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Motto: Every explanation I can give myself, I can give you too. And when I do this, I do not tell you less than I know myself.  (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §§ 210, 208)

by Robert Wesley Angelo

"To seek to know and understand by the natural light of reason alone" (Thales of Miletus). "Socrates held that if a man knew anything, he could explain what he knew to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). "And that which we know we must surely be able to tell?" (Plato, Laches 190c, tr. Jowett) "That I was a little better off, because I did not think I knew what I do not know" (Apology 21d).

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Introduction

In Wittgenstein's context, logic DEF.= the study of rules. And grammar DEF.= the study of the rules of language, or more generally "any description of the conventions (rules) for the use of words in the language, including the rules of sense and nonsense, is "grammar" in Wittgenstein's revision of that concept (jargon).

The Synopsis of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language describes the elements of Wittgenstein's "grammar", of how Wittgenstein used this concept to make language meaning public and verifiable.

Logic and Philosophy

Although Wittgenstein's logic of language is thoroughgoingly rational ("discourse of reason"), it may be used in different ways. For example, I use it only as a tool for making language meaning clear, whereas Wittgenstein uses it to show (if this isn't really his presumption) that philosophy or metaphysical speculation is really only conceptual confusion, as earlier he had said that the riddle of life (TLP 6.5) is a language illusion rather than the nature of our existence.

Absolute Value and Philosophical Ethics

Further, the limits of Wittgenstein's philosophy are not the same as the original limits of philosophy, because Wittgenstein's philosophy excludes not only metaphysics (because it is nonsense) but also ethics because, according to Wittgenstein, the subject of ethics (namely "absolute value") is not rational.

But Wittgenstein's view of ethics (Plato's "no small matter, but how to live") is not the only possible one, because there is a proposition type, namely ethical proposition, that is very different from the proposition types of metaphysics and logic but nonetheless rational, unlike the unphilosophical ethics of "value" and "conscience".

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The Two Parts of Wittgenstein's Work

My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. (Wittgenstein, Letter to Ludwig Ficker of circa September-October 1919)

When he nevertheless takes immense pains to [mark the limits of] the unimportant [the first part, "what can be put into words"], it is not the coastline of that island [the first part] which he is bent on surveying with such meticulous accuracy, but [instead] the boundary of the ocean [the second part, the important part, "what cannot be put into words"]. (Engelmann, Memoir, tr. Furtmüller, McGuinness, p. 97; cf. Drury's The Danger of Words p. xiv)

That may never have changed: the Philosophical Investigations may also consist of two parts, one written, one silent ("It is impossible for me to say one word in my book about all that music has meant in my life").

For "the second part", the silent part, one must turn to Wittgenstein's friend Paul Engelmann, and student, later friend, M. O'C. Drury, who have given an overview (description) of the second part, the question of life's meaning (which, contrary to TLP 6.5, Wittgenstein later recognized is problematical), ethics ("value") and God

The second part is alluded to by remarks like "What men mean when they say, The world is there, lies close to my heart" (LE/Notes p. 16) and "It is there -- like our life" (OC § 559).

And it is shown by the way Wittgenstein lived, by the very singular manner of man (as Bertrand Russell said) he was. Ludwig Wittgenstein (b. Austria 1889, d. Britain 1951)

The Synopsis I have written is only about the first part of Wittgenstein's work, the logic of language. It says nothing about Wittgenstein's second part, the part he called "the inexpressible" and "the mystical" in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.522 (tr. Ogden), the important part according to Wittgenstein -- although philosophy's eternal questions, which Wittgenstein said are not questions at all (ibid. 6.5), would belong to that part, and about those I have written.

