Royal Institute of Philosophy

"Sachverhalt" and "Gegenstand" Are Dead

Author(s): E. F. Thompkins
Source: Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 256 (Apr., 1991), pp. 217-234
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy
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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand

are Dead

E. F. THOMPKINS

Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are dead. Wittgenstein announces their

passing in Philosophische Untersuchungen and he of all people should
know when the brainchildren of his youth were no more. But it is
surprising that he does not accord them more generous obsequies than a
fragmented, offhand obituary. Their existence was a logical necessity
in his erstwhile scheme of things, not a dispensable phenomenon of the
contingent world:
Even if the world is infinitely complex, so that every fact consists of
infinitely many Sachverhalte and every Sachverhalt is composed of

infinitely many Gegenstiinde, even then there would have to be

Gegenstdnde and Sachverhalte (T 4.2211)1
Yet he now accepts their mortality with equanimity and seems inclined
to dismiss them as the misconceived sowing of his philosophical wild
oats. Nevertheless he refers to them only obliquely or incidentally as
though reluctant to remind himself that they had been destined to play
a central role in ending philosophical speculation once and for all. But
does he recognize them in death? Did he ever recognize them in life?

The story of Sachverhalt and Gegenstand has the makings of a

philosophical fairy tale as psychologically complex as any of the Kinder-

und Hausmarchen collected by the brothers Grimm. Wittgenstein

records the demise of changelings whom he never fathered whilst his
true offspring continue unacknowledged to counsel and guide his later

years.

If reality is broken up into its constituent parts it is logically necessary,

Wittgenstein argues in the Tractatus, that eventually there remain bits
which cannot be split up any further. He calls such a bit a 'Gegenstand'.
1 This article is based on my reading of the German texts of Wittgenstein's

Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung and Philosophische Untersuchungen and

not on the published English translations. I identify references by means of
Wittgenstein's section number preceded by PU for Philosophische Untersuchungen and T for the Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung which is now
usually called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus-Tractatus for short.
Philosophy 66 1991

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217

E. F. Thompkins

The first time he mentions Gegenstinde (T 2.01) he equates them

parenthetically with Sachen and Dinge. 'Sache' denotes a lifeless or
abstract object; 'Ding' can signify a living creature. Either a Sache or a

Ding is however a conventional mundane object whereas Wittgensteinian Gegenstande are supposed to be transcendental entities which
have no material properties. All states of affairs are contingent; the
world is whatever it happens to be (T 1). If it is not to disintegrate there
must be something beyond what is the case capable of underpinning
reality. This is the substance, the form, of the world which consists of

the simple objects:

Objects are stable and constant; configurations are mutable and

transient (T 2.0271).
Wittgenstein does not pause to explain how the physical world could
consist of non-physical objects or how we could know that it did and
invites us in due course to consider spatial objects (raumliche Gegen-

stinde) such as tables, chairs and books (T 3.1431). He does distinguish the objects as 'rdumlich' but the use of 'Gegenstand' is
confusing. It adds to the confusion to describe objects at least potentially visible as colourless (T 2.0232). Yet colour itself, along with space

and time, are forms of object (T 2.0251); two shades of blue are

separate objects.
An object is autonomous in that it can play a part in any possible state
of affairs but this autonomy gives it no more than the possibility of
existence. In order to exist it must have external properties-the prop-

erties which that object alone possesses-and the simple object cannot
have external properties because it has no body on which to hang them

and no location in which it might exist. Space might conceivably be

empty but it is inconceivable that a thing (Ding) should be nowhere
(T 2.013). So too with other properties: A speck in the field of vision
does not have to be any particular colour but it must have some sort of
colour; a sound must have a pitch; a tangible object must have a degree

of hardness and so on (T 2.0131). So everything has got to be both

something and somewhere but what its properties specifically are does
not become manifest until it concatenates with at least one other object.

Then the properties with which each object is now endowed can be
perceived and described.

The properties that are peculiar to a particular object do not however

identify it as that sort of object. In order to identify an object generically
its external properties do not have to be known but its internal proper-

ties do. A property is internal if it is unthinkable that the object

possessing it might not possess it (T 4.123). For example it is unthinkable that two shades of blue which relate to each other as lighter and
darker should not do so.

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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

It might seem that Wittgenstein's indiscriminate use of 'Gegenstand'

to denote both a logically extrapolated object and a tangible object

generates a major anomaly in his account of objects and exposes him to
the charge of perpetrating the error that he identifies as common in

philosophy-that of applying one sign to more than one symbol

(T 3.323). He seems inclined to acknowledge his guilt, seeing the

distinction that he draws between internal properties and external

relationships as evidence of a fluctuation in his use of the word 'Gegen-

stand' (T 4.123). The commonly held view is that examples of Wittgensteinian objects cannot be produced; that ordinary objects are
complexes which must be reduced to simple objects before they can be
named. This approach leads inevitably to questions of what the physical world ultimately consists of; to the demise of philosophy and the

absorption of the corpse into science. Any stopping place along this
road depends on what Wittgenstein expressly proscribes-the arbitrary
determination of reality by means of language:
If the world had no substance, whether a sentence had sense would

depend on whether another sentence was true (T 2.0211).

