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No Ladders
On Wittgenstein’s Later Metaphilosophy
“Now that my ladder’s gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”, — William Butler Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”
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It is unfortunate that when those trained in non-analytic contexts confront the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, they tend to be far more attentive to propositions 5.6 (“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”) through 7.0 (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”) than those that precede them. The closing propositions of the Tractatus include those of the “ethical” and “mystical” Wittgenstein, the Wittgenstein interested in showing what cannot be said, the spokesperson for all the “important nonsense” essential to “seeing the world aright”. This Wittgenstein is taken to be worth serious consideration, rather than the severe logical atomist of propositions 1.0 through 5.571. The Tractatus gets “deep” only near its conclusion, and not before: its general theory of representation — the “picture theory” of meaning — is assumed to be merely preparatory to the concluding invocation of ineffable truth.
This attitude — understandable but not commendable — is blind to the role that Wittgenstein’s logical prep-work plays in making his claims about philosophical nonsense plausible. His atomistic theory of meaning…
