientific means

are indeed unable to do)even then there exists the higher sphere, there

9 SeePhilosophical Investigations (New York,1958), 293.10Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, With a Memoir(Oxford, 1967), 97; italics in original.


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is asense in our existence, there exists that from which values derive

their value (and which confers it upon them from outside the world).11

Saying this, of course, does not bring one closer to living any differently: only

the personal realization of it could do that. Nevertheless, Engelmann did not

consider the further possibilityindeed, the necessity, if Wittgenstein is to suc-

cessfully avoid contradicting himselfthat his saying this cannot, in the lan-

guage of propositions, be said.

And even his saying that it cannot be said

in the language of propositions cannot be said

in the language of propositions. (There. I said it.)

As much as Engelmann saw, he just didnt see the poem.12

Both Frege and Russell failed to understand it at all: Wittgenstein wrote of

Frege, He doesnt understand a single word of my work and Im thoroughly

exhausted from giving what are purely and simply explanations.13 Russell, though

quicker to follow the logic of the book, completely dismissed both the distinction

between saying and showingcalling it a curious kind of mysticismand the

essential point of the book, viz., to indirectly call attention to the ethical: that

which cannot be said, only shown. Monks description of the last friendly meet-

ing between Russell and Wittgenstein shows that Wittgenstein considered Russells

consciously chosen and self-proclaimed moral superiority to be the definitive

demonstration of Russells failure to understand the Tractatus.

In later life Russell gave the impression that, after their meeting at

Innsbruck, Wittgenstein considered him too wicked to associate with,

and so abandoned all contact. Russell enjoyed being thought wicked,

and this is no doubt the aspect of the meeting that stayed freshest in his

memory. Wittgenstein did, indeed, disapprove of his sexual mores, and

had before their meeting in Innsbruck attempted to steer him in the di-

rection of religious contemplation by suggesting he read Lessings

Religisen Streitschriften (a suggestion Russell did not take up). There

is, too, the related, and perhaps still deeper, difference upon which En-

gelmann places so much emphasis: the difference between trying to im-prove the world and only trying to improve oneself.

11Ibid., 110; italics in original.12 In a letter to Engelmann (4 September 1917), Wittgenstein writes, Many thanks for

your kind letter and the books. The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is:

if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothinggets lost. But the unutterable will

beunutterablycontainedin what has been uttered! (ibid., 7).13 Monk, The Duty of Genius, 175.


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350 David Rozema

Monk relates a story told by Engelmann which illustrates this difference in its

starkest form, and which must surely refer to the meeting at Innsbruck:

When, in the twenties, Russell wanted to establish, or join, a World

Organization for Peace and Freedom or something similar, Wittgenstein

rebuked him so severely, that Russell said to him: Well I supposeyou

would rather a World Organization for War and Slavery, to which

Wittgenstein passionately assented: Yes, rather that, rather that!14

There is also this further evidence: the striking incommensurability between the

Tractatus and the introduction written for it by Russellan addition insisted

upon by the original publisher. Wittgenstein never liked this introduction, and it

is remarkably ironic that it was (and apparently continues to be) a condition forthe publication of the Tractatus.

It is also clear that Moritz Schlick and the other members of the Vienna

Circle (Carnap, Waismann, and Feigl) did not understand the Tractatus. When,

after much persuasion and assurances that the discussion would not have to be

philosophical, Schlick finally got Wittgenstein to attend the meetings of this

Circle, he would sometimes

turn his back on them and read poetry. In particularas if to emphasize

to them, as he had earlier explained to von Ficker, that what he had not

said in the Tractatus was more important than what he hadhe read

them the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet much in voguein Vienna at that time, whose poems express a mystical outlook diametri-

cally opposed to that of the members of Schlicks Circle. It soon became

apparent to Carnap, Feigl and Waismann that the author of the Tractatus

Logico-Philosophicus was not the positivist they had expected.15

On the other hand Engelmann responded to his first reading of the Tractatus by

writing a letter to Wittgenstein in which he numbered all the sentences, imitating

the numbered propositions ofTractatus.16 This is just the sort of response

Wittgenstein might expect from someone who shared his understanding that that

which made life truly meaningful, the ethical and the religious, is not said, but

shown in a way of life.Apart from Engelmann, however, Wittgenstein seems to have given up any

hope of anyone understanding the Tractatus. Perhaps he finally concluded that

the contemporary philosophical world was incapable of reading or even recog-

nizing philosophical poetryparticularly his poetical picture of nonsense-dis-

14Ibid., 210-11. See also Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 114, n. 78.15Ibid., 243.16 See Monk, The Duty of Genius, 162.