But there is no need to accept Wittgenstein's implausible view of

substance which he reaches through believing his own propaganda
about Gegenstiinde. There is no problem if external and internal properties are ascribed, as on his own reckoning they must be, to the same

specimen of what he identifies as spatial objects and calls variously

'Sachen', 'Dinge' and 'Gegenstinde'. Internal properties identify the
object generically; external properties distinguish that particular object
from any other of the same genus. Neither the internal nor the external

properties of an object can exist without the other. The two uses of

'object' denote the halves of a whole, not discrete entities.

All this takes place in this world not in some logico-metaphysical

realm beyond the reach of the senses. It makes sense even in Tractatus
terms to talk about mundane objects such as tables, chairs and books. A
chair is identifiable generically by its internal property of chairness no

matter what it is made of or what its external properties happen

contingently to be. Two chairs need have no constituent material in
common-one might be moulded in plastic and the other constructed
of wood, fabric and glue. It would be as unrealistic to break them up
into their constituent parts and expect to be enlightened concerning
chairs as it would to deny that there are objects called 'chairs' by
speakers of English.
Wittgenstein stipulates only that there must be Gegenstdnde; he does
not stipulate where they are or what sort of existence they have. We can

forget about primitive objects as he does-if logically they must exist

they can safely be left to logic; there is no need to agonize over tracking
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E. F. Thompkins

them down. An object needs different simultaneous levels of existence

in order to be a physical object-its objectivity as object and its subjectivity as particular object. Subliminal states of existence have nothing

to contribute to Wittgenstein's account of reality; his reduction of

existence to objects and of language to names operates this side of the
threshold. The process is linguistic; Wittgenstein does not take saw and
scalpel in hand and set to work on bits of the world. Not that such crude
tools would serve his purpose even if he did. What makes the division of
matter into its ultimate components a nonsensical proposition is that it

would have to take place beyond the reach of sensory perception by

proxy of some sort of instrumentation which would produce effects no

less symbolical than those produced by language.

A limit to analysis is set by his constraints on what language can do. If
it attempts to do more than concatenate the names of objects, language
ceases to have any reality to depict and becomes meaningless. Accordingly, I can analyse a chair down to its chairness but I cannot analyse it
any further and retain the object called 'chair'. 'Chair' is an unanalysa-

ble sign which names an unanalysable object. Wittgenstein nowhere

stipulates that simples are to be destroyed by analysis-on the contrary
they are the point at which analysis stops. If analysis stops at a much
earlier point than is commonly assumed to be necessary, that is not the

fault of Wittgenstein's method. Every combination is contingent

(T 2.021). If objects were complex they would be contingent

agglomerations of simples and therefore impossible to identify. To say

that a chair is not a simple because it is an agglomeration of simpler bits

and pieces misses the point. Chair is simple as chair; there are no
simpler chairnesses into which it might be divided.
Bewitched by the perceived necessity of unitary simples, Wittgenstein never does come to realize the implications for Gegenstand of his
insistence on the duality of internal and external properties. He comes

closest to exorcizing the spell in PU 47 and PU 60 when he turns to

examine the meaning of 'composite' but he drifts off into other concerns
and fails to follow the argument through. He equates Gegenstand with

Sache and Ding by default, not conviction. There is no other way in

which he could maintain the postulated nexus between language and
reality. Without them he would have nothing from which to extrapolate
his logically necessary though abstract objects. So the objects that make
their existence perceptible to the senses are phenomena of conventional
space-time. The sole metamorphosis that they would undergo according to Wittgenstein's account would be from simple object isolated in

logical space to object concatenated with other objects in physical

space. That would not be an internal change in an object but an external

change in its relation to other objects which it could fulfil only by

acquiring distinctive properties as an individual. But this would stand

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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

reality on its head; the process is more plausible viewed in reverseobjects shedding their spatio-temporal individuality on the way to
generic categorization.
A Wittgensteinian object has a certain affinity with a universal
viewed not as a property of objects but as a neurophysiological operation within the brain of the perceiver. In the dark all cats are grey. A

rose is red only to the beholder; rose as Platonic Form or Wittgensteinian object or what Russell calls a'physical object in physical space'2
is bound to be colourless since it is not visible. Repeated red roses plus
red other-objects, though they may vary as to the intensity and the
wavelength of the light they reflect, stimulate the brain via the optic

nerves in a way which is the same on each occasion; or at least has

enough sameness within the degrees of discrimination of which the
brain is capable for the so-called 'universal' red to be identified. The
phenomenon is internal to the perceiver; it is necessary therefore to
speak of a universal as the same phenomenon repeated. It must be

'same' and not 'identical'. I do not carry a colour chart in my mind with
which to identify by comparison each specimen of red which comes my

way. I recognize red directly; that is to say, the same neurons or

whatever are activated on each occasion. Any problem with 'same'
arises from interpreting universals as properties of objects.

