ABSTRACT
Legend has it that Wittgenstein was prompted to abandon his Tractatus 1 philosophy once and for all when his colleague and friend Piero Sraffa showed him a Neapolitan gesture. This single motion, so the story goes, was enough to explode the picture theory of the Tractatus. Although stories such as this rarely describe actual occurrences, the anecdote does capture a moment of profound realisation. From one instant to the next, Wittgenstein realised that, if construed as a world separate from actions, signs are made of dead material. “Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?” 2
