Dialectic of the Ladder Wittgenstein, the 'Tractatus' and Modernism

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) remains one of the most enigmatic works of twentieth century thought. In this bold and original new study, Ben Ware argues that Wittgenstein's early masterpiece is neither an analytic treatise on language and logic, nor a quasi-mystical work seeking to communicate 'ineffable' truths. Instead, we come to understand the Tractatus by grasping it in a twofold sense: first, as a dialectical work which invites the reader to overcome certain 'illusions of thought'; and second as a modernist work whose anti-philosophical ambition is intimately tied to its radical aesthetic character.

By placing the Tractatus in the force field of modernism, Dialectic of the Ladder clears the ground for a new and challenging exploration of the work's ethical dimension. It also casts new light upon the cultural, aesthetic and political significances of Wittgenstein's writing, revealing hitherto unacknowledged affinities with a host of philosophical and literary authors, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, and Kafka.

Ben Ware is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of English, American Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, UK.

1. Introduction

2. Chapter 1: Modernity, Modernism, Avant-Garde
i. Language, Culture and Crisis
ii. The Paradoxes of Modernity
iii. The Status of Art in Bourgeois Society
iv. The Ideologies of Modernism
v. Modernism, Mass Culture and Linguistic Turns
vi. The Avant-Garde and the Unification of Art and Life Praxis
vii. Coda

3. Chapter 2: From Nonsense to Ethics: The Method of Philosophy in Wittgenstein's Tractatus
i. The Paradoxes of the Tractatus
ii. Giving the Essence of the World
iii. 'We Make to Ourselves Pictures of Facts'
iv. The Logical Form of Reality
v. Throwing Away the Ladder
vi. The Engagement with Frege
vii. Language and Clarification
viii. Redefining Nonsense
ix. The Tractatus and Ethics
x. Logical Positivism versus Ineffability
xi. Ethics, Logic, and the Transformation of the Understanding

4. Chapter 3: The Tractatus, Literature and Modernity
i. Under the Sign of Wittgenstein
ii. Strictly Philosophical, But at the Same Time Literary
iii. Illusion and Illumination
iv. The Tractatus and Dialogue
v. Poetry and the Liberating Word
vi. The Limits of Writing Philosophy as Poetry
vii. Wittgenstein, Modernity and Culture
viii. Modernity, Culture and the Question of Politics
ix. The Tractatus, Modernity and the Ladder

5. Chapter 4: The Tractatus, Modernism and the Limits of Language
i. The Tractatus and Limits
ii. Limits, Adorno and the Kantian 'Block'
iii. Limits and Modernism
iv. The Illusion of Limits
v. The 'Truth' of Solipsism
vi. Overcoming Solipsism
vii. The Tractatus, Modernism and Loneliness
viii. The Tractatus and Modernism Reconsidered

6. Conclusion:
i. The Ladder in the Light of Modernity and Modernism
ii. Towards a Literary Use of Wittgenstein: The Tractatus and Kafka's 'Der Bau'
iii. The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought

Index