Wittgenstein versus Socrates

It is not, in my view, necessary that anyone share Wittgenstein's view of philosophy in order to use his logic of language in the service of the Socratic standard for clarity and knowing in philosophy, nor that anyone must agree that the limits of what can be said either in ethics or about "the sense of the world" (TLP 6.41) are where Wittgenstein said they are. Because I don't, but on the contrary, I share Socrates' view that one must be cured by philosophy, not Wittgenstein's view that one must be cured of it. And I would say this, that you must first use Wittgenstein's logic of language as an antidote to philosophy, and then philosophy as an antidote to Wittgenstein.

[Pro et Contra Wittgenstein: things wherein we agree and disagree.]

Conceptual versus Factual Investigations

The essential thing about metaphysics: it makes no distinction between definitions of words and hypotheses about things. (Z § 458, PI § 383)

When we philosophize, Wittgenstein thought, the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations is not clear to us, but that philosophical problems are always conceptual problems (i.e. problems about the meaning of language) rather than factual problems (i.e. problems about the nature of things) (RPP i § 949), problems that result from being mystified e.g. by the strange constructions that syntax allows and by the pictures that language suggests (PI § 109).

Since our misunderstood concepts create philosophical problems rather than our ignorance of seemingly vague or cloudy phenomena that appear to be independent of our concepts, the only possible task for philosophy, in Wittgenstein's view, is to clarify our concepts.

Note.--Wittgenstein's distinction between grammatical (conceptual) and non-grammatical (factual) investigations is dependant on a way of looking at language meaning, i.e. on a particular, selected definition of 'meaning', which is what Wittgenstein's logic of language is.

"All fact is already conceived fact"

In many cases 'concept' DEF.= 'rules for the use of a word', but sometimes by 'concept' we mean a picture or plan, a model of how something works, a conception, or a more or less defined idea. Concepts, in any case, rather than phenomena are the subject of philosophy, because concepts set the limits of phenomena, not "phenomena" the limits of concepts. If we replace 'theory' with 'concept' in Goethe's statement that "All fact is already theory", that is the idea: that there are no facts independent of concepts: all fact is already conceived-fact.

The question "Why investigate the use of words rather than the phenomena they name?" reverses the order of the relationship between concepts and phenomena -- the concept says what the phenomenon is (e.g. 'love', 'time'), not vice versa. Kant's statement that "percepts without concepts are blind" means that we cannot explain concept-formation by "the percept in itself", i.e. a phenomenon independent of any conception of it. (1) Even Russell's simple proposition 'The grass is green' requires the concepts 'grass' and 'green' and 'proposition'. And (2) the expression 'percept in itself' (or 'thing in itself') is not a name: the thing that remains after every concept is stripped away isn't a thing; its an abstraction, and it is a grammatical mistake to hypostatize it.

Although the relationship between public facts and some concepts seems obvious (OC § 617), philosophy cannot explain the relationship between our concepts and "absolute reality", of which there is no such thing if reality is, as it is, relative to the concepts it is conceived with.

In other words, reality is only reality relative to this or that set of concepts. (The laws of physics are not the laws of nature.) And so metaphysics' search for "absolute reality" (das Wesen der Welt) is misconceived (whether the longing to see as God sees is or is not). In contrast to metaphysics, Wittgenstein's philosophy examines concepts only.

Philosophical investigations = conceptual investigations. The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations. (Z § 458) A metaphysical question is always in appearance a factual one, although the problem is a conceptual one. (RPP i § 949)

Philosophy, according to Wittgenstein. But is Wittgenstein's thesis true? Wittgenstein's interest in philosophy (1) is not the only possible interest (PI § 108), and (2) is every metaphysical investigation of things really a disguised question about grammar (rules for using words) (ibid. § 464) -- are philosophical investigations never about things (nature) rather than about concepts?

Wittgenstein's conceptual investigations (1) describe the "conceived facts" of a community of thought (a human tribe), which are in Wittgenstein's logic of language public facts about the use of language (PI § 125), and (2) question what it would be like if various general facts of nature were otherwise than they are (ibid. II, xii, p. 230).

The essence of metaphysics in Wittgenstein's view. Are there counter-examples?

