Wittgenstein I : lecturas tractarianas

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Wittgenstein I. Lecturas tractarianas is an original way to approach Ludwig Wittgenstein’s first work: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Padilla’s analysis is not only focused on the main concepts of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, but also on a provocative discussion on the origins of these concepts, especially for Spanish speaker philosophers. The author presents his main theses based on an extensive revision, not only of Wittgenstein’s philosophical concepts, but also of his uses of German terminology and their complex translations into the Spanish language. With this approach, Padilla invites the Spanish speaker to reflect on the origin of the concepts used in the Tractatus in order to better understand Wittgenstein’s aphorisms.

Padilla’s book is divided in six chapters, each one of them analyses a concrete difficulty that, according to the author, has not enough carefully looked at– especially within the Spanish speaking Wittgensteinian community.

The first chapter endorses a ‘Tractarian ontology’ and questions if objects are primitive elements. The concepts Gegenstand , Sache and Ding <a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1] </a> are carefully analysed within the contexts of the aphorisms in the Tractatus, together with a brief historical review of their different uses in German and in Spanish. Padilla shows the misleading situations in which the superficial translations of such concepts have made the reading of the Tractatus more and more complicated.

The second chapter gives a linguistic and philosophical context to the close connection between Tatsache , Sachverhalt and Sachlage . Padilla finds these three terms extremely interesting also because their interpretation – translation – means a great deal of confusion and controversy within the different translations. With the help of a linguistic context, the author’s aim is to look at the different terms both within or common use of language, but also based on a juridical origin of the words. More concretely, in a simple scheme (p. 62) Padilla shows us how the different uses of the terms have been presented in Wittgenstein’s texts and how some misleading translations into English and Spanish take place, such as those of C.K. Ogden (1922), Tierno Galván (1973), Muñoz / Reguera (2002), Valdés Villanueva (2002) and Tomasini Bassols (unpublished). In this vein and throughout a concise look at Wittgenstein’s uses of the terms in the Tractatus , Padilla suggests the following translations:

Since Tatsache is a term that is related to statements while it takes structure on account, the question related to this relation results in a figurative representation and not only to pointing at facts. Padilla claims therefore, that the best translation for Tatsache is ‘cuestión de hecho’, that is, a direct translation from the English term ‘matter of fact’ (see p. 81). The term Sachverhalt , the author reminds us, is developed based on the well-known note that Wittgenstein read about the modeled version of a car accident in Paris. In this model the autos, for example, represent the real autos in the world and the way in which these are related to one another is the exact same relation in which the real autos are put in the world. The representation of the totality of a given situation is what Wittgenstein calls Sachverhalt , and in Padilla’s terms: ‘estado de cosas’ (p. 95). Sachlage cannot be merely named, but only described (see TLP 3.144). In this sense, the conditions under which something is the case are not just a static image, but the procedures under which the propositions can be described and under which they can have sense. Sachlage is thus translated by the author as ‘situación de hecho’ (p. 101), ‘procedimiento’ (p. 128) or ‘descripción de estados’ (p. 129).

In his third chapter, Padilla presents a brief analysis of the picture theory in the Tractatus and shows again the difficulties of translating Wittgenstein’s concepts into Spanish. The common example is Bild , a term that already in the German language is in need of clarification. It is not only understood as representation, but also as picture, figure, even in the sense of a photograph. According to Padilla, Wittgenstein uses Bild in a specialised context and we shall therefore understand Wittgenstein’s aim in order to give an accurate definition of the term (see p. 116). In order to explain better what Wittgenstein meant with Bild and his picture theory, Padilla refers to the relation between language, thought and reality. Padilla points out correctly, that the term thought (Gedanke ) shall not be understood within the context of psychology. It shall rather be understood inspired on Frege’s definition: the thought is objective, independent of the subject who thinks and it is true or false, and giving sense to the proposition (see p. 121).

Chapter four is a clarification of essential concepts in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus : proposition, truth and tautology. After a contextual and detailed explanation of these terms and their relation to each other, Padilla follows Wittgenstein’s arguments that will lead to the conclusion that only true propositions can describe the world. In addition, it is ‘mechanics the only science that suggests a plan to build a framework based on true propositions which allow a reconstruction of the world’ (p. 172).

In chapter five Padilla analyses the role of beliefs (‘creencias’). In order to show that a common mistake in the discussion is the analysis of epistemic attitudes and the study of phrases that express epistemic attitudes, the author comments Wittgenstein’s paragraphs related to this topic. Within this theme, Padilla analyses the problem of inclusion in predicative psychological forms where he comments Moore and Russell’s theories as background to understand Wittgenstein’s claims. This topic is a connection to the clarification of ‘soul’, ‘subject’ and psychology in the Tractatus .

I and subjectivity is the topic of the sixth and last chapter. Here Padilla carefully analyses the notions of ‘metaphysical subject’, ‘I’, the limits of the world and the analogy of the ‘eye’. Accurately, Padilla claims that the question about a subject in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is ambiguous (p. 209), for the ‘metaphysical subject’ is not defined. Padilla’s analysis of the five paragraphs where Wittgenstein says something about a subject or ‘the I’ is eloquent, if we take on account that these are commonly thought as obscure and out of context. The author makes the analysis helpful by giving context to the aphorisms under the light of clarification of concepts and historical background. Examples are the role that I. Kant’s ‘thinking subject’; E. Mach and the role of the body in the world, and most importantly, the author’s thesis that the term Grenze (limit) is an ambivalent one in German. Padilla claims: “Toda la historia que abarca el uso de mi pronombre personal cuando me refiero a mí mismo es una progresión que puede ser descrita mediante un límite. Desde esta perspectiva, la noción de ‘límite’ presupone una sucesión” (p. 217). With this definition, the author gives the problematic notion of limit a new perspective, which allows the idea of a metaphysical subject that is not negative. Followed by these claims, the author gives comments on the possible background for Wittgenstein’s interest on the psychology of his time and briefly comments Freud’s relation to the idea of ‘the I’ in Wittgenstein’s early work.

Padilla concludes that Wittgenstein is not doing a traditional ontology (see p. 244), that is, it is not within Kant’s or Husserl’s understanding of a priori or science, correspondingly. On the contrary, Wittgenstein’s aim is to construct a structure through language; a structure that can clearly distinguish between those propositions which can say something about the world and those which cannot. The fascinating part of the Tractatus is precisely that the thesis is what is not written, as Wittgenstein himself showed. That is, those things which give the logical structure of a possible language to talk about the world, like for example, the logical form, cannot be in the world, it can only be shown. Following Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing, Padilla has been encouraged to show in his book the way in which our language presents not only correct and true propositions, but also the possibility of tautologies and contradictions that our language can produce, especially in the activity of translating philosophical concepts.

If the book is read carefully, it is a fine approach to another reading of the Tractatus ; it is a good deliberation of its most important concepts, and historical contexts and interesting for Spanish speakers. In sum, it is a complete revision of other interpretations, in order to be able to read Wittgenstein’s early work by oneself with a more critical eye.

<a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1] </a> He suggests the translation into Spanish as: ‘objeto’, ‘bien’ and ‘cosa’ correspondingly (p. 22).