Blackwell Reference Online

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(1889–1951) Austrian philosopher who spent much of his life in Cambridge, England. Wittgenstein was interested in metaphysics throughout his philosophical life, but his interest was not that of a metaphysician. He wrote: ‘In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical errors, they contain so much truth’ (Wittgenstein, 1967, sect, 460). Although that remark refers in a general way to philosophical errors, he had in mind metaphysics, conceived to include all inquiries into the relation between thought and reality, and the essential nature of things. I consider here his early and later views about ‘philosophical errors’, and the question what truth such errors contain. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) Wittgenstein claims that ‘most of the propositions and questions written about philosophical things are not false but nonsensical’, and that they rest on failure to understand the logic of our language (4.003). At the end of the book, he says that the correct method in philosophy would be to say nothing philosophical, and whenever someone tries to say something metaphysical, one should show him that he has failed to assign a meaning to some signs in his propositions (6.53). The misunderstandings of the logic of our language, referred to in the earlier remark, are what make it possible for us not to notice that we are using words with no meaning. ... log in or subscribe to read full text