ABSTRACT
It has long been standard to attribute to the later Wittgenstein a ‘‘use theory’’
of meaning, a theory which is supposed to have replaced the ‘‘metaphysically
realist’’ meaning-theory of the Tractatus. Having become skeptical of the
Tractatus’ account of meaning as mirroring between language and the world,
so the standard story goes, Wittgenstein replaced it, in the Investigations, with
a pragmatic description of intersubjective communicative practice, a descrip-
tion he partially developed through the suggestive but puzzling concepts of
‘‘language games’’ and ‘‘forms of life.’’ I shall argue in this chapter that this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s development is misleading, and that we
misunderstand his role in the history of the analytic tradition if we accept it.
For the early Wittgenstein was actually more closely an adherent of the
doctrine expressed by the slogan ‘‘meaning is use’’ than was the later Witt-
genstein; and an understanding of the central role of this doctrine in the
theory of the Tractatus is essential, as well, to understanding Wittgenstein’s
decisive critical reaction to it in the Philosophical Investigations. The central
notion of the Tractarian theory of meaning, the notion of ‘‘logical form’’ shared between meaningful propositions and the states of affairs they describe,
itself depends on the Tractatus’ theory of the meaningfulness of signs as
arising from their syntactical application according to logical rules of use.
In seeing linguistic criticism as grounded in reflection on the use of expressions,
the theory already captures one of the most pervasive themes of the analytic
tradition’s consideration of language overall. But after 1929, Wittgenstein
would also come to see it also as a characteristic expression of the mytho-
logical picture of language as a regular calculus that the ‘‘rule-following considerations’’ of the Philosophical Investigations directly aim to dispel.