Are there counter-examples to Wittgenstein's claim that metaphysics is nothing more than conceptual confusion (PI §§ 111, 309)? E.g. someone who asks whether the essence of man is soul and body, or soul alone (as Plato and Aristotle ask, because it may be no small matter whether man lives his life directed towards this world or towards an afterlife) or someone who asks how man should live his life (Socrates and the good for man) does not seem to be confused about the grammar of the word 'man', as if he were "bewitched by language" (ibid. § 109), but instead he seems puzzled by the phenomenon of man. (Does "essence belong to grammar" here (ibid. § 371)?)

According to Wittgenstein, the words 'soul' and 'spirit' belong to the vocabulary of superstition. But superstition is not the same thing as conceptual confusion (nonsense), e.g. about the word 'soul'. Or is Plato the victim of a false syntactic analogy (model) misleading him into hypostatizing an abstraction? (Is belief that there is the possibility of an afterlife superstition? Materialism is metaphysics (Sophist 247c) or the superstition that whatever cannot be perceived is not real.)

Were it a thing obvious and easy to know thyself the precept might not have passed for an oracle. (Plutarch)

Did it pass for an oracle because "the logic of our language is misunderstood"? Is that why Socrates asks what the specific excellence proper and unique to man is (e.g. "discourse of reason" or "rational moral virtue")? Is that why philosophers why there is something rather than nothing, or if man is able even in principle to perceive all that exists? The answers to some questions may seem unknowable -- but that does not make them questions without meaning.

They are not conceptual investigations; they are factual investigations. But they do not belong to natural science; they are philosophical questions, as they were "for all philosophers before" Wittgenstein.

Plato's theory of learning (recollection), regardless of whether it is true or false, is not nonsense language, nor is his myth of the cave (Republic 515c). Metaphysical speculation is not knowledge, but it is not necessarily nonsense either.

Indeed, Wittgenstein's own statement -- at first an insight but then a philosophical thesis -- about the essence of metaphysics is itself a counter-example. Because Wittgenstein's remark does not belong to grammar -- it does not state rules for using the word 'metaphysics' -- but is instead a remark about the phenomenon of metaphysical thinking. And yet Wittgenstein's remark does not seem to be nonsense, a mere undefined combination of words.

The possibility of metaphysics

What is the meaning of a word? If the meaning of a word is the thing the word names, then we can speculate about what the true nature of that thing is, and thus metaphysics is possible. If however the meaning of a word is a mere description of the conventions for the word's use in the language, then metaphysics is not possible.

"Only, it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon from a variety of points of view (PI § 108), e.g. both in 'man' as a word with a use in the language and in man as an ethical being. Are not both philosophy? If metaphysics is a conceptual muddle in some cases, need it be in all cases? Is that not determined by the particular case rather than by a general presumption, pre-judgment (BB p. 18)?

Is there another way, an alternative logic of language?

A philosopher says: Look at things this way! (CV p. 61, remark from 1947)

Wittgenstein's logic of language is a logic of language, one selected meaning of 'meaning' and one selected meaning of 'nonsense', not the logic of language. "Look at language-meaning this way", which is what the philosopher says, suggests that there may be other ways of looking at language-meaning, other logics of language, each "like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at" (PI § 103).

How much I'm doing is changing the way of thinking and how much I'm doing is persuading people to change their way of thinking. (LC iii, 40, p. 28)

But it would be no easy thing to invent an alternative logic of language to Wittgenstein's. Of course we can always invent a use for any undefined combination of words, even for nonsense such as 'What is the location of the mind?' (BB p. 6-7), that makes it not nonsense, but that is not to invent a new or alternative logic of language.

