Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Jimmy Plourde
of relation that necessarily subsists between a meaningful proposition and what is
represented whenever the representing proposition is a meaningful proposition. In the
case of abbilden, I may have the proposition and not have the fact that correspond to it.
In this case there simply isn’t a relation of abbilden. The relation of abbilden is an internal
relation, that is to say a relation such that it cannot not obtain if I have all relata. But in
the case of darstellen, it seems to be different. If I have the proposition, there must be a
represented situation, no matter what. This contrast we may explain by saying that the
represented entities contrarily to the depicted ones exists necessarily of all eternity, they
are some kind of platonist entities. Another possibility consists of saying that it is the
proposition in fact which makes the represented entity exist and this is the reason why
we do always have a relation of darstellen between a proposition and the possibility it
represents. Thus, going along with the mere relation of representation, the proposition
would entertain an operational function in that it builds up the possibility that it henceforth
represent whenever it is spoken out. The advantage of this second reading is that it
provides us with an interesting interpretation of the notion or darstellen, one which is
faithful to the idea of the shadow and the parallel metaphor of the proposition which
constructs a world (4.023).
The only thesis which I consider as being utterly false is thesis (ii). According to me,
it is a widely spread mistake in the secondary literature that what a proposition is said to
represent in the Tractatus is a Sachverhalt. As a matter of fact, if one carefully looks at
the text going through all the occurrences of darstellen in the treatise of the Austrian
philosopher, then he sees that with the exception of three superficial remarks (3.0321,
4.0311 and 4.122(4)) it is never written in the text that what a proposition represent is a
Sachverhalt, but rather, either a Sachlage or a mögliche Sachlage or das Bestehen oder
das Nichtbestehen von Sachverhalten or die Möglichkeit des Bestehens und des
Nichtbestehens von Sachverhalten (see 2.11, 2.201-2.203, 4.021, 4.03, 4.031, 4.04,
4.124, 4.125, 4.462). Of all these remarks, 2.201 and 2.202 are the most striking here:
2.201 Das Bild bildet die Wirklichkeit ab, indem es eine Möglichkeit des
Bestehens und Nichtbestehens von Sachverhalten darstellt.
2.202 Das Bild stellt eine mögliche Sachlage im logischen Raume dar.
What a proposition represents being always something possible, I take the
adjunction of möglich and die Möglichkeit to be superfluous here.
People have failed to notice this point in the literature essentially for two reasons,
the second being partly a consequence of the first. The first reason is that people have
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