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guised-as-sense. This realization would, of course, only reinforce Wittgensteins

disillusionment with the spirit of the age and with the desolation of contempo-rary philosophy. It would confirm what Gellner calls the central proposition of

the Tractatus: There is no culture.17 The dilemma for Wittgenstein was in how

to wake up the sleepers: the Tractatus had apparently failed, so what was to be

done? Wittgenstein wrote in one of his notebooks,

The danger in a long forward is that the spirit of a book has to be

evident in the book itself and cannot be described. For if a book has

been written for just a few readers that will be clear from the fact that

only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate

those who understand it from those who do not. Even the forward is

written for just those who understand the book.Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even

if you add that he will not understand it. (That so often happens with

someone you love.) If you have a room which you do not want certain

people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key.

But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you

want them to admire the room from outside!

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be

noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest...

It is a great temptation to try to make the spirit explicit....18

This is just what Wittgenstein later does with the Tractatus: by agreeing to readit in just the way that nearly everyone read itas a philosophical treatiseand

then rejecting it himself as mistaken, he effectively locked it up to all but those

who could see the lock and the key to understanding it: reading it as a kind of

poetry.19 Engelmanns humorous reaction, as opposed to the reactions of nearly

everyone else, shows that he, at least, knew it to be nonsenseimportant non-

sense but nonsense nonetheless.

To begin to understand it, then, would be to recognize it as nonsense. Propo-

sition 6.54, where Wittgenstein says that he who understands me finally rec-

ognizes them [the propositions of the Tractatus] as senseless, is itself a propo-

sition in the Tractatus, a line in the poem. It would be a sign of bumbling

criticism to take a line in a poem to be only a statement about the poem, or totake a theme in a symphony to be a mimesis of the symphony.20 To truly under-

17 Ernest Gellner,Language and Solitude (Cambridge, 1998), 68. Though it is misleading

for Gellner to call this a proposition, it is essentially correct as a description.18Culture and Value (Chicago, 1980), 7e-8e.19 See Monk, The Duty of Genius, 330-31.20 Following Aristotle, I take a mimesis to be an imitation not of a thing nor a series of

events, but of an intellectual/emotional response to the things or events described in the work

of art (seePoetics 1451a37-b7).


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352 David Rozema

stand the Tractatus would be to see that Wittgenstein is rightthat this is the

only sensible way to deal with someone who cannot tell sense from nonsense:give them some and see what they do with it. Thus, what the Tractatus shows is

not just who can tell sense from nonsense, but also what the proper test is for

telling this. This is why the Tractatus can be useful for more than just the test

itself: it can serve as a model for accomplishing a particular kind of catharsis.

We might, then, do a poetic analysis of the Tractatus so that we can see it as

a model for this kind of poetry. Reading it this way, we might say that the poem

is divided into stanzas, but the division is not shown in spaces between the vari-

ous sets of propositionsthat would be too much like obvious, non-absurdist

poetrybut, rather, by means of the numbering method Wittgenstein uses. In

the only footnote to the Tractatus Wittgenstein says, The decimal figures as

numbers of the separate propositions indicate the logical importance of the propo-sitions, the emphasis laid upon them in my exposition. The propositions n.1, n.2,

n.3, etc., are comments on proposition No. n; the propositions n.m1, n.m2, etc.,

are comments on the proposition No. n.m; and so on. This means of dividing

the stanzas is just what we might expect from someone who reads a poem as if it

were a set of propositions: the white space is wasted space. How the poem looks

is unimportant. If you want to indicate whats more or less important, use a

rating system. Naturally, then, if one were to write (or read) the Tractatus as an

absurd poem that shows the absurdity of taking a poem to be a set of proposi-

tions, then one would reflect (or see) what the poem is supposed to showits

absurdityin its form just as much as in its content. But we can also see that the

numbering system is absurd by noting that the reason Wittgenstein gives in hisfootnote for adopting this numbering systemviz., their logical importance

is contrary to proposition 6.4: All propositions are of equal value. If this propo-

sition were true, then there could be no reason for it to be number 6.4 rather

than, say, number 6.4629 or number 6or number 1. What if ithad been num-

ber 1 in the Tractatus? Thenno more numbers! Start where you like; open

anywhere. Seeing this, we ought to suspect that Wittgenstein finally understood

himself to be doing something with his propositions that cannot be said to be

true or false: something that we could not call propositional; something

that shows the absurdityand even the dangerof reading a poem in that way.21

By attempting to describe his Russellian philosophical convictions as proposi-

tions, he comes to see that they cannot be propositions, and that it would bewrong to take them as such. It would be wrong grammatically, for that is not

their ordinary use, and also wrong existentially, for the way of life that results

from taking them as first principles will necessarily be devoid of the ethical.