Logic is verifiable (objective)

Note well that the question is: Is there another objective way to distinguish sense from nonsense? For example, W.E. Johnson's definition of 'meaning', namely "If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is meaningless", is not a logic of language, because by Johnson's definition language can only seem (or seem not) to have meaning to some individual (cf. PI §§ 293, 258). Johnson's definition of 'meaning' is not a public and thereby objective standard, unlike Wittgenstein's public rules based definition. (The Platonic definition of 'meaning' sets an objective standard, but it renders most words undefinable, and the barrenness of that logic of language was criticized by Wittgenstein.)

There are many meanings of 'meaning'

When Wittgenstein wrote: The meaning of a word is its use in the language (PG i § 23, p. 60), he was not stating what language meaning "really" is, nor was he simply reporting how we normally use the word 'meaning', but he was defining the word 'meaning' in the sense of limiting its meaning. There are many meanings of the word 'meaning'; Wittgenstein chose one for his work in philosophy.

The nature of this principle is made clearer when it is stated in the form: Ask for the use (in the language) rather than the "meaning".

On the other hand, Wittgenstein does not only select one meaning of 'meaning', but also shows that other meanings are not the meaning of language -- if language meaning is objective, verifiable, knowable. And non-objective meaning, as e.g. W.E. Johnson's subjective meaning, is no more serviceable than "subjective knowledge" (OC § 555) would be.

The standard Wittgenstein set for meaning is like the standard Socrates set for knowing in philosophy: to know is to be able to explain (put into words) and defend one's claim to know when questioned by others. For Johnson might as well have said, "If I say I know something, no one has the right to say I don't know it." If language meaning and claims to know were not verifiable, there could be no philosophy because reason would have nothing to anchor itself to.

The metaphor of use in the language in contrast to the picture suggested by the word 'meaning'

The reason for the precept "Ask for the use rather than the meaning' is that the expression 'meaning of a word' suggests an object of some kind, whether perceptible or abstract (ghostly). The picture: Words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, where 'thing' may mean any thing (object, phenomenon, idea). In contrast, the expression 'use of a word in the language' suggests a tool that we use to do some work in our life (I would add "and in our thought").

Look at the sentence as an instrument, its meaning as its employment. (PI § 421)

The word 'use' makes a word (or sentence) active, whereas 'meaning' makes it passive. If a word is a tool, it is used by us to do various kinds of work, and it has no life apart from that work. In contrast, if the meaning of a word is the independently existing thing it names then language is in control of us, not we in control of language.

Most words do not have an essential meaning

The more fundamental trouble with the presumption (preconception) that the meaning of a common name is the essence of the thing or class of things it names is that most common names do not have an essential definition, i.e. some one defining thing in common, but can only have their meaning serviceably explained by examples. In other words, the preconception is a false conception.

"Philosophy before Wittgenstein" (Russell)

Philosophy's aim, Wittgenstein said, is essentially to clarify language meaning in philosophical problems, problems which are really disguised nonsense (PI §§ 109, 118, 464). Contrast that with Bertrand Russell's statement that "as with all philosophers before [Wittgenstein in his later work], my fundamental aim has been to understand the world as well as may be" (My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 217), which according to the Stoics would seek to answer three questions: What is real (in contrast to ephemeral or illusion). How to reason (logic). How to live our life (ethics). After the TLP Wittgenstein limited philosophy to logic (which amounts to the distinction between sense and nonsense), and his exclusion of ethics and metaphysics, makes philosophy far less than what the earliest philosophers had made it to be, which was indeed "an understanding as well as may be" of what reality is and of how to live our life.

Russell wrote about Wittgenstein's later philosophy that "its positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines unfounded" (My Philosophical Development p. 216). Although I agree that its "negative doctrines", if universalized, are unfounded (its project to silence metaphysics unjustified), I disagree that its "positive doctrines" are trivial. The Synopsis is an account of those "doctrines", and they are not trivial if they can indeed be used to make a verifiable distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning. And although I do think that one should be cured by philosophy of Wittgenstein's "negative doctrines", I also think that his "positive doctrines" are serviceable for partly curing the vagueness and confusion that surrounds us in philosophy and in life.

