Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Is Wittgenstein a Possibilist?
failed to acknowledge the distinction Wittgenstein draws between “das Bestehen” and
“ein bestehender”. Along with Simons 1985, I think that Wittgenstein meant something
different when he used bestehen in the substantive form than when he did when he used
it as an adjective. Das Bestehen eines Sachverhaltes is not a bestehender Sachverhalt.
A bestehender Sachverhalt is a complex. It is an entity which consists of objects
combined in a specific manner. Either it exists or it doesn’t. Das Bestehen eines
Sachverhaltes is what is the case when the Sachverhalt exists. Das Nichtbestehen is
what is the case when the Sachverhalt doesn’t exist. In the first case, I have a positive
fact, in the second I have a negative fact. As Simons pointed out and as it stands in the
Tractatus (2.06), only facts are said in the Tractatus to be positive and negative. To talk
about concrete entities such as states of affairs as being the case simply doesn’t make
sense. The second reason is that there is a curious unanimity in the literature in saying
without relying on any strong evidence for that claim that a Sachlage is some kind of a
nonatomic Sachverhalt. Given 2.201 and 2.202 quoted above, and given 2.11 as well, it
is however obvious that, once the distinction between “das Bestehen” and “bestehender”
has been acknowledged, a Sachlage may no longer be considered as some kind of a
nonatomic concrete entity.
4. Concluding remarks
How does the fact that what a proposition represents isn’t a state of affairs refute the
thesis that Wittgenstein is a possibilist? The point here is the following. Despite the fact
that propositions do represent entities independently of what is the case, the entities
depicted, the situations, are not, like possibilia, things that may exist in the actual world.
They are just possibilities of obtaining of states of affairs and not these obtaining of
states of affairs. i.e. not the fact that the states of affairs do not obtain, nor the states
affairs themselves. Moreover, the idea that represented situations are not platonic
entities but constructed entities makes them closer to the abstract entities and worlds
postulated by the ersatzists than to the possibilist’s possibilia.
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