21 Interestingly, when asked by Ficker to consider the publication of the Tractatus without

using the decimal notation, Wittgenstein replied that it was absolutely necessary because they

alone give the book lucidity and clarity and it would be an incomprehensible jumble without

them (Monk, The Duty of Genius, 180).


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Wittgenstein comes to see these sentences that have the illusion of being propo-

sitions as the brush-strokes that make up a portrait ofhimself, not of the world.So just as the individual propositions of the Tractatus ought really to be seen

as nonsense-disguised-as-sense, the picture presented in the Tractatus as a whole

of the world ought really to be understood to be a picture of a certain way of

life; a certain sort of man. As propositions they are nonsense and it would be

absurd to take them as such, but as descriptionsof particular philosophical con-

victions that follow from a certain picture of language they make up a portrait of

something inhuman-disguised-as-human.

The absurdity is found not only in the form but also in the content of the

Tractatus. We can easily see this if we simply treat the whole-numbered propo-

sitions as successive premises in an argumentan argument whose final con-

clusion is left to the reader. Since the decimal numbered propositions are sup-posed to be merely comments upon the whole-numbered ones, this is not an

unreasonable thing to do. If the reader takes the so-called argument of the Tractatus

to be an argument, and if the so-called argument is sound, then the conclusion

will be ... (silence). And note that the final conclusion is not proposition 7 but the

practicalconclusion that follows from it, which is ... (silence). On the other

hand, if the reader sees the argument as part of an absurd poem, they will have

understood what Wittgenstein has done: catharsized, by means of a mimesis, the

peculiar humor of so many philosophers, and thank him for it. But they will be

tempted to take it neither as a set of propositions nor as an objective landmark in

the so-called progress of philosophy.

Now let us look at this argument:1 The world is everything that is the case.

2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

>A The world is the existence of (all) atomic facts. (1 2>A)

3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

>B The logical picture of the world is the thought. (A 3>B)

4 The thought is the significant proposition.

>C The logical picture of the world is the significant

proposition. (B 4>C)

5 Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.

>D The logical picture of the world is (the set of) truth-functions of

elementary propositions. (C 5>D)6 The general form of truth-function is: [p,,N()].

>E The logical picture of the world has the general form: [p,,N()].

( D 6>E)

[p,,N()]. (This, which cannot be said, is all that can be said.)

7Whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent.

>F ( E 7>F)


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354 David Rozema

The conclusion of this argument is(silence). Those who think its pre-

mises make sensei.e., those who thinkthat they are premisesare bound tosilence. Taken as premises, not one of them is false, and the inferences are all

deductively valid. This is one sense in which the truth of the thoughts commu-

nicated here seems ... unassailable and definitive.22 So, besides separating those

who can distinguish sense from those who cannot, the Tractatus also serves to

subdivide the group of those who cannot distinguish sense from nonsense, those

who keep talking. On the one hand there are those who keep talking because they

do not know what an argument is for; on the other hand there are those who keep

talking because they are rebellious and defiant of any authority higher than their

own. Not even logic can help them.

Persons in the former sub-group are there primarily because they lack forti-

tude: they are either weak-willed, because they cannot follow through on thepractical conclusion that they ought to be silent, or they are intellectually lazy,

because they see no problem in taking it to be an argument in the first place.

And it should not surprise us to find these vices manifested in more than just the

thought of these persons but in their actions as well. The picture of language that

takes words to be signs, language to be representative of thought and/or reality,

and meaning to be that state of affairs which a proposition pictures, is natu-

rally appealing precisely because of its ease and apparent simplicity. It is not a

picture that is likely to be rejected by anyone who is averse to investigating its

accuracy as a picture of how language is really used, or has a prejudice against

the particular case, or wishes to avoid the work of having to distinguish the

many different senses of significance, representation, reality, and pictur-ing. Hence, it would not be surprising to find these same persons not troubling

themselves with practical questions concerning the good, the true, or the beauti-

ful way(s) of living a human life.

