Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

This volume brings together essays that explore the intersections between
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein from various perspectives. While some chap-
ters focus on the philological and biographical connections of Wittgen-
stein’s reading of Nietzsche, others reflect on the ideas that are implicitly
shared by the two thinkers.
For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, philosophy is inextricably connected to
ethics and the arts and therefore takes a peculiar method that differs from
the sciences. Nevertheless, their thinking strives for knowledge and truth
by means of discursive text forms, however unconventional they may be.
The first group of chapters contextualize explicit references to Nietzsche in
Wittgenstein’s writings and clarify their philosophical function. In Part II,
the contributors take a philosophical problem as their starting point and
show how it can be illuminated by comparing or contrasting Wittgenstei-
nian and Nietzschean arguments and methods. Together the chapters trace
Nietzsche’s influence on Wittgenstein’s thought concerning the critique of
language, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophical method.
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche will be of interest to scholars and advanced
students working in the history of philosophy and intellectual history.

Shunichi Takagi is Researcher at Kyoto University and Chief Research

­Officer of AaaS Bridge. His PhD thesis, Wittgenstein and the ‘Kantian
Solution of the Problem of Philosophy’ (10 February 1931), recounts
­
Wittgenstein’s philosophical development from the Tractatus up until
­
around 10 February 1931, focusing on his engagement with Russell, Kant,
and Ramsey.

Pascal F. Zambito is Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Munich. He was

Feodor Lynen Fellow at University of Vienna. His recent publications are
“Essayism as a Form of Writing and a Form of Life” (2021) and “Search-
ing in Space vs Groping in the Dark: Wittgenstein on Novelty and Imagi-
nation in 1929–30” (2023).
Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Heidegger’s Ecological Turn

Community and Practice for Future Generations
Frank Schalow

Lectures on a Philosophy Less Ordinary

Language and Morality in J.L. Austin’s Philosophy
Niklas Forsberg

Heidegger and the Contradiction of Being

An Analytic Interpretation of the Late Heidegger
Filippo Casati

Camus and Fanon on the Algerian Question

An Ethics of Rebellion
Pedro Tabensky

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy in 1929

Edited by Florian Franken Figueiredo

Henri Bergson and the Philosophy of Religion

God, Freedom, and Duration
Matyáš Moravec

Kripke and Wittgenstein

The Standard Metre, Contingent Apriori and Beyond
Edited by Martin Gustafsson, Oskari Kuusela, and Jakub Mácha

Between Wittgenstein and Weil

Comparisons in Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics
Edited by Jack Manzi

The Turing Test Argument

Bernardo Gonçalves

Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

Edited by Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.

routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Twentieth-Century-Philosophy/
book-series/SE0438
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

Edited by Shunichi Takagi and

Pascal F. Zambito
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Contents

Notes on Contributors vii

List of Abbreviations x

Introduction: Wittgenstein and Nietzsche 1

SHUNICHI TAKAGI AND PASCAL F. ZAMBITO

PART I
Influence: Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche 15

1 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche: The Roots of Tractarian

Solipsism 17
NUNO VENTURINHA

2 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann: Three Responses to

Nietzsche 47
ANDREAS VRAHIMIS

3 Philosophy as Work on Oneself: Wittgenstein, Nietzsche,

and Paul Ernst 77
STEFAN MAJETSCHAK

4 Transvaluation and Rectification: Wittgenstein reads

Nietzsche and Lichtenberg on Values, Poetry, and Language 95
MARCO BRUSOTTI

5 ‘jenseits der Grenze’: Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Value

and Nonsense 124
PASCAL F. ZAMBITO
vi Contents

6 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers: The

Notion of Truth in Philosophy 147
OSKARI KUUSELA

PART II
Dialogues: Philosophical Intersections between
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche 167

7 Philosophical Style: Between Philosophy, Poetry, and

Aphoristic Writing 169
PHILIP MILLS

8 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 187

PIETRO GORI

9 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical

Quietism 209
PAUL S. LOEB

10 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 238

GORDON C. F. BEARN

11 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy in

Wittgenstein and Nietzsche 257
PETER K. WESTERGAARD

Index 278
Contributors

Gordon C. F. Bearn is Stewardson Professor and Chair of Philosophy at

Lehigh University. He is the author of Waking to Wonder: Wittgen-
stein’s Existential Investigations (1997) and Life Drawing: A Deleuzean
Aesthetics of Existence (2013). He has published articles on Nietzsche,
Derrida, Foucault, Wittgenstein, and Cavell. Inspired by Deleuze's read-
ing of Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, he is writing his way into
a book to be called Inklings and Algebra.
Marco Brusotti is Professor at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy). He
was Lecturer in Philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin. He is
president of the Nietzsche-­Gesellschaft and member of the Advisory
Board of the Friedrich-­Nietzsche-­Stiftung. He is also on the Editorial
Board of the journals Nietzsche-­Studien and Nietzscheforschung, of the
series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-­Forschung and of the da-
tabase Nietzsche Online (de Gruyter). He has published widely on
­Nietzsche and on Wittgenstein. Among his recent publications are: ‘The
“Continuous Line from the Formulations of the Magicians to the For-
mulations of the Sociologists”’; ‘“For the Marxists are racing motor-
ists.” Wittgenstein on Max Eastman and on “the sound idea in Marx’s
thinking”’; “Nietzsche and the Good Europeans beyond Europe”; [with
Michael J. McNeal, Corinna Schubert, Herman Siemens:] European/
Supra-­European: Cultural Encounters in Nietzsche’s Philosophy (2020).
Pietro Gori is fellow researcher at the NOVA University Lisbon, where he
is also in charge of the chairs of Philosophy of Science and Philosophy
of Knowledge. His academic expertise focuses especially on Modern
and Contemporary Philosophy; History and Philosophy of Science;
Epistemology; and Philosophical Anthropology. Within this context,
Gori deals more in particular with representatives of an anti-­
foundationalist turn in philosophy (e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Mach
and William James), as well as with the post-­empiricist approach of the
viii Contributors

British philosopher of science Mary B. Hesse. On these topics, Gori

published monographic essays, edited collective volumes, and a number
of book chapters as well as articles in peer-­reviewed international jour-
nals and series. Among his recent works: Nietzsche’s Pragmatism. A
Study on Perspectival Thought (2019); Practices of Truth in Philoso-
phy. Historical and Comparative Perspectives (co-­edited. Routledge,
forthcoming).
Oskari Kuusela is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of
East Anglia, UK. He is the author of The Struggle against Dogmatism
(2008), Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy (2019), and
Wittgenstein on Logic and Philosophical Method: Elements in the Phi-
losophy of Wittgenstein (2022), as well as the co-­editor of five collec-
tions on Wittgenstein, including the Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein
(2011).
Paul S. Loeb is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at University of Puget
Sound and is currently teaching at Hawai‘i Pacific University. He is the
author, editor, and translator of a number of books on Nietzsche, in-
cluding The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (2010), Nietzsche’s
Metaphilosophy (edited with Matthew Meyer) (2019), Unpublished
Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Vols. 14 and 15
(translated with David F. Tinsley) (2019, 2021), Dionysus Dithyrambs
(translated with David F. Tinsley) (2021), and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra: A Critical Guide (edited with Keith Ansell-­Pearson) (2022)
Stefan Majetschak is Professor of Philosophy at the School of Art and De-
sign and at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kassel,
Germany. Book publications: Die Logik des Absoluten. Spekulation
und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hegels (1992); Ludwig Wittgen-
steins Denkweg (2000); Ästhetik zur Einführung (2007; 5th ed. 2019),
Wittgenstein und die Folgen (2019). Until recently, he was president of
the International Ludwig Wittgenstein Society and editor in chief of
Wittgenstein-­
Studien. International Yearbook for Wittgenstein
Research.
Philip Mills is a Postdoctoral Fellow in French Literature at the University
of Lausanne. His first book, A Poetic Philosophy of Language: Ni-
etzsche and Wittgenstein’s Expressivism (2022), connects the philoso-
phies of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein to elaborate a philosophy of
language that can account for poetic phenomena. His current research
approaches poetry within the framework of Ordinary Language Phi-
losophy (Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell) and analyses ordinary practices
at play in contemporary French poetry.
 Contributors ix

Nuno Venturinha is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Nova Univer-

sity of Lisbon. He is the author of Description of Situations: An Essay
in Contextualist Epistemology (2018), and the editor of The Textual
Genesis of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (Routledge 2013)
and Wittgenstein After His Nachlass (2010). He is currently editing a
topical collection on the epistemology of John Greco for Synthese and
working on a manuscript on Wittgenstein on belief formation for Cam-
bridge University Press. In addition, he has published in journals includ-
ing Analysis, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of
Philosophical Research, Logos & Episteme, Nordic Wittgenstein Re-
view, Philosophia, Philosophical Investigations, Philosophy, The Philo-
sophical Quarterly, Topoi and Wittgenstein-­Studien.
Andreas Vrahimis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics
and Philosophy of the University of Cyprus. His research interests in-
clude the History of Analytic Philosophy and its dialogues with other
contemporary philosophical traditions, as well as Aesthetics and the
Philosophy of Art. Apart from Bergsonism and the History of Analytic
Philosophy (2022), and several articles, he is the author of Encounters
Between Analytic and Continental Philosophy (2013).
Peter K. Westergaard is Associate Professor at the Department of Cross-­
cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. His areas of
research are the history of ideas and the philosophy of religion. Wester-
gaard’s interests centre on the philosophy of Nietzsche and Wittgen-
stein. His publications include Mennesket er et ceremonielt dyr. Ludwig
Wittgensteins Bemærkninger om Frazers ‘Den gyldne gren’ [Man is a
ceremonial animal. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s ‘The
Golden Bough’] (Copenhagen, 2013); Kritik og tro. Hume, Kant,
­Nietzsche og Wittgenstein [Critique and Belief. Hume, Kant, Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein] (Copenhagen, 2015); Nietzsche. “… hvis man altid
går til grunden …”. En afslutning [Nietzsche. “… if one always faces
ruin …” A conclusion] (Aalborg, 2018). He also translated, and wrote
an introduction to Georges Bataille’s Nietzsche. Memorandum (Aarhus,
2022).
Abbreviations

Works by Wittgenstein and Derivative Texts

APR Wittgenstein: Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psycho-
analysis and Religious Belief. Compiled from Notes taken by
Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and James Taylor, ed. by Cyril Bar-
ret. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.
AWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935, ed. by Alice
Ambrose, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979.
BBB The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philo-
sophical Investigations’, ed. by Rush Rhees, Oxford: Blackwell,
1965 [1958].
BNE Bergen Nachlass Edition, ed. by the Wittgenstein Archives at the
University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Witt-
genstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-­
Kathrein (2020–) [wittgensteinsource.org]. [Quoted by manuscript
or typescript number following G.H. von Wright’s catalogue.]
BT The Big Typescript: TS 213, ed. & tr. by C.G. Luckhardt and
M.A.E. Aue, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
CC Gesamtbriefwechsel: Innsbrucker elektronische Ausgabe [Com-
plete Correspondence: The Innsbruck Electronic Edition], 2nd
release. Edited by Anna Coda, Gabriel Citron, Barbara Halder,
Allan Janik, Ulrich Lobis, Kerstin Mayr, Brian McGuinness, Mi-
chael Schorner, Monika Seekircher, and Joseph Wang on behalf
of the Brenner Archive Research Institute. Charlottesville: In-
teLex Corporation, 2011.
CL Cambridge Letters. Correspondence with Russell, Keynes,
Moore, Ramsey and Sraffa, ed. by B.F. McGuinness and G.H. von
Wright, Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.
CV Culture and Value/Vermischte Bemerkungen, ed. by G.H. von
Wright, tr. by Peter Winch, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.
Culture and Value/Vermischte Bemerkungen, ed. by G.H. von
Wright, tr. by Peter Winch, revised second edition, Oxford: Black-
well, 1998.
 Abbreviations xi

GT Geheime Tagebücher 1914–1916, 3rd edn, ed. by Wilhelm Baum,

Vienna: Turia & Kant, 1992.
IDP Interactive Dynamic Presentation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philo-
sophical Nachlass [http://wittgensteinonline.no/]. ed. by the Witt-
genstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction
of Alois Pichler, Bergen: Wittgenstein Archives at the University
of Bergen, 2016–.
LE A Lecture on Ethics, in PO, 37–44.
Lecture on Ethics, ed. by Edoardo Zamuner, Ermelinda Valen-
tina di Lascio and D. K. Lewy, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell,
2014.
LS Licht und Schatten. Ein nächtliches (Traum-­)Erlebnis und ein
Brieffragment, ed. by Ilse Somavilla, Wien/ Innsbruck: Haymon,
2014.
LWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932, ed. by Des-
mond Lee, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980.
LWW Werkausgabe, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985–1989 [Quoted by vol-
ume and page number]
MN Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930–33. From the Notes of
G.E. Moore, ed. by D. G. Stern, B. Rogers, and G. Citron, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
NB Notebooks 1914–1916, 2nd edn, ed by G. H. von Wright and G.
E. M. Anscombe, tr. by G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Black-
well, 1979.
NL “The Notes on Logic”, ed. by Michael Potter. In Michael Potter,
Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic, 276–95, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2008.
OC On Certainty, ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, tr. by
Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969.
OR ‘On Religion: Notes on Four Conversations With Wittgenstein’,
Notes by Rush Rhees, ed. by D.Z. Philips, in Faith and Philoso-
phy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, 2001, Vol.
18 (4), 409–415.
PG Philosophical Grammar, ed. by Rush Rhees, tr. by Anthony
Kenny, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974.
PI Philosophical Investigations / Philosophische Untersuchungen,
ed. by P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, tr. by G.E.M. Ans-
combe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, Chichester: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2009.
PPF Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment [previously known as
‘Part II’ of the Philosophical Investigations], in PI 2009,
182–243e.
PO Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. by J.C. Klagge and Al-
fred Nordmann, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Gardners Books, 1993.
xii Abbreviations

PPO Public and Private Occasions, ed. by J.C. Klagge and Alfred Nor-
dmann, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 2003.
PR Philosophical Remarks, ed. by R. Rhees, tr. by R. Hargreaves and
R. White, Oxford: Blackwell, 1975.
PTLP Prototractatus: An early version of Tractatus Logico-­
Philosophicus, 2nd edn, ed. by B.F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, G.H.
von Wright; tr. by D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness, London: Rout-
ledge, 1996.
RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, 3rd revised edn,
ed. by G.H. von Wright, Rush Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe, tr.
by G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978.
ROC Remarks on Colour / Bemerkungen über die Farben, ed. by
G.E.M. Anscombe, tr. by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete
Schättle, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977.
RR ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Conversations with Rush Rhees
(1939-­50): From the Notes of Rush Rhees’, ed. by G. Citron,
Mind, 2015, Vol. 124 (439), 1–71.
RSD ‘The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience’, in PO,
289-­367.
RW Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. by Rush Rhees, Oxford Uni-
versity Press 1984.
SRLF ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 1929, Supplementary Volume 9: 162–171.
TLP Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus, ed. by C.K. Ogden, tr. by C.K.
Ogden and F.P. Ramsey, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co. 1922.
Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus, tr. by D.F. Pears and B.F. Mc-
Guinness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961.
Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus: Centenary Edition. Ed. by Lu-
ciano Bazzocchi, tr. by B. F. McGuinness and D. F. Pears, Lon-
don: Anthem Press, 2021.
VW The Voices of Wittgenstein. The Vienna Circle, ed. by Gordon
Baker, tr. by Gordon Baker, Michael Mackert, John Connolly and
Vasilis Politis, London/New York: Routledge, 2003.
WA Wiener Ausgabe, ed. by M. Nedo, Wien: Springer-­Verlag, 1994–
2001; Klostermann 2020-­[Quoted by volume and page
number].
WC Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911–1951.
Ed. by Brian McGuinness. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.
WCL Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941. From the
Notes by Yorick Smythies, ed. by Volker A. Munz and Bernhard
Ritter, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
 Abbreviations xiii

WLPP Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946–1947.

Notes by T. Geach, K.J. Shah, A.C. Jackson, ed. by T. Geach,
New York/London: Harvester-­Wheatsheaf, 1988.
WVC Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. Conversations
­recorded by Friedrich Waismann, ed. by B.F. McGuinness, tr. by
J. Schulte & B.F. McGuinness, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979.
Z Zettel, ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, tr. by
G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967.

Works by Nietzsche

A ‘The Anti-­Christ: A Curse on Christianity’, tr. by Judith Norman,

in The Anti-­ Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 1–68.
‘The Antichrist: Curse upon Christianity’, tr. by Carol Diethe and
Adrian del Caro, in The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols,
The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Dionysus Dithyrambs, Nietzsche
Contra Wagner, vol 9, Complete Works of Nietzsche, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2021, 134–211.
BGE Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, tr.
by Marion Faber, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Beyond Good and Evil. Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,
ed. by R.P. Horstmann and Judith Norman, tr. by Judith Nor-
man, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
‘Beyond Good and Evil’, tr. by Adrian del Caro, in Beyond Good
and Evil. On the Genealogy of Morality, Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2014.
BoT ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, tr. by Ronald Speirs, in The Birth of Trag-
edy and Other Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999, 1–116.
The Birth of Tragedy, tr. by Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2008.
D Daybreak, tr. by R.W. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997 [1982].
EH ‘Ecce Homo’, tr. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, in The
Anti-­Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005, 69–152.
Ecce Homo. How To Become What You Are, tr. by Duncan
Large, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
‘Ecce Homo’, tr. by Carol Diethe, Duncan Large, Adrian del Caro
and Alan D. Schrift, in The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols,
The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Dionysus Dithyrambs, Nietzsche
xiv Abbreviations

Contra Wagner, vol 9, Complete Works of Nietzsche, Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2021, 212–318.
GM On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. by Douglas Smith, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
On the Genealogy of Morality, tr. by Carol Diethe, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017 [2006].
‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, tr. by Adrian del Caro, in Be-
yond Good and Evil. On the Genealogy of Morality, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2014.
GS The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of
Songs. tr. by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
The Gay Science. With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Ap-
pendix of Songs, tr. by Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
‘The Joyful Science’, tr. by Adrian del Caro, in The Joyful Science/
Idylls from Messina/Unpublished Fragments from the Period of
The Joyful Science (Spring 1881–Summer 1882), Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press 2023.
HH Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, tr. by R.J. Hol-
lingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University, Press, 1996 [1987].
Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirits, tr. by Gary
Handwerk, Stanford: Stanford University, Press, 2013.
JGB Jenseits von Gut und Böse, in Nietzsches Werke, Taschen-­
Ausgabe, Band VIII: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Zur Genealogie
der Moral, Aus dem Nachlaß 1885/86, Leipzig: Kröner, 1905.
KSA Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, ed. by
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin/New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 1988.
KSB Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli
and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1986.
PT Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of
the Early 1870s, tr. by D. Breazeale, New Jersey: Humanities
Press International, 1990 [1979].
TI ‘Twilight of the Idols’, tr. by W. Kaufmann, in The Portable Ni-
etzsche, ed. and tr. by W. Kaufmann, Middlesex: Penguin Books,
1982, 463–563.
Twilight of the Idols, tr. by Duncan Large, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1998.
Twilight of the Idols, tr. by Judith Norman in The Anti-­Christ,
Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2005, 152–230.
 Abbreviations xv

‘Twilight of the Idols’, tr. by Carol Diethe, Duncan Large, Adrian

del Caro and Alan D. Schrift, in The Case of Wagner, Twilight of
the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Dionysus Dithyrambs,
­Nietzsche Contra Wagner, vol 9, Complete Works of Nietzsche,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021, 43–132.
TL ‘On the Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’, in PT, 79–100.
‘On Truth and Lie in a Non-­Moral Sense’, in The Birth of Trag-
edy and Other Writings, tr. Ronald Speirs, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999, 139–154.
TSZ Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. by W. Kaufmann, New York: Pen-
guin, 1978.
‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, tr. by W. Kaufmann, in The Portable
Nietzsche, ed. and tr. by W. Kaufmann, Middlesex: Penguin
Books, 1982, 103-­439.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. by Graham Parkes, New York:
­Oxford University Press. 2005
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None, tr. by Adrian
del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
UM Untimely Meditations, tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997.
WP The Will To Power, ed. W. Kaufmann, tr. W. Kaufmann & R.J.
Hollingdale, New York: Vintage Books, 1968.
WS The Wanderer and his Shadow, in HH

Other abbreviated works

AHW Wittgenstein, Hermine: “Ludwig sagt…”: Die Aufzeichnungen

der Hermine Wittgenstein. Ed. by Mathias Iven, Berlin: Parerga,
2006.
CPR Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Pure Reason, tr. by Norman Kemp
Smith, with an intr. by Howard Caygill, revised second edition,
Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2007.
LP Pinsent, David Hume: “Letters”. In A Portrait of Wittgenstein as
a Young Man: From the Diary of David Hume Pinsent 1912–
1914. ed. by G. H. von Wright, 95–112, Oxford: Blackwell,
1990.
TLH Hänsel, Ludwig: Begegnungen mit Wittgenstein – Ludwig Hän-
sels Tagebücher 1918/1919 and 1921/1922, ed. by Ilse Soma-
villa, Innsbruck/Wien: Haymon 2012.
WWR Schopenhauer, Arthur: The World as Will and Representation,
2 vols., tr. by E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover Publications, 1969.
Introduction
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

Introduction
This volume collects essays on intersections between Ludwig Wittgenstein
and Friedrich Nietzsche. As many of these intersections concern questions
of influence, the direction of research is, so to speak, backwards: from
Wittgenstein to Nietzsche – hence the non-chronological order of names.
The first of the book’s two parts will deal with such, broadly speaking,
historical issues: its chapters contextualise explicit references to Nietzsche
in Wittgenstein’s writings and reflect on their philosophical implications.
The second part will explore more systematic intersections between the
two thinkers: its chapters bring Nietzsche and Wittgenstein into philo-
sophical dialogues exploring styles, methods and topics in comparison and
contrast.
Both thinkers have interpreted the task of philosophy in peculiar ways.
Although they reacted to the tradition and have themselves become very
influential, they stand out from the history of philosophy and cannot easily
be grouped to any intellectual school. The peculiarity of their thought is a
similarity between them, but it also exacerbates a widespread objection to
comparative studies in philosophy: It has been called a triviality that any
two things can be called similar in some respect. According to this view,
comparisons in the history of philosophy tend to overemphasise contin-
gent resemblances and to construe patterns of intellectual influence or heri-
tage without properly motivating them and often neglecting important
differences.1 In his typical polemical manner, Nietzsche has advanced a
version of this criticism: ‘He who wants to mediate between two resolute
thinkers shows that he is mediocre: he has no eye for what is unique; seeing
things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes’ (GS
2001, §2282). Since Nietzsche’s own philosophy is so idiosyncratic, a simi-
lar objection might be made against the attempt to bring it together with
Wittgenstein’s work. Let us therefore dwell a bit on Nietzsche’s aphorism
and address its implicit reproach. Thus, we shall give reasons why a

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-1
2 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

comparison between these two arguably resolute thinkers is not only legiti-
mate, but even fruitful both in historical and philosophical terms.
Like many aphorisms, Nietzsche’s saying expresses a profound but one-
sided insight which, despite its straightforward appearance, provokes fur-
ther reflection rather than declaring a definitive truth. It is not clear which
specific thinkers, if any, he has in mind,3 nor whom he is accusing of weak
eyes (he was extremely myopic himself and almost blind on his right eye4).
In our situation, we must ask ourselves: are we the mediators? Are Ni-
etzsche and Wittgenstein two resolute thinkers that should only be appre-
ciated in their uniqueness?
Asked whether Nietzsche himself was a resolute thinker, the answer will
most likely be Yes. Pressed for further elaboration, however, few would be
able to provide a satisfactory answer.5 What Nietzsche means with the word
‘resolute’ (entschlossen) in the aphorism is likewise hard to say. Heidegger’s
students used to joke about their teacher’s obsession with Entschlossenheit:
Ich bin entschlossen, nur weiß ich nicht wozu – ‘I am determined, but I don’t
know what for’.6 Considering the numerous internal tensions in his work,
Nietzsche’s enschlossene Denker raise a similar problem.
The issue is no less complicated in the case of Wittgenstein. The ‘resolute
reading’ of his Tractatus has its followers, but it remains controversial. In
a different sense, Wittgenstein might be called resolute insofar as he appar-
ently had strong opinions in conversation and, sometimes, in his writings.
Yet in his second main work Philosophical Investigations, unpublished,
but carefully composed and extensively revised until shortly before his
death, he is at pains to avoid any form of such dogmatism. In the final ver-
sion, strong claims are mostly qualified or framed as tentative solutions;
often there are more questions than answers or we are offered competing
views without a clear preference for one side.
Such a procedure, which might be called perspectivist, could be one
point of intersection with Nietzsche. Is stating such a similarity already
failing to see the unique? It is another triviality that any two things are dif-
ferent. Again, Nietzsche provides a pointed perspective: already the idea to
summarise individuals under a concept may in a certain sense be called a
form of lying (TL 1999, 145). Yet logic and philosophy are based on such
a form of untruth: they are based on conceptual unification of the multi-
plicity of experience. Although closer to truth, ‘seeing the unique’ may,
under certain conditions, be detrimental both to life (physical survival) and
to thinking. ‘The predominant disposition’, Nietzsche writes,

to treat the similar as identical – an illogical disposition, for there is nothing

identical as such – is what first supplied all the foundations for logic. Simi-
larly, in order for the concept of substance to originate, which is indispens-
able to logic though nothing real corresponds to it in the strictest sense, it
 Introduction 3

was necessary that for a long time changes in things not be seen, not be
perceived; the beings who did not see things exactly had a head start over
those who saw everything ‘in a flux’. As such, every great degree of caution
in inferring, every sceptical disposition, is a great danger to life.
(GS §111)

Apparently, Nietzsche’s aphorism against mediators is not as straightfor-

ward as it seems. Seeing the unique may be the proper way to truth in certain
contexts, but strictly and universally applied it leads to the end of thought,
to silence and intellectual barrenness. Of course, Nietzsche’s perspectivism is
not exactly the same as Wittgenstein’s. And yet pointing out such similarities
can enrich our understanding of both. Just as logic, the history of philosophy
is based on recognizing patterns in the multiplicity of unique phenomena. It
contextualises and compares ideas which are never exactly the same. Yet it
is based on seeing similarities in the unique: an indispensable form of un-
truth at the basis of knowledge (cf. BGE 2001, §24).
Leaving aside the interpretative difficulties of the aphorism, we would
like to highlight that ‘making things the same’ is not our intention. Com-
paring does not necessarily result in making things the same, not even in
stating similarities. A comparison may bring to the fore differences that
were not visible before, aspects that improve our grasp of both sides of the
comparison. Some differences may even become clearer against a back-
ground of partial similarities. And sometimes the result of a comparison is
indeed a parallel or an analogous pattern. Seeing ‘what is unique’ is easy in
the case of two thinkers as idiosyncratic as Wittgenstein and Nietzsche,
who both sometimes appear as untimely monoliths in the history of ideas.
In this case, recognizing similarities, contextualising their thoughts, may
provide a better understanding than diligently carving out the differences
and ending in silent admiration. In the end, it all depends on what the simi-
larities and differences are, and to what degree they are relevant. We be-
lieve a comparison between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein is worthwhile for
several reasons. They can be grouped in four categories.