Pace the idealists, a universal has no reality in the physical world.

What it might be said to have is what Brentano calls 'intentional
inexistence', a notion which he traces back through the mediaeval
Scholastics to Aristotle who spoke of the sensed object as being, minus
its matter, within the sensing subject:

This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively of mental

phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We
can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are

those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within

themselves.3

Intentionally inexistent objects meet Wittgenstein's stipulation of

absence of physical properties. There is no need to postulate a metaphysical realm beyond the limits of the physical world or beyond the
capacity of language to picture it. Thought is language and 'objects' is

what the later Wittgenstein calls a 'language-game' (PU II v, final

paragraph); the relation between it and the 'sense-impressions' lan-

guage-game is complicated. It seems straightforward enough when he

15.

2 B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1970),

3 F. Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 89.
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E. F. Thompkins

first proposes his theory of Gegenstand. The world is a construct of

language; objects form the substance of the world and exist only as

names. When names combine in an elementary sentence objects

acquire sense-perceptible properties by concatenating in what he calls a

'Sachverhalt' (T 2.01; 2.0231).

The word has caused his translators a great deal of difficulty. Dictionaries suggest 'circumstance(s)', 'state of affairs', 'facts of the case',
'state of the case'. Ogden translates, after Russell, as 'atomic fact'; Pears
and McGuiness as 'state of affairs'. The latter is the more accurate but it

has an unfortunate consequence: Wittgenstein uses 'Sachlage' when he

wishes to signify 'state of affairs' in general; having used 'state of affairs'
for 'Sachverhalt', Pears and McGuiness are reduced to the regrettably
debased 'situation' for 'Sachlage'. Ogden's imputing the connotation of

'fact' to 'Sachverhalt' opens a Pandora's box of problems. A major

problem is revealed by what de Laguna calls 'an error of the first
magnitude for which Mr Russell is apparently responsible'. This is to
treat Sachverhalt as a simple fact and Tatsache as a compound fact,

translating the first by 'atomic fact' and the second by 'fact'. De Laguna
points out that this is by no means the whole difference between them:

A Sachverhalt is a logically possible condition of affairs, which may

or may not exist in reality. A Tatsache, or fact, is the existence (or

non-existence) of Sachverhalte (2; cf. 2.06). This distinction is

maintained with general, though not perfect, consistency.4

De Laguna is a little hard on Russell in blaming him for Ogden's 'error'
and much too easy on Wittgenstein who fails to maintain a coherent
view of Tatsache and its relation to Sachverhalt. Dietrich, untroubled
by problems of translation, bluntly denies that Sachverhalte are facts:
Sachverhalte sind keine Tatsachen.5

Dietrich notes that Grimm's Deutsches Worterbuch explains

'Sachverhalt' by means of the Latin expression status rerum implying
that it is not things which are under consideration but their relation one
to the other. I propose 'circumstance' for 'Sachverhalt', intending the
less usual use of the singular noun to underline the technical nature of
the term in the context of the Tractatus. A circumstance is a con-

figuration of objects and the simplest bit of reality that can exist.
Circumstances (Sachverhalte) then go to make up a state of affairs
4 T. de Laguna, 'Review of Tractatus', in I. M. Copi and R. W. Beard,
Essays on Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1966), 26.
5 R.-A. Dietrich, Sprache und Wirklichkeit in Wittgensteins 'Tractatus'
(Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1973), 20.
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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

(Sachlage) and states of affairs (Sachlagen) make up total reality

(Wirklichkeit) which equates with the world (Welt). Skipping the
intermediate stages, the world is the totality of existent circumstances

(T 2.04).

The objects which concatenate in a circumstance are real; that does

not necessarily make a circumstance real. Wittgenstein wants us to
believe that from the stage of circumstance onwards we are in the real
world and the problems which now arise are problems of the real world,
naively understood so to be. But all is not plain sailing with Sachverhalt
which even before its launch in T 2 is threatened with foundering on the
reef of Tatsache. Tatsache surfaces in the second sentence of the

Tractatus and Wittgenstein loses no time in developing several incompatible views of it:
The world is whatever it happens to be (T 1); the fact is that it is the

totality of existent circumstances (T 2; 2.04) and by extension therefore the totality of the objects which form the circumstances (T 2.01).
But the world is the totality of facts not things (T 1.1); it is however
nonsense to speak of the totality of facts because 'fact' signifies a formal
concept (T 4.1272). Nevertheless the totality of facts determines what
is and what is not the case (T 1.12). Any fact might or might not be the

case (T 1.21); a positive fact is the existence of circumstances, a

negative fact their non-existence (T 2.06). Clearly a fact is not a
circumstance even though the totality of facts equals the totality of
circumstances. But facts are circumstances; any given fact might consist of an infinite number of circumstances (T 4.2211). A circumstance
is depictable but the existence or non-existence of a circumstance i.e. a
fact, being a metaphysical notion, is not. But we do create pictures of