Persons in the latter sub-group manifest a more serious, more dangerous

vice. It might, in fact, be more accurate to describe these people as those who

will not admit that what they say is nonsense. The vice at work in this kind of

case is intellectual pride. They are not lazy or weak-willed people; on the con-

trary, they are very clever and strong-willedstubborn, in fact. They might

very well see that what they say is nonsense, or that the picture theory of

language is fraught with confusions and insoluble problems (and so must some-

how be dissolved rather than solved), but, even so, continue to insist on it, refus-ing to keep quiet. Their doing so betrays an unwillingness to admit mistakes in

their thinking. Again, it would not be surprising to find this unwillingness mani-

fested in the realm of practical affairs as well. Such a person will insistat least

in what they do, and perhaps even in what they saythat good, right,

beauty, justice, and truth can never be used unambiguously, not in any

22Tractatus, Preface.


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particular context, thus allowing such a person to live a life free from restraint,

obligation, and judgment.23

The picture theory of language can serve such aperson in that it cannot explain what these terms mean; what they repre-

sent.24 The person whose intellect and will are strong but whose intellectual

pride prevents him from admitting the possibility of any mistakes in his thought

or action might intentionally insist that a mistaken thought or a wrong action is

in a way not mistaken or wrong at all. He is more dangerous than the intellec-

tually lazy person.

But the thoughts communicated here, if the Tractatus is read as a poem,

are communicated indirectly: the thoughts are not stated but elicited indirectly

by means of the passion the poem produces. If, in addition to the comic catharsis

of the readers own feelings of sympathy with the poet and desire not to be like

the kind of person the poem describes, the Tractatus produces feelings of pity orfear for the person it picturespity for the poor, confused, lost philosopher or

fear of the dangerous, harmful onethen these passions might elicit the thoughts

Wittgenstein really does, in the end, wish to communicate: thoughts which are

more like pleas than propositions. For when the Tractatus is read as a poem, it

actually draws us away from the thought that the kind of person it pictures is

living a worthwhile or happy life, and draws us toward the thought that the right

sort of life would lie outside the picture he has drawn.25

As in all art, these thoughts are communicated indirectly, through the stir-

ring of our passions. The passions evoked by literary art lead us to an examina-

tion of our attitude towards a life-forming idea. Our passions thus show us

something about our relationship to certain ideas, persons, or ways of living;something that we might not be able to say about ourselves. And Wittgenstein

cannot say it either, but he can show it, as a mirror can.

Even before the Tractatus was written, Wittgenstein thought that

Print must be impersonal ... it must not preach. A later anecdote records

[his] condemnation of TolstoysResurrection for this reason. Tolstoy is

best, he said, when he turns his back on the reader, as, no doubt, in

Hadji Murad, which Wittgenstein read with such enthusiasm in the sum-

mer of 1912. We look over the authors shoulder, he describes a life, and

we see, rather than are told of, the values it exhibits.26

Can a poem, through saying, show what cannot be said? Certainly. It can do

so indirectlynot through the language of propositions, nor through the lan-

23 For an example of such a character, see Camuss novel, The Fall(New York, 1956).24 E.g., see A. J. Ayers Language, Truth, and Logic.25 See James Edwards,Ethics Without Philosophy (Tampa, Fla., 1982); Norman Malcolm

and Peter Winch,From a Religious Point of View? (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995); and O. K. Bouwsma,

Without Proof or Evidence, eds. J. L. Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit (Lincoln, Neb., 1984).26 McGuinness, Wittgenstein, 110.


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356 David Rozema

guage of reporting, nor through the language of explanation, but through the

language of description, imagery, and metaphor, language formed to fit its prosodicframe, the language of poetry. In this languagewhat O. K. Bouwsma calls

language on holiday27poetry itself can be poeticized, with the result being

not an exposition nor a proposition nor an explication but a description that can

serve as an image of itself. The readers emotional reaction to such a poemif

the description and imagery or metaphor is well-donewill then show the reader

to be either fine or coarse in his tastes, cultured or uncultured in his desires,

high-minded or base in his pleasures, discerning or indiscriminate in his judg-

ments, virtuous or vicious in his actions. According to Aristotle, a readers in-

difference or insensitivity to a well-made poem or drama shows that readers

deficient or misplaced sympathy, desire, fear, or pity.28 So a readers indiffer-

ence or insensitivity to a well-made poem that is about an unworthy or un-happy life would show that readers deficient or misplaced sympathy, desire,

fear, or pity towards life itself. The good poet may know what sympathy, desire,

fear, or pity ought to be produced by any given poem in any given reader, but

what the good poet knows, the good poet cannot say. If the poet says what the

response ought to be, the poem cannot be what a poem essentially is: a mirror in

which both author and reader sees himself. If the poet says what the response

ought to be, the poem is not a poem, for it would attempt to say what it can only

show.