1. Cultural Background
2. Explicit References to Nietzsche in Wittgenstein’s Writings
3. Similarities in Topics and Methods
4. Existing Debate

Cultural Background
Both philosophers belong to the German-speaking intellectual world. They
come from educated families and were introduced early on to that culture,
4 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

especially to the classics from the late 18th and early 19th century. While
Wittgenstein is, in some respects, a very Austrian thinker, the influence of
the German tradition must not be underestimated. And although he was
born almost half a century later than Nietzsche, he described his own cul-
tural ideal as continuous with the time of Schumann, omitting the second
half of the 19th century (MS 107, 156–1577).
For Wittgenstein as for Nietzsche, references to the German classics did
not require any special explanation. They are not the result of a scholarly
reading of Goethe, Schiller or others, but part of a cultural environment.
Quotes and sayings are integrated casually into their writing, sometimes
without even marking them as quotes or naming the author. Both philoso-
phers refer, for instance, to Schiller’s letter to Goethe where he speaks of
the poetic mood (BoT, §5; MS 136, 80a). Nietzsche’s examples of ‘higher
men’, whose thriving is at the heart of his morality, are Goethe, Beethoven
and Nietzsche himself.8 For Wittgenstein, precisely these three figures have
– to different degrees – come close to the central problems of Western cul-
ture of which he speaks with admiration, but also some distance because
that culture has already begun to disappear in his age of civilization (MS
110, 12).
There is also a more specifically philosophical heritage. Both Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein refer to Enlightenment thinkers of the German tradition,
especially Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, as shown in Marco Brusotti’s
contribution to this volume. Moreover, the two philosophers drew on
Kant’s critical philosophy, though the inspirations they derived were most
plausibly different and neither of them was a Kantian in any straightfor-
ward sense. By contrast, the philosophical systems of Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel seem to have attracted rather marginal attention.9 Instead, Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein were, at least in their youth, ardent admirers of Schopen-
hauer’s continuation of the Kantian project. It is striking that the early
writings of both philosophers, the Birth of Tragedy as well as Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, advance a kind of philosophical universalism. To be
sure they do not straightforwardly adopt Schopenhauer’s philosophy of
the Will, but both seem at least ready to take a view of the world that leads
it back to one unifying principle. And both are sympathetic to Schopen-
hauer’s idea that music has an intimate connection to this principle. While
this is very clear in Nietzsche’s Birth (e.g. BoT §16), Wittgenstein considers
connections between music and logic more waveringly (e.g. NB 7 February
1915) and finally decides to focus on the latter – yet without eliminating all
traces of Schopenhauer in the Tractatus.
The important role that is granted to music is not only a Schopenhaue-
rian trait, but also part of the German tradition in a wider sense, especially
of Romanticism. Both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein remain attached to mu-
sic as they distance themselves from Schopenhauer in their later works.
 Introduction 5

When Wittgenstein describes his cultural ideal as belonging to the early

19th century, he does not mention Goethe, Hölderlin, Kleist or Eichen-
dorff as key representatives of the time, but Robert Schumann. Consider-
ing music as typical of a time and no longer, like Schopenhauer, as a timeless
and universal mirror of a metaphysical truth is one symptom of Wittgen-
stein’s later appreciation of history in his philosophy. It is likely that the
increasing importance of history was mediated by Oswald Spengler; it
could thus indirectly be traced back to Nietzsche from whom Spengler
took ‘history’ as his central question.10 For the later Nietzsche, too, music
becomes more historical and instead of an absolute metaphysical principle
it is seen as relative to, and characteristic of, certain peoples and cultures
(see e.g. BGE, §§240–255).
Considering the remark on the time of Schumann, we should note that
Wittgenstein is talking about an ‘ideal’ and does not exclude that he was
influenced by later ideas. To the contrary, his famous list of influences
(MS 154, 15v) contains Ludwig Boltzmann and Heinrich Hertz, who were
contemporaries of Nietzsche in the second half of the 19th century, and
many contemporaries of his own, from the early 20th century. The fact
that Nietzsche himself is not mentioned should not be overestimated. First,
it may simply be the case that he was not very present on Wittgenstein’s
mind around 1931 when the list was written, even though there are strong
indirect hints to Nietzsche through Spengler and Weininger. Perhaps Ni-
etzsche, like Goethe, needed no explicit mention on this list because he had
himself become part of the German-speaking cultural heritage that ‘re-
quires no special explanation’.11 Second, there is plenty of other evidence
that supports the assumption that Nietzsche was on Wittgenstein’s mind at
several stages of his life. We shall now turn to this evidence.

Explicit References to Nietzsche in Wittgenstein’s Writings and

Conversations
We know that Nietzsche’s work was widely discussed among Wittgen-
stein’s family and friends. His sister Hermine, with whom he exchanged
ideas on intellectual matters throughout his life, read Nietzsche’s Human
All Too Human in 1915 as she writes in a letter to her brother (CC, 24
March 1915). In 1916, Wittgenstein was a member of the Olmütz Circle
around Paul Engelmann where Nietzsche was discussed in direct or indi-
rect ways, as Stefan Majetschak’s contribution to this volume shows. Lud-
wig Hänsel, who became one of Wittgenstein’s best friends, was reading
Nietzsche’s work during the time when they met in a prisoner of war camp
in Italy and talked about philosophical matters on a daily basis.12 Moritz
Schlick and Friedrich Waismann, with whom Wittgenstein discussed phi-
losophy in the late 1920s and early 30s, had read Nietzsche early on and
6 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

kept referring to his thought throughout their careers, which is shown in

Andreas Vrahimis’ essay in this volume.
Yet there is also ample evidence of Wittgenstein’s direct engagement
with Nietzsche. In Wittgenstein’s own writings and other relevant materi-
als, we find several references which span from his earliest manuscripts to
his last years. They show a lifelong presence of Nietzschean ideas in his
mind and sometimes indicate intriguing intersections with his own philo-
sophical work at the time of the reference.
Already in 1913, he shows a passage from Zarathustra to G.E. Moore,
apparently reading the book at the time of his early studies at Cambridge, as
Moore notes in his diary.13 During the war, in December 1914, Wittgenstein
buys ‘Volume 8’ of Nietzsche’s works and leaves an unusually long coded
comment in his manuscript (MS 102, 39v–40v). He connects Nietzsche’s
ideas to the problem of solipsism that occupied him both personally and
philosophically while he was working on the Tractatus (see Nuno Ven-
turinha’s contribution in this volume). Precisely which works by Nietzsche
he had read is not entirely clear as there existed several editions at the time.
If it was the octavo edition, as is usually assumed, volume 8 would have
contained poetry, the late texts The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols,
Nietzsche contra Wagner, The Antichrist and parts of what was at the time
considered Nietzsche’s unfinished opus magnum, The Will to Power. In the
more portable pocket edition from 1905, volume 8 contained Beyond Good
and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals and some fragments from the
Nachlass.14 In either case Wittgenstein would have found ‘hostility to Chris-
tianity’ by which he was ‘deeply moved’ according to his manuscript, and
which he took seriously as an ethical and philosophical position, even though
he did not agree. If we also take into account that Hermine read Nietzsche
at the time and that the siblings likely discussed their readings, we may have
reason to assume some Nietzschean influence on the Tractatus although his
name is not mentioned in the final version.15
In the 1920s, there are only indirect connections to Nietzsche through
Wittgenstein’s meetings with the Vienna Circle,16 but direct references come
up soon after he starts writing philosophy again in 1929, probably rekindled
through his reading of Spengler. In October 1930, he speaks of his time as a
‘revaluation of all values’ and asks whether Nietzsche had anticipated this
development (MS 183, 53). In January 1931, he mentions Nietzsche as the
only philosopher who had ‘perhaps passed by’ the problems of Western cul-
ture which Wittgenstein finds himself unable to tackle (MS 110, 12–13). In
the Big Typescript, the summary of his middle period, there are some strik-
ing similarities to Nietzsche which seem to go beyond a mere terminological
coincidence (TS 213,423r; see Majetschak’s essay in this volume).
 Introduction 7

From 1933, Wittgenstein repeatedly refers to Nietzsche’s idea of eternal

recurrence as an illustration of the relation between grammatical possibil-
ity and empirical actuality, a central theme of his later philosophy. The
association to Nietzsche seems to have been important to Wittgenstein for
he repeats it through various stages throughout the 1930s.17
The most programmatic reference, where Wittgenstein most clearly ar-
ticulates his proximity to Nietzsche, is made in 1938. As its translation
already raises several questions it is worth to be quoted fully in German:

Wenn ich nicht eigentlich ein richtigeres Denken, sondern eine andere /
neue Gedankenbewegung lehren will, so ist mein Zweck eine ‘Umwer-
tung von Werten’ & ich komme dadurch auf Nietzsche, sowie auch
dadurch, daß meiner Ansicht nach, der Philosoph ein Dichter sein
sollte.18
(MS 120, 145r)

Schulte has nicely put the fascination of this remark, which is not explained
in its original context, ‘The more one thinks about this passage, the more
one is tempted to despair of giving a convincing interpretation of the whole
of it. And yet, the remark seems too evidently important to leave it alone’
(2013, 350). Almost every expression raises a number of open questions:
at stake are not only the relation to Nietzsche, but also the much-discussed
issue of Wittgenstein’s view on poetry and philosophy, the aim (Zweck) of
his philosophy as a whole, the questions of values in this philosophy and
the role of a ‘movement of thought’ (Gedankenbewegung) as opposed to
‘more correct thinking’ (richtigeres Denken). Due to its suggestiveness, the
remark has provoked three, quite different, reactions in this volume (Brus-
otti, Kuusela, Zambito).
Wittgenstein keeps on referring to Nietzsche until his last years. In 1946,
he critically quotes a line from the Zarathustra as an example of a form of
materialism which takes ‘soul’ as ‘just a word for something on the body’
(MS 131, 68; cf. TSZ, 23). In 1947, he mentions and modifies an idea
about the creative process. While Nietzsche emphasises the element of se-
lection in the works of genius – even the best thinkers, poets or composers
have written mediocre things but they were able to separate them from the
good ideas – Wittgenstein stresses the special role of incomplete sketches in
the whole process of creation (MS 134, 125–125; cf. HH, I, §155). On a
related issue, Rush Rhees remembers a conversation from around 1947
where Wittgenstein claimed with Nietzsche that philosophers want ‘to be
learnt by heart’ (TSZ, 28) which motivates their sometimes poetic forms of
writing (RR, 62–63.).
8 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

Similarities in Topics and Methods

The explicit references in Wittgenstein’s writings prove a lifelong occupa-
tion with Nietzschean themes and ideas. It is, however, not only the quan-
tity of the direct and indirect intersections between the two that make a
comparison worthwhile. Independent of direct influence, their remarks on
solipsism, on the task of philosophy, their critiques of language, culture
and writing show a striking kinship in the choice of topics and methods.
The legacies of both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche have an ambiguous posi-
tion between the schools of 20th-century philosophy. With their rigorous
critique of metaphysics they can be considered forerunners of analytic phi-
losophy. In a negativistic spirit, both used philosophy of language to point
out inconsistencies and problems in traditional ways of thinking and in tra-
ditional concepts such as ‘subject’, ‘soul’, ‘good’ and ‘evil’. And both out-
lined a new philosophy that should be as rigid as the sciences and resist all
metaphysical nonsense. Historically, this aspect of Nietzsche’s and Wittgen-
stein’s thought was emphasised and adopted by members of the Vienna Cir-
cle. Up to the present analytic readings of Nietzsche stress his naturalism;
and analytic readings of Wittgenstein appreciate the programmatic passages
from the Tractatus where philosophy is restricted to the clarification of lan-
guage and the rejection of metaphysical propositions as nonsense.
Yet both philosophers are problematic forerunners of analytic philoso-
phy. Their apparently scientistic claims are often undermined by a hypo-
thetical and subjunctive presentation or by performative contradictions
(e.g. TLP 6.53–6.54; BGE §16). In their own texts, both Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein deviate decidedly from the ideal of clarity and unambiguous-
ness that analytic philosophers typically aspire to. Their perspectival writ-
ing lacks a moderating voice which would decide between the various
views that are presented. Often their style is more literary than philosophi-
cal. In any case it does not conform with conventional academic discourse.
Nietzsche is sometimes seen more as a poet than a philosopher, while Witt-
genstein seems to have been attracted precisely by this attitude when he
famously summarises his attitude to philosophy with the idea that it ought
be written ‘only as one writes a poem’ (CV 1998, 28).19 It seems plausible
that in both cases this attitude is not a contingent aspect of their philoso-
phy, but an integral part of it which also affects the more analytic claims in
their work. That both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein treat ethics and aesthet-
ics not only with analytic means, that they take philosophy to be not
merely an academic, but also a deeply personal issue, has made them popu-
lar points of reference also for thinkers of the continental tradition.

Existing Debate
The two philosophers have been compared since the 1970s.20 Interestingly,
the first scholars who brought them together were particularly interested in
 Introduction 9

Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s negative verdicts on academic philosophy

and took more practical careers themselves. After his Krisis book on nega-
tive thought from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein (1976), Massimo Cacciari
kept on publishing philosophical books, but also became a politician and
got elected mayor of Venice twice. After From Nietzsche to Wittgenstein
(1989), Glen T. Martin became a social reformer. There have been more
specialised articles, chapters and doctoral theses in the past years, but there
is no comprehensive attempt to trace the intersections and explore their
philosophical implications in different directions. This is the aim of the
present volume.
In the past years several quality papers on Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
have been advanced in German-speaking publications. One aim of our
volume is to make this debate available to a wider English-speaking audi-
ence. Thus, Nuno Venturinha’s paper on solipsism, although written in
English, was published in the German volume Ungesellige Geselligkeiten
(2011), whose publisher Parerga has disappeared from the market. Stefan
Majetschak’s ‘Philosophie als Arbeit an sich selbst. Wittgenstein, Nietzsche
und Paul Ernst’ has hitherto only been available in the German volume
Wittgensteins ,große Maschinenschrift‘. Untersuchungen zum philoso-
phischen Ort des Big Typescripts (TS 213) im Werk Ludwig Wittgensteins
(Peter Lang 2006). Marco Brusotti has written a seminal historical-philo-
logical piece ‘Wittgensteins Nietzsche. Mit vergleichenden Betrachtungen
zur Nietzsche-Rezeption im Wiener Kreis’ in the German journal Nietzsche
Studien (2009). – Venturinha’s paper is reprinted in this volume and sup-
plemented by a postscript. Majetschak’s paper has been translated and is
made available in English for the first time. Marco Brusotti has integrated
parts of his German paper into a new English article, which he wrote spe-
cifically for this volume, and explores additional aspects that were not in-
cluded in the older paper, such as Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s relation to
Lichtenberg. Some parts of Brusotti’s 2009 paper that have not been used
in his new article, are covered and extended in Andreas Vrahimis’ work on
the Vienna Circle’s reception of Nietzsche.

Essays in this Volume

The book consists of two parts. One is rather historical, the other rather
systematic – although no sharp line can be drawn between them. The chap-
ters of the first part Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche are mostly based on indi-
vidual pieces of philological evidence, namely on Wittgenstein’s explicit
mentions of Nietzsche in his writings and conversations.
Thus, Nuno Venturinha’s essay sets out to situate Wittgenstein’s earliest
written reference to Nietzsche within the genesis of the Tractatus and the
development of its key ideas, notably the issue of solipsism. In a new after-
word to this reprint of his 2011 paper, Venturinha deepens the discussion
10 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

of solipsism as a form of skepticism, explores a non-epistemic reading of

Wittgenstein’s view and reacts to recent literature on this topic.
The following essays proceed roughly chronologically towards the mid-
dle and late Wittgenstein and focus on the place of both thinkers in the
development of German-speaking intellectual history. Andreas Vrahimis
looks at Nietzsche as an important, but often-underappreciated influence
on the Vienna Circle. Schlick and Waismann, who were closest to Wittgen-
stein in the Circle, appreciated Nietzschean ideas and developed readings
of his philosophy that ran counter to the fascist appropriations of Nietzs-
chean thought by many of their contemporaries. By focusing on Nietzsche’s
‘progressive’, scientific-minded and anti-metaphysical side, they can count
as forerunners of today’s analytic readers of Nietzsche. At the same time,
Vrahimis shows how different Waismann and Schlick reacted to Nietzsche’s
views on morality and how Wittgenstein, as always, resists all straightfor-
ward classification, although he played an important part in this intellec-
tual constellation.
Stefan Majetschak’s contribution was published in German as a contri-
bution to a 2006 volume that focused on the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein’s
first attempt to compose a second book out of his hundreds of manuscript
pages which he had written after his return to philosophy in 1929. In the
translation presented here, English readers can for the first time follow
Majetschak’s careful reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s affinity to Nietzsche’s
critique of ‘the herd’ and its language – an underappreciated and surprising
aspect of the middle Wittgenstein, who is already on track towards what
shall later be called ordinary language philosophy. Rather than following
the ‘herd’, both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche understand philosophy as
‘work on oneself’. Based on historical evidence and suggestive passages,
Majetschak conjectures that the attraction to Nietzsche might have been
mediated by Wittgenstein’s reading of Paul Ernst and discussions of Ernst
in the Olmütz Circle during the First World War.
Marco Brusotti, who has published numerous articles on both thinkers
and their philological connections, argues that Wittgenstein’s critique of
language could have been influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophy of lan-
guage, but was more likely stimulated by another figure of German intel-
lectual history, namely by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. While Brusotti
explores Lichtenberg’s famous dictum about the thinking subject (‘it
thinks’ rather than ‘I think’) and Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s reactions
to it, he locates Nietzsche’s actual influence on Wittgenstein more on the
level of values and philosophical style, especially its proximity to poetry.
That values and poetry are two important connections between the two
thinkers is supported by the most programmatic reference in Wittgenstein’s
oeuvre which Brusotti also discusses: the 1938 remark about ‘Umwertung
von Werten’. It has attracted two other authors in this volume to comment
 Introduction 11

on it. Pascal Zambito looks at the respective remark through the lens of
Wittgenstein’s early work. By comparing the peculiar roles of values and
the limits of language in the Tractatus and in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good
and Evil, he proposes a reading in which also Wittgenstein’s later work
may be understood in terms of revaluation.
Finally, Oskari Kuusela explores Wittgenstein’s view, expressed in the
same remark from 1938, ‘that the philosopher should be a poet’ (MS 120,
145r). Kuusela connects this with the question of truth in philosophy and
points out that Wittgenstein’s language-games and clarificatory stories
have something in common with Nietzsche’s genealogy: they are not meant
as literal truths, but as models and objects of comparison which throw
light on the relation of language and reality.
Chapters in the second part of this volume do not necessarily depart
from concrete references, but explore topics that are relevant to both Ni-
etzsche and Wittgenstein. Thus the first chapter of Part II takes up the topic
of poetry from the end of the first part, but shifts the focus to philosophical
style more generally. Philip Mills asks in what sense Wittgenstein and Ni-
etzsche can be called ‘poetic’ philosophers. He compares their stylistic ef-
forts, which manifest themselves in their different forms of aphoristic
writing, and explores the philosophical implications of their relation to
poetry.
While the problem of truth is implicit in discussions of poetry, style and
philosophical method, Pietro Gori frames the problem as a question of
knowledge and certainty. In particular, he highlights perspectivist attitudes
in both philosophers’ epistemologies. Emphasising the historical element
in human knowledge, he suggests reading Nietzsche and Wittgenstein as
advancing a form of pragmatism that does not reduce truth to an arbitrary
function of utility, but pays special attention to the role of language in hu-
man practices.
Similarities in terms of philosophy of language are also the starting point
of Paul Loeb’s contribution. However, from the shared critique of gram-
matical confusions, he proceeds to carve out their different diagnoses of
these errors: while Wittgenstein traces philosophical mistakes to deviations
from ordinary language, Nietzsche sees common sense not as the solution,
but as the primary cause of confusion. More than other authors in this
volume, Loeb stresses the differences between the two thinkers and pro-
vides a pointed Nietzschean critique of Wittgenstein, contrasting his
method to ‘bring words back … to their everyday use’ (PI §116) with
­Nietzsche’s sense of philosophical exceptionalism, and connecting this line
of thought with their contrary positions regarding Christian values.
It is interesting to see how two authors can touch a similar point from
completely different directions and with different philosophical implica-
tions: Gordon Bearn also elaborates on the contrast between Nietzsche’s
12 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

ambition to go beyond common sense and grammatical conventions on the

one hand – and the principles of ordinary language philosophy, as inter-
preted by one of Wittgenstein’s most forceful followers, Stanley Cavell, on
the other hand. Bearn draws attention to the different strategies to react to
forms of language that have become all too conventional, empty and life-
less: confronted with such ‘chagrin’, as Emerson would call it, Nietzsche is
trying to get rid of grammar, moving forward, as it were, from the dead
forms of convention – whereas Wittgenstein and Cavell are aiming to re-
vive these forms of expression by restoring their real grammar, which they
have lost, by bringing them back to human practice and the forms of life
where they originated.
The last chapter can be read as a reply to Loeb’s and Bearn’s readings
which stress the quietist tendencies in Wittgenstein, where philosophy’s
aim is apparently to bring philosophy to an end, and contrast it with
­Nietzsche’s forward-looking and constructive view of philosophy. Peter
Westergaard, resembling Majetschak’s position in this aspect, sees
­Nietzsche as concerned with a form of self-knowledge that requires a kind
of ‘bringing back’ not too different from Wittgenstein. Moreover, he ­argues
that the clarity, which Wittgenstein’s philosophy strives for, is not the end
of thinking but its starting point.
In this spirit, we hope that this volume will inspire further debate. While
many of its articles advance well-founded research on philological evi-
dence, on historical intersections and plausible lines of influence, other
questions will most likely remain open to further discussion. On the basis
of the more or less solid philological and historical data, questions arise
that cannot be settled once and for all, but will keep on attracting scholars
to think about them. Can a proper appreciation of Nietzsche’s influence
help reading the Tractatus as more than a continuation of the Russell-
Frege project? What is the relation of Wittgenstein and Nietzsche to the
Vienna Circle and its heirs in analytic philosophy? How shall we under-
stand Wittgenstein’s self-description as someone who aims at a ‘revalua-
tion of values’? Which philosophical strategy is preferable: The practice of
ordinary language philosophy to reconnect words with human forms of
life? Or the attempt to go beyond grammar and perhaps even beyond the
human form of life? And is it always clear that Wittgenstein would give a
version of the first answer and Nietzsche a version of the second?

Notes
1 Kerkmann 2022, 182.
2 While in German scholarship KSA has become the standard for referring to
Nietzsche’s complete works, there exist several English translations of most of
his writings. Therefore we added, in each chapter, the publication date to the
 Introduction 13

first abbreviated citation of each work that has multiple translations. We use
the §-sign, common in Wittgenstein scholarship, to refer to Nietzsche’s num-
bered sections or aphorisms.
3 A pre-stage of the aphorism names Schopenhauer and Spinoza as well as Plato
and Kant as examples. The remark has also been interpreted as being about
Wagner and Nietzsche himself (Kaufmann 2022, 1011).
4 See Young 2010, 209 and 561.
5 Here is a symptomatic passage from Robert Musil’s novel The Man without
Qualities: The protagonist Ulrich asks his friend Clarisse: “‘But what was it
Nietzsche actually wanted?’ Clarisse reconsidered. ‘Well, of course I don’t
mean a Nietzsche monument or a Nietzsche street,’ she said in some embarrass-
ment. ‘But people should try to live as he-’
‘As he wanted?’ he interrupted her. ‘But what did he want?’ Clarisse started
to answer, hesitated, and finally said: ‘Oh come on, you know all that yourself
…’ (Musil 1995, 83)
6 Safranski 1998, 166.
7 We, as well as most authors in this volume, refer frequently to Wittgenstein’s
Nachlass which is partly accessible in print in the Wiener Ausgabe (WA) or
fully accessible online in the Bergen Nachlass Edition (BNE). References ac-
cording to von Wright’s catalogue (MS 1xx for manuscripts, TS 2xx for type-
scripts, TS 3xx for dictations) can be retrieved in both editions.
8 See Leiter 2015, 93.
9 Thomas Brobjer’s systematic research on Nietzsche’s reading suggests that Ni-
etzsche most likely read little of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, at least directly
(Brobjer 2008, 185–236). As for Wittgenstein, he reportedly tried to read some
Hegel in the 1940s but soon abandoned it (RR, 52). See also Berg 2021.
10 Spengler 1926, 20.
11 McGuinness 1988, 36.
12 Towards the end of July, Hänsel started reading a volume of Nietzsche which
apparently contained The Birth of Tragedy. (TLH 74–75)
13 Due to the fact that Moore’s diaries are only stored at the University Library of
Cambridge as manuscripts, this fact has supposedly been known to only a few
scholars such as Josef Rothhaupt (see Pilch, 2019, 102; Moore 1912–1914).
14 See Brusotti 2009, 361.
15 See Pilch 2019, 102.
16 See again Vrahimis’ contribution to this volume. Another piece of evidence for
Wittgenstein’s acquaintance with Nietzsche’s works is a letter to Schlick from
1932 where Wittgenstein describes his relation to the Vienna Circle with an
image from Zarathustra (MS Z, 68) – and even cares to tell Schlick where his
image comes from (CC, 6 May 1932).
17 Dictation for Schlick: TS 302, 5 (VW, 13); Brown Book: TS 310, 45; German
translation and revision of Brown Book: MS 115, 164. See also Vrahimis’ pa-
per in this volume.
18 As the remark has been revised multiple times, its original form is hard to re-
construct. See the facsimile in BNE: http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/BFE/
Ms-120,145r_f.
19 The original is ‘Philosophie dürfte man eigentlich nur dichten.’ Marco Brusot-
ti’s contribution discusses issues about the translation of this passage.
20 One might count the reactions of the Vienna Circle to both thinkers as the first
attempt to bring together elements of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein (see Vrahi-
mis’ essay in this volume).
14 Shunichi Takagi and Pascal F. Zambito

Sources
Berg, A. (2021). Wittgensteins Hegel, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink.
Brobjer, T. (2008). Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography,
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Brusotti, M. (2009). ‘Wittgensteins Nietzsche. Mit vergleichenden Betrachtungen
zur Nietzsche Rezeption im Wiener Kreis’. Nietzsche-Studien 38, 335–362.
Cacciari, M. (1976). Krisis. Saggio sulla crisi del pensiero negativo da Nietzsche a
Wittgenstein, Milano: Feltrinelli.
Kaufmann, S. (2022). Band 3.2 Kommentar zu Nietzsches ‘Die fröhliche
­Wissenschaft’, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Kerkmann, J. (2022). ‘Bernhard Ritter, Dennis Sölch (Hrsg.): Wittgenstein und die
Philosophiegeschichte’, Review in Wittgenstein Studien 13(1), 179–184.
Leiter, B. (2015). Nietzsche on Morality, New York: Routledge.
Majetschak, S. (2006). ‘Philosophie als Arbeit an sich selbst. Wittgenstein,
­Nietzsche und Paul Ernst’, in Wittgensteins ‘Große Maschinenschrift’: Untersuc-
hungen zum philosophischen Ort des Big Typescripts (TS 213) im Werk Ludwig
Wittgensteins, ed. by S. Majetschak, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 61–78.
Martin, Glen T. (1989). From Nietzsche to Wittgenstein: the Problem of Truth and
Nihilism in the Modern World, New York: Peter Lang.
McGuinness, B.F. (1988). Wittgenstein: A Life, London: Duckworth.
Moore, G.E. (1912–1914). George Edward Moore: Personal Papers and Corre-
spondence. GBR /0012/MS Add. 8330 1/3/3. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Library.
Musil, R. (1995). The Man without Qualities, tr. by Sophie Wilkins, New York:
Vintage International.
Pilch, M. (2019). ‘1914–1918. Die Entstehung des Tractatus im Ersten Weltkrieg
– Nachträge zur Biographie’, in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Die Tractatus Odyssee,
ed. R. Schweitzer, Wittgenstein Initiative, 75–116.
Safranski, R. (1998). Martin Heidegger. Between Good and Evil, tr. by Ewald
­Osers, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schulte, J. (2013), ‘Wittgenstein on Philosophy as Poetry’, in Morphology:
­Questions on Method and Language, eds. M. Molder, D. Soica and N. Fonseca,
New York: Peter Lang, 347–369.
Spengler, O. (1926). The Decline of the West, tr. by C.F. Atkinson, New York:
Knopf.
Venturinha, N. (2011). ‘Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche. The Roots of Tractarian
­Solipsism’, in Ungesellige Geselligkeiten. Unsocial Sociabilities. WIttgensteins
Umgang mit anderen Denkern. Wittgenstein’s Sources, ed. by Ester Ramharter,
Berlin: Parerga 2019, 59–74.
——— (2018). ‘Agrammaticality’, in New Essays on Frege, ed. by G. Bengtsson, A.
Pichler, S. Säätelä, Cham: Springer, 159–175.
Young, J. (2010). Friedrich Nietzsche. A Philosophical Biography, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Part I

Influence
Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche
1 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche
The Roots of Tractarian
Solipsism

Nuno Venturinha

Introduction
On 9 December 1914, after having been aboard a vessel in the Vistula,
Wittgenstein was employed in an artillery workshop in Cracow. The re-
mark that follows was written in code on the previous day in the second of
the surviving wartime notebooks:

Bought Nietzsche volume 8 and read in it. I am strongly impressed by

his hostility against Christianity. For there is also some truth contained
in his writings him. To be sure, Christianity is the only secure way to happi-
ness; but what if someone spurned this happiness?! Might it not be bet-
ter to ruin oneself, unhappy, in a despairing struggle against the external
world? Such a life is senseless. But why not lead a senseless life? Is it
unworthy? – How can it be reconciled with the strictly solipsistic point
of view? But what must I do to prevent my life being lost to me? I must
be always conscious of it – of the spirit.1

This long passage is particularly important to understand Wittgenstein’s

early philosophy because it not only introduces the issue of solipsism, but
does so in connection with a reading of Nietzsche. The volume Wittgen-
stein apparently refers to contained The Case of Wagner, from 1888, The
Twilight of the Idols, from 1889, as well as the posthumous writings, pre-
pared between August 1888 and January 1889, Nietzsche contra Wagner,
The Antichrist – the first book of the project Transvaluation of all Values
– and some Poetries.2 Incidentally, there is not a single occurrence of the
term “solipsism” either in these works or in any other of Nietzsche’s. A
closer look at Wittgenstein’s remark reveals, however, that he actually puts
Nietzsche’s “hostility against Christianity” (Feindschaft gegen das Chris-
tentum) alongside his “strictly solipsistic point of view” (streng
solipsistische[r] Standpunkt). Thus, if the encounter with Nietzsche gave
Wittgenstein an extra illumination, this must have consisted only of an

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-3
18 Nuno Venturinha

insight into the most possible negative way of establishing a human life,
rejecting Christianity, which, by that time, was already conceived in a “so-
lipsistic” manner. It is then Wittgenstein’s reaction to such a view, while
elaborating his Tractarian conception of solipsism, that I shall be examin-
ing in the remainder of this essay.