facts (T 2.1); a picture is a fact (T 2.141) and a fact is a picture

(T 2.16). Thought is facts logically depicted (T 3)-we cannot think

illogically (T 3.03); nevertheless the logic of facts cannot be represented (T 4.0312). In order to be a picture a fact must have something

in common with what is pictured (T 2.16); obviously the two cannot

have both a mere common element and common identity-in any case
common identity is a nonsensical notion (T 5.5303). Only facts can
express meaning (Sinn), a sentence-sign being a fact (T 3.14; 3.142).
That a sentence-sign is a fact is concealed by its appearance on the page
(T 3.143); its nature can be made plain by imagining it as made up of
objects instead of words (T 3.1431) and the nature of a sentence can be

understood by thinking of hieroglyphs which depict the facts they

describe (T 4.016).

Wittgenstein's account of fact might seem to support his claim in the

penultimate paragraph of the Tractatus that he has been talking nonsense. There is however a simple explanation capable of dissolving the
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E. F. Thompkins

paradoxes, rendering redundant many a wordy exegesis, and showing

how it is that

... after all, Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what
cannot be said ...6
Wittgenstein is hoist with his own petard:
In ordinary language it happens with uncommon frequency that the
same word signifies in various ways-therefore belongs to different
symbols ... Thus there easily arise the most fundamental confusions

(of which the whole of philosophy is full) (T 3.323; 3.324).

He uses the sign 'fact' to designate at least three disparate symbols: the

concept 'fact'; any individual fact which establishes the concept and
belongs to language; a circumstance or state of affairs which ostensibly
belongs to reality. For example he follows Frege in insisting that fact as

concept-or for that matter as language-cannot be described but only

shown.7 But there is no reason why fact as circumstance should not be

described, even to its logical structure. If it could not the language

would be full of unintelligible holes. On balance Wittgenstein favours

the notion of fact as reality, seeing the world as determined by the

totality of its constituent facts. Common sense suggests that this is
putting the cart before the horse. The physical nature of the world
determines what the facts of the world are, not vice versa. Once again
Wittgenstein makes a sign serve more than one symbol. The language

user creates his own world (T 5.6; 5.61; 5.62):

The world of the fortunate man is a different world from that of the

unfortunate (T 6.43).
Accordingly there are two sorts of reality as far as the Tractatus is
concerned: my world which is co-extensive with my language and
consists of those circumstances that I am capable of depicting in
language; the total possible world which consists of the totality of
circumstances. Wittgenstein calls the first 'Realitit' and the second
'Wirklichkeit'. The difference between the two is lost both in Ogden

and in Pears and McGuinness. Realitat is empirical (T 5.5561);

Wirklichkeit is the objective world (T 2.063). Wittgenstein does not

offer any clarification of the expression 'empirische Realitat' and it
remains ambiguous. Since it is empirical, Realitat is amenable to
extension through new experience. To talk of extending my Realitat
6 B. Russell, Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

7 G. Frege, 'On Concept and Object', in P. Geach and M. Black, Transla-

tions from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Blackwell,

1980), 42-43.

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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

might imply that I add new elements of Wirklichkeit to the world or that
I extend my grasp of existing Wirklichkeit. There is no reason why these
should be mutually exclusive and to do one could be to do the other also
since new experience on my part might be of some new element that I
have added to Wirklichkeit.

The possibility arises that his confusing the two sorts of reality rather
than reality and fact is the reason for Wittgenstein's use of one sign to

signify more than one symbol. But this will not do because the confusion arises within his account of Wirklichkeit. Plochmann and Law-

son propose 'prime fact' for Sachverhalt and 'derivative fact' for
Tatsache with 'Fact1' and 'Fact2' as alternatives. They accept that
Wittgenstein says that Tatsachen are composed of Sachverhalte but see
the relationship as functional rather than that of whole and parts.8 But
this will not solve the problem because Wittgenstein ascribes incom-

patible properties to Tatsache alone. Fact1 and Fact2 might more

feasibly represent Tatsache as reality and Tatsache as second-order

view of reality. But the double confusion inherent in Tatsache on the

one hand and Tatsache in its relation to Sachverhalt on the other would

remain to plague the interpretation. There is no doubt that Wittgenstein sees fact as reality and adopts in doing so an untenable position. A
fact is a linguistic phenomenon; a statement of what is the case. It is not

an object or a configuration of objects-as Strawson points out, one

cannot spill coffee on a fact.9
Wittgenstein's view of fact as language is not determinate enough to
allow his view of fact as reality to be ignored. The safer course is to

ignore both. His account loses nothing of consequence and gains

greatly in clarity if all reference to fact is excised from it. Reality is then

portrayed as a sequence of stages of increasing complexity:

Gegenstand > Sachverhalt > Sachlage > Wirklichkeit

Object > Circumstance > State of affairs > Reality.
But that is not the end of the story. Justification is still required and is

not forthcoming for his inclusion of any stage between objects and
reality. All language is metaphor since the symbol is never what it
symbolizes.
The idea that we could prise the world off our concepts is incoherent;
for with what conception of the world should we then be left?10
8 G. K. Plochmann and J. B. Lawson, Terms in theirPropositional Contexts

in Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962), 37-39, 131-132.
9 P. F. Strawson, 'Truth', in Proceedings oftheAristotelian Society (Supple-

ment 24, 1950), 135.