Let me make the case more secure, then, that Wittgenstein saw (or came to

see) the Tractatus as useful inshowing, through what it says and how it says it,

what a pitiful or fearful life results from the picture of language drawn there.First, there are many comments from his Notebooks that Wittgenstein thought

of philosophy as an art and therefore as a means for a person to know himself. In

a note from 1933 Wittgenstein writes, I think I summed up my attitude towards

philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as apoetic

composition. It must, as it seems to me, be possible to gather from this just how

far my thinking belongs to the present, future, or past. For I was thereby reveal-

ing myself as someone who cannot quite do what he would like to be able to

do.29 From the 1938 Notebooks we find a poem from Longfellow:

In the elder days of art

Builders wrought with greatest care

27 O.K. Bouwsma, Toward A New Sensibility, eds. J. L. Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit (Lincoln,

Neb., 1982), 268.28 See Aristotle,Poetics 1449b21-31 on the catharsis of pity and fear in tragic poetry; the

case for comedys catharsis of sympathy and desire is by extension; it is made explicitly by

Gene Fendt, Resolution, Catharsis, Culture: As You Like It, Philosophy and Literature, 19

(1995), 248-60.29 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, tr. Peter Winch, ed. G. H. von Wright (Chicago,

1980).


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Each minute and unseen part

For the gods are everywhere

This is followed by Wittgensteins remark, This could serve me as a motto.30

This careful attention to detail by the artist is certainly evident in the Tractatus.

In 1936 Wittgenstein notes The queer resemblance between a philosophical

investigation (perhaps especially in mathematics) and an aesthetic one (e.g.,

what is bad about this garment, how should it be, etc.?).31 The resemblance

Wittgenstein has in mind is presumably this: since there is no empirical standard

for correct answers in mathematical questions, the answers that actually are

accepted are the ones given by those who practice the discipline. The same is

true for aesthetic judgmentthere is an inseparable connection between the stan-

dard and the man. The man practicing the art is the standard (e.g., Shakespeare).Not just any standard, and not just any man will do. This connection takes on

added significance with regard to philosophy, for in philosophy the connection is

as close as it can possibly be: a mans philosophy underwrites his entire life.

Frege was bothered by what Wittgenstein said about the Tractatus in the Pref-

acethat this book will perhaps only be understood by those who have them-

selves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it.... Its object would

be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding. He

wrote to Wittgenstein,

The pleasure of reading your book can therefore no longer be aroused

by the content which is already known, but only by the peculiar formgiven to it by its author. The book thereby becomes an artistic rather

than a scientific achievement; what is said in it takes second place to the

way in which it is said.32

Freges reaction was more insightful than he realized. Wittgenstein acknowl-

edged the literary nature of the Tractatus himself in a letter to Ficker, who was

considering it for publication inDer Brenner, his literary journal: The work is

strictly philosophical and at the same time literary, but there is no gassing in

it.33 In fact Wittgenstein had turned to the idea of publishing the Tractatus in a

literary journal primarily in response to Freges suggestion that he split the work

up into sections so it could be published serially. Again, Wittgensteins vocifer-ous responsethat to do so would be to mutilate it from beginning to end and,

in a word, make another work out of it34is exactly the response we might

30Ibid., 35.31Ibid., 25.32 Monk, The Duty of Genius, 174.33 McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, 288.34Ibid., 176.


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358 David Rozema

expect from a poet given the suggestion that he have his poem split up and

published a few lines at a time. And finally, a remark that has special applicationto reading the Tractatus, Dont,for Heavens sake, be afraid of talking non-

sense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.35 There seems to be ample

evidence that Wittgenstein came to think that the Tractatus ought to be seen as

poetic in its construction and in its purpose.

Second, there is the previously noted matter of the so-called propositions of

the Tractatus not being propositions at all. If they are not propositions, then

what are they? I have suggested that they are descriptions, maybe even descrip-

tions that, taken together, can be understood to be images or metaphors. In the

Tractatus itself Wittgenstein says that The object of philosophy is the logical

clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philo-

sophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy isnot a number of philosophical propositions, but to make propositions clear.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise

are, as it were, opaque and blurred.36 The Tractatus, then, should be seen as a

clear, elucidatory description of what we might call the propositional attitude

the way of life followed by someone who understands all language to be propo-

sitional, and cannot understand any of its other uses. Almost all the proposi-

tions in the Tractatus should be seen as descriptions of what we might call

certain articles of faith, or dogmas held to by Wittgenstein himself at one time.