I
In a letter to Russell of 22 May 1915, about two months before leaving
Cracow, Wittgenstein wrote:

The problems are becoming more and more lapidary and general and
the method has changed drastically.–3

We shall never know exactly what Wittgenstein meant when he said that
“the method [had] changed drastically”, but an analysis of the remarks
written down at that time in MS 102 may offer us a clue. In fact, if the few
coded entries for May 1915 on the left-hand pages are merely of biograph-
ical interest,4 there are quite a lot of un-coded philosophical remarks cov-
ering all that month on the right-hand pages.5 Among these, a segment that
can be found just one day after the above-mentioned letter to Russell was
written deserves special attention. Indeed, 23 May opens with the follow-
ing considerations:

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

There really is only one world soul, which I for preference call my soul
and as which alone I conceive what I call the souls of others.
The above remark gives the key for deciding to what extent solipsism is
a truth.
I have long been conscious that it would be possible for me to write a
book: “The world I found”.6

And the closing remark for that day reads as follows:

In the book “The world I found” I should also have to report on my

body and say something which members are subject to my will, etc. For
this is a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an
important sense there is no such thing as the subject; for it would be the
one thing that could not come into this book. –7

Except for the second, all these remarks made their way into the Tractatus.
They are interspersed from 5.6 onwards, the 5s ending precisely with a
discussion of solipsism. Yet, it will be useful to consider as well how these
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 19

remarks made their way into the so-called Prototractatus. Furthermore, in

its notebook, MS 104, they are spread among different layers of the text.
Following the lead of Brian McGuinness, I have argued elsewhere that
a first treatise, which Wittgenstein concluded at Olmütz towards the end
of 1916, was composed of only the first 70 pages of the Prototractatus
manuscript.8 As a consequence, the last numerical proposition of it was
not 7, which comes only on page 71,9 but 6.131 of page 66 – correspond-
ing to the second paragraph of 6.13 of the Tractatus. This, interestingly
enough, states that “[l]ogic is transcendental”. Given that the first ethical
remark, later rubbed out, appears close to proposition 7, at the top of
page 71,10 it seems then as if the “proto-Prototractatus”, in McGuinness’
words, would solely contain remarks about logic. Still, a genetic look at
Wittgenstein’s elaboration of his treatise will show that the remarks on
solipsism selected for the 1916 version actually make the bridge between
what one might call a Tractatus Logicus and the Tractatus Logico-Philo-
sophicus itself.

II
To begin with, let us list the relevant propositions that figure in MS 104
before page 70. They start with a reformulation of the first entry of 23
May 1915, which is taken as the main proposition, and run as follows:

The limits of my language are mean the limits of my world.

This remark gives the key for deciding [the question] to what extent
solipsism is a truth.
For what solipsism means is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it
shows itself.
That the world is my world shows itself in the fact that the limits of my
language (the only [only] language which I understand) mean the limits
of my world.
There is no such thing as the thinking, representing subject.11

Taking into account that proposition 5.3351, the first paragraph of 5.62 of
the Tractatus, derives from the third entry of 23 May, it is likely that “the
key” Wittgenstein alludes to is not to be found in proposition 5.335, 5.6 of
the Tractatus, but in the (omitted) second entry for that day in MS 102.12
This is also the reading suggested by Peter Hacker.13 But, for instance, Da-
vid Pears is of the opinion that the first paragraph of proposition 5.62 of
the Tractatus constitutes a comment on 5.6, the same happening in the
corresponding passages of the diary.14 Joachim Schulte, in turn, even criti-
cizing Pears, notes that, in MS 104, the proposition that precedes 5.3351
is actually 5.335.15
20 Nuno Venturinha

I leave this question open and turn now to the second appearance in the
Prototractatus notebook of the topic of solipsism. And, contrary to what
characterized his inaugural treatment, Wittgenstein would not insert this
time the propositions consecutively, but these were interwoven with many
of the ethical-religious remarks from the right-hand pages of MS 103, the
third of the wartime notebooks that survived. Thus, after condensing in a
sole proposition the fourth and the closing remark of 23 May 1915 on
page 76, under the number 5.33541, forming the second paragraph of
5.631 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein inserted on page 83 a proposition
bearing the number 5.33531 – consisting, therefore, of a comment on
5.3353, the third paragraph of 5.62 of the Tractatus – which, correspond-
ing to 5.621 of the final version, says that “[t]he world and life are one”.
This, then, is immediately followed by a proposition, numbered 6.4221,
the (parenthetical) third paragraph of 6.421 of the Tractatus, stating that
“[e]thics and aesthetics are one”. Both come from remarks written down
on 24 July 1916,16 with the other two remarks of that day, which never
reached a later version, reading as follows:

Physiological life is of course not “Life”. And neither is psychological

life. Life is the world.
Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the
world, like logic.17

If we bear in mind that, as a result of an immanent procedure, the last prop-

osition of what I called the Tractatus Logicus should conclude that “[l]ogic
is transcendental”, it is of particular interest that both in the Prototractatus
and the Tractatus the proposition that identifies ethics with aesthetics is im-
mediately preceded by one saying that “[e]thics is transcendental”,18 the
source of which is the last remark of 30 July 1916.19 In fact, after the exten-
sive remark that marks the transition of the ethical entries from the coded
left-hand pages to the un-coded right-hand ones in MS 103, dated 11 June
1916, where Wittgenstein already writes, in the sixth paragraph, that “life is
the world”, anticipating the first record of 24 July,20 we clearly see that the
reflections on solipsism lie with their application to ethical-religious views
about our cognitive and linguistic limits. That is the reason why in MS 104,
as well as in the Prototractatus and Tractatus numbering, the idea of the
transcendentalism of ethics represents a comment on a proposition affirming
that “ethics cannot be expressed”,21 something originally recorded also on
30 July 1916.22 Moreover, both in the Prototractatus and in the Tractatus,
the proposition about the inexpressibility of ethics comes after one that
­follows 6.41, the more philosophical version, so to speak, of the remark of
11 June, with Wittgenstein writing that “there can be no ethical ­propositions”,
and that “[p]ropositions cannot express anything higher”.23
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 21

III
This connection between solipsism and ethics or religion becomes even
more clear when we verify that the next solipsistic proposition in MS 104,
numbered 5.33542, 5.632 in the Tractatus – thus functioning as a com-
ment on 5.33541 of page 76, the second paragraph of 5.631 of the Tracta-
tus – immediately follows, on page 84, an intriguing remark, composed of
two paragraphs, to which no number has been assigned. Proposition
5.33542, 5.632 of the Tractatus, mentions that “[t]he subject does not
belong to the world but it is a limit of the world”. It stems from a remark
dated 2 August 1916, which begins by saying that “[g]ood and evil only
enter through the subject”.24 Looking now for the source of the unnum-
bered proposition referred to above, we see that it lies in the opening en-
tries for 1 August 1916, appearing on the heels of that about the
transcendentalism of ethics. I quote the two together:

How things stand, is God.

God is, how things stand.25

Further connections are well worth our attention, but there are two that I
would like to mention here because they bring us back directly to Wittgen-
stein’s statement about Nietzsche. The first one has to do with the next
entry for 1 August, in which it is said:

Only from the consciousness of the uniqueness of my life arises religion

– science – and art.26

While it is evident that this “uniqueness of my life” is related to “the

strictly solipsistic point of view”, the use of the word “consciousness”
­(Bewußtsein), repeated on the very next day, where it is identified with
“life itself”,27 seems to be truly reminiscent of the last sentence of 8 Decem-
ber 1914 where Wittgenstein emphasized that “to prevent [his] life being
lost to [him]”, “[he] must be always conscious (bewußt) of it – of the
spirit”. The second connection I would like to draw attention to concerns
the two propositions that, in MS 104, precede the unnumbered remark at
issue, following the view that “ethics is transcendental”. The former is the
well-known proposition that affirms that “[t]he world of the happy is quite
another than that of the unhappy”,28 deriving from an entry dated 29 July
1916.29 The other is the equally famous proposition about the laying down
of any “ethical law” and the sort of “ethical reward” and “ethical punish-
ment” that is at stake in our actions.30 Its source is the opening remark of
30 July,31 with Wittgenstein writing on that day, apart from the early ver-
sions of propositions 6.421 and 6.422, i.e. the first and second paragraphs
22 Nuno Venturinha

of 6.421 of the Tractatus, three other remarks, which also have much in
common with the framework of that on Nietzsche. They read as follows:

I keep on coming back to this! simply the happy life is good, the un-
happy bad. And if I now ask myself: But why should I live happily, then
this of itself seems to me to be a tautological question; the happy life
seems to be justified, of itself; it seems that it is the only right life.
But we could say: The happy life seems to be in some sense more har-
monious than the unhappy. But in what sense??
What is the objective mark of the happy, harmonious life? Here it is
again clear that there cannot be any such mark, that can be described.
This mark cannot be a physical one but only a metaphysical one, a
transcendental one.32

We are now in a position to better understand Wittgenstein’s talk about

Christianity as “the only secure way to happiness” in spite of the “truth
contained in [Nietzsche’s] writings [Nietzsche]”. Indeed, there is nothing in the em-
pirical world that justifies a “leap of faith”, to use a phrase of Kierkegaard,
and, in so doing, we may be merely negating our will because we are not
strong enough to affirm it, overcoming the very idea(l) of truth, that is, of a
version about reality. Nevertheless, there is something inside of us that
speaks against such a “will to power”,33 something that cannot be “de-
scribed” or “put into words”: our “conscience” (Gewissen), which Wittgen-
stein, in an entry dated 8 July 1916, characterizes as “the voice of God”.34

IV
Thus, when Wittgenstein writes that “[t]he subject does not belong to the
world but it is a limit of the world”, he is not simply making an epistemo-
logical claim as the numbering both of the Prototractatus and of the Trac-
tatus suggest. If we criss-cross Wittgenstein’s remarks in their original
sequence, as well as in the sequence they take in MS 104, it becomes mani-
fest that the problem of solipsism grew up in his mind along with an ethi-
cal-religious view on the world. A pair of remarks of 2 and 5 August 1916,
neither of which are included in either the Prototractatus or in the Tracta-
tus, reinforces the reading I am proposing here. They say:

As the subject is not a part of the world but a presupposition of its ex-
istence, so good and evil which is are predicates of the subject, are not
properties in the world.35
If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world,
which we call the I and which is the bearer of ethics.36
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 23

It was between these two days of notes that Wittgenstein wrote down, on
4 August, what came to be proposition 5.33543 of the Prototractatus,
numbered 5.633 in the Tractatus, which follows, even in MS 104 on page
84, that about the subject being a limit of the world. There begins the re-
markable discussion about the “field of sight” or “visual field”. He ob-
serves in his diary:

Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?

You say that here it is just as it is for the eye and the visual field. But you
do not actually see the eye.
And I think that nothing in the visual field would enable one to infer
that it is seen from an eye.37

Then, after a remark that echoes closely the last solipsistic proposition of
the “proto-Prototractatus”, proposition 5.3354 – the first paragraph of
5.631 of the Tractatus – which comes before 5.33541, 5.33542 and
5.33543 (5.631[2], 5.632 and 5.633 in the final version), stating that “[t]he
thinking subject is surely mere illusion” whereas “the willing subject ex-
ists”,38 there follows a train of reflections on the “I”. It starts with the re-
mark about the “I” as the “centre of the world” and “bearer of ethics”,
continuing as follows:

What is good and evil is essentially the I, not the world.

The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious!
The I is not an object.
I objectively confront every object. But not the I.
So there really is a way in which there can and must be talk about the I in a
non-psychological sense in philosophy.
The I makes its appearance in philosophy through the world’s being my
world.39

It is important to appreciate this earlier approach to the question because

only the last two remarks made their way into the Prototractatus and the
Tractatus. They constitute the two paragraphs of proposition 5.33551 of
the former, which comes in MS 104 on page 85, and the first two para-
graphs of proposition 5.641 of the latter, actually the final of the 5s. The
third paragraph of proposition 5.641, bearing the number 5.33552 in MS
104 on page 94, was taken from a later remark, dated 2 September 1916.
It also focuses on the “I” but revealing in a different way the “metaphysical
subject”. The diary version differs significantly from the (Proto-)Tractarian
versions because the second sentence of the remark was left out by Witt-
genstein. In full the quotation is:
24 Nuno Venturinha

The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body or the
human soul with the psychological properties, but the metaphysical
subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world. The human body, how-
ever, my body in particular, is a part of the world among others, among
beasts, plants, stones, etc., etc.40

Still on that day there are further contributions to the discussion about the
“I”. The opening entry is the most important one since, in MS 104, further
ahead on the same page where proposition 5.33551 was inserted, we find
it, slightly modified, with the number 5.3355, coinciding with proposition
5.64 of the Tractatus. Consequently, it is meant to preface, in both texts,
the two (or three) last-mentioned statements. And it is here that the word
“solipsism” reappears. I quote from the final version:

Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure real-
ism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there re-
mains the reality co-ordinated with it.41

Bewilderingly, this remark begins by alluding to a “Here” which is by no

means easy to determine. In effect, it is not related to the thoughts ex-
pressed on the previous days, neither on the right-hand pages nor on the
left-hand ones, so that we must turn to the later versions in order to grasp
its meaning. We verify then that in the textual sequence of MS 104 it is
preceded by proposition 5.33545, whose two paragraphs form the second
and third ones of 5.634 of the Tractatus. The first paragraph of proposi-
tion 5.634 of the Tractatus is numbered 5.33544 in MS 104,42 following,
on page 85, proposition 5.33551, the one that numerically follows 5.3355.
Accordingly, the puzzling “Here” drives us to the closing remarks of 12
August 1916, standing between them and the opening entry for that day
– where the segment on the “I” apparently ended – the much-quoted re-
mark with the diagram of the eye. This comes, in MS 104, immediately
after proposition 5.33543, 5.633 in the Tractatus, bearing the number
5.335431 in the Prototractatus and 5.6331 in the final version. Here are
the closing remarks of 12 August:

This is connected with the fact that none of our experience is a priori.
All that we see could also be otherwise.
All that we can describe at all could also be otherwise.43

The addition Wittgenstein made to this sequence on page 92 of MS 104,

writing down out of the blue, as it were, a proposition numbered 5.33546,
in what would be the fourth paragraph of 5.634 of the Tractatus, saying
that “[t]here is no order of things a priori”, cannot thus be seen as the root
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 25

of the remark that makes solipsism coincident with realism, still less as a
vindication of empiricism. Quite the contrary, the original context I have
tried to reconstruct plainly shows that what Wittgenstein really means is
that experience is, in a certain sense, always a posteriori since it is already
my experience. That is why, in MS 104, after the proposition on solipsism
and realism, Wittgenstein went on to write, on page 85, “I am my world”
and parenthetically “the microcosm”, assigning to this proposition the
number 5.33532, 5.63 in the Tractatus. It stems from a much later remark,
dated 12 October 1916,44 but it came to follow proposition 5.33531, num-
ber 5.621 of the Tractatus, in which it is said that “[t]he world and life are
one”.

V
This was, as we have seen, the first proposition that Wittgenstein selected
for his second consideration of solipsism in MS 104. And, as we also have
seen, that proposition was followed, on page 83, by 6.4221, which says, in
turn, that “[e]thics and aesthetics are one”. So, in order to conclude this
analysis, I would like to point out that the proposition that, in MS 104,
follows 5.33532 states that “[t]he contemplation of the world sub specie
aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole”,45 something specified by a
proposition that comes on the next page, with Wittgenstein writing that
“[t]he feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling”.46 To
make things even more interesting, the former of these propositions is ac-
tually prefaced, in the Prototractatus numbering, by the proposition that
in the manuscript follows 6.42, about the impossibility of “ethical proposi-
tions” given that “[p]ropositions cannot express anything higher”, which
bears the same number in the Tractatus. It says that “[t]here is indeed the
inexpressible”, that “[t]his shows itself”, that “it is the mystical”.47 And,
perhaps the best of the story, the only remark in the diaries in which the
word “mystical” appears was written down only two days after the first
series of solipsistic remarks,48 preceding, in MS 104, where it was slightly
modified, the proposition about the possible book “The world I found”.49
This criss-crossed net of relations makes us see that a theoretical reading
of Wittgenstein’s solipsism cannot be entirely right. That kind of reading
receives its classic expression in Hacker, who criticizes McGuinness’ asso-
ciation of phrases like “Man is the microcosm” or “I am my world”, as
said on 12 October 1916, with “traditional mysticism”. Here is how
Hacker poses the question:

Wittgenstein’s solipsism was inspired by Schopenhauer’s doctrines of

transcendental idealism. These he adapted to his own peculiar transcen-
dental form of “theoretical egoism”. What the solipsist means, and is
26 Nuno Venturinha

correct in thinking, is that the world and life are one, that man is the
microcosm, that I am my world. These equations have little to do with
traditional mysticism and are not descriptions of mystical experiences.
Nor are they essentially connected with ethical Stoicism, involving a
refusal to identify oneself with part of the world.50

And he goes on to say, criticizing McGuinness:51

McGuinness suggests that realization that the world is my world is an

essential part of happiness, that “I am my world” is a refusal to identify
oneself with the physiological or psychological peculiarities and life of a
particular individual. He […] associates [this interpretation] with tradi-
tional mysticism.52

I do not have opportunity to consider in detail here Wittgenstein’s concept

of “mysticism”, but it was surely influenced by Schopenhauer, who, in The
World as Will and Representation, frequently alludes to mystics like Meis-
ter Eckhart or Angelus Silesius, a tradition of thought that Wittgenstein
greatly admired.53 Thus, even though McGuinness’ view of Wittgenstein’s
mysticism is somewhat confused, it is evident that Hacker’s interpretation
overlooks the ethical-religious implications of solipsism.54 In truth, there is
no “theoretical egoism” in Wittgenstein, as there is none in Schopen-
hauer.55 What they both aim at is precisely a negation of our natural ego-
ism, the negation that Nietzsche seeks to overcome.56 The notes of
Wittgenstein’s sister, Hermine, on Nietzsche’s criticism of Schopenhauer in
Human, All Too Human, dating from 1917–1918, go exactly in that vein.57
And we know, from a postcard sent to her brother at the beginning of
1915, as well as from a letter dated 24 March of the same year, that she
was already reading Nietzsche at that time, more specifically, as the letter
reveals, the Human, All Too Human.58 I shall then close with a quotation
from Nietzsche’s preface to the second volume of that work, a quotation
that may have been an inspiration for both the preface and proposition 7
of the Tractatus:59

One should only speak where one may not remain silent; and only speak
of what one has overcome – everything else is chatter, “literature”, lack
of breeding.60

Afterword (2022)
In his seminal paper “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by De-
scription”, first published in 1910–11, Russell contends that while it makes
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 27

no sense to deny the role played by the subject in cognition, as that would
be tantamount to assuming a purely materialistic view, one should avoid
falling into the other extreme, namely “that what is presented is part of the
subject”; by following this route, he warns, “we arrive at idealism, and
should arrive at solipsism but for the most desperate contortions”.61 Al-
though he essentially agreed with Russell on this matter, Wittgenstein did
not see things in the same light and Russell’s “dualism of subject and ob-
ject”62 was actually contorted into a strange mix of idealism or solipsism
and realism.
The last diary entry for 15 October 1916 seems to attenuate the coinci-
dence between solipsism and realism that is found in the aforementioned
entry for 2 September of the same year which would make its way into
proposition 5.3355 of the Prototractatus, 5.64 of the Tractatus. Wittgen-
stein writes:

This is the way I have travelled: Idealism singles men out from the world
as unique, solipsism singles me alone out, and at last I see that I too
belong with the rest of the world, and so on the one side nothing is left
over, and on the other side, as unique, the world. In this way idealism
leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.63

Still, this mitigated combination of idealism and realism was overshad-

owed by the emphasis on solipsism that characterizes both the Prototrac-
tatus and the Tractatus. Hence, we will run into problems if we interpret
this solipsism on purely epistemological grounds as the balance inevitably
tips to the internalist side. The externalist, realist side is swallowed up in it
when we realize that any justification for our evidence that the external
world really exists is mind-dependent. What emerges is the spectre of radi-
cal scepticism, which is often associated with solipsism. But this kind of
interpretation – which I shall call the epistemic reading – falls short of
noticing that Wittgenstein’s solipsistic perspective does not involve a scep-
tical line of argument. Sami Pihlström has recently articulated such a non-
epistemic reading. Departing from the tendency to equate “the radical
skeptical scenario that there is no world external to our thought” with
“the solipsistic view that the world exists only due to our thinking”, Pihl-
ström distinguishes between two conceptions of solipsism: one “as a mere
skeptical idea” and another “as a ‘transcendental’ idea”.64 The former he
describes as follows: “for all I know, it is possible, or conceivable, that
nothing exists independently of my mind and experience”; the latter, in
turn, corresponds to the realization that “‘the world is my world’ in the
somewhat mystical sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early work, Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus”.65 It is only when we explore this second stance,
Pihlström argues, that we can grasp the extent to which solipsism can be
28 Nuno Venturinha

“both ethically and metaphysically, or even existentially, fundamental to

our self-understanding”.66 I sympathize with Pihlström’s approach for that
is exactly what I have tried to demonstrate in this essay while focusing
specifically on Wittgenstein’s reaction to Nietzsche. Still, I think that the
success of the non-epistemic reading depends upon whether the cancella-
tion of the epistemic reading is a valid cancellation. The purpose of this
Afterword is to elaborate on this specific aspect.
In an interesting analysis of the problem of solipsism, James Levine ob-
serves that at first glance it may seem reasonable to defend that “[s]ince,
for Wittgenstein, understanding ~(Solip) precludes its truth, he is thereby
committed to denying that ~(Solip) is a sentence with sense and to holding
that, if ~(Solip) is a sentence at all, it is a contradiction”; but in this way,
Levine points out, “he is committed to holding that, if (Solip) is a sentence
at all, it is a tautology”.67 We thus get a paradoxical result if we look at the
matter that way. So Levine concludes that “it is clear that he cannot regard
(Solip) as a (senseless) tautology or ~(Solip) as a (senseless) contradiction,
but is rather committed to regarding both as nonsensical pseudo-sen-
tences”.68 While Wittgenstein does not qualify solipsism as either sinnlos
or unsinnig in his early writings, he does use the latter adjective and not the
former to talk about scepticism. As mentioned above,69 this occurs in the
second remark for 1 May 1915 which, together with the one that follows
in the diary, would form proposition 6.51 in both the Prototractatus and
the Tractatus. I quote from the final version:

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical (unsinnig), if it

would doubt where a question cannot be asked.
For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only
where there is an answer, and this only where something can be said.70

When we consider the matter attentively, we quickly understand that scep-

ticism or solipsism are by no means good candidates to be conceived as
“senseless” (sinnlos) according to Wittgenstein’s technical use of this term.
He reserves it for tautologies and contradictions,71 which, he specifies,
“are, however, not nonsensical (nicht unsinnig)”.72 Using Levine’s nota-
tion, in order for (Solip) and ~(Solip) to count respectively as a tautology
and a contradiction, we would need to affirm something like “~[(Solip) &
~(Solip)]” in the first case and “(Solip) & ~(Solip)” in the second. But in so
doing we would be affirming nothing about (Solip) and ~(Solip) in them-
selves. Tautologies and contradictions, Wittgenstein explains, “are not pic-
tures of reality” as these limiting cases of truth-functions “present no
possible situation”.73 Of course, there are special cases of single proposi-
tions that are tautological (or contradictory), e.g. “a triangle has three
straight sides and three angles” (or “a triangle does not have three straight
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 29

sides and three angles”). Yet, what the proposition asserts does not go be-
yond the definition of a name (or its annulment). It is instructive what the
Prototractatus tells us in this regard at 4.44602, a proposition that was not
incorporated in the Tractatus: “Analytical propositions are tautologies.”74
Solipsism cannot be a “truth” to the same extent as the definition of tri-
angle (a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles) is a sense-
less truth insofar the latter forms a tautology in virtue of its analyticity. All
that solipsism (or its negation) wants to say, if anything, is wholly syn-
thetic as the existence (or non-existence) of something outside my present
experience cannot be derived from the concept of a subject who has this
present experience. So how can solipsism be a nonsensical “truth”?
John W. Cook first, Cora Diamond later and, more recently, Shunichi
Takagi have all put forward substantive arguments that support an inter-
pretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks for 1 May 1915 in light of a rejoinder
to Russell’s 1914 book Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field
for Scientific Method in Philosophy,75 which consists of the Lowell Lec-
tures he gave in Boston in March and April 1914.76 In fact, the final entry
for that day mentions that “Russell’s method in his ‘Sc[ientific] Method in
Phil[osophy]’ is simply a retrogression from the method of physics”.77
“Scientific Method in Philosophy” is, however, the title of another work
published by Russell in the same year consisting of the Herbert Spencer
Lecture given on 18 November 1914.78 It thus becomes uncertain whether
Wittgenstein’s reference is to the book, to the lecture or to both. Whereas
Cook and Takagi believe that what Wittgenstein read was the book,79 Dia-
mond leans toward the hypothesis that he did get the two texts from John
Maynard Keynes.80 In a letter to Wittgenstein dated 10 January 1915,
Keynes alludes indeed to “a new book” by Russell appeared “about the
beginning of the War”,81 that is, June–August 1914, and in his reply, ap-
parently written on 25 January 1915, Wittgenstein urges Keynes to send
him that “book”.82 We shall never know exactly what Keynes sent to Witt-
genstein, if he did manage to send anything at all. But if he did, Russell’s
just 30-page long pamphlet of the lecture is unlikely to have been equated
with the “book” alluded to in Keynes’ letter. Taking into account the strik-
ing parallels with Our Knowledge of the External World, there are good
reasons to believe that Wittgenstein will have received some time after his
exchange with Keynes, pace Diamond, the “British binding issue” of the
first edition of that book, which came out in August 1914, one month be-
fore the publication of the “American binding issue” and various months
before the publication of the Lecture.83
Our Knowledge of the External World represents Russell’s first major
work after the collapse of his 1913 project of a Theory of Knowledge.84
This project was put behind mainly as a result of Wittgenstein’s acute criti-
cism of Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment (henceforth MRTJ),85
30 Nuno Venturinha

a criticism that still finds an echo in the Tractatus where at 5.5422 Witt-
genstein affirms:

The correct explanation of the form of the proposition “A judges B”

must show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense (Unsinn). (Russell’s
theory does not satisfy this condition.)

The same point had already been made by Wittgenstein in the 1913 “Notes
on Logic”, dictated to Russell before leaving to Norway, where he would
stay until the outbreak of the War in 1914. In the “Summary” Wittgenstein
makes the following observation:

In my theory p has the same meaning as not-p but opposite sense. The
meaning is the fact. The proper theory of judgment must make it impos-
sible to judge nonsense.86

Russell’s MRTJ was laid out long before the preparation of his 1913 The-
ory of Knowledge. In the 1910 paper “On the Nature of Truth and False-
hood”, he already writes that “judgment is not a dual relation of the mind
to a single Objective, but a multiple relation of the mind to the various
other terms with which the judgment is concerned”.87 Russell was con-
vinced that only this theory could solve the problem of there being a false
judgment as long as the dual relation theory requires that the judgment be
inevitably true. But if we understand that any “judgment is a relation of a
mind to several objects, one of which is a relation”, then it will be possible
to say, he claims, that “the judgment is true when the relation which is one
of the objects relates the other objects” for “otherwise it is false”.88 We find
this same approach in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by
Description”89 and, of course, in the Theory of Knowledge, where the rela-
tion of judging is largely explained in terms of a relation of believing.90
Thus, he maintains that the processes of “belief and understanding”, con-
trary to what happens in a dual, direct cognitive relation like that of per-
ception, “have not a single object, the ‘proposition’, but have a plurality of
objects, united with the subject in a multiple relation”.91 Russell’s rejection
of a Fregean-like view based on the articulation between an intersubjective
meaning or sense (the Sinn) and an objective denotation or reference (the
Bedeutung), a rejection he had been formulating since the 1905 paper “On
Denoting”, is well synthesized in this non-objectivist account of what does
it mean to believe in something:

[…] the whole nature of belief must necessarily be misunderstood by

those who suppose that it consists in a relation between “ideas”, rather
than in the belief of a relation between objects. Something subjective
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 31

must be so inseparably bound up with belief as to make it impossible to

regard it as a dual relation to a single object, since, if we did so regard
it, falsehood would become inexplicable.92

Russell is not suggesting that we are subjectivists through and through.