10 A. J. Ayer, The Central Questions of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Pel-

ican, 1981), 49.

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E. F. Thompkins

There is no problem with prising our concepts off the world. Language

does not need to be matched by reality; if it did we should have no

history, no literature, no religion. Whatever approach we make to the

world must be through language-but this is what Wittgenstein proposes to do in the Tractatus. If he had stuck to circumstance as fact and

both as language he could have developed a coherent account of their

relation to reality identified as the physical world composed of objects.
It is only because he attempts to insert circumstances and facts between
objects and reality that problems such as those that I have been reviewing arise. To introduce circumstance is to shift from reality to symbol.
But here the symbol is at only one remove from reality; a proxy for

reality. Language can never get any closer to reality than that. To

introduce fact is to shift two stages away from reality; to symbolize a

symbol of reality and to do so to no purpose. Quine suggests that in
ordinary usage 'true sentence' carries as much weight as 'fact'; the claim
that true propositions are those that state facts is spurious in that facts
face the same identity problems as propositions. Accordingly:

. . . there is no call to posit facts, certainly not over and above

propositions, nor any difficulty in absorbing or paraphrasing away

the word.11

Freed from the gratuitous complication of fact Wittgenstein's method is

simple: He proposes to use language to process language into a form in
which its relation to reality is directly revealed, thereby revealing reality

itself. This takes place when ordinary sentences have been analysed
into the elementary sentences of which he takes them to be truth
functions, an elementary sentence being the linguistic counterpart of a

circumstance. It is clear that reality is not revealed if the analysis

proceeds to a stage at which the relation between sentence and circumstance no longer holds. Yet this is what interpreters of the Tractatus
commonly propose. Pears says that the assertion that his watch is on the

table implies many other propositions concerning, for example, the

mechanism inside the watch.12 Agreed, there could be problems with
the possessive pronoun and the definite article, perhaps even with the

copula, but 'watch on table' is as far as the sentence can be analysed

before the meaning of its three simple signs and the relation of each to
the others are lost. Kenny speaks of analysing the sentence 'My fork is
to the left of my knife' into a series of simpler statements which will end

only with symbols that denote non-complex objects.13 But neither 'fork'

l W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T.

Press, 1964), 246-248.
12 D. Pears, Wittgenstein (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1981), 58.
13 A. Kenny, Wittgenstein (Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1975), 6.
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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

nor 'knife' can be analysed into simpler symbols and still perform its
function of identifying an object. Neither Kenny nor Pears takes the
point that at an early stage of his proposed analysis all contact is lost
with the ostensible subject of the discourse. It was on such grounds that
Stebbing took the physicists to task for their improper use of ordinary

language to describe extraordinary states of affairs. Eddington for

example, one of the chief culprits, describes stepping on a plank as 'like

stepping on a swarm of flies' because 'the plank has no solidity of

substance'. This denial of solidity is nonsensical because:
... the common usage of language enables us to attribute a meaning

to the phrase 'a solid plank'; but there is no common usage of

language that provides a meaning for the word 'solid' that would
make sense to say that the plank on which I stand is not solid.14
The notion that sentences such as those quoted by Pears and by Kenny,
the meaning of which is already plain, need to be analysed into simpler
sentences before their meaning becomes plain is nonsensical because to
do so is to destroy their meaning not make it plain. Wittgenstein does

not advocate such a procedure for our everyday sentences; they are

perfectly well ordered (geordnet) just as they are (T 5.5563). He

assumes that his own statements in the Tractatus are capable as they
stand of conveying his meaning and of being seen for the nonsense that

he disingenuously claims they are; he proposes mundane objects and

their relationships as a paradigm of the sentence-sign (T 3.1431).
In short his account of the analysis of complexes into simples
assumes no more than that simples will appear when they do appear. He
nowhere advocates destroying language in the attempt to find out how
it works. Commentators have assumed that the state of linguistic
simplicity stipulated by Wittgenstein can be found only at some logically extrapolated point beyond the limits of everyday speech. None of
them makes plain where this terra incognita might lie. It must by
definition be within language, otherwise it disappears from consideration, and moreover within the ultimate zone of language-there cannot
be anything simpler beyond it. But in that case we cannot know,
according to Wittgenstein, that the region of ultimate simplicity has
been reached. A limit must be viewed from both sides before we can

know that it is a limit but we cannot step across the boundary of

language into metaphysical territory and continue to use language to
examine in retrospect whether the limit of language has been reached.
Language needs an anchor in reality and it is objects that provide the

anchor.

52.