But common to each description is the underlying dispositionwe might call it

a prejudiceto take these dogmas as propositions about reality. Such a persons

attitude will be exactly as Wittgenstein describes in proposition 4.023: Theproposition determines reality to this extent, that one only needs to say yes or

no to it to make it agree with reality. Reality must therefore be completely

described by the proposition. A proposition is a description of the fact. This is

a description of the world or reality that a person who understands languages

only use to be that of making propositions. It is a description of the prejudice.

Like the businessman who sees all relationships as a means to either profit or

loss, or the sophistical politician who sees all decisions as a means to gain an

advantage over others, or the educationist who sees all knowledge as a means to

power or self-esteem, in the same way the propositionist sees all language as a

means to make claims.

If we read the Tractatus as a description of just such a person, living in justsuch a narrow world, then some of the later propositions take on a new, sinis-

ter tone. E.g., propositions 5.62-5.63: That the world is my world shows itself

in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which I understand)

mean the limits ofmy world.; The world and life are one.; I am my world.

(The microcosm.) Much more could be brought out here from the Tractatus

35 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 56.36 Wittgenstein, Tractatus, prop. 4.112.


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itself, but the point is to see that the whole work is an if a series of descrip-

tions that picture a certain kind of life conditioned by a certain, very limited viewof the purpose and meaning of language, and in fact a view that allows for no

judgments of value at all. All propositions are of equal value.37 If we add to

this remark the further Tractarian premises that propositions are logical pic-

tures of reality (the conclusion from propositions 3 and 4), and that reality con-

sists of all possible facts (the conclusion from propositions 1 and 2), then the

conclusion that follows for a person whose reality fits this description is that

all possible facts are of equal value, i.e., of no value. In the face, then, of so-

called injustice and vice such a person must be silent.

But mere description alone does not make it poetry: the description must be

read in such a way as to elicit in the reader a certain emotional response to it. To

see how Wittgenstein does this, we might use an analogy he gives us in proposi-tion 4.011: At first glance the propositionsay, as it stands printed on paper

does not seem to be a picture of the reality of which it treats. But nor does the

musical score at first sight appear to be a picture of the musical piece.

But how is a musical score a picture of a musical piece? Yes, there is the

correspondence of the notes and other markings on the page to the sounds made

by the musician. But would it be correct to say that if the musician can make

these correlations he understands the musical piece? When could we say that the

musician knows the piece? When can we say that the musician is a musician?

What sort of noise will you get from someone who can simply play the notes and

follow the markings on the page? Likewise, if learning the language consisted in

correlating the picturethe proposition printed on the paperwith what itsupposedly pictures, is that what I am to call understanding the language?

Surely this is not all there is to understanding, say, a Faulkner novel or a

Shakespearean sonnet. Such a definition of understanding would rule out un-

derstanding any utterance that wasnt made to make a proposition. Either that,

or you would have to try to figure out how to make Do not go gentle into that

good night look like a proposition to which you can impassively (but, ironically

enough, not propositionally) say yes or no. Literature, then, is out, except

as a set of claims about some possible world. Poetry, of course, could not be

understood at all, for it cannot be read as any sort of claim, not even about some

possible world. In a poem you can even find contradictions that are, neverthe-

less, used meaningfully, but not in the world of the propositionist. So far thispicture of the propositionist only makes him look silly, someone to laugh at, but

not a possible picture of us and not someone to be pitied or feared: the Tractatus

is not a tragedy. The supposition that understanding the language means know-

ing the state of affairs that the proposition pictures is a ridiculous definition.

But, in another sensea sense that Wittgenstein the poet shows us without di-

rectly saying sothis supposition may be correct. For, as weve also seen, the

37Ibid., prop. 6.4.


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360 David Rozema

Tractatus presents a picturenot of the world, but of a way of life which actu-

ally is somebodys world, complete with the cold passion that such a way of lifecontains. The proper fear or desire for yourself, and the proper sympathy or pity

for another, will be aroused in you when you realize that this way of life isor

has been, or might besomething like your own way of life. And each readers

response to it will show how close he is to that way of life. The image is there in

the Tractatus.