Quite the contrary, his theory aims to safeguard an objectivity that neces-
sarily has to be presupposed if we do not want to reduce the propositional
content to “ideas” intersubjectively shared by human beings within a
metaphysical, Platonist framework. After all, as he puts it in another text
from 1913, the “two-term relation” that constitutes “presentation” or
“acquaintance”, promoted by “a subject, or (better) an act, to a single
(simple or complex) object”, is preserved alongside the “multiple relation”
of believing or judging, that carried out by “a subject or act to the several
objects concerned in the judgment”.93 And it is this understanding of the
matter that, despite his criticism levelled against Russell’s theory in 1913,
Wittgenstein will find again in Our Knowledge of the External World,
specifically at the end of Lecture II. After reiterating why it is necessary to
go beyond “a two-term relation” in the explanation of “the nature of judg-
ment or belief”, Russell declares that incapacity to figure out this crucial
aspect “vitiated almost everything that has hitherto been written on the
theory of knowledge, making the problem of error insoluble and the differ-
ence between belief and perception inexplicable”.94 It is then particularly
relevant that Wittgenstein’s reference to scepticism as being “not irrefut-
able, but obviously nonsensical” represents a direct response to Russell’s
claim made just a few pages ahead (7 to be exact, if one excludes the blank
pages), in Lecture III, that “[u]niversal scepticism, though logically irrefut-
able, is practically barren” and as such “can only, therefore, give a certain
flavour of hesitancy to our beliefs” even if it “cannot be used to substitute
other beliefs for them”.95 That Wittgenstein’s response is articulated within
the framework of his opposition to Russell’s MRTJ has nevertheless passed
unobserved by commentators of proposition 6.51 of the Tractatus.96 In the
remainder of this Afterword I will do two things: I will explain why from
a philosophical point of view this appears to be the best interpretation of
the passage and how it coheres well with the non-epistemic reading I have
been favouring on the basis of Wittgenstein’s reaction to Nietzsche; at the
same time, I will lay down a series of philological arguments supporting
such an interpretation which seem to have escaped the attention of
scholarship.
Russell’s admission that radical, “universal scepticism” is “logically ir-
refutable” involves a good deal of confusion. A proposition can only be
logically irrefutable if it is a tautology and, for Wittgenstein, the whole
business of logic consists in showing that logical propositions are tauto-
logical and therefore uninformative. We saw that, as a purely formal
32 Nuno Venturinha

discipline, logic can do no more than allowing the construal of proposi-

tions like “~[(Solip) & ~(Solip)]” and “(Solip) & ~(Solip)” as being tauto-
logical and contradictory, respectively. Any claims of the form “there is
something outside my present experience” or “there is nothing outside of
my present experience”, which can be formalized in terms of “(∃y)(~Ay)”
and “~(∃y)(~Ay)”, say nothing else than “not everything is the object of
my present acquaintance” or “everything exists within my acquaintance”,
which can be formalized in terms of “~(∀y)(Ay)” and “(∀y)(Ay)”.97 We
have done no more than stating a logical equivalence between “(∃y)(~Ay)”
and “~(∀y)(Ay)” on the one hand and “~(∃y)(~Ay)” and “(∀y)(Ay)” on the
other. The content of these propositions is entirely irrelevant to logic as
they could be used to express anything that is logically translatable through
the same schemes, e.g.: “I am not the author of all books that exist in the
world” or “I am the author of all books that exist in the world”. The em-
pirical congruence or incongruence of these two propositions – as well as
the previous ones – is of no interest to logic. It therefore comes as no sur-
prise that Russell’s theory of types had been sharply criticized by Wittgen-
stein as it is for him inconceivable that a logical theory can declare that
such and such proposition has sense and such and such is nonsensical.
That some proposition is a tautology or a contradiction is shown in the
symbolism alone.98 Yet, the shortcomings of Russell’s theory of types at the
logical level are no less important than those of his MRTJ at the epistemo-
logical level.
As we saw, Wittgenstein was convinced that Russell’s view of judgment
had the unfortunate result of making it possible “to judge (a) nonsense”. If
there is no “single Objective” to which a subject A is related in the judg-
ment “A believes that the external world exists” and all that A is related to
are the multiple constituents or objects of the judgment itself (viz. “A”,
“A’s belief that it is so”, “the quality of being external”, “the world” and
“the predicate of existence”), then it is difficult to see how, in Russell’s
words, “the relation which is one of the objects relates the other objects”
for A’s judgment to be true. Without any other condition than the judging
relation itself – something that Russell thinks necessary to avoid a meta-
physical hypostatizing of a Fregean “proposition” to which A’s judgment
would refer – we are bound to accept as meaningful whatever relation that
A entertains in its mind – even one resting solely in a subjective representa-
tion. A person with schizophrenia can affirm that he is Napoleon exactly
as a radical sceptic can claim that there is no world external to her thought.
As long as they are related to the objects of their judgments, “to judge (a)
nonsense” becomes possible. Wittgenstein must have found it unbearable
to defend such an account and vehemently wrote in the second entry for 1
May 1915 that “[s]cepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical”.
What is at issue is that we cannot form any representation of what could
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 33

be the putative success of the radical doubt advanced by the sceptic. The
question “Does the external world exist?” is a pseudo-question. There is
nothing that I expect to be answered as there is no room for a negative
answer. The confirmation that the sceptic was right in doubting about the
existence of the external world is not articulable in any way. “Oh yeah,
you’re right” is not an option here for it does not result in portraying a
possible state of affairs. Scepticism is consequently far from being “practi-
cally barren”, as Russell thought, since if it were so it would nonetheless
be something meaningful. That scepticism may “give a certain flavour of
hesitancy to our beliefs” is not because we cannot logically refute it but
rather because we fail to recognize the nonsense of the sequences of words
that only apparently challenge our worldview. Hence, scepticism has by no
means the capacity “to substitute” our most deeply rooted beliefs for new
beliefs, not in virtue of a real-world inapplicability but as a result of there
being no alternative to our way of thinking. If Wittgenstein read Nietzsche’s
Human, All Too Human before May 1915, as the correspondence with his
sister Hermine somehow suggests,99 we can well imagine his resistance to
passages in which Nietzsche highlights a sceptical attitude in both the first
volume100 and the second, as the opening section of the aforementioned
Preface illustrates with its defence of “moral scepticism” and the view that
nothing is worth believing in any longer.101
It is now time to give a philological demonstration that Wittgenstein’s
entries for 1 May 1915 should be read in the context of his opposition to
Russell’s MRTJ and that therein lies the key to understanding why scepti-
cism is nonsense. Proposition 6.51 was inserted on page 50 of MS 104 at a
time when only one of the other 6s had been registered in the notebook:
proposition 6 itself on page 3 (about the “general form of truth-function”).102
There is something missing here because 6.51 cannot follow from 6. But
there is one proposition in the Prototractatus that puts us on the right track:
the equivalent there of the above-discussed 5.5422 of the Tractatus that so
sharply criticizes Russell’s MRTJ for making it possible “to judge a non-
sense”. This proposition was numbered 6.0043 and inserted on page 75 of
MS 104. It is the corollary of a series of propositions that specifically address
Russell’s MRTJ, namely 6.003, 6.004, 6.0041 and 6.0042, inserted in a row
on pages 74 and 75.103 Among these, proposition 6.0041 of the Prototracta-
tus, the first paragraph of 5.5421 of the Tractatus, is particularly interesting
because, after criticizing “modern epistemology” – including not only Rus-
sell but also Moore – at the end of 6.003, the final paragraph of 5.541 of the
Tractatus, Wittgenstein brings the “subject” into the discussion. I quote
from the final version:

This shows that there is no such thing as the soul – the subject, etc. – as
it is conceived in contemporary superficial psychology.104
34 Nuno Venturinha

This seems to be related to the claim made in the final solipsistic remark for
23 May 1915 (discussed in §I), in which Wittgenstein talks about “a
method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important
sense there is no such thing as the subject”,105 and (as observed in §II) the
insertion of this remark on page 76 under the number 5.33541 is a clear
indication that the matters are indeed related – regardless of inevitable
changes in the author’s thought over time. I mentioned earlier (§V) that the
only remark in Wittgenstein’s diaries that contains the word “mystical”
was penned on 25 May 1915 and inserted later, actually without its open-
ing sentence, in MS 104 on page 76 just before proposition 5.33541, bear-
ing the number 6.52 in both the Prototractatus and the Tractatus. The
omitted opening of the diary entry – that “[t]he urge towards the mystical
comes of the non-satisfaction of our wishes by science”106 – receives impor-
tant light against the background of Russell’s Our Knowledge of the Ex-
ternal World, which in Lecture I offers a “justification of the scientific as
against the mystical attitude”.107 We may therefore assume that Wittgen-
stein is responding to Russell when he says, to quote from the final versions
of the remark, that “even if all possible scientific questions be answered,
our problems of life have still not been touched at all”.108 That this is so be-
comes manifest when we see that the proposition inserted immediately
before 6.52 in MS 104 on pages 75 and 76 is neither more nor less than
6.5, a number retained in the Tractatus. It brings us back to the main issue
of 6.51, which it is meant to preface:

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be

expressed.
The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.109

If we take into account that proposition 6.5 is preceded on page 75 of MS

104 by the aforementioned propositions 6.41 (about “the sense of the
world” not lying in it),110 6.42 (about the incapacity of our propositions to
“express anything higher”)111 and 6.43, numbered 6.522 in the Tractatus
(about “the inexpressible” and “the mystical”),112 and that these, in turn,
are preceded by proposition 6.0043 (about Russell’s MRTJ), the circle is
finally closed. It is only at this point in the manuscript of the Prototractatus
that the remark on scepticism becomes fully coherent and comprehensible.
Diamond seems to have been alone in observing that “[t]he number of the
remark about skepticism was plainly not originally 6.51”; she sensibly
writes: “it looks to me as if it may have been 6.001, but it is hard to
say.”113 It is definitely hard to say given that the number was corrected
various times, as can be seen in Figure 1.1.
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 35

Figure 1.1 Detail of fol. 50 of MS 104 (BNE, http://www.wittgensteinsource.org/

BFE/Ms-104,50_f).
With the kind permission of The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; The
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; The University of Bergen, Bergen.

It is plausible that when the proposition was inserted on page 50 Wittgen-

stein had not yet assigned a number to it114 or had followed the procedure
we find on page 79 where the first ramification of proposition 5 is num-
bered 5.00.115 If he did so, the number 6.00 may have been (properly) cor-
rected to 6.001 when propositions 6.01 and 6.02 (about the “general form
of the operation” and the “general form of the cardinal number”) were
inserted at the bottom of page 70.116 But the insertion of propositions
6.001 and 6.002 on page 74,117 right before the series 6.003–6.0043 on
pages 74 and 75, made it necessary to correct the numbering again. Our
6.001 may have been then made 6.401 thus following a 6.3 on page 71
(about propositions being “of equal value”).118 But when, after the inser-
tion of what was then 6.31, 6.32 and 6.33 on page 75,119 what is now
proposition 6.5 was inserted at the bottom of page 75 under the number
6.4,120 our 6.401 became 6.411. Finally, when Wittgenstein decided to add
a series on mathematics from page 101 onwards and that this should be
the 6.2s, to follow the 6.1s on logic, the series on science that formed by
then the 6.2s was corrected to 6.3s, the series on value that formed the 6.3s
was corrected to 6.4s and the 6.4s turned into 6.5s with our 6.411 becom-
ing 6.511.
The exact sequence of these corrections is, to some extent, a matter of
speculation. But this analysis gives a substantive account of the reason why
Wittgenstein could not accept scepticism, or solipsism, as a viable position
as the epistemic reading needs to assume. The engagement with sceptical
or solipsistic arguments has the advantage of getting us closer to our inner
self, but that can only result in an ethical or religious transformation. It
36 Nuno Venturinha

does not bring about a change in our fundamental epistemological beliefs

for the simple reason that, in this sphere, there is nothing to change. The
early Wittgenstein could not disagree more with Nietzsche in this regard
and the later Wittgenstein, despite the profound differences in terms of
philosophical approach to the author of the Tractatus, would endorse sim-
ilar views. A defence of such a continuity lies however outside the scope of
this essay.

Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this essay were published as “Wittgenstein on Nietzsche
and Solipsism”, in Ludwig Wittgenstein – “przydzielony do
Krokowa”/“Krakau zugeteilt”, ed. Józef Bremer and Josef Rothhaupt
(Cracow: Ignatianum, 2009), 479–97, and, with revisions, as “Wittgen-
stein Reads Nietzsche: The Roots of Tractarian Solipsism”, in Ungesellige
Geselligkeiten: Wittgensteins Umgang mit anderen Denkern/Unsocial So-
ciabilities: Wittgenstein's Sources, ed. Esther Ramharter (Berlin: Parerga,
2011), 59–74. My thanks to the editors, including Jens Kertscher as co-
editor of the Wittgensteiniana series, as well as to Andrew Lugg for exten-
sive comments on a draft of the original paper and to Richard Schmitt for
insightful comments on its last quotation. Thanks also to the participants
in a conference in Cracow in 2008 and in a seminar in Åbo in 2009 for
their valuable comments on previous versions. I owe particular thanks to
Luciano Bazzocchi, Martin Pilch and Shunichi Takagi for many incisive
comments on a draft of this revised version, especially on the Afterword.
Finally, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the editors of this vol-
ume, Shunichi Takagi and Pascal Zambito, for their interest in a new pub-
lication of my essay.

Notes
1 MS 102, 39v–41v; GT, 8.12.14, my translation. In quoting from the Nachlass,
I have added to the linear transcription offered by the Wittgenstein Archives
at the University of Bergen (IDP) some features of the diplomatic transcrip-
tion, namely original supralinear insertions.
2 See in this regard Baum in GT, 49, n. 67. I say “apparently” because, as Bru-
sotti (2009, 341–2) points out, it is not clear which edition Wittgenstein read,
although Brusotti recognizes that researchers have tended to agree that it was
the so-called Großoktavausgabe of Nietzsche’s Werke, not the Taschenaus-
gabe, which included Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of
Morality.
3 WC, 83.
4 Cf. MS 102, 71v–73v; GT, 1–24.5.15 (with many gaps).
5 Cf. MS 102, 81r–117r; NB, 1–31.5.15. It is worth noting that, even though
Wittgenstein’s bipartite way of writing in this period does not raise so many
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 37

difficulties as in the later one, certainly attempting to differentiate, whenever

possible, the private from the public, there remain some questions about the
nature of some remarks, namely the one on Nietzsche. In this essay, I cannot
go into details, but I hope to contribute to clarify the matter. For a nice discus-
sion of this problem, see Westergaard 1998, 145–7. Westergaard also traces
some interesting parallels between Wittgenstein and Nietzsche in Westergaard
2007. See in addition Nájera 2008.
6 MS 102, 101r–102r; NB, 23.5.15[1–4], translation slightly amended.
7 MS 102, 105r; NB, 23.5.15[11], cancellation added and translation slightly
amended.
8 See, among other texts, McGuinness 2002a, Ch. 23, and McGuinness 2002b,
as well as Venturinha 2010, §§1, 3 and 12.
9 It remained unchanged in the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof
one must be silent.” Wittgenstein’s words are: “Wovon man nicht sprechen
kann, darüber muß man schweigen.” It is of some interest to note that a letter
from Hermine Wittgenstein to her brother of 7 June 1917 contains in Lud-
wig’s hand a version of proposition 7: “Worüber man nicht reden kann,
darüber muß man schweigen.” (CC) Another version of these remarks occurs
in the preface: “… wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muß man schwei-
gen.” (MS 104, 119; TLP 1922, 26)
10 It carries the number 6.3 and reads: “Ethics does not consist of propositions.”
Here I have followed McGuinness’ translation in PTLP, x, n. 3.
11 MS 104, 59–60; PTLP, 5.335, 5.3351–4; TLP, 5.6, 5.62[1–3], 5.631[1]. These
quotations are drawn from the Anscombe translation of the Notebooks, the
Pears and McGuinness translation of the Prototractatus and the Ogden (and
Ramsey) translation of the Tractatus with some emendation and combina-
tion. I have followed the editors of the Prototractatus, using square brackets
to indicate additions or alterations in the Tractatus.
12 The Tractatus makes things even more puzzling because it includes a 5.61
consisting of four paragraphs, numbered 5.4041, 5.4042, 5.4043 and 5.40421
in the Prototractatus. These, however, have been inserted in MS 104 only on
pages 90 (the latter) and 91, corresponding, as it will become clear in a mo-
ment, to an afterthought. Quoting from the final version: “Logic fills the
world: the limits of the world are also its limits. | We cannot therefore say in
logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. | For that would
apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot
be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that
is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. | What we cannot
think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.”
It is on the basis of this proposition that Marie McGinn explores an interpre-
tation of Wittgenstein’s discussion of solipsism as a response to Russell’s con-
ception of the relation between the subject and the world in McGinn 2006.
She argues that “it is Wittgenstein’s reflections on the nature and status of
logic, and, in particular, his rejection of Russell’s idea that logic has something
to do with how the world is – i.e. with a question of existence or non-exis-
tence – that provides the key to his reflections on solipsism” (268). For an-
other expression of this epistemological interpretation, see Diamond 2000.
My aim in this essay is to develop an alternative interpretative line.
13 See Hacker 1986, 91–2.
14 See Pears 1986, 179 and 182–3, as well as Pears 1987, 163 and 168, n. 50.
See also Morris 2008, 305.
38 Nuno Venturinha

15 See Schulte 1995, 229–30.

16 Cf. MS 103, 30r; NB, 24.7.16[1, 4].
17 MS 103, 30r; NB, 24.7.16[2–3].
18 MS 104, 83; PTLP, 6.422; TLP, 6.421[2].
19 Cf. MS 103, 37r; NB, 30.7.16[6]. Here Wittgenstein employs the adjective
“transcendent” (transzendent) instead of “transcendental” (transzendental).
20 The notes of 11 June deserve to be quoted in full: “What do I know about
God and the purpose of life? | I know that this world exists. | That I am
placed in it like my eye in its visual field. | That something about it is prob-
lematic, which we call its sense. | That this sense does not lie in it but outside
it. | That life is the world. | That my will penetrates the world. | That my will
is good or evil. | Therefore that my will good and evil are somehow con-
nected with the sense of the world. | The sense of life, i.e. the sense of the
world, we can call God. | And connect with this the comparison of God to a
father. | To pray is to think about the sense of life. | I cannot bend the hap-
penings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless. | I can only
make myself independent of the world – and so in a certain sense master it
– by renouncing any influence on happenings.” (MS 103, 8r–10r; NB,
11.6.16, cancellation added and translation slightly amended) This long
chain of thoughts will have also influenced proposition 6.41 of page 75 of
MS 104, which coincides with 6.41 of the Tractatus. It reads: “The sense of
the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and
happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it
would be of no value. | If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside
all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. |
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this
would again be accidental. | It must lie outside the world.” It is worth men-
tioning that proposition 6.4 (“All propositions are of equal value”), lying in
MS 104, on page 71, between the rubbed out 6.3 and number 7, opens, both
in the Prototractatus and the Tractatus, the ethical debate.
21 Cf. MS 104, 83; PTLP, 6.421; TLP, 6.421[1].
22 Cf. MS 103, 36r; NB, 30.7.16[3b].
23 MS 104, 75; PTLP, 6.42; TLP, 6.42.
24 MS 103, 39r; NB, 2.8.16[7a].
25 MS 103, 37r; NB, 1.8.16[1–2]. The German reads: “Wie sich alles verhält, ist
Gott. | Gott ist, wie sich alles verhält.” It is interesting to compare this with
how Wittgenstein characterizes in the Prototractatus the “most general prop-
ositional form” as: “This is how things stand (Es verhält sich so und so).”
(MS 104, 46; PTLP, 4.4303a) This corresponds to 4.5[3]b in the Tractatus,
where Wittgenstein speaks instead of the “general form of proposition”.
26 MS 103, 37r; NB, 1.8.16[3].
27 In full the remark is: “And this consciousness is life itself.” (MS 103, 37r; NB,
2.8.16[1])
28 MS 104, 83; PTLP, 6.4411; TLP, 6.43[3].
29 Cf. MS 103, 33r; NB, 29.7.16[12].
30 Cf. MS 104, 84; PTLP, 6.4412; TLP, 6.422. This is a completely different view
from the one that we find in Nietzsche’s reflections on the same topic, for ex-
ample in The Antichrist (cf. KSA 6, 194–5, 205 and 228).
31 Cf. MS 103, 34r–35r; NB, 30.7.16[1].
32 MS 103, 35r–37r; NB, 30.7.16[2, 4–5], translation slightly amended. Note
that here the adjective used by Wittgenstein is transzendent (see n. 19 above).
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 39

33 I am here borrowing an expression (Wille zur Macht) that comes, among

other texts, in The Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-
christ (cf. KSA 6, 51, 118, 124 and 157, as well as 170, 172, 176 and 183,
respectively).
34 He puts it as follows: “Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of
God.” (MS 103, 20r; NB, 8.7.16[21]) The “good conscience” (gute Gewis-
sen) is obviously one of Nietzsche’s targets in the volume Wittgenstein appar-
ently refers to in his remark of 8 December 1914, namely in The Case of
Wagner, The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (cf. KSA 6, 52, 84 and
94 [where it parenthetically qualifies the “consciousness of good actions” (Be-
wusstsein guter Handlungen)], as well as 175 and 193, respectively). Wittgen-
stein’s remark on Nietzsche is actually suggestive of this passage from The
Twilight of the Idols, which would lead to a criticism of the “good con-
science”: “The spiritualization of sensibility is called love: it is a great triumph
over Christianity (Christenthum). Another triumph is our spiritualization of
hostility (Feindschaft).” (KSA 6, 84, my translation)
35 MS 103, 40r; NB, 2.8.16[11], cancellation added.
36 MS 103, 42r; NB, 5.8.16[2].
37 MS 103, 41r; NB, 4.8.16[2–3], insertion added.
38 MS 103, 41r; NB, 5.8.16[1].
39 MS 103, 42r–43r; NB, 5.8.16[3–4], 7.8.16, 11.8.16[1–2], 12.8.16[1], inser-
tion added, translation slightly amended.
40 MS 103, 50r–51r; NB, 2.9.16[6].
41 The diary version is found in MS 103, 48r–49r; NB, 2.9.16[1].
42 Indeed, the proposition is astonishingly numbered 5.33544a.
43 MS 103, 43r–44r; NB, 12.8.16[3–4].
44 There Wittgenstein wrote: “It is true: Man is the microcosm: | I am my world.”
(MS 103, 59r; NB, 12.10.16[7]) Luciano Bazzocchi (personal communica-
tion, 26 April 2022) is of the opinion that we can better capture the sense of
“Here” in proposition 5.3355 of the Prototractatus if we look at proposition
5.3354 (which denies the existence of “the thinking, representing subject”),
itself stemming from 5.3353 (that “the world is my world”), a sequence that
the Tractatus simplifies by making proposition 5.64 a direct ramification of
5.63 (that “I am my world”). This is perspicuously presented in his tree-like
edition of the text (TLP 2021, 204). The problem with this reading is that it
does not take into account that the “Here” was already present in the diary
entry of 2 September 1916 and therefore it is particularly difficult to explain
it by reference to a proposition like 5.63 that not only on page 85 of MS 104,
under the number 5.33532, follows, not precedes, the equivalent of 5.64,
5.3355, but also has its original source in an entry dated 12 October 1916.
45 MS 104, 85; PTLP, 6.431; TLP, 6.45[1].
46 MS 104, 86; PTLP, 6.432; TLP, 6.45[2].
47 MS 104, 75; PTLP, 6.43; TLP, 6.522.
48 It runs as follows: “The urge towards the mystical comes of the n ­ on-satisfaction
of our wishes by science. We know feel that even if all possible scientific
­questions are answered our problem is still not touched at all. Of course in
that case there are no questions any more; and that is the answer.” (MS 102,
107r–108r; NB, 25.5.15[2], cancellation added)
49 Cf. MS 104, 76; PTLP, 6.52; TLP, 6.52.
50 Hacker 1986, 99.
51 See McGuinness 2002a, Ch. 14.
40 Nuno Venturinha

52 Hacker 1986, 99, n. 17.

53 On this issue, see a letter from Bertrand Russell to Lady Ottoline Morrell of
20 December 1919, quoted in WC, 112, and Russell 1997, 178–9. See also a
reference by Wittgenstein to Silesius’ Cherubinic Wanderer in an entry dated
22 February 1931 in MS 183, 68; PPO, 77.
54 For a related reading, see Kremer 2004, 59–84. At the beginning of this essay,
he claims that readings of the Tractatus “have tended to focus on solipsism as
an epistemological or metaphysical thesis” (59). He then says that “[his] ap-
proach is suggested by a remark of Brian McGuinness, that ‘solipsism […] in
his [Wittgenstein’s] case was not an intellectual exercise but a moral and mys-
tical attitude’” – cf. McGuinness 2005, 228; and see McGuinness 2002a, Ch.
13 – writing a bit further on that “[he] would prefer to say that solipsism is an
intellectual, moral and mystical exercise aimed at bringing about a change in
one’s spiritual life” (59). To support this view, Kremer contrasts “Hacker’s
irresolute reading of the Tractatus” (64) with that offered by authors such as
Cora Diamond and James Conant. This, however, is not to say that I am en-
dorsing here the latter line of interpretation, which, as a matter of fact, is hard
to reconcile with Kremer’s. For a more orthodox “resolute” reading, see Mc-
Manus 2004, 137–61.
55 Here is a representative passage from WWR, Vol. 1: “[…] whether the objects
known to the individual only as representations are yet, like his own body,
phenomena of a will, is […] the proper meaning of the question as to the real-
ity of the external world. To deny this is the meaning of theoretical egoism,
which in this way regards as phantoms all phenomena outside its own will,
just as practical egoism does in a practical respect; thus in it a man regards
and treats only his own person as a real person, and all others as mere phan-
toms. Theoretical egoism, of course, can never be refuted by proofs, yet in
philosophy it has never been positively used otherwise than as a sceptical
sophism, i.e., for the sake of appearance. As a serious conviction, on the other
hand, it could be found only in a madhouse; as such it would then need not so
much a refutation as a cure. Therefore we do not go into it any further, but
regard it as the last stronghold of scepticism, which is always polemical.”
(104) See in addition WWR, Vol. 2, 193. “Scepticism” is a word that enters
into Wittgenstein’s notebooks also in May 1915. Like Schopenhauer, Wittgen-
stein holds it as “obviously nonsensical” (cf. MS 102, 81r; NB, 1.5.15[2],
translation slightly amended), but neither that remark nor the one that fol-
lows it, which talks of “doubt” (cf. MS 102, 81r–82r; NB, 1.5.15[3]), were
selected for the solipsistic “chapters” of the Prototractatus and the Tractatus.
Still, the proposition that derives from those remarks, having made its way
into page 50 of MS 104 under the number 6.51, a number kept in the Tracta-
tus, prefaces, in both texts, proposition 6.52. I should point out here that
propositions 6.53 and 6.531, numbered 6.53 in the Tractatus, about the
“right method of philosophy”, stemming from two remarks of 2 December
1916 (cf. MS 103, 88r–89r; NB, 2.12.16[3–4]), come in MS 104 on page 85
immediately after proposition 6.431, the first paragraph of 6.45 of the Trac-
tatus, being followed by propositions 6.54 and 6.55, which form a single
penultimate 6.54 in the Tractatus. This sequence ends, in MS 104, with prop-
osition 6.432, the second paragraph of 6.45 of the Tractatus.
56 See, for example, KSA 6, 125 and 131–2 (from The Twilight of the Idols), as
well as 187 (from The Antichrist).
57 See AHW, 70–73.
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 41

58 See CC.
59 See n. 9 above.
60 KSA 2, 369, my translation. Nietzsche’s own words run as follows: “Man soll
nur reden, wo man nicht schweigen darf; und nur von dem reden, was man
überwunden hat, – alles Andere ist Geschwätz, ‘Litteratur’, Mangel an
Zucht.” Martin Pilch has recently taken up this suggestion tracing also paral-
lels between another passage from Nietzsche’s preface and proposition 6.54
of the Prototractatus. See Pilch 2018, 102ff, esp. 109.
61 “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description”, in Russell
1992, 148. These passages were not included in the chapter with the same title
published by Russell in The Problems of Philosophy (Russell 1992, Ch. V).
This is a book that we know Wittgenstein read (see Slater’s “Introduction” to
Russell 1992, xxviii) and which includes a discussion of “solipsism” (Russell’s
word in the Index) in Ch. II, “The Existence of Matter”, 33–38. The topic is
related to that of a 1912 paper Wittgenstein also read in which Russell men-
tions that “the problem of matter is involved in any attempt to refute solip-
sism” and that “if we are to refute solipsism, it must be by first finding some
reason to believe in matter”. See “On Matter”, in Russell 1992, 80–81.
62 Russell 1992, 148.
63 MS 103, 64r; NB, 15.10.16[19].
64 Pihlström 2020, 2.
65 Ibid., 2–3.
66 Ibid., 3.
67 Levine 2013, 200. Levine introduces his notation on page 181 in the follow-
ing way:

~(Solip) (∃y)(I am not now acquainted with y) [(∃y)(~Ay)]

(Solip) ~(∃y)(I am not now acquainted with y) [~(∃y)(~Ay)]

