ABSTRACT
Throughout, Wittgenstein had Frege in mind. We should too, to understand him. This is as true for Philosophical Investigations as for the Tractatus. In fact, the later work is, in an important way, closer to Frege than the first-even though the Philosophical Investigations makes a target of what seems a central Fregean idea. It directs Frege’s own ideas at that target, using something deeply right in Frege to undo a misreading of what, rightly read, are mere truisms. The Tractatus presents a view of what it is, essentially, to represent as so.
The Philosophical Investigations, I will suggest, presents a different view, but on the same topic. Wittgenstein, of course, rejects essences, on some conceptions, in some employments:
