What Cannot Be Said in the Tractatus

Abstract

The Tractatus aims at establishing the ultimate conditions which make possible a meaningful language. These conditions, however, cannot be said within that language. Thus, the book takes the reader from the analysis of what can be said to its inexpressible conditions. These inexpressible conditions are the limits of the world.
This paper deals with the inexpressible limits of language and of the world. Three questions are raised:
(i) How does the Tractatus lead to the view of the world as a limited whole?
(ii) How is it possible to communicate such a view by means of meaningless expressions?
(iii) Which is the “right” view of the world that such a communication make possible?
1. The conditions of what can be said
The analysis of the meaningful language shows certain inexpressible conditions that make it possible.
First, it makes one accept the ultimate elements which are represented in propositions by simple signs, i.e., objects. Objects cannot be put into words, they are inexpressible.
Second, it leads to the admission of logical form as an a priori condition of language. Logical form is also inexpressible, but it is shown in every proposition.
Third, it leads us to assume an ultimate extralogical presupposition of the two logical assumptions above mentioned, i.e., the absolutely contingent existence of the world as a whole limited by logical space.
To view the world as a limited whole (ultimate assumption of all representation) doesn’t correspond to the realm of representation but to that of feeling and the will. It is involved in all religious, ethical or esthetical “experience”, in all question concerning the “sense” and “value” of the world and of life. To view the world as a contingent and limited whole is the end to which the Tractatus is directed, but it is also its antecedent. Indeed, the entry 1 of the Tractatus presupposes it; the point of arrival is also the point of departure.
2. Pseudo-propositions about the inexpressible
How are we to express this view of the world? Some seemingly unjustifiable exceptions apart, the pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus that talk about the inexpressible are of one of two clases:
(i) Negative sentences. They intend to say that something is not in the world or that a pseudo-proposition is not a part of the language.
(ii) Sentences about the whole or about the limits of the world and of language. They intend to say that something outside the world and the language is shown when the world and the language are viewed as a whole.
The pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus about the inexpressible do not intend to predicate anything of it; they do not intend to describe what the inexpressible is like. They only communicate one and the same thing, i.e. that the inexpressible is such that it does not belong to the world (that it is not a fact) and cannot be described (by means of the picture of a fact). Thus, in order to express the inexpressible the Tractatus turns to the via negationis.
3. Kinds of nonsense
These pseudo-propositions, however, lack meaning. Two kinds of nonsense should be distinguished. We will call them nonsense1 and nonsense2. Both violate the logical rules that make possible a meaningful language. Nevertheless, as nonsense1 does not communicate anything, it just has to be rejected. Nonsense2, on the contrary, can communicate something; it has to be used and, only later on, abandoned. The pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus about the inexpressible are examples of nonsense2.
No nonsense says or shows anything. What nonsensical1 sentences intend to say is never shown anywhere; what nonsensical2 sentences intend to say is shown everywhere else, in the totality of the propositions and of the world. How?>br> We must distinguish two kinds of nonsense2: those that intend to communicate the logical conditions of language, and those that intend to communicate its extralogical conditions.
The nonsensical2 sentences of logic intend to mention the conditions assumed by language, and this is shown only by the use of propositions. The meaningful sentences show what nonsensical2 pseudo-propositions of logic cannot say nor show, but what they intend to communicate.
The nonsensical2 sentences that intend to express the extralogical conditions are those about ethics and the “mystical”. They are shown in a different way than logical conditions, i.e., in the view of the world as a limited and contingent whole which is offered, not to thought, but to feeling and the will.
Then, nonsensical2 sentences intend communicating what is shown elsewhere, i.e., in the meaningful language and in the view of the world as a whole. There must be, therefore, a kind of communications that is different from saying or showing.
4. Communication of the inexpressible
Nonsensical2 sentences neither say nor show anything, they orientate the reader in order that he takes notice of what his language and his world show to him. They have the role of pointing out to him what he should see by himself. Nonsensical2 sentences “refer” to the limits of the language and the world; but “reference” (Bedeutung) has, in this context, a pragmatic, not a semantical sense.
From this, the importance of the via negationis is clear. The negative pseudo-propositions do not intend to express any state of affairs; they “do” something else, i.e., they divert our attention from states of affairs and point, in the totality of our experience, to something that cannot be presented in any fact.
However, we have to admit a certain vague understanding of what nonsensical2 sentences claim to communicate so that they can accomplish that pragmatic role.
The nonsensical2 sentences of the Tractatus use pseudo-signs of ordinary language that have, in that language, a confused or void reference. That vague reference (in the semantical sense) is canceled in the nonsensical2 sentences of the Tractatus and at the same time they point (in a pragmatic sense) to something analogous (to the vague reference) that can be given in the view of language and of the world as a whole. They direct our attention in order that we see by ourselves something “analogous” to what the vague expressions of ordinary language claim to express, but they can do that only in so far as we understand that they do not represent anything, that they lack meaning. Only by understanding that they are nonsense our attention is directed to what otherwise we would not see, because only then the describable states of affairs are put aside. In that way they let us get a “right” view of the world.
5. The “right” view of the world
The Tractatus rejects neither ethics nor metaphysics, it liberates us from the illusion that obstructs their “right” interpretation. The traditional illusion of ethics and metaphysics has been to believe that we can find their object in the world that can be pictured by language. So long as we do not understand that that way is not open to us we cannot see by ourselves the analogon of what they tried to communicate. Only then it can be shown in the realm of feeling and the will something similar to what the pseudo-propositions of ethics and metaphysics intended to refer to in the realm of representation.
The understanding that all the Tractatus flows towards nonsense frees one from the traditional illusion of metaphysics and opens the correct view, i.e., we will not try to find sense and value in facts of the world but in the existence of the world and of life itself. I have to live “sense” and “value” in the feeling of the “miracle” of the existence of the world and in the conformity of my will to it. To understand that metaphysics questions are meaningless is the only way to understand by ourselves the problems with which they are concerned.
When the Tractatus restricts the meaningful language to the propositions of science, ethics and metaphysics are eliminated from the realm of representation and therefore from the realm of thought. But this opens at the same time the possibility of the only metaphysics compatible with that attitude, i.e., the one that can be shown “outside” the realm of thought, in feeling and the will.