About my work, and about philosophy itself

Wittgenstein was a philosopher, which means that he was gifted with a new way of looking at things and with focus. But I am not. To all I have thought must be added "if I have understood, and seen deep enough" (CV p. 48, 62). There is a saying that "a man can't jump higher than his own forehead". I am not that tall.

Philosophy is cross-questioning

Work in philosophy is Socratic dialog: the cross-questioning of theses, whether by holding discourse with oneself alone or with one's companions. And that is to say that its results are the results of the day: new objections (cross-questions) and new theses to test may occur to us in the following days. Philosophy is revision.

About one of his earlier views, Wittgenstein told Drury, "That is just the sort of stupid remark I would have made in those days" (Recollections p. 98). I have over the years made a lot of stupid remarks on this site, and I have often been wrong in my understanding of how to apply Wittgenstein's logic of language to particular philosophical problems.

Clarity in philosophy

Nothing in philosophy stays clear for very long, only for as long as we see no problem with it.

But in that case we never get to the end of our work! -- Of course not, for it has no end. (cf. Z § 447)

Wisdom is ever-elusive Proteus, philosophy the illusion of catching him, or the field where Pinocchio was told to bury his money. (Plato, Euthydemus 291b-c)

In his last notes written in the last months of his life, Wittgenstein wrote:

Is my understanding only blindness to my lack of understanding? It often seems so to me. (OC § 418)

No matter how deep you see in philosophy, there is always someplace deeper that you don't yet see.

Writing about philosophy in order to give an account of what you think you know

Wittgenstein, somewhat like the historical Socrates, asks for an account of what you know -- "If a man knows anything, he can give an account (explanation) of what he knows to others", an account to be tested for unclarity or contradiction in cross-questioning (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; see this site's motto). An "explanation of meaning" or "grammatical account" (in Wittgenstein's jargon (PP ii, p. 276)) -- is an account of what you think you know (PI §§ 69, 75).

A grammatical account is a description of "what anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211; PI § 599) because it has been put into words "open to the public" and therefore verifiable.

The Socratic standard may not be beyond criticism (PI § 78), but it is an essential part of how I see philosophy and also of how I (as well as M. O'C. Drury) look at Wittgenstein's work in philosophy ("to say no more than you know"). What cannot be put into words cannot be the subject of philosophy, because philosophy is discourse of reason, although if someone claims that something cannot put into words, that thesis has to be questioned in the light of logic of language.

In the Phaedrus Plato says that the only reason to write anything down is to provide yourself with refreshment both for your memory and for your old age (276c-d). But there is also this:

It is only the attempt to write down your ideas that enables them to develop. (Recollections p. 109) Philosophy is really a working on oneself, on one's own interpretation, way of seeing things. (CV p. 16, remark from 1931)

You have to find your own way to what you want from philosophy. No one can do this for you. But maybe what others have written can be useful to you in this way:

In my attempt to understand the thought of others my own thought became clearer. (A. Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, tr. Lemke, xiv)

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THE SYNOPSIS

1. Wittgenstein's Use of the Words 'Logic' and 'Grammar', being the first chapter of A Synopsis of The Elements of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language [See Table of Contents above]

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The Introduction above and the Synopsis itself are the present stage of my own understanding of Wittgenstein's work in philosophy. (Summer 2026)

As to the rest, some are worse than others, and over the years selective revising has made many of them a patchwork of contrary ideas. Revising for me is replacing old stupid remarks with remarks that at present don't seem stupid. But I think there are some good ideas here.

Appendixes

These pages are written from the point of view of Wittgenstein's logic of language, and they may not be understood without first understanding that logic.

Regardless of the specific topics, the background here is Wittgenstein's revision of the concepts 'grammar' and 'logic'. That revision and the standard set by the historical Socrates are and have been my points of reference.