Whereas the former proposition mentions that “there is something outside my

present experience”, the latter vindicates that “there is nothing outside of my
present experience” (ibid.).
68 Ibid., 201.
69 See n. 55 above.
70 I have followed here the Pears-McGuinness translation of the Prototractatus
for the expression “offenbar unsinnig”, which the Ogden translation renders
as “palpably senseless”. Anscombe’s option in the Notebooks, where the ex-
pression appears underlined, is “obvious nonsense”.
71 See MS 104, 45; PTLP, 4.448; TLP, 4.461[3].
72 See MS 104, 38; PTLP, 4.4481; TLP, 4.4611.
73 See MS 104, 45; PTLP, 4.4482; TLP, 4.462[1], translation slightly amended.
74 MS 104, 36; PTLP, 4.44602. The nearest we have in the Tractatus comes in
6.1 and 6.11, which were inserted on page 64 of MS 104 forming proposi-
tions 6.1 and 6.1001 of the Prototractatus. The first states: “The propositions
of logic are tautologies.” And the second: “The propositions of logic therefore
say nothing. (They are the analytical propositions.)”
75 See Cook 2000, 167–79; Diamond 2014, 148–53; and Takagi 2021, 50–62.
76 Russell 1914a.
77 MS 102, 82r–83r; NB, 1.5.15[7]. I have rendered the reference to Russell’s
work in accordance with the original merely correcting the German Methode
to the English Method in what was certainly a slip of the pen.
42 Nuno Venturinha

78 Russell 1914b. The title of the lecture, as indicated on page 3 and in the run-
ning heads, is actually “On Scientific Method in Philosophy”.
79 See Cook 2000, 216, n. 10, and Takagi 2021, 55–7.
80 She writes: “I think Keynes sent [Our Knowledge of the External World] to
Wittgenstein together with Russell’s essay “On Scientific Method in Philoso-
phy”, and that Wittgenstein received the book and the essay some time in
March or April.” (Diamond 2014, 148) However, on the next page Diamond
notes that “[t]he matter is subject to some uncertainty” and that “[i]f Witt-
genstein did receive the material from Keynes, it is possible that Keynes sent
only the book, not the essay, and possible also that it was easier for him to
arrange for the book to be sent from a neutral country and that the American
edition was sent” (149, n. 9).
81 WC, 78.
82 WC, 79. The same request was made to David Pinsent who wrote to Wittgen-
stein on 2 March 1915, in reply to a letter dated 10 February, in the following
terms: “I have not heard of Russell’s new book, but will try to find out about
it and if possible send it to you.” (LP, 100) Even if there is no trace in their
correspondence that Pinsent had sent Wittgenstein the book, Takagi does not
exclude this possibility. See Takagi 2021, 50–51. The 1914 paper “The Rela-
tion of Sense-Data to Physics”, which Russell himself sent to Wittgenstein in
a letter dated 28 July but received no earlier than December 1914 (see WC,
76), has certainly reignited Wittgenstein’s interest in Russell’s work. One
might even wonder whether the adjective “solipsistic” – or the expression “le
point de vue ‘solipsistique’” that translates the noun “solipsism” in the French
version accompanying the original – is related to “the strictly solipsistic point
of view” mentioned in the remark on Nietzsche of 8 December 1914. See
“The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics”, in Russell 1986, 12–13 and 372.
However, the fact that Wittgenstein wrote the remark on Nietzsche before
joining the artillery workshop in Cracow, of which he already gives the ad-
dress to Russell (see WC, 76), excludes such a supposition.
83 See in this regard Blackwell and Ruja 1994, 45–7 and 52–3. Takagi is also
convinced that what Wittgenstein received was the first British edition of Our
Knowledge of the External World even though he does not rule out as possi-
bilities the first American edition or even the second impression (personal
communication, 13 April 2022). However, this latter hypothesis does
not match the apparent publication of that reprint in September 1915
(see ibid., 47).
84 The unfinished text was posthumously published in Russell 1984. Interest-
ingly, the first chapter contains an extensive discussion of “the principles of
solipsism”, which Russell attempts to refute by means of both “empirical”
and “logical” arguments (see 10–14).
85 In a letter to Ottoline Morrell dated 21 May 1913 Russell reports that Wittgen-
stein made a “refutation of the theory of judgment which I used to hold”
(quoted in Eames’s “Introduction” to Russell 1984, xxvii). This passage of a
letter from Wittgenstein to Russell of 22 July 1913 is also illuminating: “I am
very sorry to hear that my objection to your theory of judgment paralyses you.
I think it can only be removed by a correct theory of propositions.” (WC, 42)
86 TS 201a1, a4; TS 201a2, a5; NL, 288 [C39]. A similar statement is found in
this remark: “Every right theory of judgment must make it impossible for me
to judge that this table penholders the book. Russell’s theory does not satisfy
this requirement.” (TS 201a1, b15; TS 201a2, b15; NL, 280 [B33]) He also
 Wittgenstein Reads Nietzsche 43

says there: “The epistemological questions concerning the nature of judgment

and belief cannot be solved without a correct apprehension of the form of the
proposition.” (TS 201a1, b20; TS 201a2, b21; NL, 283 [B55])
87 Russell 1992, 122.
88 Ibid.
89 Here is an illustrative passage: “a judgment, as an occurrence, I take to be a
relation of a mind to several entities, namely the entities which compose what
is judged.” (Ibid., 154)
90 In the first chapter of the second part, devoted to “The Understanding of
Propositions”, Russell avers that a “very important relation which comes un-
der the head of knowledge of propositions is belief or judgment” and in the
fourth chapter, “Belief, Disbelief, and Doubt”, he makes clear that with the
word “belief” he envisages “the same kind of fact as is usually called ‘judg-
ment’” (Russell 1984, 105 and 136).
91 Ibid., 137.
92 Ibid., 140.
93 “The Nature of Sense-Data: A Reply to Dr. Dawes Hicks”, in Russell 1992,
184.
94 Russell 1914a, 58.
95 Ibid., 67. See in addition 71.
96 Conversely, that Wittgenstein’s rejection of Russell’s MRTJ can be illumi-
nated by a consideration of proposition 6.51 has passed unnoticed in the lit-
erature. Some notable examples include Hanks 2007; Potter 2008, 118–31
and 218–23; and Connelly 2021.
97 See n. 67 above.
98 In commenting specifically on “Russell’s Theory of Types”, Wittgenstein
writes that “Russell’s error is shown by the fact that in drawing up his sym-
bolic rules he has to speak about the things his signs mean” (MS 104, 55;
PTLP, 3.20152b; TLP, 3.331). See in addition MS 104, 34; PTLP, 3.20171;
TLP, 3.332.
99 See n. 58 above.
100 See, for example, KSA 2, 42 [§21] and 217 [§261].
101 See KSA 2, 370.
102 MS 104, 3; PTLP, 6; TLP, 6[1]. Not only the formulae for the “general form
of truth-function” are different in the two versions but there is also a second
paragraph in the final one that is truly reminiscent of proposition 4.4303 of
the Prototractatus, 4.5 of the Tractatus (see n. 25 above): “This is the general
form of proposition.” Following Luciano Bazzocchi, one could even put for-
ward the hypothesis that proposition 6 is a subsequent addition to page 3 of
the manuscript, which features the main propositions of the work except the
final one. See Bazzocchi 2007, where he writes that proposition 6 was “almost
surely inserted in the first page [i.e. page 3] much later” (19); and see also
Bazzocchi 2010, where he conjectures in a more precise way that when Witt-
genstein reached page 70 and formulated what is now proposition 6 on page
3 “he transformed the old section 6 into 6.1” (19). In this scenario, other
conjectures are possible: proposition 6 could have been formulated for the
first time on page 3 when proposition 6.1 was inserted on page 64 (see Ba-
zzocchi 2010, 15, and n. 74 above) or proposition 6.51 could have been origi-
nally numbered 6. However, the recent discovery by Martin Pilch of what
must have been an additional folio just before page 3 that was cut out from
the notebook, which contains a previous version of propositions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
44 Nuno Venturinha

and 6, but without numbers, seems to rule out the hypothesis of proposition
6 being a later insertion. See Pilch 2015, where he claims that “proposition 6
was, from the beginning, an integral part of the conception formulated by the
six main propositions” and that initially “only the formula was missing, not
the entire proposition” (71). As a result of this finding, Bazzocchi would
change his mind subscribing to Pilch’s view. See Bazzocchi 2015, esp. 358.
103 See MS 104, 74–5; PTLP, 6.003, 6.004, 6.0041, 6.0042 and 6.0043. They
correspond in the Tractatus to propositions 5.541[2–4], 5.542, 5.5421[1],
5.5421[2] and 5.5422.
104 We should not forget that already in the “Notes on Logic” we find Wittgen-
stein’s not particularly appealing claim that, in contrast to logic, “[e]pistemol-
ogy is the philosophy of psychology” (TS 201a1, b21; TS 201a2, b22; NL,
283 [B62]), something repeated in both the Prototractatus and the Tractatus
(MS 104, 33; PTLP, 4.100152; TLP, 4.1121[2]).
105 See n. 7 above.
106 See n. 48 above.
107 Russell 1914a, 19. Russell uses the phrase “scientific attitude” in other pas-
sages (see 6, 19–20 and 27). On the parallels between the 25 May entry and
Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World, see also Takagi 2021, 54.
108 MS 104, 76; PTLP, 6.52; TLP, 6.52, translation slightly amended, italics cor-
rected and superscript added according to the manuscript.
109 MS 104, 75–6; PTLP, 6.5; TLP, 6.5.
110 See n. 20 above.
111 See n. 23 above.
112 See n. 47 above.
113 Diamond 2014, 165, n. 40.
114 Besides the unnumbered remark on page 84 that was mentioned in §III, Witt-
genstein did not assign a number to remarks on pages 29, 35, 43, 86 and 93
of MS 104. None of them made their way into the Tractatus.
115 The editors of the Prototractatus write: “The number is incomplete. The place of
the remark is probably between 5.00161 and 5.00162 or after 5.00162.” (PTLP,
136, n. 1) I am indebted to Martin Pilch for reminding me of this proposition.
116 MS 104, 70; PTLP, 6.01 and 6.02; TLP, 6.01[1] and 6.03. The formulae are again
different in the two versions, with the final version of 6.01 including a second
paragraph that reads: “This is the most general form of transition from one prop-
osition to another”. It is only at this juncture that Wittgenstein will have been able
to sketch the formula included in proposition 6 (see n. 102 above).
117 MS 104, 74; PTLP, 6.001 and 6.002; TLP, 5.54 and 5.541[1].
118 See n. 20 above.
119 See n. 20, n. 23 and n. 47 above.
120 I assume that it was originally a 6.4. Although it looks like there is a “4” be-
neath the “6”, this may have been a slip of the pen when writing “6.4”.

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———. (2005). Young Ludwig: Wittgenstein’s Life 1889–1921, 2nd edn. Oxford:
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2 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and
Waismann
Three Responses to Nietzsche

Andreas Vrahimis

1 Introduction
During the early days of the First World War, Nietzsche’s work became the
topic of heated public controversy.1 Largely due to Elisabeth
­Förster-Nietzsche’s efforts, a selection of Nietzsche’s writings had been
­‘enlisted in the service of German war propaganda’ (Martin 2003, 367).
Alongside various other books similarly marketed to soldiers, publishers
printed pocket-sized editions of Nietzsche’s works (so as to fit in soldiers’
knapsacks).2 In response, British propaganda targeted Nietzsche, with
­various newspaper articles claiming that this godless immoralist was the
mastermind behind Prussian militarism and its ruthless wartime a­ ggression.
As with various later attempts to embroil philosophers (including e.g. Kant
and the German Idealists) into wartime propaganda, a controversy ensued
in which Nietzsche’s detractors were answered by his apologists, ­contending
e.g. that he was in fact a critic of German nationalism.3
Though now largely forgotten, these wartime controversies would cen-
trally shape the Anglophone reception of Nietzsche’s work, including that
by most prominent analytic philosophers.4 Even though he did not partici-
pate in the wartime debates, Bertrand Russell, one of Nietzsche’s most ve-
hement analytic critics, began to name Nietzsche as an ancestor of fascism
during the 1930s (Russell 1935, 87, 89–91, 97, 99, 101, 103). Russell
continued this line of attack in later works, including most famously his
History of Western Philosophy (1946, 114, 677, 746, 751–752, 756, 788–
800, 818), which was published in the aftermath of the Second World War,
and which blamed several of Russell’s non-analytic philosophical foes for
contributing to the rise of Nazism.5 At around the same time, an array of
Anglophone philosophers addressed similar attacks, in which Nietzsche
was taken to be a central influence on Nazi ideology.6
It was only after considerable scholarly efforts, distancing Nietzsche
from his appropriation by Nazism, that interest in his work by Anglo-
phone analytic philosophers was revived in the latter quarter of the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-4
48 Andreas Vrahimis

twentieth century.7 Even with this resurgence of interest, Robertson and

Owen write that ‘while Nietzsche undoubtedly influenced much of so-
called “continental philosophy”, his influence on its analytic counterpart
may appear to be somewhat negligible’ (2013, 185). This chapter will chal-
lenge this assertion by looking back to a relatively overlooked aspect of
Nietzsche’s reception by three Germanophone analytic philosophers. An
altogether different story concerning Nietzsche’s analytic reception comes
to light if one attends to the work of Moritz Schlick, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
and Friedrich Waismann.
Wittgenstein’s reading of Nietzsche is an exceptional case, differing both
from that of his mentor Russell and other Anglophone commentators, and
those of his Germanophone interlocutors Schlick and Waismann. Fighting
on the opposite side of the trenches from most of his Anglophone col-
leagues, Nietzsche’s books were available to Wittgenstein, as a soldier, due
to their use in Germanophone wartime propaganda.8 In a note from 8
December 1914, Wittgenstein states that he purchased Volume 8 of Ni-
etzsche’s works.9 As Brusotti (2009, 341–342) clarifies, it is unclear
whether this refers to the older octavo edition or the pocket-sized edition
(with different contents than the octavo) newly issued specifically for sol-
diers. In either case, the war brought Nietzsche’s work to Wittgenstein’s
attention. Reading Nietzsche at a time of existential crisis and spiritual
conversion, Wittgenstein remained sceptical of his critique of Christian-
ity.10 He also concurred with Nietzsche’s description of modern civilisation
as characterised by the transvaluation [Umwertung] of all values – a topic
to which we return in section 3.11
By contrast to those Anglophone figures whose reluctance to engage
with Nietzsche’s work was shaped by the wartime controversies, in the
work of Moritz Schlick we find a marked resistance against the appropria-
tion of Nietzsche’s outlook by wartime militarists, and by interwar fascism
and Nazism. Long before the war began, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was one
of the first philosophy books Schlick read, alongside Schopenhauer, as an
adolescent in the late 1890s – at a time when Nietzsche was still alive, and
little-known.12 Despite the later appropriation of Nietzsche’s thought by
militarists and fascists, Schlick maintained his early admiration of the phi-
losopher throughout his life. Schlick (2013) plainly states his high esteem
for Nietzsche in a lecture series first delivered at the University of Rostock
in the winter semester of 1912–1913.13 Being called to repeat his course on
Nietzsche a few months after the outbreak of the war, Schlick’s notes indi-
cate that he opened his lectures with an extensive objection against the
interpretation of Nietzsche as a defender of militarism.14 Schlick instead
utilised Nietzsche’s work in support of his own pacifist stance towards the
war. A variant of this interpretation of Nietzsche was also put forth in
Schlick’s unfinished book from the 1930s, Natur und Kultur (1952,
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 49

77–79). There, he derides the far-right appropriation of what he claims are

the biggest errors found in Nietzsche’s otherwise genius work, namely his
Herrenmoral and his ‘gospel of power’ (79). In opposition to these ­far-right
readings, Schlick interpreted Nietzsche as, broadly speaking, an early
proponent of the scientific world-conception defended by Logical
­
­Empiricism. In this, he was in agreement with, and arguably influential on,
several other Vienna Circle members after him.15 Schlick’s engagement
with N ­ ietzsche, especially in explicitly defending him against British
­propaganda in 1914, thus clearly sets him apart from all of Nietzsche’s
Anglophone analytic critics between the 1930s and 1950s.
In 1928, Schlick prepared a preface to Logik, Sprache, Philosophie, Wa-
ismann’s aborted effort to write a book about Wittgenstein’s views in col-
laboration with Wittgenstein himself, eventually published in 1965.16 In
describing Waismann’s joint effort with Wittgenstein, Schlick notes that

the thoughts which are to dominate the world “come on dove’s feet”, as
Nietzsche's beautiful simile has it.
(1979, 130)17

Waismann’s at-least-partial awareness of Schlick’s influence by Nietzsche is

evident not only in Schlick’s preface, but also in Waismann’s later descrip-
tion of Schlick’s ethical outlook as being ‘in conformity with Nietzsche’
(1977, 36; cf. 1979, xvii). Nevertheless, as section 6 will demonstrate,
many of Waismann’s criticisms of Nietzsche’s views are at odds with
Schlick’s interpretations thereof. Writing in the late 1930s (while seeking
refuge from Nazism), Waismann’s severe criticisms of Nietzsche’s Herren-
moral far exceed Schlick’s brief dismissals of this aspect of Nietzsche’s
outlook.
It is notable, however, that Waismann also repeatedly attributes to Ni-
etzsche an idea that is central to his own Wittgensteinian project. In his
foreword to Schlick’s posthumous Gesammelte Aufsätze, Waismann sum-
marises this view as follows:

Frege declared it the task of philosophy to break the power of words

over the mind, by uncovering the deceptions which almost inevitably
arise from linguistic usage. Nietzsche had hold of this truth when be-
hind the similarity of Indian, Greek and German philosophy he per-
ceived the unconscious dominance and guidance of the same grammatical
categories.
(1979, xxvii)18

Waismann goes on to add that Schlick was also engaged in precisely this
Nietzschean project of overcoming the ‘common philosophy of grammar’
50 Andreas Vrahimis

(Waismann 1968b, 176), not by simply diagnosing ‘the meaninglessness of

questions’ (1979, xxvii), but rather by ‘push[ing] forward to fruitful ways
of putting questions’ (xxvii). In other words, even though Waismann was
heavily critical of Nietzsche’s ethical views, he also saw him as a progenitor
of one of the central tasks of analytic philosophy, insofar as it is concerned
with language use.
In what follows, I endeavour to bring Schlick’s, Wittgenstein’s, and Wa-
ismann’s responses to Nietzsche into dialogue. In section 2, I begin with an
account of Nietzsche’s contribution to the early Schlick’s conception of the
naturalisation of the different branches of philosophy, focussing primarily
on ethics. I show that Schlick’s reduction of all other drives to a fundamen-
tal ‘will to pleasure’ leads him towards a criticism of Nietzsche’s emphasis
on the ‘will to power’. Section 3 undertakes a comparison between Witt-
genstein’s and Schlick’s readings of Nietzsche, clarifying some of their im-
plicit interpretative disagreements. In section 4, I turn to Wittgenstein’s
criticisms of Schlick’s naturalisation of ethics, followed by section 5, which
explores Waismann’s reconciliation of these two standpoints in his account
of the relation between science and ethics. In section 5, I explore Wais-
mann’s connected objections against Nietzsche’s ethics. Throughout the
above, I reconstruct a dialogue between these three figures and their differ-
ent readings of Nietzsche’s work, in many ways exceptional within the
analytic tradition.19

2 Nietzsche’s influence on Schlick’s ethics

(a) Schlick’s Nietzschean naturalism

Schlick’s admiration of Nietzsche, and his pursuit of the Nietzschean proj-

ect of naturalising philosophy’s various branches, especially ethics, remain
a constant throughout his intellectual development.20 In Lebensweisheit,
Schlick’s first published philosophy book from 1908, Nietzsche’s central
influence is evident not only in the many explicit references to his work
(Schlick 2006, 98, 170, 178, 181, 237, 267, 286), but also in Schlick’s lit-
erary writing style.21 Though this eventually did not materialise, it was
Schlick’s original intention to preface Lebensweisheit with a motto quoted
from Zarathustra;22 Schlick ([1908] 2006, 170) did eventually use a quote
from Zarathustra to preface his account of the origins of scientific knowl-
edge. At the book’s core, one finds an evolutionary theory of the develop-
ment of drives [Trieben]. Like Nietzsche, Schlick uses Schopenhauerian
terminology in naming these drives, e.g. the ‘will to pleasure’, the ‘will to
beauty’, the ‘will to truth’, and the ‘will to power’.23 In Schlick’s account,
the evolutionary emergence of these different drive-types enables the hu-
man animal to engage in multifarious types of activity, including not only
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 51

the basic struggle for survival and the attainment of practical goals, but
also the aesthetic appreciation of art, the scientific investigation of nature,
various religious attitudes directed towards the world as a whole, and also
the entire range of ethical attitudes towards one’s fellow humans.
This biological account of drives underlies Schlick’s efforts to naturalise
aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics. The appeal to evolutionary biology,
physiology, and psychology in explaining the origins of drives and emo-
tions is a project that – particularly in the case of naturalising ethics –
Schlick at least partly inherits from Nietzsche. This Nietzschean influence
is partly reflected in the terminology Schlick uses to describe the evolution
of drives. According to Schlick, drives are products of environmental ad-
aptation, and become entrenched through habituation. Nonetheless, as
environmental factors change over time, the entrenchment of drives can
become a hindrance to adaptation. Drives that had previously fulfilled ad-
vantageous functions within specific environmental conditions can become
obsolete once those conditions have changed. Using Nietzsche’s verbiage,
Schlick calls such vestigial attributes the ‘all-too-human’ [‘allzumenschli-
che’ (99)] drives. In his view, ‘all-too-human’ drives are currently being
overcome by the human species. They will eventually tend towards extinc-
tion, though some may become vestigial, i.e. they may be retained while
functionless, like wisdom teeth or goose-bumps. On the other end of the
spectrum, Schlick detects several nascent tendencies, which form what he
calls the ‘overhuman’ [‘übermenschliche’ (99)] drives. The emerging ‘over-
human’ drives are more advantageous adaptations to the environment
than the ‘all-too-human’ drives that they serve to overcome. On the basis
of this distinction, Schlick paints an optimistic, if not utopian, picture of
the future, according to which ‘overhuman’ drives continuously improve
the human species’ adaptation to its environment, thereby harmonising
human culture with nature. As Schlick ([1911] 1979) sees it, this is a very
gradual and slow evolutionary process, and one which he describes using
Nietzsche’s terminology as the ‘transvaluation of values’ (115).24
On the basis of the above evolutionary account, Lebensweisheit devel-
ops a detailed typology of drives, carefully setting out distinctions between
different domains of human activity according to the different volitions
that guide them. Schlick’s typology is premised on the view that the ‘will to
pleasure’ is the single fundamental drive which guides all human action. In
Schlick’s view, this entails that every other drive is ultimately produced by,
and aims to satisfy, the fundamental pleasure-drive.
In its simplest manifestations, the will to pleasure exists in both human
and non-human animals. Its primary function is to motivate actions that
aim to realise practical goals conducive to the continuing survival of either
an individual or even an entire species. The will to pleasure has evolved in
such a way as to guide different animals’ efforts to satisfy basic needs, such
52 Andreas Vrahimis

as hunger or procreation. In the human species, which Schlick takes to be

at a higher stage of evolutionary development than other animals, this
drive takes more complex forms involving conscious efforts toward the
realisation of specific practical ends.

(b) Work and play

Contrary to many of his evolutionist predecessors (including e.g. American

Pragmatism or Machianism), Schlick rejected the view that all human ac-
tivity eventually aspires only to the attainment of practically beneficial out-
comes.25 According to Schlick, the attainment of certain basic practical
requirements allows higher forms of human activity, no longer guided by
purely practical considerations, to emerge. The genesis of these higher
forms is, nonetheless, still explainable by the biological principle of the will
to pleasure. Schlick argues that, to formulate this explanation, a basic dif-
ferentiation must be drawn between two fundamentally different ways in
which pleasure motivates action. For a range of activities, such as those
undertaken in order to achieve specific practical goals, the activity is not
itself pleasurable, but is motivated by the aspiration of a potential satisfac-
tion of the pleasure-drive through its outcome. Such activity, undertaken
for the sake of some pleasurable outcome, is what Schlick characterises as
‘work’. Nevertheless, an altogether different way in which the will to plea-
sure can relate to action is also possible, when it comes to what Schlick
calls ‘play’. Through the gradual evolutionary process of adaptation, it
becomes possible for certain activities to become pleasurable in themselves.
Indeed, the same activity can be undertaken in the guise of ‘work’ and
‘play’ interchangeably, depending on the motivating role of the will to
pleasure in its undertaking. In Schlick’s ([1908] 2006, 144–145) example,
for most players football is a game enjoyed for its own sake but, though
the activity is roughly the same, in the case of a professional ‘player’ it is in
fact classifiable as work. Conversely, an activity that was undertaken as
work can be transformed into play once its agent comes to enjoy it for its
own sake.
This is precisely the basic idea that guides Schlick’s optimism concerning
the future harmonisation of culture with nature. Schlick sees the long
course of human evolution as a process of the gamification of work. This
process creates (e.g. through habituation) the biological conditions that
transform selected activities, previously either unpleasant or indifferent,
into sources of pleasure. The emerging ‘overhuman’ drives, in Schlick’s
view, will increasingly contribute to this evolutionary process. They will
continuously transform work into play by increasing the human species’
capacity to take pleasure in action undertaken within a specific environ-
ment (assuming that environment remains relatively stable over time).
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 53

Schlick thus hypothesises that the process of development of ‘overhuman’

drives will perpetually make culture more harmonious with nature, and
increasingly improve the human species’ adaptation to its environment.
Schlick explicitly attributes the basic insights behind his conception of
‘play’ to Nietzsche, and more specifically to his critique of Schopenhauer’s
pessimism. According to Schlick, Nietzsche saw that ‘life has no meaning,
so long as it stands wholly under the domination of purposes’ ([1927]
1979, 113). As already noted, what Schlick understands as ‘play’ concerns
precisely those types of activity that are not purpose-driven, but rather are
enjoyed for their own sake. Schlick even discerns in Nietzsche’s three
phases a division between these types of activity that parallels his own ty-
pology of drives. The early Nietzsche urged his reader to ‘consider the
world […] as an aesthetic phenomenon’ (Schlick, 113), an attitude which
transforms sensation into a form of play. During his positivist phase, Ni-
etzsche understood theoretical knowledge as a form of play: ‘look upon
life as an experiment of the knower, and the world will be to you the finest
of laboratories’ (Schlick, 113). Finally, in his most mature phase, Nietzsche
reached the point of view Schlick also claims to advocate, namely that ‘the
ultimate value of life, to him, was life itself’ (113). In Schlick’s view, the
‘wisest Nietzsche […] of Zarathustra’ (113) understood that the meaning
of life is inherent in the playful attitude itself, rather than its specific mani-
festations in the guise of aesthetic appreciation or scientific knowledge.
Paralleling in part the development he attributes to the various phases of
Nietzsche’s outlook, Schlick ([1908] 2006) utilised the distinction between
work and play in separating the domain of practical activity from aes-
thetic, scientific, religious, and ethical attitudes. Each of the latter is con-
ceived by Schlick as a kind of game that is governed by different
manifestations of will, and thereby different rules. In Schlick’s account,
aesthetic attitudes involve a purely playful attitude directed towards sen-
sory objects, which is what Schlick calls the ‘will to beauty’. Practical and
aesthetic attitudes are directed towards the same objects – those that the
human senses have evolved to detect, in order for the species to survive and
adapt to its environment. Nevertheless, taking an aesthetic attitude to-
wards sensory objects means enjoying the sensations as pleasurable in
themselves, instead of merely functioning as guides for fulfilling practical
ends. In the case of religion, as understood in a Nietzschean spirit by
Schlick, a similarly playful attitude is directed toward the world as a whole,
rather than in response to specific objects in the world. Schlick thus at-
tempts a naturalistic explanation of religion, understood as an attitude
towards the world, without any reference to any deity.26
The theoretical knowledge pursued by science also involves its own dis-
tinctive form of play, guided by the ‘will to truth’.27 According to Schlick,
what sets science apart from all other human activity is that it uniquely
54 Andreas Vrahimis

pertains to value-free facts, as opposed to the evaluative attitudes involved

in either practical endeavours, or play in its aesthetic, religious, and ethical
guises. Qua value-free knowledge of facts, Schlick claims that science must
be divorced from any of the aforementioned domains, and purified from
their possible encroachments into its own terrain. Theoretical knowledge
has oft been confused with aesthetic contemplation, insofar as both are
playful attitudes towards objects in the world.28 Yet while the aesthetic at-
titude is guided by an unrestricted will to beauty, scientific knowledge is
restricted by the search for truth. Scientific theories and unverifiable meta-
physical utterances alike can certainly be appreciated for their aesthetic
qualities, but in so appreciating them one is not playing the game of scien-
tific investigation. According to Schlick, the game of science is bounded by
the will to truth, which demands that scientific hypotheses be tested by
their predictive accuracy.29
In Lebensweisheit, Schlick explicitly attributes to Nietzsche the view
that the scientific researcher must undertake their activity not as a type of
work, but as a form of joyful play, a ‘fröhliche Wissenschaft’ (181).30 He
chastises institutions of higher learning for ignoring this Nietzschean in-
sight when they confuse the scientific search for knowledge with a drive to
attain practical aims. He cites Nietzsche in decrying the academic aspira-
tion to ‘seriousness’ as a justification for engaging in what is essentially a
joyful game, and should be seen as such. This line of critique applies not
only to the professionalization of academic learning, but also to the limita-
tion of scientific research by recourse to its technological applicability.
Schlick even argues that undertaking theoretical knowledge as the playful
pursuit of truth ultimately results in the maximisation of the potential
practical benefits reaped.31

