We have now ‘finished’ the TLP, meaning that I have introduced you to all the key ideas, and we have discussed all as thoroughly as we need to, with the exception of the subject, value, and the “Tractatus paradox.” We dealt with this vexing triad again today – and with ethical value in some detail – but there is a perhaps a bit more that needs to be said.
Before heading into the prompt, I should stress the importance of his ethical ideas for three reasons. First, they provide a line of continuity with the later work, insofar as he comes to reject the Tractarian theory (the ontology, semantics, and logic) but not his ethics. (He actually presents his ethics in ordinary language in a lecture that he gave in 1929.) Thus, while his ontology, semantics, and logic appear to fail upon critical analysis, his ethics does not fall with them. Second, his ethics, once grasped, has much to offer and even, in the context of the history of Western ethical thought, is the most compelling of the pseudo-theories that he offers in the TLP. He’s onto something. This is likely not clear from today’s class, in which I tried to hold back and let everyone grapple with things a bit; however, we can build on this in Thursday’s class. Third and finally, this is one of most intense areas of focus for most who work on the TLP today: if the say/show distinction is the central and most vexing idea in the TLP, then the implications of that for ethics is the most central and vexing aspect of that idea.
But back to the prompt: There are four general things about which you might write in your paper on the Tractatus, and they are connected to some general aims that ought to motivate your writing. Here are the four general things:
1. You might summarize the ontology, semantics, and logic – and explain why they matter, i.e., how they develop philosophy in response to the vexing (at the time) question of how language means.
2. You might focus on the exegesis of a particularly unclear – yet compelling – proposition, setting it within the context of Wittgenstein’s Tractarian theory as a whole and in particular with respect to its location in the text’s ‘architecture.’
3. You might focus on what results when the Tractarian theory is applied to one of the perennial problematic concepts of philosophy, such as causality, free will, the limits of the world, the self, or the good.
4. Finally, you might focus on what philosophy is according to the TLP – and on the status of the TLP itself.
In pursuing one of these four topic sources, you should be motivated by the following. First, can you show that you understand this text and, in particular, that you understand how philosophy operates (or at least how it operates in this seminal philosophical text)? Second, you’ll soon be dealing with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which responds critically to the TLP (by demolishing parts of it while making other parts stronger). Thus, do you understand it well enough to move on to a critique of it, and, further, is there some aspect of his early philosophy that you’d like to trace in his later philosophy? Third, you might be motivated by interest in some perennially problematic philosophical conception, such as the self, free will, or the good; if so, you should focus on that.
Much of what you will be doing will be essentially exegetical in nature, and your attempt to engage in exegesis (critical explanation or interpretation of a text) will be answering the basic question, Do I understand X? But keep in mind that all essays – whether in composition or philosophy or the editorial page of the newspaper – must be answering some question and must have a thesis in response to that question (and a thesis is an answer (claim) along with the main supporting reason(s)).
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