Finally, it is worth noting that Wittgenstein did the lions share of the work

on the Tractatus during the First World War while serving in the Austrian army,

much of the time at the Russian front, and then for a year in an Italian prisoner

of war camp. It is not credible that he would have remained so devoted to the

composition of a philosophical treatise on logic in the midst of a war in which

his very existence was threatened nearly every day. Given Wittgensteins intel-lectual genius, his self-conscious nature, and the high moral standards he placed

upon himself, his continued work on this so-called treatise cannot be explained

unless he came to see the existential import of the work. What is also noteworthy

is that many of the very people whom the Tractatus accurately describes lacked

Wittgensteins own sense of duty to country as well as the desire to live a life that

was, in his words, worthwhile. Russell spent the war years subverting his

countrys war efforts, and towards the end of the war visited the newly formed

Bolshevik state in Russia in order to help promote that form of socialism in

England. Given his own professed views on the relative and purely emotive

nature of value statements,38 we must question whether he did such things out of

a sense of duty or for an altruistic motive. Though perhaps concerned with thepurity of thought, Russell was seldom bothered by questions about the moral

purity of his personal life, and was rarely ashamed of his actions. Wittgenstein,

on the other hand, was tortured by this question so much that it became charac-

teristic of him, and he was often deeply ashamed of his actions.

McGuinness suggests that it was the War that precipitated the final fusion

between Logic and ethicsbetween purity of thought and purity of heartin

Wittgensteins thinking.

[T]he implications forWeltweisheitfor the philosophy of lifeof his

technical philosophy [Logic] were not always apparent to him, though

no doubt were unconsciously part of his motivation. But now, in this theworst summer of danger and defeat [1916], somewhere between the

shells and the bullets, he began to feel that the two were connected; that

grasping the essence of propositions or of an operation had something

to do with adopting the right attitude towards life. No longer does his

38 See Russell,Marriage and Morals (Garden City, N.Y., 1929); The Conquest of Happiness

(London, 1930); The Scientific Outlook(New York, 1931), among others.


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attitude towards his philosophy merely exhibit the same structure as his

attitude towards life: the two are now identified. The critic of Russell isfused in the reader of Dostoevsky.39

Although it is clear that McGuinness does not take the Tractatus to be a

poem, his observation here fits in nicely with the reading I am suggesting, and

brings us full circle: the Tractatus shows the connection between a purely tech-

nical philosophy, like that of Logical Atomism or Positivism, and the way of

life of a person who holds to it. But McGuinness indicates elsewhere in his

biography that Wittgenstein had long been conscious of this connection. A year

or so earlier Wittgenstein had said to Engelmann, How can I be a good philoso-

pher when I cant manage to be a good man?40 Sometime earlier than that, in

October of 1914, upon hearing that his brother Paul (a concert pianist) had losthis arm in battle, he wrote in his diary: I cannot help thinking of poor Paul the

whole timeso suddenly deprived of his occupation! How terrible! What phi-

losophy it would take to get over that!41 Even before the War, while living alone

and working in Norway, he wrote to Russell, Perhaps you regard this thinking

about myself as a waste of timebut how can I be a logician before Im a

human being!Farthe most important thing is to put my own house in order!42

Soon after this, Wittgenstein brought an end to his close friendship with Russell,

explaining that

Weve often had uncomfortable conversations with one another when

certain subjects came up. And the uncomfortableness was not a conse-quence of ill humour on one side or the other but of enormous differ-

ences in our natures. I beg you most earnestly not to think I want to

reproach you in any way or to preach you a sermon. I only want to put

our relationship in clear terms in order to draw a conclusion.Our

latest quarrel, too, was certainly not simply a result of your sensitive-

ness or my inconsiderateness. It came from deeperthe fact that my

letter must have shown you how totally different our ideas are....43

As this and later correspondence shows, the issue was one of different value-

judgments between the two men. What brought the difference to a head is un-

knownthe letter from Wittgenstein in which he explicitly states the reason forthis particular quarrel is lostbut whatever it was, it must have decisively re-

39Wittgenstein: A Life, 245. McGuinness points out the deep influence of Dostoevsky on

Wittgenstein, especially during the War and subsequent captivity (236, 249, 255, 273, 278).40Ibid., 227.41Ibid., 223.42Ibid., 192, 192n20.43Ibid., 194-95.


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362 David Rozema

vealed to Wittgenstein that what he valued, Russell did not, and that this differ-

ence was both parallel to and deeper than their differences over Logic.All of this is to show that Wittgenstein had long been conscious of the con-

nection between the purity of life and the clarity of thought. I suggest that it was

Russells failure to make this connection that led to the break between them.