14 L. S. Stebbing, Philosophy and the Physicists (London: Methuen, 1937),

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E. F. Thompkins

Objects form circumstances and circumstances are the fundamentals

of discourse since they do not exist until they are depicted in sentences.

But the circumstances are arbitrary; there is no logical reason why

objects concatenate in the way they do. And sentences are freestanding

and do not require the support of circumstances-even in the Tractatus sentences that depict non-existent circumstances have sense. As
Wittgenstein later comes to realize, world and language are not directly
necessary one to the other. From the very beginning of Philosophische
Untersuchungen he seeks to distance himself from the view that language is based on words meaning things. He now considers this to be a

primitive notion of a more primitive language than ours. It is not

however, in spite of his implying that it is, the view of language that he

projects in the Tractatus. That language is anything but primitive,

being colloquial speech (Umgangssprache) which
. . is a part of, and no less complicated than, the human organism

(T 4.002).

Certainly it is fundamental to his Tractatus view that an unanalysable

word names an unanalysable object but, as I have tried to show, this

process readily proceeds within ordinary speech. Wittgenstein makes
an unconvincing attempt to throw the baby out with the bathwater by
pretending that he ever maintained that this was all language consisted
of. He did not attempt in the Tractatus to give a convincing account of a
primitive object, taking his claim of logical necessity to be sufficient
proof of its existence. So he has no respectable position from which to
retreat in now confining his interest in objects to the mundane variety.
He is doing no more than formalize the attitude to Gegenstand he had

already adopted which did not imply a determinate form for every
specimen of a given object:
If I am shown various leaves and told 'That's called "leaf"', I acquire
a concept of leaf-form, a picture of it in my mind. But what then does
the picture of a leaf look like that shows no determinate form but 'that

which is common to all leaf-forms'? What shade is the 'pattern in my

mind' of the colour green-of that which is common to all shades of

green? (PU 73).

Wittgenstein is tacitly accepting objects as a combination of internal

and external properties. 'Leaf' or 'green' names a logical object that
manifests itself as mundane objects. Each needs the other though the
first is never more than symbol and the second never merely symbol but

always symbol plus symbolized. In terms of Philosophische Untersuchungen this is a language-game and occasions on which the language-game is played. The 'leaf' language-game has the backing, actual
or potential, of the object leaf; its rule is the possibility of reference to
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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

an empirically observable object the myriad mundane manifestations of

which have in common only their logical objectivity as specimens of

leaf.

One reason why language is not just a matter of giving names to

objects is that attaching a label to a thing does not reveal what happens
next (PU 26; 27). But this is what the Tractatus says. An object can be

named though it cannot exist in isolation. Its name can then be used
together with the names of other objects in an endless variety of

sentence patterns. It is perverse of Wittgenstein to imply (PU 23) that

his account of the multiplicity of language-games cancels what he said
in the Tractatus about the structure of language. He must know that he
is now talking about something quite different-how complexes func-

tion as complexes, not the analysis of complexes into simples. He

confuses himself with his talk of language-tools and fails to distinguish

between the construction of tools, the uses of tools and the things that

might be made with the tools. His box of tools has not changed-it is
still everyday language in all its complexity-but he is now interested in
how the tools work whereas he used to be interested in how they were
made. He was not and is still not interested in what can be made with
them.

He now claims that he was held captive by the notion of language as a

picture of nature (PU 115). He disparages his attempt in T 4.5 to

formulate a general sentence-pattern which with an appropriate choice

of vocabulary would depict whatever was the case in the world (PU
114); such a device would do no more than retrace a pattern imposed on
nature. But he produced no language-picture of nature in the Tractatus
and imposed no language-pattern on the world. The difference is that
the nexus between language and nature was determinate in theory but
non-existent in practice; it is now indeterminate in theory and non-

existent in practice. Language was autonomous by default; it is now

autonomous by design. In neither case has he the slightest interest in
projecting a view of nature; his concern is solely with the projection

apparatus. In the Tractatus this produces a sharp latent image; in

Philosophische Untersuchungen an out of focus latent image. Neither
produces a view of the world; together they produce views of language
remarkable for their ostensible polarization and effective correlation.
His attempt to dissociate himself from the Tractatus view of objects
fares no better because it is not what he intended it to be. If a circum-

stance consists of objects arbitrarily concatenated, a world that consists

of the totality of circumstances necessarily consists of the totality of the
objects concatenated in those circumstances. What Wittgenstein's poetical account of the ultimate simplicity of the cosmos amounts to is that
an object cannot logically exist in a universe of its own and this means
merely, as he tacitly admits, that he could not say what such a universe
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E. F. Thompkins

would look like (T 3.031). In any case Realitit is empirical and all we
know of Wirklichkeit is what our senses tell us directly or indirectly. So
all we can talk about is matters of science and we must keep quiet about

the rest. The later Wittgenstein agrees but decides that empirical
matters are of no interest to him (PU 109); he accepts the commonsense
view of the world but rejects it as a matter of philosophical concern. It is
how we talk about objects and their relations that interests him. But it
was so in the Tractatus:

The aim of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philos-

ophy is not doctrine but an activity (T 4.112).

