ABSTRACT
In 6.421 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein describes ethics (and perhaps aesthetics) as, like logic, “transcendental”. Peter Geach might have been one of the first, but he certainly was not the last, to hear in Wittgenstein’s remark the suggestion that not only logical but also ethical and aesthetic utterances could gesture at or “show” insights that they could not express, insights that transcend the expressive capacities of language. No one has done more than austere readers of Wittgenstein to dislodge this conception of logic and ethics and, at the same time, to clarify an alternative way to make sense of Wittgenstein’s description of them as “transcendental”. For the most part, though, a corresponding treatment of the transcendental character of aesthetics is not to be found. This paper seeks to develop one. I argue that the transcendental character of aesthetics lies not in the peculiarly “inexpressible” properties that make up its subject matter but rather in the peculiarly basic organizing role that aesthetics, like ethics and logic, plays in organizing our thinking.
