ABSTRACT
The question is that of the place of discussions of solipsism in the Tractatus and preparatory writings and also whether these have in this respect any relation to the work of the 1930s. In The False Prison volume I (1987) David Pears (to simplify drastically) regards solipsism as a theory refuted in the early work by showing that the supposed subject does not exist and rendered totally harmless in later discussion by showing that the supposed private objects of such a subject cannot exist either. One difficulty with this account is that in the earlier work Wittgenstein does not refute but affirms solipsism. At best it might be argued that he rejects a false solipsism in favour of what is, in his view, the only true form of it, but there is in fact little sign that he was much concerned by or about any theory of solipsism that would involve the notion of privacy.