A.  Remarks about Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Introduction and comments, with explanations of the meaning of the book's title "Logical-philosophical Treatise", and the TLP's eccentric definition of the word 'nonsense', or "when nonsense is not nonsense" (because language that conveys meaning is, after all, not nonsense).

C.  Statements-of-Fact: the grammar (logic) of sentences of the form statement-of-fact (proposition), many of which are not statements of fact. The history of the word 'logic' (the Greek maid-of-all-work word logos).

E.  The Fable of The Born-Blind Tribe: Look at the word 'know' as a tool in their way of life. With postscripts about H.G. Wells' The Country of the Blind, and George Orwell's 1984 (using language to control what can and cannot be thought).

G.  The Philosophy of Mathematics: What are numbers? The philosophy of geometry: What are geometric points? The view of the philosopher of mathematics is the view from outside: it does not affect the calculi of mathematics.

i.  Questions about M. O'C. Drury's essay "Concerning Mind and Body" (the word 'consciousness'). Pictures of the mind: pictures that mislead rather than show the use of the word 'mind' in the language.

K.  The Philosophy of Science: (1) M. O'C. Drury, (2) Arthur Eddington, and (3) James Jeans.

M.  Historical asides:

• Wittgenstein at Cassino, an interlinear translation of selections from Franz Parak's Wittgenstein prigioniero a Cassino. Wittgenstein was held at the prisoner of war camp from November 1918 to August 1919. When he was taken prisoner he had in his knapsack the manuscript of his "Logical-philosophical Treatise", which was later to be published as the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
• G.E. Moore's grave, with a visit to Wittgenstein's grave, in St. Giles Cemetery, Cambridge, as it was in October 1980.
• Professor Michael Wolff's Cambridge University Recollections (1945-1947).
• C.D. Broad's Review of Norman Malcolm's "Memoir of Wittgenstein" (from 1959).

• Selections and Comments about Plato's dialogs. Among the dialogs (list of all) I have written about are:
  • Laches. "And that which we know we are able to tell others" is the standard for knowing that Socrates set for philosophy. But otherwise in this dialog it often seems that Plato's first teacher, namely Heraclitus, rather than Socrates is directing the discussion. (With remarks about the relation between Wittgenstein, Plato, and the historical Socrates (November 2023).)
  • Euthyphro. Plato seeks a standard of measurement, a universal yardstick, in ethics applicable in every particular case.
  • Sophist. Plato invents "logical form" as he shows that the meaning of 'that which is not' is really 'that which is different'. The remedy for conceited ignorance. Noun + verb = sentence.
  • Gorgias. "We are discussing no small matter, but how to live."
  • Parmenides. If discourse of reason depends on knowledge of the Forms, and if knowledge of the Forms is not possible in this world, then what becomes of philosophy?
  • Phaedrus. "Words about whose meaning we are at variance", and "The written word cannot defend itself."
  • Phaedo. Plato's method of seeking the truth by holding fast to his preconceived principles.
  • Republic, Book 1. Plato demonstrates through his method of tautologies in ethics that the good or just man harms no one and does good even to his enemies.
  • Euthydemus. Plato's distinction between professors of philosophy and "philosophy herself", and his exhortation to philosophy and virtue: "Wisdom is the only good, and ignorance the only evil."

P.  The Philosophy of Religion:

• Wittgenstein's method of language games. Does the comparison of religious practices to games make the nature of religion clearer? "A blunder that big is no blunder."
• Notes about Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough.
• Philosophy of Religion (Albert Schweitzer, Wittgenstein, Michael Prior).
• The Christian Religion without Supernaturalism (Schweitzer, Wittgenstein).
• Goats, man, and God: "Can a goat think a man's thoughts, or man the thoughts of God?"
• A distinction between superstition and religion (Dietrich Bonhoeffer on "God as a working-hypothesis").

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For this Web site, copyright © September 1998. Send Internet or form-mail to Robert (Critical comments and corrections are always welcome).

Written 1979-2026.

This page was last revised 30 August 2026 : 2026-08-30

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