Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Joachim Schulte (essay date 1992)

Joachim Schulte (essay date 1992)

SOURCE: "Connecting Links," in Wittgenstein: An Introduction, translated by William H. Brenner and John F. Holley, State University of New York Press, 1992, pp. 69-95.

[In the following essay, Schulte examines the relationship between the Tractatus and Wittgenstein's later works.]

Much of what cannot be said but only shown, according to the doctrine of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein attempts to express indirectly. Although meant to cancel themselves in their entirety, the "propositions" of the Tractatus are still supposed to convey a message, if only a negative one. In the years of silence after the publication of his book, little at first seems to change in Wittgenstein's basic ideas. His writings, and the statements of others from the first years after his return to philosophy in 1928/29, are strongly reminiscent of the Tractatus—this despite the fact that he was attempting to...

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