He makes heavy weather of the attempt to dissociate himself from his
Tractatus view that a word should name a simple object. Someone who
takes this view, he suggests (PU 39; 44), might be expected to argue as
follows: The word 'Nothung' is an example of what usually passes for a

proper name. The sentence 'Nothung has a sharp edge' makes sense

whether the sword is still whole or is already shattered-that is to say

when there is nothing to be named and therefore no name. There must
consequently be words that name simples into which Nothung can be
divided and so keep the sense of the word 'Nothung' alive and these are

the real names.

However, the example that he puts into the mouth of the imaginary
proponent of logically proper names fails to make Wittgenstein's point
because it would not make the other's either. Nothung never existed
and could not therefore cease to exist. Any problem with the name is
inherent in the naming and does not arise from the destruction of the
object named. Even accepting for the sake of argument the sufficient
reality of the sword does not rescue the point because 'Nothung' lacks
the necessary uniqueness of reference. 'Nothung' is the name invented
by Wagner for two swords which figure in Der Ring des Nibelungen:

Siegmund's, shattered on Wotan's spear in the encounter that costs

Siegmund his life, and his son Siegfried's, forged from the melted down
fragments of his father's sword. At any given moment in imaginary

space-time one Nothung might be shattered and the existence of

Nothung be maintained by the other.
Wittgenstein is being disingenuous if he intends his own theory of

logical simples to be included in his strictures. In the Tractatus he

offers an explanation why 'Nothung has a sharp edge' makes sense, an
explanation that his later exposition neither improves nor significantly

amends: A sentence is by definition an arrangement of words that

makes sense. Even in the Tractatus sense does not depend on reference
but only on the logical possibility of reference. 'Nothung has a sharp
edge' describes a thinkable state of affairs and therefore makes sense;

the question of its referential truth does not arise. In short, sense

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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

attaches to symbol; but that is to say no more than that there is symbol.

There cannot be two separate things, symbol and the sense of the
symbol:

If I think in language, I do not have 'meanings' in the back of my

mind besides the linguistic expression; on the contrary, the language
itself is the vehicle for the thought (PU 329).

The symbol is its own sense; in Wittgenstein's later terminology it

equates with its use. If sense was separate from symbol there would be
no possibility of referential meaning. He claims (PU 40) that the word
'meaning' is being used anti-linguistically (sprachwidnrg) if it is taken to
signify the thing that corresponds to the name. To confuse the meaning
of the name with the bearer of the name implies that the meaning of a
name dies when the bearer of the name dies and this is manifest

nonsense.

It appears to be nonsense only because Wittgenstein artificially sets

up a non sequitur. His surely disingenuous argument depends for its

validity on the very contention that he is seeking to discredit-that a

word in everyday speech has, or should have, a single determinate

meaning. If a word has a number of connotations, one of which is to

designate when accompanied by an ostensive gesture a particular living
being, there is no difficulty over one meaning dying and the rest living
on. Wittgenstein is a case in point: When he was alive his name meant at
least two separate things-Ludwig Wittgenstein the physical being and
a Wittgenstein of the type 'by their fruits ye shall know them'. When
Wittgenstein died the first meaning died with him. His name ceased to

have either reference or use as an accompaniment to an ostensive

gesture, becoming therefore meaningless in terms of both the Tractatus and Philosophische Untersuchungen. But not senseless; it could
still be used in discourse ostensibly about Ludwig Wittgenstein the

man. The second meaning took on a life of its own with the potential for
waxing and waning as Wittgenstein's works waxed or waned in public
esteem.

As he admits in PU 43, Wittgenstein has no justification for claiming

that the bearer of a name is not the meaning of a name. If that is how the
word is used, that is what it means. This meaning does not prevent the
word meaning whatever else it is used to mean. But what is the thing
that is to be named? Wittgenstein examines at some length the question
of 'the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed'-what he

says he called 'Gegenstande' in the Tractatus-and comes to the con-

clusion that it makes no sense to talk absolutely about the simple parts
of a chair for example. The reason for this is that 'simple' means 'not
composite' and it is the composite that causes the problem as much as

the simple. In PU 60 he almost solves the problem, coming close to

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E. F. Thompkins

seeing 'broom' as an unanalysable name and broom therefore as a

simple object even though it consists of a head and a handle.
Language consistently dominates the approach to reality of both the

early and the later Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus it is the logical

connection between elementary sentence and circumstance that holds

his attention-but only as a theoretical extrapolation. Elementary sen-

tences picture circumstances and thereby reveal reality itself. For

elementary sentences simple signs are needed. Grant that the generic
names of mundane objects are unanalysable simples and Wittgenstein's
later position is established. The conceptualizing power of language, of
ordinary everyday language stripped of metaphysical gloss, creates our

view of the world. Such ontological knowledge as we have is of an

objectivity constituted by language:

Existence is articulated in grammar (PU 371).