(c) ‘Will to power’ vs. ‘will to pleasure’

As shown so far, Nietzsche’s influence significantly shaped Schlick’s overall

project in Lebensweisheit. From Nietzsche’s oeuvre, among other influences,
Schlick extrapolates the idea that the various sub-disciplines of philosophy,
including aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics, can be naturalised by appeal
to a psychology of drives rooted in evolutionary biology. When it comes to
the naturalisation of ethics, in particular, Schlick additionally stressed the
centrality of sociology. Both in Lebensweisheit, and even more prominently
in the later Fragen der Ethik, it is a combination of sociology with psychol-
ogy that provides Schlick’s proposed framework for explaining the funda-
mentally social nature of ethical emotions.32 As we shall see below, this
trajectory will bring Schlick at odds with certain tenets centrally upheld by
Nietzsche.33 In defending his view of the social character of ethical feelings,
Schlick will criticise Nietzsche’s emphasis on the ‘will to power’.
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 55

Schlick explicitly delimits the applicability of the ‘will to power’ as a

principle for explaining actual human activity. Both the ‘will to pleasure’
and the ‘will to power’ are usually bundled together as being ‘egoistic’
(Schlick [1908] 2006, 72).34 Schlick (72–73) argues that the ordinary use
of the term ‘egoism’ involves multiple confusions.35 All action, Schlick
(78–80) argues, is ‘egoistically’ motivated, in the sense that desiring some-
thing is tantamount to expecting some form of pleasure from it. This does
not, however, preclude the possibility that pleasure can be derived from
‘altruistic’ or other-regarding action. It is because it has evolved to strive
for pleasure that the human animal is thereby led to develop social affects
such as love, which can involve deriving pleasure from self-abnegating
acts.
In defence of Nietzsche’s individualism (and contra Guyau), Schlick re-
jects any form of sociological holism venturing to explain apparently ‘al-
truistic’ behaviour by recourse to some form of ‘will to society’ (193) that
overcomes individualistic, self-interested drives. Lebensweisheit already
upholds a version of the methodological individualism that Schlick’s later
works defend more elaborately: social science does not deal with abstract
entities like ‘state’, ‘society’, or ‘peoples’ [‘Volk’ (196)], but rather simply
with collections of individuals. Schlick’s psycho-sociological ethics must
therefore make sense of the apparently ‘altruistic’ behaviour of individuals
without recourse to the assumption that these are driven by some social
instinct that rises above the individualistic pleasure-drive.36
At first glance, it is not so clear that Schlick’s asserted primacy of the
‘will to pleasure’ is completely irreconcilable with the Nietzschean prefer-
ence for the ‘will to power’. As Schlick’s discussion intimates, one could
consider the former as a cause for the latter, if it were the case that an in-
crease in power results in an increase in pleasure. Schlick ([1908] 2006,
202–203) readily concedes that the ‘will to power’ is a biological phenom-
enon that can be observed in all living things. In its earliest evolutionary
development, power manifests itself in defensive guises: from poisonous
plants in defence of their lives, to humans wishfully fabricating powerful
protective gods. In the course of its development in humans, power can
become a means of minimising displeasure and maximising pleasure by
turning other humans into instruments of the will of the powerful (203–
204). Schlick concedes that ethical emotions are ultimately means of trans-
forming other humans into instruments of pleasure. He contends, however,
that the unrestricted exertion of power unavoidably fails to bring about
this end. Absolute mastery over all other humans is, Schlick (204, 206–
207) argues, impossible in the natural world, where power is always lim-
ited, and excessive power is countered. Since there are natural limits to the
degree of power an individual can accumulate, any excessive emphasis on
the struggle for power, through the imposition of one’s will onto others,
56 Andreas Vrahimis

will tend to overshadow other pursuits more readily conducive to pleasure

(205). Instead, Schlick (205–206) proposes that a self-serving, pleasure-
maximising strategy can involve neither the pure imposition of my will
onto others, or my allowing others to impose their will onto myself, but
rather a compromise solution of mutual accommodation. He argues that
this is the most efficient way of turning other humans into means of pursu-
ing my own pleasure.
As formulated in Lebensweisheit, the above objection might appear to
affirm the consequent: Schlick’s arbitrary rejection of Nietzsche’s assertion
of the fundamentality of the ‘will to power’ relies on a prior commitment
to the primacy of the ‘will to pleasure’. It is only once Schlick’s later Fragen
der Ethik is taken into consideration that it becomes clear that Schlick’s
objection does not take the form of an a priori argument, but is instead an
a posteriori sociological observation. Schlick ([1930] 1939) elaborates on
his view of a naturalised ethics as a descriptive enterprise.37 While Lebens-
weisheit is already engaged in this task, it neither makes this goal explicit,
nor does it contain any of the extensive argumentation that Fragen der
Ethik develops in defence of this view. From the perspective of Schlick’s
later work, the question as to whether the ‘will to power’ or the ‘will to
pleasure’ ultimately underlies the evolution of all other drives is tanta-
mount to the empirical psycho-sociological question concerning which of
the two principles best describes human action. By this hindsight, the 1908
critique of the limits of the ‘will to power’ is thus to be understood empiri-
cally: asserting the primacy of the ‘will to power’ over other drives does
not accord with the observed power relations that hold within actual hu-
man societies. Instead, Schlick takes it that what observation discovers is a
sort of social balance of power that at least to some degree curtails abso-
lute mastery and domination by individuals over all others (though notice
that this does not preclude mastery and domination by one social group
over another). In Schlick’s view, therefore, power-hungry individuals are
the unhappy exception to the rule, vainly seeking to attain pleasure by
seeking for power, rather than beauty, truth, or loving relations with their
fellow humans.

(d) A genealogy of absolute values

Despite the clash between their fundamental principles, there remain signifi-
cant parallels between Schlick’s and Nietzsche’s proposals for naturalising
ethics. Schlick insists on a sharp distinction between the purely descriptive
task of ethics, on the one hand, and the prescriptive efforts of moralists on
the other. Throughout history, the two efforts were confusedly blended by
philosophers, who have been tempted by their subject matter into becoming
moralists, seeking to justify their normative prescriptions instead of simply
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 57

describing the given norms of specific human societies. In Schlick’s view, in-
sofar as it is conceived as scientific, i.e. as a purely theoretical form of knowl-
edge engaged in the search for truth, ethics is only engaged in the latter
task.38 Nietzsche detects a similar confused blending of the search for truth
and the moralising impulse.39 For example he proclaims

that all philosophers were building under the seduction of morality,

even Kant – that they were apparently aiming at certainty, at ‘truth’, but
in reality at ‘majestic moral structures’
(D, 3)

Schlick largely concurs not only with Nietzsche’s overall view, but also
with his more specific view of Kant, who ‘finds that the only way to arrive
at metaphysics is to start with ethics’ (Schlick 1994, 6).
Under Nietzsche’s (and Guyau’s) influence, Schlick engages in a thor-
ough critique of Kantian ethics and its assertion of absolute values and
obligations.40 The notes from one of Schlick’s last lecture courses, posthu-
mously published under the title ‘The Main Ideas of the Theory of Values’
(1994), shed some light on Schlick’s genealogy for Kant’s absolutisation of
ethics, clearly inspired by Nietzsche. In Schlick’s view, the Kantian meta-
physics of absolute values and obligations results from the transition from
antiquity to Christianity. Ancient virtue ethics only sought to develop
‘practical guidelines’ (1994, 4) for the attainment of eudaimonia. While
there is consensus among the various ethical schools that this non-meta-
physical goal is the desired outcome, they disagree when it comes to its
definition, and thereby the method of its attainment (4–5). Like Nietzsche,
Schlick sees the advent of Christianity as displacing the prior consensus by
setting a goal of ethics different from ‘earthly happiness’ (5) attainable in
this life. The pleasant is thereby separated from the good. As a result, ‘the
concept of value is made absolute and hypostatized’ (5) in a manner which
has ‘no parallel in antiquity [and …] is a product of modern civilized man’
(6). In its modern form, ethics thus becomes ‘pursued as a special part of
metaphysics’ (5). It is transformed into a theory of absolute values, i.e. of
mind-independent entities that are supposed to exist separately from hu-
man volition in a realm that ‘exists beside the so-called genuine reality’ (5).
Schlick places squarely onto Kant the philosophical blame for the for-
mulation of modern ethics. According to Schlick, the absolutisation and
hypostatisation of the concept of value, one that was previously exclu-
sively used in a relative sense, gives rise to various forms of nonsense un-
wittingly employed by modern ethics:

Kant […] took these ideas, which made sense when they were part of
the language of everyday life in antiquity, and reduced them to a
58 Andreas Vrahimis

philosophical formula. In its absolute form the concept [of value] is

completely metaphysical, for there is no absolute value to be found in
the world.
(Schlick 1994, 5)

A prime example for Kant’s misuse of ordinary language is his conception

of an absolute ‘ought’. Schlick ([1930] 1939, 110–115) argues that, in or-
der to arrive at this concept, Kant deviates from the ordinary employment
of this term, which can only be meaningfully used in a relative sense. In
ordinary usage, ‘I ought to do x’ is really equivalent to ‘Jones wants me to
do x’ (100–111). In such cases, ‘ought’ does not prescribe a categorical
imperative, but only involves a hypothetical imperative – it concerns the
expression (and possibly, given enough power, the imposition) of another’s
will. This expression is relative, i.e. it describes my relation to Jones. While
‘ought’ can be meaningfully employed in this manner only, Schlick argues
that Kant repurposes the term in order to prescribe an absolute. This mis-
use of the term results in a contradiction, insofar as ‘relativity, the relation
to another desiring person, is constitutive of the ought in its usual sense’
(112). In Schlick’s example, an absolute ‘ought’ that bears no relation to
another’s desire is equivalent to ‘an uncle who is such, not relatively to
some nephew or niece, but simply in himself’ (112).
The rejection of absolute values is part and parcel of Schlick’s account of
a science of ethics that is merely descriptive of the relative norms and val-
ues contingently upheld within specific social settings in specific points in
evolutionary history. Any attempt to justify these values is beyond the
scope of a scientific ethics. One could here object that Schlick’s descriptiv-
ist aspirations are at odds with the Nietzschean project of the ‘transvalua-
tion of all values’, if the latter is understood as a normative or justificatory
enterprise.41 Schlick, however, interprets Nietzsche’s ‘transvaluation’ in a
way that renders it compatible with his own descriptive project. The trans-
valuation of values is in fact, Schlick contends, a process that normally
takes place during the gradual course of the evolution of human civilisa-
tion. Schlick thus chastises Nietzsche for naïvely assuming that transvalu-
ation can be significantly affected by an individual genius. A naturalised
ethics that only aims at describing relative values will indeed have to take
into account these processes of transvaluation. What ethics must abstain
from is the temptation to itself engage in evaluating its object of study,
thereby confusing descriptive ethics with prescriptive moralising.42

3 Wittgenstein and Schlick on Nietzsche: A comparison

The relations of mutual influence between Schlick and Wittgenstein are far
too complex to summarise in this chapter.43 This section will focus on their
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 59

readings of Nietzsche, showing that these diverged in interesting ways. As

we shall see in what follows, their reception of Nietzsche was guided by
their different responses to Schopenhauer, on the one hand, and Spengler,
on the other. These differences in their reception of Nietzsche help frame
Wittgenstein’s (and later Waismann’s) criticisms of Schlick’s naturalisation
of ethics, to which we will turn in section 4.
Like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Schlick shared a common interest in
Schopenhauer. Both read him at an early age,44 and responded to him, im-
plicitly or explicitly, throughout their intellectual development.45 We have
already seen one example of Schopenhauer’s influence at work in the early
Schlick’s evolutionary account of drives, identified as types of will.46
Schlick’s response to Schopenhauer is far from uncritical. For example, in
his seminal ‘Experience, Cognition, Metaphysics’, Schlick ([1926] 1979,
107–109) vehemently attacks Schopenhauer’s proclamations of the limita-
tions of scientific knowledge, as opposed to metaphysics.47 A similarly
critical attitude accompanies Wittgenstein’s influence by Schopenhauer.
The extent of Schopenhauer’s influence is subject to debate hinging on
broader interpretative questions which I cannot here address.48
One significant difference between Wittgenstein’s and Schlick’s recep-
tions of Schopenhauer is that the latter, and not the former, is significantly
informed by the work of Nietzsche. Schlick’s various Schopenhauerian ten-
dencies should be understood as filtered through and subsumed under his
appraisal of Nietzsche. In Schlick’s (2013, e.g. 139–140, 204, 228–229)
lectures on both thinkers, he presents Nietzsche as a critic of Schopen-
hauer’s romantic metaphysics. Schlick subscribed to the thesis, traceable
back to Lou Andreas-Salomé, that Nietzsche began his career as a Scho-
penhauerian philologist (Schlick 2013, 128–132), only to overcome this
early phase from Human, All Too Human onwards (205). Schlick argues
that during this middle period Nietzsche became a positivist (Schlick 2013,
229), and outright rejected the possibility of metaphysical theorising (e.g.
250). Nietzsche’s later writings remain within the purview of naturalism,
exploring the ethical implications that follow from upholding a scientific
conception of the world (Schlick 2013, e.g, 240–241, 276–277). It is this
Nietzsche, seen as a positivist, critical of metaphysics, committed to a sci-
entific conception of the world, and thereby to the project of naturalising
ethics, that Schlick and other members of the Vienna Circle praised, and
even proclaimed to be their predecessor.49
The above attitude, attributed by the Vienna Circle to Nietzsche and
also upheld by its own members, is certainly one towards which Wittgen-
stein was critically disposed.50 Wittgenstein’s critical tendency towards this
attitude is reflected in his attribution to Nietzsche of the diagnosis, with
which he seems to be in agreement, that ‘our age is really an age of the
transvaluation of all values’ (PPO, 61). Wittgenstein describes modern
60 Andreas Vrahimis

civilisation’s process of transvaluation as a situation in which ‘the proces-

sion of human-kind turns a corner & what used to be the way up is now
the way down etc’ (61). While Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche would
agree that transvaluation has something to do with a ‘procession of hu-
man-kind’ (61), as we have seen in section 2, Schlick ([1911] 1979) has an
account of the gradual process of transvaluation that is at odds not only
with Wittgenstein’s pronouncement, but also with Nietzsche’s aims. By
contrast to Wittgenstein’s literally revolutionary conception of transvalua-
tion, Schlick’s evolutionary account concerns the gradual displacement of
all-too-human drives by overhuman ones – a process which can be de-
scribed by reference to biological facts, rather than to transcendent values.
This tension between Schlick’s descriptivism, as opposed to Wittgenstein’s
rejection of the relevance of theory to values, will manifest itself in Witt-
genstein’s criticism of Schlick’s naturalised ethics, to which we return in the
following section.
Perhaps contrary to other members of the Vienna Circle (and especially
its ‘left wing’), Schlick shared Wittgenstein’s critical attitude toward mo-
dernity. Already in Lebensweisheit, and much later in his posthumously
published Natur und Kultur, Schlick decried the tendency of modern tech-
nological civilisations to create environments, like modern cities, to which
human beings are not well-adapted, a tendency which leads astray from
the harmonisation of nature with culture.51 Schlick (2013, e.g. 101) fur-
thermore saw Nietzsche as centrally preoccupied with philosophical prob-
lems that specifically arise within modern civilisation. Concurring with
Andreas-Salomé’s division of Nietzsche’s work into phases, Schlick (2013,
e.g. 164–165) sees the early Schopenhauerian phase to involve a romantic
rejection of modernity and its Enlightenment optimism concerning knowl-
edge’s power to transform society for the better. He nonetheless argues that
Nietzsche revised his appraisal of Socratic ‘Wissenskultur’ (Schlick 2013,
165) during his middle period. In Schlick’s view, given that Nietzsche’s
later work remains committed to this reappraisal, it should be seen as pri-
marily concerned with working out the philosophical, and especially axi-
ological, consequences that arise from a commitment to modern
civilisation’s scientific conception of the world.
Like most of their contemporary Germanophone academics, both
Schlick and Wittgenstein reproduced the dubious distinction between ‘cul-
ture’ [Kultur] and mere ‘civilisation’ [Zivilisation].52 In Schlick’s view,
modern civilisation has been hitherto led astray by technological develop-
ments that destroy the habitats to which humanity became adapted through
long and gradual evolutionary processes. Schlick the moralist thinks that a
culture worthy of its name would instead strive towards its harmonisation
with the natural environment. Wittgenstein similarly describes modernity
as ‘a time without culture’ (CV 1998, 9). In Wittgenstein’s view, within
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 61

Western (i.e. ‘European and American’ (8)) civilisation, an individualistic

attitude focussed on technical specialisation has replaced an earlier, more
collective mode of social organisation that was conducive to cultural pur-
suits (8–9).
This earlier cultural world is connected, in Wittgenstein’s view, to

problems I never tackle, which do not lie in my path or belong to my

world. Problems of the intellectual world of the West […] which no
philosopher has ever confronted (perhaps Nietzsche passed close to
them). And perhaps they are lost to western philosophy, that is there
will be no one there who experiences and so can describe the develop-
ment of this culture as an epic. Or more precisely it just is no longer an
epic, or is one only for someone who observes it from outside & per-
haps Beethoven did this with prevision (as Spengler hints in one place).
(CV 1998, 11–12)

It is notable that here we find Wittgenstein partly sharing Schlick’s conten-

tion that Nietzsche was primarily a philosopher of culture, dealing with
problems raised by modernity. Wittgenstein does not here explicitly state
what the problems linked to ‘the end of this culture’ (12) are.53 Elsewhere,
however, he explicitly connects the Western decline into modern civilisa-
tion with the tendency towards increasing technical specialisation (of the
type promulgated e.g. by the Vienna Circle) in philosophy – something
which he compares to the anti-decorative tendencies of modernist
architecture.54
As the above quote reminds us, one of Wittgenstein’s key sources for the
distinction between culture and civilisation is the work of Oswald Spen-
gler.55 Spengler also mediates Wittgenstein’s reading of Nietzsche. Brusotti
(2009) argues that Wittgenstein understood Nietzsche’s account of the
transvaluation of values through the lens of Spengler’s account of the
downfall of Western civilisation. Showing a trace of Spengler’s influence,
Wittgenstein maintains that he ‘contemplate[s] the current of European
civilization without sympathy, without understanding its aims if any’ (CV
1998, 9), since its ‘spirit […] is alien & uncongenial’ (8) to him. Yet Witt-
genstein (8) insists that his declarations concerning the transition from an
earlier culture to modern civilisation are not meant to be ‘disparaging’ (8)
value judgements. To restate his view in the Nietzschean terms we already
saw him employ, while Wittgenstein fails to sympathise with the transvalu-
ation of values characteristic of modern civilisation, he also does not seek
to evaluate this civilisation as somehow inferior from the preceding
culture.
Wittgenstein’s sympathy for Spengler clearly differentiates him from
most of the Vienna Circle’s members, including Schlick.56 Spengler’s
62 Andreas Vrahimis

popular declarations concerning the downfall of Western civilisation were,

already in 1921, the target of an extensive rebuttal in Neurath’s Anti-Spen-
gler. Despite his proximity to Wittgenstein (or his antagonism with Neur-
ath), Schlick seems to have remained unconvinced by his friend’s enthusiasm
for Spengler’s views. This is evident in the scathing and detailed objections
against Spengler’s theses developed in Natur und Kultur.
Among other criticisms, Schlick rejects Spengler’s account of history
as unjustifiably teleological (Schlick 1952, 42), and his fatalism for be-
ing empirically unfounded (42–45).57 Schlick takes Spengler’s pessi-
mism to rely on the erroneous thesis that nature and culture are opposed
forces. Spengler takes technology to be the primary factor driving the
development of human cultures and civilisations. Civilisational devel-
opment is thus tantamount to a perpetually growing opposition to na-
ture; and downfall is thus the destiny of all human civilisations, which
must unavoidably lose this war. This pessimism is precisely the opposite
view of the optimistic evolutionism we have seen Schlick develop since
his earliest work. Contrary to Spengler, Schlick had argued that culture
is an outgrowth of nature that can become fully harmonised with it.
Once we clear away certain confusions caused by Spengler’s vague use
of terms such as ‘opposition’ to characterise the relation between na-
ture and culture, Schlick argues that the question of the direction of
cultural development becomes an empirical matter. In his view, the em-
pirical evidence favours his own optimism.
In the opposition between Schlick and Spengler, we see two very dif-
ferent approaches towards interpreting Nietzsche. Spengler and other
Lebensphilosophen looked to Nietzsche for a predecessor of their vari-
ous forms of anti-intellectualism, if not irrationalism. Following its
propagandistic use during the First World War, it is through its incor-
poration into popular Lebensphilosophie that Nietzsche’s thought came
to be appropriated by the fascists and Nazis. As we have seen, Wittgen-
stein’s reception of Nietzsche, filtered through Spengler’s cultural pes-
simism, occupies a very unique place in the history of analytic
philosophy, veering toward enemy camps. By contrast, though Schlick
acknowledged the early Nietzsche’s romantic critique of the Enlighten-
ment, what he appreciated was his later overcoming of his Schopenhau-
erian metaphysics, and his defence of a scientific world-conception.
Schlick was thus thoroughly opposed to the appropriation of Nietzsche’s
thought by militarists and fascists alike.58 In opposition to Spenglerian
pessimism, Schlick looked to Nietzsche for a utopian vision of the fu-
ture harmonisation of nature with culture. Thus, as this section has
shown, despite their apparent convergence in remaining critical of
­modernity, Wittgenstein and Schlick saw Nietzsche’s stance towards
­modernity through very different prisms.
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 63

4 Wittgenstein against Schlick’s ethics

On 17 December 1930, Waismann recorded Wittgenstein’s remarks in re-
sponse to Schlick’s Fragen der Ethik. The analysis so far undertaken by this
chapter helps place one point of Wittgenstein’s agreement with Schlick into
context. As shown in section 2(d), Schlick ([1930] 1939) developed an
extensive Nietzschean criticism of the absolutisation of values and obliga-
tions that led to the Christian subsumption of ethics under metaphysics.
Schlick’s main example for this move was Kant’s assertion of an absolute
‘ought’, which Schlick took to rely on a shift from the ordinary meaning of
the term to its nonsensical metaphysical employment. Wittgenstein’s re-
marks apparently restate Schlick’s viewpoint, concurring with it without
much modification:

What does the word ‘ought’ mean? A child ought to do such-and-such

means that if he does not do it, something unpleasant will happen. […]
‘Ought’ makes sense only if there is something lending support and
force to it – a power that punishes and rewards. Ought in itself is
nonsensical.
(WVC, 118)

Wittgenstein thus agrees with Schlick that ‘ought’ can be meaningfully

used only in a relative, not an absolute, sense. By appealing to this particu-
lar example, Wittgenstein further links Schlick’s critique of the Kantian
absolute imperative back to the Tractatus’ (6.422) assertion that ‘ethics
has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense’ (TLP
1922, 183). According to the Tractatus, the consequences of an imperative
must be extrinsic to its ethical import. The distinction between relative and
absolute values was further elaborated in Wittgenstein’s ‘Lecture on Eth-
ics’, thereby influencing the subsequent development of Schlick’s ethics.59
A fundamental disagreement concerning the meaning of the term ‘ethics’
looms behind the apparent agreement between Schlick and Wittgenstein
concerning the meaninglessness of an absolute ‘ought’.60 Wittgenstein out-
right rejects the relation between ethics and science developed in Schlick’s
book.61 As Wittgenstein insists, ethical values have ‘nothing to do’ (WVC,
115) with the sociological and psychological facts that Schlick’s ‘ethical
science’ sets out to describe and explain. Wittgenstein thus asserts that
scientific explanation, or indeed any theory of values, is simply irrelevant
to ethics.62 For example, he contests Schlick’s thesis that ‘valuations are
facts existing in human consciousness’ (Schlick [1930] 1939, 21) thus:

Is value a particular state of mind? Or a form attaching to some data or

other of consciousness? I would reply that whatever I was told, I would
64 Andreas Vrahimis

reject, and that not because the explanation was false but because it was
an explanation.
(WVC, 116–117)

In the above, Wittgenstein primarily rejects the applicability of the term

‘ethics’ to Schlick’s psycho-sociological theory. Schlick takes what he calls
a ‘scientific ethics’ to be able to describe the set of norms upheld within a
given society at a particular stage in its history (or, more broadly, humanity
at a particular stage of its evolution).63 As Schlick insists, such a scientific
enterprise would not endeavour to justify these norms – any such endeav-
our must inevitably fail. In his response to Schlick, Wittgenstein does not
appear to reject the viability of such a scientific project. Rather, he contests
its relevance to ethics. According to Wittgenstein,

What is ethical cannot be caught. If I could explain the essence of the

ethical only by means of a theory, then what is ethical would be of no
value whatsoever. […] all I can do is to step forth as an individual and
speak in the first person.
(117)

In other words, Wittgenstein asserts that ethics is not a form of theory. The
theoretical enterprise Schlick set out on is ethically irrelevant; the word
‘ethics’ is inapplicable to it.
In summarising his response to Schlick in 1930, Wittgenstein rephrases
Schopenhauer’s aphorism: ‘to moralize is easy, to establish morality diffi-
cult’ (quoted in WVC, 118). According to Wittgenstein, instead, ‘to moral-
ize is difficult, to establish morality impossible’ (118). Almost a decade
later, in his unfinished notes for a lecture at Cambridge from 1938 or 1939,
Waismann reiterates, and thereby interprets, Wittgenstein’s claim as
follows:

An ethicist can proclaim his doctrine and try to promote it […] by per-
suasion or by living by it. But there is one thing he cannot do: he cannot
justify his ethics. Schopenhauer says: ‘it is easy to preach, but difficult to
found, morality’. I say: it is difficult to preach, but impossible to found,
morality. Ethics, like religion, is something you can only profess.
(Waismann 1994, 50)

5 Waismann between Schlick and Wittgenstein

In the Cambridge lecture notes, Waismann’s take on the relation between
science and ethics integrates elements of Schlick’s project and
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 65

Wittgenstein’s critique. At first glance, Waismann appears to side with

Wittgenstein in his attempt to show that ethics is not a theoretical enter-
prise.64 Yet if one looks at its details, Waismann’s defence of this viewpoint
does not go against any specific part of Schlick’s descriptive science of eth-
ics. Indeed, Waismann’s lecture is simply not concerned with the type of
project Schlick was engaged in.65 Instead, Waismann emphasises a point of
agreement between Wittgenstein and Schlick when he argues that there can
be no factual justification for normative claims.
In arguing his case, Waismann shares the assumption common to both
Wittgenstein and Schlick in their criticisms of absolute values and obliga-
tions: to justify ethics scientifically would only be possible once

we can demonstrate the legitimacy of an ethic in an objective manner,

i.e. in such a way that any human being must recognize this ethic as
binding
(Waismann 1994, 37)

Yet, in Waismann’s view, such an absolute is unattainable. What we en-

counter in reality is disagreement between proponents of ‘mutually contra-
dictory’ (44) ethical systems, among which Waismann (44) lists Epicurean,
Stoic, Christian, and Nietzschean ethics. Waismann concurs that, once the
basic tenets of either ethical system are accepted, justification can be of-
fered for various views within each system. Yet any choice between com-
peting ethical systems cannot itself be justified scientifically – there can be
no recourse to facts in deciding ‘which morality is “correct”’ (45). Theo-
retical disagreements between ethical outlooks thus remain unresolvable.
Proponents of ethical systems throughout history seem to have nonethe-
less insisted on theoretical dialogue. Waismann explains this insistence by
reference to a confusion concerning the nature of ethical utterances. These
often take a form similar to descriptions, and here ‘as so often, we are
misled by language’ (45). Waismann does not follow Wittgenstein’s earlier
assertion that ethical utterances are meaningless.66 Rather, his meta-ethical
viewpoint is closer to the early Schlick’s Schopenhauerianism:

ethics is a matter of the will, not of the understanding. This is why ethi-
cal sentences have nothing to do with knowledge and error nor with
‘true’ and ‘false’.
(45)

Like Schlick, Waismann understands ethics as involving expressions of vo-

lition. In Waismann’s view, his non-cognitivist denial of the truth-aptness
of ethical sentences entails that theoretical dialogue between competing
ethical systems, understood as competing forms taken by volition, is
66 Andreas Vrahimis

untenable.67 Waismann’s view allows for the possibility that, starting from
some basic form of volition, an ethical system directed towards its attain-
ment can be erected. Neither does he preclude the possibility, explored by
Schlick, that such a system can be described in a scientific manner. What he
denies, in common with both Wittgenstein and Schlick, is that the conflict-
ing volitional attitudes ultimately expressed by different ethical systems
can ever be scientifically justified.

