ABSTRACT
The Tractatus can, and should, be conceived as a continuation of the Kantian project of exposing and dissolving dialectical illusion, on the assumption that dialectic is a natural product of the theoretical interests of pure reason and that it is unavoidable. The Tractatus puts forward a seemingly unchallengeable set of propositions in order to show their limits and overcome them. Careful reading strongly suggests extreme equivocation and even contradiction in the theses, leading up to the final claim that the propositions are nonsense to be overcome. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein is concerned with the correct form of propositions in the critique of language, a critique restoring language to a logical purity that is transcendental, and as such is a mirror of the world. The meaning of 'nonsensical' has to be determined in Wittgenstein, and this can best be done with reference to the questions of transcendence and contradiction in philosophy, as raised by Kant.