Grammar says what sort of object (Gegenstand) something is.

(Theology as grammar) (PU 373).
Man's words do not create things; they say what things are as far as man
is concerned. The quasi-reality thus articulated is not finite; it can be

expanded or developed or amended through empirical inquiry. But

that, Wittgenstein insists, is science. Philosophy looks to the language
part of the process, seeking to ensure that the medium on which the

ontological message ultimately depends does not confuse the issue.

Philosophy is a struggle against the way language bewitches our wits
(PU 109); the conversion of covert nonsense into manifest nonsense
(PU 464). Less picturesquely but no less decisively philosophy aims
not to produce statements but to clarify them (T 4.112). Both agree
that the task of the philosopher is to sort out what the language is

actually saying from what it appears to be saying. Nothing is seen to be

wrong in either case with the mechanics of the language. Every sentence of our colloquial language is 'logically perfectly ordered (logisch
vollkommen geordnet)' (T 5.5563), is 'in order (in Ordnung)' (PU 98),
just as it is. As far as the meaning is concerned, in the first case it is
indeterminate and the complex sentence needs to be analysed into
elementary sentences before the meaning becomes clear; in the second
it is indeterminate and must remain so because indeterminacy of mean-

ing is inherent in language. In the first case Wittgenstein has a bad

conscience about the indeterminacy; in the second he has come to terms

with it:

. . we are not striving after an ideal; as if our ordinary vague

sentences lacked as yet any immaculate sense and a perfect language

had still to be constructed by us (PU 98).

This is the stance that he in fact adopts in the Tractatus. He never does
pursue the crystal clarity that in PU 97 he accuses himself of having
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Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are Dead

pursued. All his talk of ultimately simple Gegenstande configured in

the simplest possible Sachverhalte records a view of a theoretical,
logically necessary state of affairs. It must exist; he does not say that it
does. Proof of its existence is neither possible nor necessary. Its existence is not sensible and any statements about it are therefore nonsens-

ical i.e. they are beyond the reach of language. What he has been saying
is nonsense but valuable as a ladder up which to climb to a clearer view

of reality. Language must of necessity confine itself to statements

provable empirically. It is not surprising that the logical positivists
hailed Wittgenstein as their prophet and not surprising that he declined

the honour. He is not interested in making empirically supported

statements but only in averring that such are the only statements that

can be made and that consequently philosophical inquiry has shot its
bolt. Having solved all philosophical problems by denying their existence he is finished with philosophy.
But philosophy is not finished with him. The position that he reaches
at the end of the Tractatus is not the position that he claims he reached
looking back from Philosophische Untersuchungen but the one that he

takes up in his later work-commonsense objects of necessity configured in contingent circumstances but causing him no concern by
their lack of ultimate simplicity because that is how the world happens
to be; pointless to wish it were otherwise. The objects have names and
the circumstances are described in the commonplace vague sentences of

our everyday language and we can just as readily discourse on the

metaphysical as on the physical-discourse is autonomous and as likely
as not nothing but discourse. Language does not have to be matched by
reality:
If concept formation is amenable to explanation based on the facts of
nature, should we not then be interested, instead of in grammar, in

that which gives it its foundation in nature? But . . . we are not

pursuing natural science; not even natural history-since we can of
course for our own purposes even fabricate the natural-historical

(PU II xii).

Reality is what it is, as it was in the Tractatus, and can be left to the

scientists-such a comfort not to have to worry about objects and

circumstances. So he sidesteps two or three millennia of philosophical

problems and concentrates on the medium from which they have

ostensibly drawn their support, claiming that it has in fact been generating them. Without the concepts of circumstance and object that he
develops in spite of himself in the Tractatus he could not have done it.
In Philosophische Untersuchungen he needs a reality ordinary and safe
enough to turn his back on as he looks to an autonomous language. So
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E. F. Thompkins

he uses the effectively explicit stance on reality of the Tractatus to

underpin the implicit stance of Philosophische Untersuchungen.
In spite of the efforts of Wittgenstein and some of his commentators

to make the difference appear greater than it is, the later takes up
smoothly where the earlier leaves off. At its widest the difference
between the two is that of two viewpoints not two views. In the
Tractatus Wittgenstein purports to stand outside language and look in;
in Philosophische Untersuchungen he stands inside language and looks
around. The result is variant perspectives on the same object-but not
so variant after all since in neither case can he do more than use

language to examine language. His early view of the biological complex-

ity of language complements and is not superseded by his later

sociological view of language as a pattern of living (Lebensform). The

one projects a close-up of the individual speaker; the other a wide-angle
view of a community of speakers. The one fails to provide a picture of
reality; the other disparages the attempt to do so. Having to his own
satisfaction got reality out of the way Wittgenstein can concentrate on
the language. But the reality that he rejects was founded on a Gegenstand and a Sachverhalt that never were. The ordinary, commonplace
Gegenstand and Sachverhalt that he identified unwittingly then and
takes for granted now are the ones that provide the essential underpinning for his later work.

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