ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what Wittgenstein has to say about the riddle of life in the Tractatus is idiosyncratic to the point of perversity, and yet defensible. For Wittgenstein, this idyllic post-mortem state of affairs is as irrelevant as mere permanent post-mortem existence. It is thus a distinctive feature of Wittgenstein's conception of the riddle of life that it transcends the theodicy problem and finds existence itself –l however idyllic or edifying its ultimate upshot – enigmatic. The enigma of 'happening and being-so' is out of reach of such considerations. If the demand made of a solution to the riddle of life is that it take the problematicality out of contingency, then it is obvious that nothing contingent, whether the Creation or the Big Bang, can do this. For Wittgenstein one of the enigmatic aspects of life is the riddle of selfhood – 'the mysteriousness of the ''I''.