6 Waismann contra Nietzsche

Waismann frames his brand of non-cognitivism within a broad genealogy
of morality that partly resembles the Nietzschean historical account we
previously encountered in Schlick. According to Waismann, different ethi-
cal systems have their historical origins in different religions, while he at-
tributes the attempt to construct theoretical systems of ethics to the demise
of religious belief. Ethical theory seeks to fill the gap that opens once faith
in various religions’ revelatory commandments subsides. Like Schlick, Wa-
ismann takes modern ethics, from Spinoza to Schopenhauer, to have en-
deavoured ‘to give ethics a metaphysical foundation’ (Waismann 1994,
36). Waismann concurs with Schlick in taking Kant’s work to be the para-
digmatic culprit for this move, since he conceived of ethics as

the field in which man rises from the sphere of the empirical world sub-
ject to natural causes into an intelligible world of free spirits.
(36)

Waismann agrees with Schlick that a scientific attitude towards ethics ‘is
undermining and gradually breaking up this metaphysical pseudoworld’
(36). In the wake especially of Darwinian evolutionary theory (35), a new
type of approach to ethics has endeavoured to justify its assertions on the
basis of scientific results. In at least partial contrast with Schlick, Wais-
mann is critically disposed towards both the modern metaphysical, and the
later naturalistic forms taken by ethical theory.
When it comes to the latter, Nietzsche becomes the main target of
­Waismann’s criticism. Waismann employs the clash between a Christian
and a Nietzschean morality as exemplary of robust, unresolvable
­disagreement between ethical systems. Waismann’s overall claim is that,
despite Nietzsche’s multiple appeals to evolutionary biology, physiology,
and p ­sychology, his ethical standpoint is ultimately unjustifiable by
­recourse to the results of science.
By contrast with Schlick’s efforts to avoid Nietzsche’s appropriation by
far right politics, Waismann’s lecture notes, composed soon after Schlick’s
murder and Waismann’s escape from the Nazis to Cambridge as a refugee,
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 67

concede from the outset that Nietzsche was associated with ‘certain ideolo-
gies’ (34) such as ‘the glorification of the blond beast’ (34) and the ‘idea of
breeding supermen’ (34).68 According to Waismann, Nietzsche thought
that the members of a ‘master race’ (47) are to be exempt from all moral
strictures. In interpreting Nietzsche, Waismann clarifies that he uses the
word ‘race’ in a non-biological sense. Membership in the master race is
voluntary, to be gained by those who have ‘the courage to overcome the
slave morality’ (47). For these masters, everything is morally permissible,
while morality applies only to a lower caste of slaves. As a result, in Wais-
mann’s view, Nietzsche proposes the institution of two legal systems.
Waismann’s first objection to Nietzsche concerns a logical contradiction
involved in the application of this double legal order. The imposition of
morality onto the slaves would, by Nietzsche’s standards, be impossible,
since anyone who breaks the rules applying to slaves could claim to be a
master, a claim that is validated by the fact that they did not follow slave
morality. However, as Waismann admits, this problem could be resolved
by introducing further criteria for entry into the master caste, e.g. ‘self-
determination, outstanding achievements, etc’ (48).
Waismann’s second objection is directed against Nietzsche’s contention
that the ‘rule of the will to power’ (48) was best exemplified in a ‘particular
state of culture, one he found realized above all in the sixth century before
Christ’ (48). Waismann argues that Nietzsche’s analysis of this culture is
mistaken, since its growth and development were largely premised on

trade, colonization and the beginnings of progress rather than on the

will to power, which was frittered away on countless local wars that
lacked any cultural value, ruined the land, and even contributed to the
downfall of the great public figures.
(48)

Waismann thus argues that the Nietzschean must decide whether what they
value above all is the unrestrained expression of the will to power or ‘great
cultural achievements’ (48). The objection here is in some ways similar in
spirit to Schlick’s contention that an unrestrained will to power will ulti-
mately clash with the will to pleasure, the latter being more apt in describing
actual sociological phenomena. At the same time, however, Schlick may
have rejected Waismann’s interpretation of Nietzsche: according to Schlick’s
division of Nietzsche’s works into phases, the admiration of pre-Socratic
culture is characteristic of Nietzsche’s early metaphysical phase, while the
assertion of the will to power is developed in the last positivistic phase.
A further incompatibility between Waismann’s and Schlick’s interpreta-
tions is connected to Waismann’s third objection to Nietzsche. This concerns
the notion of eternal recurrence, an idea that, perhaps surprisingly, Schlick,
68 Andreas Vrahimis

Wittgenstein, and Waismann all address in different ways. As already noted,

in his lectures on Nietzsche Schlick argues that the later Nietzsche remained
a positivist, and was committed to the rejection of any metaphysical asser-
tion concerning a supra-sensory world that goes beyond experience (Schlick
2013, 228). Schlick (298) argues that the doctrine of eternal recurrence is a
case in point: it makes no reference to a supra-sensible world, but simply to
an occurrence within the sensible world that cannot possibly be experi-
enced.69 He therefore maintains that this view contains no contradiction,
and is a plausible naturalistic hypothesis (298–299).
By contrast to Schlick, as Brusotti (2009, 359) notes, Wittgenstein’s
­response to the idea of eternal recurrence is not concerned with ­interpreting
Nietzsche, but rather with diagnosing a particular type of error which he
takes such a view to exemplify. Wittgenstein uses his rendition of ­Nietzsche’s
idea in the context of clarifying a specific use of the term ‘can’ expressing
possibility:

The use which is made of the word ‘can’ – the expression of possibility
[…] – can throw a light upon the idea that what can happen must have
happened before (Nietzsche). It will also be interesting to look […] on
the statement that what happens can happen.
(BBB, 104)

An elucidation of the above relatively obscure comment can be found in

Waismann’s reporting of Wittgenstein’s views in his Principles of Linguis-
tic Philosophy. Here, Nietzsche’s ‘idea to prove eternal recurrence’ (Wais-
mann 1997, 341) is connected to Russell’s view that ‘the possible is that for
which there are precedents’ (341). In Diktat für Schlick, Wittgenstein fur-
ther clarifies his diagnosis that the confusing polysemy of ‘can’ is what
tempts Nietzsche into considering the notion of possibility as necessitating
eternal recurrence.

This misunderstanding is of exactly the same kind as seeing possibility

as a shadowy reality and the ability to do something as a shadowy per-
formance. […] Here too belongs Nietzsche’s argument for the assertion
of eternal recurrence.
(VW, 13)

In other words, Wittgenstein takes the idea of eternal recurrence to be a

consequence derived from unwittingly identifying the meaning of an ex-
pression such as ‘he can do so and so’ (BBB, 104) with that of the expres-
sion ‘he has done so and so’ (104).
Contrary to Schlick, who argued against a metaphysical interpretation,
Waismann insists that the notion of eternal recurrence is metaphysics pure
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 69

and simple. Perhaps contrary to Wittgenstein, who appears to have clearly

understood the misunderstanding that it contains as originating in the use
of ‘can’, Waismann claims that it is nonsensical. According to Waismann,

the theory of eternal recurrence, to which Nietzsche attached such im-

portance in his later years and which he regarded as the metaphysical
underpinning of his ethics, is really meaningless.
(48)

Waismann describes Nietzsche’s position in terms of ‘all things and states

of affairs in the world’ (48). He argues that if all the states of affairs that
have taken and will take place simply repeat themselves infinitely many
times, without any conceivable characteristic that differentiates between
various repetitions, then it is meaningless to conceive of them as eternally
recurring:

one could just as well say that everything in the world is just what it is
and that time is self-contained.
(48)

Waismann here seems to implicitly appeal to some version of Leibniz’s law.

There is no discernible difference between the specific objects and states of
affairs that are repeated infinitely many times. Thus their existence is a
spurious metaphysical postulate.
A possible response to Waismann’s view can be formulated on the basis
of Schlick’s interpretation. The physical possibility of repeated sequences
of states of affairs could be differentiated by their temporal position only.
Two questions, which neither Schlick nor Waismann address, would then
remain: (i) whether a non-metaphysical articulation of Leibniz’s law can be
permitted within the bounds of Logical Empiricism; and (ii) whether this
should be understood to take temporal differences into consideration.
Even if it were granted that the above objections give theoretical reasons
that motivate a rejection of Nietzsche’s ethics, Waismann concedes that
any theoretical argument will be insufficient for the goal. He claims that
Nietzsche does not present his meta-ethical theory as the result of logical
argument which must convince his reader without any doubt. Instead
­‘Nietzsche uses every means in his language to talk us into accepting his
theory of values, to seduce us’ (48–49). Given that Nietzsche does not rely
on argument, but rather on psychological persuasion, there is little by way
of argument that can convincingly answer his theory. Understood thus,
what might have appeared as a theoretical system of ethics turns out to be
nothing other than an assertion of Nietzsche’s will. The same diagnosis,
Waismann contends, would ultimately apply to all other ethical systems.
70 Andreas Vrahimis

7 Conclusion
With Waismann’s lecture at Cambridge, our story of the exceptional char-
acter of the Germanophone analytic response to Nietzsche has come full
circle, returning to some of the criticisms made familiar in Anglophone
analytic polemics. It is unclear whether Russell had any knowledge, direct
or indirect, of Waismann’s objections. Whether under Waismann’s influ-
ence or not, his widely read History of Western Philosophy (Russell 1946,
137, 699, 799–800) repeats a variant of Waismann’s last claim against
Nietzsche: his ethics is really a matter of sentiment rather than theory.70
The appropriation of Nietzsche’s work by Nazism motivated such criti-
cisms by Anglophone analytic philosophers. As a result, Nietzsche would be
of little interest to analytic philosophers during the third quarter of the twen-
tieth century. As Robertson and Owen (2013) note, a resurgence of interest
occurred, during the last quarter of the century, within Anglophone analytic
debates in ethics. This chapter has demonstrated that this overall pattern in
Nietzsche’s reception does not apply to the cases of three of the leading Ger-
manophone figures in the history of analytic philosophy.
Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann had elaborate responses to parts of
Nietzsche’s outlook. A significant Nietzschean influence guided Schlick’s
project of naturalising ethics, both in its philosophical viewpoints and in
the style of its exposition. Schlick nonetheless maintained a critical attitude
towards various aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy, such as his assertion of
the will to power. Despite their proximity, Wittgenstein’s understanding of
several of Nietzsche’s views (under the influence of Spengler) deviated from
Schlick’s more elaborate interpretation. Wittgenstein concurred with
Schlick’s criticism of an absolute ‘ought’, despite his overall rejection of
Schlick’s naturalisation of ethics. In Waismann’s articulation of his own
view of the relation between ethics and science, we find an emphasis on an
element that is common in Schlick and Wittgenstein, namely their rejection
of the possibility of scientifically justifying moral claims. As shown in this
chapter’s last section, Waismann’s criticisms of Nietzsche’s ethics can be
brought into dialogue with Schlick’s and Wittgenstein’s responses, espe-
cially in the case of the notion of eternal recurrence. The overall dialogue
reconstructed by this chapter thereby deviates from the usual depiction of
a split in Nietzsche’s reception along the lines of a purported divide be-
tween ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy.71

Notes
1 See Martin 2003, 2006; Akehurst 2010, 18–23; Vrahimis 2015, 2022a,
55–59.
2 See Martin 2006, 154–155. Similar compact editions of Nietzsche’s aphorisms
were published in the Second World War.
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 71

3 See Vrahimis 2015, 2022a.

4 See Akehurst 2010.
5 See Akehurst 2010, 35–38.
6 See Akerhurst 2010.
7 See Robertson and Owen 2013.
8 See Brusotti 2009, 341. I am grateful to Shunichi Takagi for pointing out to me
that G.E. Moore’s diaries from 1913 suggest that Wittgenstein was already fa-
miliar with Zarathustra.
9 See Brusotti 2009, 341.
10 See Brusotti 2009, 341–343.
11 See Brusotti 2009, 345–349.
12 Iven 2013, 55.
13 See Iven 2013, 63. The lectures were repeatedly delivered by Schlick at various
times and places up until 1923. Schlick modified the lectures, e.g. with the
subsequent addition of an introduction to Schopenhauer. The lecture notes
were first published a century later as Nietzsche und Schopenhauer (Schlick
2013).
14 I analyse Schlick’s defence of Nietzsche against militarism in Vrahimis 2022a.
15 See Vrahimis 2020.
16 On the book’s Nietzschean overtones, see Brusotti 2006, 349–354.
17 The simile mentioned here is from Nietzsche (TSZ 2006, 117).
18 Similar remarks, citing Nietzsche, are also found in Waismann (1968a, 6;
1968b, 176).
19 I should note that this chapter will not focus on evaluating the correctness of
these views qua interpretations of Nietzsche.
20 See Mormann 2010; Vrahimis 2020, 2022a. Another relevant central influence
on Schlick is the less well-remembered work of Jean-Marie Guyau, whose proj-
ect of naturalising ethics was highly influential on Nietzsche’s similar effort; see
Ansell-Pearson 2009. It should be noted that the question whether Nietzsche
was indeed a naturalist has been a subject of ongoing scholarly dispute.
21 Nietzsche is also mentioned in later works related to ethics, e.g. Schlick ([1927]
1979, 113, 120, 124, 127–128; [1930] 1939, 141, 172).
22 Iven 2006, 19–20.
23 See also Leinfellner 1985, 328, 336–337.
24 Schlick ([1911] 1979, 115) nevertheless rejects Nietzsche’s individualistic con-
ception of transvaluation; see Vrahimis 2020, 6, 11.
25 See also Textor 2018.
26 As Ferrari (2022) points out, this is one of the disagreements between Schlick
and Wittgenstein.
27 See Bonnet 2016.
28 See Vrahimis 2022a, 71–78.
29 See Lewis (1990); Uebel (2020).
30 Cf. Schlick [1932] 1979, 368.
31 This idea is further explored in Schlick ([1918/1925] 1974, 94–101; [1927]
1979, 116).
32 See Leinfellner (1985); Ambrus (2022).
33 In this, Schlick comes closer to Guyau’s social vision of the naturalisation of
ethics; see Ansell-Pearson 2009.
34 Cf. Schlick [1930] 1939, 59.
35 Schlick ([1930] 1939, 56–78) later engages in a more sustained discussion of
the term’s definition.
72 Andreas Vrahimis

36 See also Leinfellner 1985.

37 See also Ambrus 2022.
38 Apart from this conception of a scientific ethics, Schlick also conceives of a
supplementary philosophical meta-ethics, which investigates the logical rela-
tions between possible sets of rules; see Ambrus 2022.
39 See Ansell-Pearson 2009, 103.
40 See Ferrari 2016. As Ansell-Pearson (2009) argues, Guyau’s work can be un-
derstood as the source for Nietzsche’s critique of absolute value.
41 But see e.g. Robertson and Owen 2013, 186–188.
42 Schlick ([1930] 1939) himself nonetheless traverses the distinction between the
two; see Ambrus 2022.
43 See e.g. Uebel 2020.
44 Iven 2006, 22; Anscombe 1959, 11–12; see also Jacquette 2017, 60–61.
45 On Schopenhauer’s influence on Wittgenstein, see e.g. Jacquette 2017. On
Schopenhauer’s significant influence on Schlick, see Textor (2018, 2021, 251–
260), and a brief mention in Leinfellner 1985, 328, 336–337. Waismann (e.g.
1968a, 3–4, 6; 1977, 31; 1994, 36, 50) also repeatedly mentions and discusses
Schopenhauer’s views – including in the book that resulted from his failed col-
laboration with Wittgenstein (Waismann 1965, 6–7, 154, 189, 328).
46 See Leinfellner 1985, 328, 336–337.
47 A similar line of criticism directed against Schopenhauer is pursued in Schlick
([1930] 1979, 167–168; [1932] 1979, 324). According to Textor (2018, 113–
116; 2021, 325–329), Schopenhauer’s influence also extends to Schlick’s con-
ception of acquaintance, which underlies his objections against its epistemic
status – a line of criticism that Schlick upholds throughout his work.
48 See e.g. Jacquette 2017.
49 See Vrahimis 2020.
50 See e.g. Kienzler 2018.
51 See also Mormann 2010; Vrahimis 2021a.
52 See e.g. Mormann 2010; Vrahimis 2021b, 153–156.
53 On Wittgenstein’s account of the relation between modern civilisation and phi-
losophy, see e.g. Kienzler 2018; Vrahimis 2021b.
54 See Vrahimis 2021b, 153–156.
55 As Kienzler (2018) shows, Spengler’s work also informs Wittgenstein’s criti-
cisms of the Vienna Circle.
56 See Vrahimis 2020, 2022b.
57 See Vrahimis 2020, 54–56.
58 See Vrahimis 2022a, 66–68.
59 On the importance of the distinction between absolute and relative values for
Wittgenstein’s reception of Nietzsche, see Brusotti 2009, 345. On the relation
between Wittgenstein’s and Schlick’s ethical outlooks, see Ferrari 2022.
60 I further analyse Wittgenstein’s critical response to Schlick’s ethics in Vrahimis 2023.
61 This is something Schlick anticipates in his letter accompanying his dispatch of
the book to Wittgenstein, where he acknowledges that ‘I think that your judge-
ment will be that the whole [book] has nothing to do with ethics’ (quoted in
Iven 2006, 338).
62 See also Ferrari 2022.
63 See also Leinfellner 1985; Ambrus 2022.
64 Nevertheless, as Sandis (2019, 48–50) shows, while Wittgenstein was warning
against the scientism involved in Schlick’s project, Waismann was defending a
kind of scientistic view of ethics.
 Schlick, Wittgenstein, and Waismann 73

65 See also Sandis 2019, 48.

66 Sandis 2019, 49.
67 See Sandis 2019.
68 Schlick’s (2013, 284–285) early interpretation of Übermensch as a biological
concept (and one related to breeding [‘Höherzüchtung’ (2013, 286)]) is neverthe-
less partly aligned with Waismann’s proclamation here; see Vrahimis 2020, 11.
69 See Vrahimis 2020, 11.
70 Russell’s earlier criticisms of Bergson instigated this type of criticism, gradually
influencing the Vienna Circle’s anti-metaphysical stance; see Vrahimis 2022b.
71 I owe many thanks to Shunichi Takagi and Pascal Zambito for inviting me to
contribute this chapter to their volume, and for all their editorial work. I also
owe thanks to Benoît Berthelier for his insightful comments.

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3 Philosophy as Work on
Oneself
Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and
Paul Ernst1

Stefan Majetschak

1 Wittgenstein’s Reception of Nietzsche and Its Context

In a note of 16 January 1931, Wittgenstein accorded Nietzsche’s thought a
high rank. ‘Nietzsche’, he wrote, had ‘perhaps’ ‘passed close’ to problems
which he himself

never [tackles] […]. Problems of the intellectual world of the West which
Beethoven (& perhaps Goethe to a certain extent) tackled & wrestled
with but which no philosopher has ever confronted […].
(CV 1998, 11; MS 110, 12; WA3.154)

Nietzsche belongs to those authors with whom Wittgenstein was con-

cerned early on. He reads him in a context of other readings that makes it
clear that he hoped for inspiration from all these authors with regard to the
question of a ‘right view’ of the world, a view that – as he believed – would
make the ethical problem of life, so pressing to him not least in the years
of the First World War, ‘disappear’.2
At that time, between 1914 and 1916, when he was only gradually de-
veloping the basic ideas of his first and only published book during his
lifetime, the Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, which is today usually
referred to as Tractatus, he did not yet have a clear idea of what such a
view should be and how it could be achieved in philosophy, according to
the penultimate sentence of his book.3 He works ‘a lot’, as his diaries re-
cord in numerous places, on logical-philosophical problems on the one
hand, for which he owes ‘in large measure the stimulation of [his] thoughts’
to ‘the great works of Frege and [his] friend Bertrand Russell’ (TLP 1922,
Preface, 2), and on his ethical problems on the other hand, ‘but without
real clarity of vision’ (GT, 12.11.14). He lacks ‘an overview [Überblick],
and as a result the problem’ – one must assume: his logical as well as ethi-
cal problem – ‘appears unsurveyable [unübersehbar]’. (GT, 25.9.14) He
struggles for a long time to find the ‘redeeming word’ [erlösende Wort]

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-5
78 Stefan Majetschak

(GT, 21.11.14 and GT, 22.11.144) on both questions. He looks for guid-
ance in his readings. He reads ‘Tolstoy’s “Elucidations of the Gospels”’
(GT, 2/9/1914) which he ‘constantly’ carries with him for weeks ‘like a
talisman’ (11/10/14), as well as Emerson’s Essays which have, he believes,
‘a good influence’ on him (15/11/14). ‘One month after reading Emerson’,
in December 1914, ‘Wittgenstein buys volume 8 of Nietzsche’s works in
Kraków’ (published Leipzig 1904),5 which contains poetry, the late texts
The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche contra Wagner, The
Antichrist as well as parts of what was at the time considered Nietzsche’s
unfinished opus magnum, The Will to Power; Wittgenstein is ‘strongly
moved’ by Nietzsche’s ‘hostility towards Christianity’ (8/12/14)
From the documents on his biographic and philosophical development,
even from McGuinness’ very detailed work on Young Wittgenstein, we
cannot decide if he read Tolstoy, Emerson and Nietzsche merely because he
found these writings by chance, or if they were – especially in this constel-
lation – motivated by other incitements than those by Frege and Russell. It
can hardly be determined either how these readings contributed in detail to
what he at different times considered ‘the right view’ of the world. What he
meant by his vague remark from 1931 about problems which only
­Nietzsche of all philosophers, but not Wittgenstein himself, had touched,6
remains just as open a question in Wittgenstein scholarship as what he
found remarkable, especially in the case of Nietzsche in the 1930s.
Maybe this question was not even considered particularly important,
since Wittgenstein’s reading of volume 8 of Nietzsche’s works in 1914 as
well as his reading of further texts by Nietzsche in the 1930s and 40s7 seems
at first sight to have left no more than rudimentary marks in his own writ-
ings. McGuinness assumes it might have been Nietzsche’s repeated emphasis
on writing for few readers only which impressed Wittgenstein, perhaps even
for a readership that did not even exist at the time. Nietzsche’s preface to the
Antichrist begins with the words ‘This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps
none of them is yet alive’ (A, Preface). And McGuinness rightly highlights
that these words are surely ‘echoed in the preface of the Tractatus, and even
more strikingly in Wittgenstein’s later remark that he thought he was writing
for a race of men who would think in a quite different way from us’;8 in any
case for no more than ‘a small circle’.9 Unmistakable echoes of Nietzsche can
in fact be found in another text by Wittgenstein, namely in those passages of
the Big Typescript which he labelled with the heading Philosophy, where he
said more on his conception of philosophy than anywhere else in his work.
Based on this text, I shall in the following suggest a conjecture – not more!
– about how Nietzsche could have been relevant for Wittgenstein in the
years of the First World War as well as in the early 1930s. According to this
conjecture, Paul Ernst’s interpretation of Nietzsche might have been not only
a motivation to read Nietzsche, but also a source of Wittgenstein’s own
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 79

conception of p ­ hilosophy.10 This conjecture cannot be proven philologically

with the c­urrent state of documents on Wittgenstein’s development. For
­unfortunately Wittgenstein used to ‘give no sources’ for his thoughts ­because
it was ‘a matter of indifference’ to him whether what he had thought had
been ­‘anticipated by someone else’ (TLP 1961, Preface); even if such sources
existed. Nevertheless the conjecture can perhaps be given a certain ­plausibility
if a main feature of Wittgenstein’s understanding of philosophy in the Big
Typescript is considered as well as the appeals to Nietzsche in this text.
Although Wittgenstein’s explanation of his concept of philosophy in the
Big Typescript has numerous parallels to the later Philosophical Investiga-
tions, which manifest themselves in, partly literal, agreements of both
texts, he here emphasises an aspect of working on philosophy that is less
explicit in the later work. ‘Working on philosophy’, he writes here, is,
‘similar to what working in architecture is often like – actually more’ than
working on so-called factual problems ‘working on oneself. On one’s own
understanding. On the way one sees things. (And on what one demands of
them.)’ (BT, 407/300e). Precisely this task of philosophy could have been
connected by Wittgenstein to Nietzsche’s name via the mediation of Paul
Ernst, as shall be shown. To substantiate this claim, I shall first outline why
philosophy was for Wittgenstein in a decisive sense ‘work on oneself’; sub-
sequently I shall point out by means of Nietzschean traces in the Big Type-
script that this concept of philosophy was anticipated by Paul Ernst’s
interpretation of Nietzsche which Wittgenstein could have known, either
through his own reading or through conversations with the Olmütz Circle
around architect Paul Engelmann.

2 ‘Philosophy’ in the Big Typescript

That philosophy must essentially be a work on one’s own perspective,
which has to be done by each one individually, is connected to the specific
difficulties which, according to Wittgenstein’s presentation in the Big Type-
script, counter the attempt to cure philosophical thinking from the tempta-
tion to see the world in the light of those ‘false analogies’ (BT, 409/302e)
which natural language – that ‘enormous net of well-preserved/viable me-
anders’ – time and again imposes on our thinking. Such false analogies,
according to a diagnosis often repeated since the 1930s, derive from the
fact that the grammar of our natural language is lacking ‘surveyability’
(BT, 417/308e);11 as a result, not only our ordinary thinking, but also the
philosophical thinking of the tradition, is seduced to get caught in the net
of language and, therefore, to regard as analogous phenomena of the world
which are essentially uncomparable such as phenomena of the physical
and the mental sphere (WA3.209). Thus the ‘primitive forms of our lan-
guage – noun, adjective and verb – show the simple picture to whose form
80 Stefan Majetschak

language tries to reduce everything’ (BT, 434/317e). On the surface, our

language treats all phenomena according to this image. And as long as one
does not look closer, one may easily believe that a sentence like ‘I know
where Japan is’ speaks about an individuable, however obscure and un-
seizable, inner process in the same way as the sentence ‘I travel to Japan’
speaks about a process that is localisable in space and time. We lack, ac-
cording to Wittgenstein, the overview over the very different grammars of
verbs like ‘know’ and ‘travel’. And thus we are tempted to interpret basi-
cally uncomparable phenomena by means of the same pattern.
As expressed in MS 110, from which many remarks were transferred to
the Big Typescript, such false analogies are the actual morbus philosophi-
cus (MS 110, 86; WA3.209) which traditional metaphysics, according to
Wittgenstein, suffers from. Especially when it assumes, in the spirit of a
philosophia perennis, ‘that the same problems occupy us which occupied
already the Greeks’, it does not see that it is basically still misled by the
same false analogy, because

our language has remained constant and keeps seducing us into asking
the same questions. So long as there is a verb “be” that seems to func-
tion like “eat” and “drink”,

or ‘so long as there are the adjectives “identical”, “true”, “false”, “possi-
ble”’ (BT, 424/312e), which can be misinterpreted as predicable properties,
such false analogisations cannot be completely avoided. While he believed
that he could work against them by means of a ‘surveyable representation’
(BT, 417/307e)12 of the language-games that we actually play with these
words in our natural language, he also saw that for someone who in prin-
ciple sees through them, they still mean a ‘constant battle and uneasiness
(a constant irritant, as it were)’ (BT, 409/ 302e).

It is as if something seems to be a human being from afar, because at

that distance we don’t perceive certain things, but from close up we see
that it is a tree stump. The moment we move away a little and lose sight
of the explanations, one figure appears to us; if after that we look more
closely, we see a different figure; now we move away again, etc., etc.
(ibid.)

