ABSTRACT

In PI §428 and §429, Wittgenstein takes up a theme that he first discusses in remarks critical of his early work, at the beginning of the book. PI §428 begins with the following words in quotation marks: ‘“A thought – what a strange thing!”’. These words are a direct echo of the words quoted at the beginning of PI §94 and §95. In the earlier remarks, the thought these words express is linked with ‘the sublimation of our whole account of logic’, and with our ‘tendency to assume a pure intermediary between the propositional sign and the facts’ (PI §94). PI §95 further characterizes the latter tendency as follows:

When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, then, with what we mean, we do not stop anywhere short of the fact, but mean: such-and-such – is – thus-and-so.