Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Is Wittgenstein a Possibilist?
a positive atomic fact, as I have used this term, for then all elementary
propositions would be true. So Wittgenstein needs what in Meinongian terms we
can call a watered-down fact (cf. BB 35-6 on “Shadows of facts”) which a
proposition can represent irrespective of its truth-value. In the Tractatus this role
is played by the Sachlage or situation (2.11, 2.202), and in the special positive
atomic case Wittgenstein uses the special term ‘Sachverhalt’. (P.M. Simons,
1992(1985), p. 334)
As to the nature of this “watered-down fact”, Simons does not tell us anything here.
But since he conceives of states of affairs as complexes of simple objects and, therefore,
admits the thesis (iii), his interpretation commits Wittgenstein to possibilism1 .
3. Critique of the argument
But does the picture theory really commit Wittgenstein to the existence of nonactual
possible states of affairs? I think not. In fact, for reasons I am not going to present here
today, I think that Wittgenstein is much closer to an anti-possibilist position in the
Tractatus than to a possibilist interpretation2 . Thus, at least one of the three theses above
from which we came to the conclusion that Wittgenstein would be a possibilist must be
wrong. But which one(s)?
Thesis (iii) seems to me quite obvious. That states of affairs must be conceived as
some kind of structured concrete entities follows straightforwardly from the following
remarks:
2.01 Der Sachverhalt ist eine Verbindung von Gegenständen. (Sachen, Dingen)
2.03 Im Sachverhalt hängen die Gegenstände ineinander, wie die Glieder einer
Kette.
2.031 Im Sachverhalt verhalten sich die Gegenstände in bestimmter Art und
Weise zueinander.
We do find in the Tractatus some evidences for the thesis (i) as well. The most
speaking one is the following:
2.22 Das Bild stellt dar, was es darstellt, unabhängig von seiner Wahr- oder
Falschheit, durch die Form der Abbildung.
The only question which remains here however problematic is the question of the
nature and force of “darstellen”. In the thesis quoted above, it is taken to be some kind
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