Perhaps the best evidence of this is the famous anecdote about Wittgenstein that

Russell himself often laughingly related: Once I said to him: Are you thinking

about logic or about your sins? Both, he replied, and continued his pacing.44

I said earlier that Wittgensteins form of philosophical poetry was a unique

kind of poetry. The peculiar form of his philosophical poetry is indeed new, but

philosophical poetry itself is not new. Plato has done it first. Just as Platos

dialogues dont look like poetry and perhaps did not even originate as poetry,

neither does the Tractatus.Aristotle recognized Platos art as a distinct form of poetry and distinguished

it from other kinds of poetry:

Now the art which imitates by means of words only, whether in

prose or verse, whether in one meter or a mixture of meters, this art is

without a name to this day. We have no common name which we could

apply to the mimes of Sophron or Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues;

and also to any imitations that may be written in iambics, elegiacs, or

other such meters.45

Since the Socratic Dialogues do not imitate by meters, Aristotle must mean thatPlato practiced the art of producing a mimesis by means of words only, that is,

without any bodily, musical, or visual representation; without the formal aspects

of poetry, such as meter, pattern, rhythm, or line, and without any narrative that

would explain what gets said in terms of other nonverbal activities that might be

going on simultaneously. It is poetry without meter, but said in a particular

dramatic context and in response to a specific kind of individual, a specific way

of life: it is drama without the acting, but said so as to give a full picture of what

a certain way of life will look like. We might call it the art of pure description,

leaving everything as it is. This art, too, illumines.

Karl Shapiro once wrote that a poem is what an idea feels like. This, of

course, reaffirms the function and importance of description in poetry, for adetailed and specific description can, all by itself, evoke an emotional response.

Add to the description the elements of imagery, metaphor, pattern, meter and

rhyme, and you have even more tools with which to express and evoke a nearly

infinite range and depth of feeling. Shapiros description of poetry rightly puts

the emphasis on feeling, but it also reminds us that the feeling is necessarily tied

44Ibid., 156.45 Aristotle,Poetics, translated by G. M. A. Grube (New York, 1958), 1447a27-1447b14.


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to somethingan idea. He is not too concerned here about what might be

included in the category of ideasit is usually philosophers who worry aboutthatbut being a poet himself, he is more concerned that his description of

poetry evokes a proper feeling towards poetry. The remark can itself serve to

illustrate why, as Bouwsma says, a poem is not a statement. Whether or not an

idea can feel like anything, Shapiros remark stands or falls, is accepted or

rejected not on the basis of its so-called factual truth but rather of its feeling

right. Granted, this feeling right, not only with regard to this sentence but

with any poem or part of a poem, will depend a great deal on the detail and

accuracy of the description(s), but the primary aim of the poet is not to make

statements, but rather to evoke the feelings appropriate to the idea being de-

scribed. Bouwsma imagines a conversation between a person who reads a poem

as if it were a set of propositions and another person who actually understandsthe poem.

Imagine A and B reading the same poem. A reads the poem and says:

This poem is false. Furthermore, the poet doesnt believe what he is

saying. A turns to B: Do you understand this poem? and B says

Yes. When A goes on: And how do you understand it? B takes up

the poem and reads it. Then he turns to A: That is how I understand it.

A is exasperated. A turns on B. Is the poem true? and B does not

answer. He shrugs his shoulder. A goes on: Does the poet believe what

he says? Once more B shrugs his shoulder. At this, A throws the book

at B.46

Here A is asking B for help in understanding the poem, as if the poem is written

in code and B knows how to read the code. A is looking for instructions on how

to interpret the poem, to find its meaning. But Bs response shows that the poems

meaningif you want to call it thatis to be found not in the propositions of

the poem nor in any interpretive statements about it but in its demonstration.

You could not, in the language of propositions, say what makes a poem a poem.

A great poem simply is. It shows itself.

Likewise, the meaningif you want to call it thatof a mans life is given

not in propositions nor in propositions about the meaning of his life, but in the

manifestation of that life. You could not, in the language of propositions, saywhat makes a mans life great or worthwhile. A great man simply is. He shows

himself.

University of Nebraska at Kearney.

46Toward a New Sensibility, ed. J. L. Craft and R. E. Hustwit (Lincoln, Neb., 1982), 254.

Documents

Wittgenstein e Dostoevski