Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Regaining the Sense of the Tractatus: Wittgenstein’s Logical Mysticism - Paul Poenicke
The answer was expressed through Wittgenstein’s
discussion of time: beginning with strictly linguistic
analysis, time becomes the face of life’s riddle, emerging
out of logical concerns of form, object, and fact. Through
Tolstoy’s mystical temporal linguistics, time is also the face
of the solution as well, leading to increasingly paradoxical
language as Wittgenstein extends beyond the effable.
Upon writing and surmounting his propositions,
Wittgenstein did not imitate Carnap, and begin a
revolutionary linguistic research experiment, but rather
followed Tolstoy’s Christ, becoming poor and teaching
disadvantaged children. Without an adequate
understanding of the Tractarian ladder’s composition, we
will fail to see what this action points towards: the sense of
the Tractatus and why the ladder was necessary in the first
place—to get beyond the facts to reach the higher.
References
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Tolstoy, Leo. The Gospel In Brief. Translated by Isabel Hapgood.
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