Thus the disquieting temptation to a misleading perspective returns again

and again – also to Wittgenstein himself as we must assume.
The reason for this is given in general terms in the Big Typescript. For
Wittgenstein generally explains this tendency to relapse into a misleading
perspective of things with a gap that opens up time and again, for ordinary
as well as for philosophical thinking, ‘between understanding the subject’,
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 81

which would be in principle possible in a certain perspective, ‘and what

most people want to see’ (BT, 406–407/300e–301e). What most people
want to see is an image of things in analogy to established patterns of in-
terpretation handed down by their language. This will is deeply anchored
in the thinking of people, because it is connected ‘with the oldest thought
habits, i.e. with the oldest images that are engraved into our language it-
self’ (BT, 423/311e); for this reason it is difficult to bring them to a changed
perspective which also recognises the false analogisations, which come up
in the course of this process, as misleading. In this consists the whole ‘dif-
ficulty of philosophy’ (BT, 406/300e), as Wittgenstein holds in the Big
Typescript. For this difficulty, he writes, is ‘not the intellectual difficulty of
the sciences’, which rests on the complexity of the respective scientific
problem; rather it is the ‘difficulty of restructuring’ (ibid.) our perspective.
‘[N]ot a difficulty of the intellect, but of the will’ has to be ‘overcome’ in
philosophy (BT, 407/300e) – which, however, cannot be achieved easily for
reasons that are important and instructive for Wittgenstein’s understand-
ing of philosophy.
For the problem of restructuring our perspective suffers from the dif-
ficulty that Wittgenstein now, having definitively left behind the premises
of his early work, cannot provide a criterion for the ‘right’ perspective of
things which shall be achieved by means of the work on philosophy. And
this is probably why, in the Big Typescript, he no longer calls the perspec-
tive that he is concerned with, the ‘right one’. For he is now lacking a
criterion of distinction which allows, like formerly the picture theory,
distinguishing adequate ways of speaking from inadequate ones. There-
fore the restructuring of perspective, which shall be achieved by means of
philosophical work, can no longer be, as it were, enforced with criteria
and arguments such that someone who views the world in the light of
metaphysics must accept it as binding for his or her thoughts. The reason
is that there cannot be objective criteria to distinguish ‘right’ from ‘false’
perspectives, or ‘adequate’ from ‘inadequate’ ways of speaking simply
because, as Wittgenstein is now convinced, we do not have anything but
our ordinary language of the everyday, with all its contingent being such,
to find orientation in the world; and nobody has such a complete over-
view over the world and the language which would enable us to distin-
guish bindingly between ways of speaking that are adequate to phenomena
and those that are inadequate. Unlike many interpreters believe up to this
day, the use of everyday language with its apparent primordiality in con-
trast to the language of metaphysics, cannot serve as a criterion of dis-
tinction. Wittgenstein may seem to contrast it with the philosophers’
metaphysical use of language when he writes in the Big Typescript (like
later in Philosophical Investigations):
82 Stefan Majetschak

When philosophers use a word and search for its meaning, one must
always ask oneself: Is this word ever really used this way in the language
for which it has been created?13
(BT, 430/315e)

But in their changeability and unsurveyability, which Wittgenstein per-

ceives as a problem, the language-games of everyday life can never actually
achieve this. ‘Philosophy’, as Wittgenstein now understands it, ‘may not in
any way infringe upon the […] /actual/ use of language’ precisely because
in its found contingency it ‘cannot justify it either’ (BT, 417/308e; transla-
tion modified14) and accordingly, of course, cannot prove that it should be
given preference over the language of metaphysics for binding reasons!
If Wittgenstein’s method of describing everyday language-games in ‘sur-
veyable representations’ since the 1930s aims to ‘create a clear order’ in the
unsurveyable relationships of natural language (BT, 415/307e), he cannot
for that reason be concerned at all with cataloguing the supposedly ‘objec-
tively correct’ uses of words in everyday language by means of such
representations.
What he wishes to describe is ‘one of many possible orders’ of language,
‘not the order’ (PI §132). Every such ‘description gets its light – that is to
say, its purpose – from the philosophical problems’ (PI §109/my emphasis)
to which it is related. And this shows what Wittgenstein actually means
when he brings the philosophical use of words in metaphysical criticism
back to their everyday use:15 He means that the everyday use of words –
just like the ‘clear and simple language games’ he occasionally invents –
can be used ‘as an object of comparison’, i.e. ‘as a sort of yardstick’ (PI
§131), not in the sense of a criterion for distinguishing ‘correctness’ and
‘incorrectness’, but as something only in comparison with which a meta-
physical use of language can become recognisable to philosophically trou-
bled thinking as a false analogy. It is not a question of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or
any other criteria-based decisions, but only of the insight, which can be
gained in comparison with everyday language under certain circumstances,
but by no means inevitably, that in ‘philosophy’ often ‘words whose mean-
ings are familiar to us from everyday life’ are ‘used in an ultraphysical
sense’ (BT, 429/315e) due to unrecognised transpositions: for example,
when we try to understand the human ‘spirit’ in a false analogy with the
grammar of words for physical objects as an ultraphysical, intangible ob-
ject. ‘If I rectify a philosophical mistake’, Wittgenstein therefore wrote in
the Big Typescript, ‘I must always point out an analogy according to which
one had been thinking, but which one did not recognize as an analogy’ (BT,
408–409/302e). In comparison with everyday language, it can be recog-
nised clearly and, if applicable, as false. This insight can eliminate the dis-
quiet that results from the fact that we always want to think of the mind
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 83

as a kind of thing, but nevertheless feel that it cannot be such a thing. And
this is what really concerns Wittgenstein. ‘As I do philosophy’, he notes in
the Big Typescript, ‘its entire task is to shape expression in such a way that
certain disquietudes disappear’ (BT, 421/310e; translation modified), by no
means that of opposing philosophy’s metaphysical use of language with a
supposedly more appropriate one. ‘The problems’ are then, when the dis-
quieting has disappeared through recognition of the false analogy that un-
derlies them, ‘solved in the literal sense of the word – dissolved like a lump
of sugar in water’ (ibid.). They no longer exist and no longer trouble us,
because a perspective has been reached in which thinking ‘comes to rest’
(BT, 431/316e; translation modified) or – as Wittgenstein puts it elsewhere
– to the actual ‘goal someone who philosophizes longs for’: ‘Thoughts at
peace’ (CV 1998, 50). When this is the case, for Wittgenstein, the view
which work on philosophy aims at is reached. Comparable to the ethical
solution to the problem of life in the Tractatus, one recognises it in the
disappearance of the problem.
If one really takes Wittgenstein’s determination of the goal of philoso-
phy seriously – and one has every reason to do so – it is not wrong to re-
gard this goal as an ethical one even in his late philosophy. But, as said, it
is not easy to get there. The resistances of the will that have to be overcome
in the shift of view are difficult to break. At the time he compiled the Big
Typescript, working on it must indeed have seemed to Wittgenstein an al-
most-agonising undertaking, for he speaks of overcoming the difficulty of
philosophy with concepts of ‘torment’ and ‘redemption’. The disquieting
of thought by an inscrutable philosophical problem seemed to him to be
comparable to some extent to the ‘torment’ of a Sisyphus-like ‘ascetic’ who
‘stands there lifting’ his problem like ‘a heavy ball above his head, amid
groans, and whom someone sets free by telling him: “Drop it”’ (BT,
416/307e). Of course, the remark ‘drop it’ is usually not enough for some-
one who is really struggling with a philosophical problem, and this is
where the comparison is flawed. Rather, in his work of liberation, the ‘phi-
losopher’ must strive for what Wittgenstein himself has always struggled
for since the early diaries: ‘to find the redeeming word, and that is the
word that finally permits us to grasp what until then had constantly and
intangibly weighed on our consciousness’ (BT, 409/302e; translation
modified).
Finding this ‘redeeming word’ is so difficult because no account of the
language-games of a natural language must necessarily convince those who
remain attached to the language of metaphysics that their use of language,
which differs from the everyday, is wrong or somehow illegitimate. And in
this respect, for Wittgenstein’s attempts of criticism of metaphysics in his
late work to prove traditional philosophical theories to be ‘houses of cards’
(PI §118) made of false analogies, there are also no intersubjectively
84 Stefan Majetschak

binding criteria according to which they would necessarily be accepted by

rational speakers of a natural language. For this reason, Wittgenstein can
ultimately only ‘convict a person’, who is caught up in the language of
metaphysics, ‘of an error’ if he or she also ‘acknowledges’ the hint at a pos-
sibly false linguistic analogy as convincing (BT, 410/303e). Since this is by
no means achieved by any arbitrary analysis of ordinary word usages,
Wittgenstein reckons that the ‘choice’ of his ‘words […] is so important’,
because ‘it is necessary to hit the physiognomy’ of what the metaphysician
thinks ‘exactly’ (BT, 410/303e), i.e. ‘to trace the physiognomy of every er-
ror’, and to do so in such a way that the ‘reader’ of his investigations who
tends to a metaphysical view ‘says, “Yes, that’s exactly the way I meant it”’
(BT, 410/303e). Only if one ‘acknowledges’ of one’s own accord, without
being compelled to do so by any (supposedly irrefutable) linguistic analy-
ses, that the ‘analogy’ to which Wittgenstein points them was really the
‘source of their thought’, will one possibly be prepared to admit its falsity,
which, as Wittgenstein sees it, brings convincing philosophical analyses
considerably closer to ‘psychoanalysis’ (ibid.), whose therapeutic successes
are just as much based on the patient’s interpretive acceptance as the ‘ther-
apies’ (PI §133) that he himself proposes for philosophical disturbances.16
In both cases, each person must themselves carry out the insight that ‘re-
deems’ them from the respective disturbances. This is the reason why phil-
osophical work on a view of things that makes philosophical problems
disappear is something of which nobody can be relieved, but it must al-
ways be work on oneself for everyone in the decisive sense.

3 Traces of Nietzsche in the Big Typescript and the Nietzsche

Interpretation by Paul Ernst
In the passages of the Big Typescript in which Wittgenstein unfolds the
suggestive notion of ‘philosophy as work on oneself’, there are some re-
marks that will recall Nietzsche to those of Wittgenstein’s readers who are
familiar with both works: not least to Nietzsche motifs from Twilight of
the Idols, which was included in the volume of the Nietzsche-Werkausgabe
that Wittgenstein owned. Some of these correspondences, if one does not
really believe in Nietzsche’s relevance for Wittgenstein, can be dismissed as
coincidences or even as far-fetched associations of the reader who knows
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein: For example, when someone feels reminded of
Nietzsche’s description of the ‘case of the philosopher’ who gets ‘destroyed
by a weight he can neither carry nor throw off’ (TI, 157) in Wittgenstein’s
characterisation of the philosopher’s situation as the ‘torment’ of an ‘as-
cetic […] lifting’ his problems (BT, 416/307e). The same is true when one
hears in Wittgenstein’s remark ‘All that philosophy can do is to destroy
idols’ (BT, 413/305e), an echo of Nietzsche’s project of ‘sounding out idols’
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 85

in its entirety: those ‘eternal idols’ of the metaphysical tradition of philoso-

phy, which in his writing are ‘touched with the hammer’ of devastating
linguistic-philosophical criticism ‘as with a tuning fork’ (TI, Preface) in
order to expose them as hollow by sound.
Those who already see the alleged thematic correspondence in these two
cases as owing to interpretative violence will certainly do so to an even
greater extent with the suggestions that Nietzsche considers in his writing
the ‘peace of the soul’ (TI, 173) that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy strives
for, that he, too, regards the right ‘seeing’, that it is philosophically neces-
sary to ‘learn’, as dependent on overcoming the will (TI, 190), or that he,
too, wished to ‘do justice’ (TI, 186: ‘to be fair’ – ‘gerecht zu sein’) to the
object of his critique, as Wittgenstein described it in the Big Typescript
with the same words as his ‘task’ (BT, 420/309e). All these correspon-
dences cannot prove that they actually go back to Wittgenstein’s reading
memories, because the ‘seed’ of the inspiration, even if it really existed, fell
on a ‘soil’ in which it grew differently ‘than it would in any other soil’ (CV
1998, 42). And this has often led him to recontextualisations of the ad-
opted inspirations that no longer have much to do with the textual mean-
ing of the source. Certainly, there is at least one place in the Big Typescript
where Wittgenstein’s adoption of a thought motif that originates genuinely
from Nietzsche is so clearly in Nietzsche’s sense that Wittgenstein’s refer-
ence to him can hardly be disputed: It is found where Wittgenstein speaks
of a principal limit to his project of tearing ‘people’ out of those ‘philo-
sophical i.e. grammatical confusions’ in which they are so ‘deeply […] im-
bedded’ (BT, 423/311e). To do this, as Wittgenstein writes, one must
actually ‘regroup their entire language’ (ibid.). But this does not work for
everyone. For

this language emerged /developed/ as it did because human beings had

– and have – the tendency to think in this way. Therefore extricating
them only works with those who live in an instinctive state of rebellion
against /dissatisfaction with/ language. Not with those who, following
all of their instincts, live within the very herd that has created this lan-
guage as its proper expression.
(ibid. translation modified)

Right down to the terminology, Wittgenstein refers here to one of Ni-

etzsche’s basic ideas in his philosophy of language: the idea that the devel-
opment of a natural language does not primarily reflect the subtle needs
and expressive interests of a few individuals, but the ‘inclination’ of a
broad mass of people to ‘think’ in a certain way. Nietzsche disparagingly
calls this mass the ‘herd’ on the basis of his high esteem for large, single
individuals, which need not be pursued further here. This is what lets him
86 Stefan Majetschak

speak with regard to language of the fact that in it ‘the herd instinct’ comes,
so to speak, to ‘words’ (GM I, §2; p. 12). For even if the ‘origin of lan-
guage’ should go back to a ‘seigneurial privilege of giving names’, i.e. to a
‘manifestation of power’ (ibid.) of, initially, a few individuals, as Nietzsche
once speculated, one must nevertheless interpret ‘the history of language’
as a whole as ‘the history of a process of abbreviation’, which at all times
primarily aims at enabling all people ‘to quickly comprehend’ each other
through the use of general signs, by means of which they can refer to nu-
merous objects in abbreviated form. They need this out of ‘necessity’ (BGE
§268), because man as a species, regarded as ‘the most endangered ani-
mal’, needed ‘help and protection, he needed his peers, he had to learn to
express his distress and to make himself understood’ (GS, V, §354). Ac-
cording to Nietzsche, this universal need for communication conditions
the development of language, whose history thus appears as the history of
the development of the signs available for abbreviated communication.
Since these signs – the words of language – as markers for possibilities of
abbreviated reference will then naturally express the herd’s own world-
view, Nietzsche also calls them ‘herd signal’ [Heerden-Merkzeichen] (ibid.).
Because the ‘conscious thinking’ of man takes place ‘in words, that is, in
signs of communication’, which in the respective manner of abbreviated
reference to things are originally oriented to the thinking of the herd, and
‘the development of language and the development of consciousness’ go
‘hand in hand’ for humans, this has the consequence, according to Ni-
etzsche, that what man consciously thinks about the world is always
‘translated back into the herd perspective’ solely through the use of lan-
guage. Language as such suggests this perspective to him, thus leading him
to consider surrogates of language – ‘falsification, reduction to superficiali-
ties, and generalisation’ (ibid.) in accordance with the worldview of the
herd – to be an adequate view of things, to be ultimately knowledge and
truth. Nietzsche considered complete liberation from such surrogates im-
possible. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, at least strove for it, but this did
not seem possible for those ‘who, following all of their instincts, live within
the very herd that has created this language as its proper expression’.
Wittgenstein’s unambiguous and affirmative reference to Nietzsche's
thoughts is astonishing; it can hardly be considered a terminological and
intellectual coincidence of which he was unaware. It has probably not re-
ceived interpretative attention so far because Wittgenstein does not even
mention Nietzsche's name among the names he mentions in the Big Type-
script as sources of inspiration for his concept of philosophy. We find,
however, the name of the now largely forgotten neo-classical writer and
philosophically ambitious literary theorist Paul Ernst (1866–1933). Given
his influence on Wittgenstein’s thought, there are reasons to believe that
Ernst’s interpretation of Nietzsche may have motivated Wittgenstein’s
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 87

undisclosed reference to Nietzsche not only in the years of the First World
War, but even at the time of the compilation of the Big Typescript in the
early 1930s. The most important one is probably that Wittgenstein’s con-
cept of philosophy in the Big Typescript is, in essence, no different from the
one that Paul Ernst highlights as Nietzsche’s.
As we now know, Paul Ernst was an important inspiration for Wittgen-
stein.17 In the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein cites him as a source for the
thesis that ‘in the forms of our language’, i.e. in the modes of expression
and linguistic images that we ‘count among our own’, supposedly enlight-
ened ‘vocabulary’, ‘an entire mythology is laid down’ (BT, 434/317e).
Ernst, of course, was of considerable importance to Wittgenstein much
earlier. In 1931, on the way to a second philosophical book, he noted:

If my book is ever published, its preface must commemorate Paul Ernst’s

preface to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which already in the Log. Phil. Abhan-
dlung should have been mentioned as the source of the expression ‘mis-
understanding the logic of language’.
(WA3.266)

And if he had really done this when he claimed in the preface to the Trac-
tatus that ‘philosophical problems’ of traditional provenance are based on
a ‘misunderstanding of the logic of our language’ (TLP 1922, Preface), re-
search would probably have been spared numerous one-sided interpreta-
tions that were able to see the Tractatus exclusively in the perspective of
Frege and Russell’s problems.
Wittgenstein probably already owned Paul Ernst’s edition of Grimm’s
Fairy Tales when he studied with Russell before the First World War.18 In
its afterword, which Wittgenstein mistakenly recalled as a preface19 about
twenty years later, Paul Ernst was not concerned with philosophical
questions.
Rather, here he traced the logic of poetic imagination embedded in the
historical development of mythical fairy-tale materials and motifs. In the
wake of this project he – to put it very briefly – assumed that the ‘process’
of this development was ‘essentially always that’: ‘a problem’ of the cred-
ibility of a traditional material or motif, ‘insoluble by’ the respective con-
temporary ‘experience of reality’, was ‘solved by the poetic imagination
through an invented rationalising story’,20 which adapted the older, no lon-
ger comprehensible motif to contemporary standards of acceptability. The
reasons Ernst gives for such rationalising reinterpretations of outmoded
literary motifs provided the young Wittgenstein with a decisive stimulus.
For, according to Ernst, in the history of the development of a literary mo-
tif, rationalising reinterpretations became necessary, among other things,
‘through transformations of language’, as a consequence of which ‘a later
88 Stefan Majetschak

time no longer understood the logic of language of the past and interpreted
it through inventions’. As it seems, Wittgenstein simply applied this thought
to philosophy in the Tractatus when he wrote that ‘[m]ost questions and
propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not under-
stand the logic of our language’ (TLP 1922 4.003), and therefore tend to
misleadingly interpret it in metaphysical theories.
At least, this is how the connections appear, if one is prepared to believe
Wittgenstein’s self-interpretation in his 1931 note. In it, however, he also
writes that Ernst’s afterword should also be commemorated in the preface
to his second book, to the preliminary stages of which the Big Typescript
belongs. If he had done so – and in the preface to the Philosophical Inves-
tigations of 1945 he did not! – he would have had to include another as-
pect of Ernst’s afterword, as is clear in the Big Typescript. Here he should
have referred to Ernst’s idea that the ‘power of man’ to invent rationalising
myths that serve the interpretation of the world had shifted in modern
times from literature to natural science.21 In this sense, according to Ernst,
‘we perhaps’ find ‘mythology in the various understandings of history, in
Darwinism, in Kant-Laplace’s theory’ etc.; indeed, he certainly regarded
‘Darwin’s theory’ as ‘a grandiose mythology’.22 Wittgenstein, who proba-
bly shared this view precisely with regard to Darwinian theory (cf. APR,
26), went beyond Paul Ernst by also seeing mythology at work, mostly
unrecognized, in the traditional images and forms of language.
Although only his acquaintance with Ernst’s afterword to the edition of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales is philologically verifiable, it may be assumed that
Wittgenstein was certainly familiar – directly or indirectly – with other
texts and ideas by Paul Ernst, as Josef Rothhaupt has been able to show.
For, ‘once Wittgenstein had found inspiration and thought-provoking im-
pulses in a work by a writer, scientist or philosopher, he took a closer inter-
est in this author and in further works by him’.23
In the case of Paul Ernst’s writings, this is especially probable because it
is now known that in the Olmütz circle around the architect Paul Engel-
mann, of which Wittgenstein was a member as a soldier in 1916, Ernst was
‘much talked about’.24 In these conversations, Wittgenstein cannot have
failed to notice, against the background of his own Nietzsche reading of
1914, that Ernst was influenced by Nietzsche to an extraordinarily strong
degree. For the reading of Nietzsche had ‘a deep after-effect’ on Paul Ernst,
as the executor and editor of his Nachlass Karl August Kutzbach writes;
from 1890 onwards, he repeatedly dealt with Nietzsche in numerous texts,
who became ‘increasingly important’25 to him ‘as a critic of the times and
as a fighter for new high values of life’.26 Particularly noteworthy with re-
gard to Wittgenstein is his text Friedrich Nietzsche from 1900,27 with
whose fundamental thesis Wittgenstein was supposedly familiar; – even if
perhaps only from the conversations in the Olmütz circle.
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 89

If Wittgenstein had also known Ernst’s Nietzsche interpretation from his

own reading, he could have found references here to Nietzsche’s critique of
metaphysics based on his philosophy of language, according to which tra-
ditional concepts such as ‘spirit’, ‘soul’, ‘will’ etc. are merely linguistic hy-
postatizations, i.e. ‘fictions’28, which – as he says in Twilight of Idols – have
our language as ‘a constant advocate’ (TI, 169); – a critique of metaphysics
comparable to his own in more than external respects. And he should then
also have known from Paul Ernst that Nietzsche, in the context of his dis-
tinction between a ‘master and slave morality’, speaks of the ‘herd’ which,
according to Wittgenstein’s exposition in the Big Typescript, ‘created lan-
guage’, as it has come down to us, ‘as its very expression’. If this were so,
then it cannot also be ruled out that Wittgenstein came across this text
even before the Olmütz conversations about Paul Ernst, shortly after his
reading of the afterword to the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. For this would ex-
plain what may have motivated the young Wittgenstein at the beginning of
the First World War to read Tolstoy, Emerson and Nietzsche as mentioned
at the beginning.
In Ernst’s interpretation of Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Emerson form the
points of reference with regard to which Paul Ernst endeavours to elabo-
rate Nietzsche’s concept of philosophy. But this circumstance, which may
be nothing more than a coincidence, is not decisive here, where we are
primarily concerned with Wittgenstein’s concept of philosophy in the Big
Typescript. More important in this context is what Ernst then says about
the underlying intention of Nietzsche’s philosophizing. In the very first sen-
tence of his text, he emphasises what always interested Wittgenstein about
Nietzsche,29 namely ‘that he wrote only for “the few”’30 who were able to
understand a ‘writer as difficult to read as Nietzsche’31 at all: ‘Anyone who
takes him purely at his word will soon run into inextricable and foolish
contradictions.’32 His philosophical writing can only be adequately under-
stood if one sees that in Nietzsche an understanding of philosophy is ex-
pressed to perfection that ‘Emerson’ had already admired ‘in his essay on
Goethe […]: that philosophy is to be considered as ‘work on oneself’. Ac-
cording to Ernst, ‘Nietzsche is one of the noblest and bravest representa-
tives of this urge’.33 And so he tries to make fundamental motifs of
Nietzsche’s thinking – such as his critique of Christianity,34 which touched
the young Wittgenstein so much when he read Antichrist – understandable
from the fact that Nietzsche was concerned in his writings with overcom-
ing his own preconceptions of his intellectual biography, precisely with
philosophising as ‘going back to one’s own personality, working on one-
self’.35 For him, ‘thinking was a very personal thing for a personal goal’,
which Wittgenstein also shared in the Big Typescript: in thinking, not so
much to arrive at new theories, but rather ‘to come to rest’.36 Irrespective
of Nietzsche’s theories on language and morality in detail, which are to be
90 Stefan Majetschak

taken with a pinch of salt, Nietzsche’s philosophical achievement for Ernst

consists precisely in such a determination of the goal of philosophy, which
the philosopher has to accomplish ‘through his and his followers’ work,
each in himself’.37 His ‘great deed’ was therefore that he had once again
‘set up an ethical goal for philosophy’,38 regardless of what philosophical
positions he may have held at different times.39
Such a conception of philosophy, whether adequate as a Nietzsche inter-
pretation or not, is likely to have met with Wittgenstein’s approval, be-
cause it corresponds to his own view of philosophy still at the time of the
work on the Big Typescript in a decisive fundamental trait. Even if he did
not know Ernst’s text from his own reading, its presentation of Nietzsche’s
understanding of philosophy long before he himself unfolded a concept of
philosophy as ‘work on oneself’ – was probably a topic in the conversa-
tions in the Olmütz circle around the architect Paul Engelmann: something
that at least Engelmann acknowledged, and which the two of them per-
haps even talked about again when they jointly built the house for Witt-
genstein’s sister in Vienna in the mid-1920s. For otherwise the fact that
when Wittgenstein expresses a comparable understanding of philosophy
himself, he explicitly mentions that not only the ‘work on philosophy’ but
‘in many cases’ also ‘the work on architecture’ is to be understood as a
‘work on oneself’ (BT, 407/275) would remain at least an oddity. If such a
concept of philosophy was indeed associated in Wittgenstein’s memory
with the names of Nietzsche and Ernst, it is not surprising that in a context
in which he unfolds it, traces of Nietzsche are found alongside mentions of
Paul Ernst.

Notes
1 The present essay is a translation of ‘Philosophie als Arbeit an sich selbst. Witt-
genstein, Nietzsche und Paul Ernst’ in Wittgensteins ,große Maschinenschrift‘.
Untersuchungen zum philosophischen Ort des Big Typescripts (TS 213) im
Werk Ludwig Wittgensteins, ed. by Stefan Majetschak 2006, Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 61–78. The translation was made by the editors of the pres-
ent volume.
2 In the so-called Geheime Tagebücher, where Wittgenstein’s ethical concern is
clearer than in the philosophical (uncoded) remarks or in the published text of
the Tractatus, he puts this concern in the form of a question: ‘How must I thus
live to persist in every moment? To live in the good and in the beautiful until
life ends on its own’ (GT, 7/10/1914). The urgency of such questions presum-
ably motivated Wittgenstein to write – perhaps a bit too pointedly – in a now
famous letter from 1919 to Ludwig Ficker that the ‘sense’ of his first ‘book’ was
‘an ethical one’ (CC 20/10/1919). Based on this passage, Allan Janik and Ste-
phen Toulmin have first advanced an interpretation of Wittgenstein that con-
strues the Tractatus not only in terms of its convergence with theoretical themes
from Frege and Russell (Janik and Toulmin 1973). Since then many have fol-
lowed Janik and Toulmin’s line of interpretation. See, for instance, Hughes
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 91

2001, who speaks of Wittgenstein’s ‘ethical intention’ (74), as well as Ma-

jetschak 2000, 127.
3 Numerous interpreters have already pointed to the fact that the Tractatus not
only deals with logical-philosophical problems, but also strives for a ‘right
view’ of the world (see for example Gabriel 1978, 357; Scheier 1991, 24; Dia-
mond 1991, 86). That Wittgenstein hoped for a solution to the ‘problem of life’
from such a view has also been emphasised by Matthias Kroß (2004, 98). The
penultimate proposition of the Tractatus says that the understanding reader
will reach it precisely by overcoming the propositions of the Tractatus and not
at all by affirming them – ‘he who understands me finally recognizes them as
senseless’: the Tractatus decrees in its characteristically apodictic form ‘He
must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.’ (TLP 1922,
6.54) On the interpretation of this at first sight paradoxical self-cancellation of
the Tractatus theory in favour of a ‘right view’ of the world, see Majetschak
2000, 124ff.
4 Cf. also GT, 17/10/14.
5 See McGuinness 1988, 225; cf. MS 102, 39v.
6 From the context of this remark we can assume that these problems must have
been connected to being able to experience and describe the ‘progress’ of ‘West-
ern Culture as an epos’ (cf. note 1).
7 At the beginning of the 1930s, Wittgenstein concerned himself with Nietzsche
repeatedly. This is confirmed not only by the quoted remark from 1931, but
also by a diary entry from 1930 where he calls his own time ‘a revaluation of
all values’ of which Nietzsche had spoken at the beginning of his preface to
Twilight of the Idols. (MS 183, 35; cf. TI 2005, 155). Another mention of Ni-
etzsche can be found in [a remark from] 1947 which suggests that Wittgenstein
must have known Nietzsche’s Human All Too Human as well (quote from
Culture and Value).
8 McGuinness 1988, 225, note 26.
9 See MS 110, 18, where this remark stands close to Wittgenstein’s express admi-
ration for Nietzsche, cf. note 1.
10 By contrast, Janet Lungstrum takes Fritz Mauthner’s Beiträge zu einer Kritik
der Sprache (1901/02) as well as his Wörterbuch der Philosophie (1910/11) as
an ‘important bridge between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein’ (Lungstrum 1995,
302). Most studies that compare the relation between the two, however, ignore
the question of any direct or indirect influence of Nietzsche on Wittgenstein;
they focus on the analysis of systematic similarities and differences. See, for
instance the works by Kyle Wallace 1973, Meredith Williams 1988 and Daniel
Steuer 1995 as well as Shoshana Ronen 2002.
11 The German concepts ‘Übersicht’, ‘Übersichtlichkeit’, and ‘Übersichtliche
Darstellung’ play a central role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. As Peter
Hacker already noticed in 1972, an adequate English translation of these terms
has ‘given Wittgenstein’s translators much trouble. They have chosen to trans-
late it non-systematically in conformity with the demands of English style,
thereby partially obscuring the significance and pervasiveness of the concept in
Wittgenstein’s work, e.g. “command a clear view” (Übersehen PI, § 122); “per-
spicuous representation” (Übersichtliche Darstellung PI, § 122); “synoptic ac-
count” (Übersichtliche Darstellung Z, § 273); ‘Survey’ (Übersicht Z, § 273);
“synoptic view” (Übersichtlichkeit Z, § 464); “perspicuity” (Übersichtlichkeit
RFM, 45); “capable of being taken in” (Übersehbar RFM, 81).’ (Hacker 1972,
113–114, fn. 3) Elsewhere I have argued that the terms ‘survey’ (Übersicht),
92 Stefan Majetschak

‘surveyability’ (Übersichtlichkeit) and ‘surveyable representation’ (übersichtli-

che Darstellung) most adequately represent what Wittgenstein had in mind
(Majetschak 2016).
12 ‘The concept of surveyable representation’ describes – as I will specify later on
– the fundamental methodological means for Wittgenstein since the early 1930s
to strive for a ‘view of things’ in his own texts that allows for an overview. ‘It
designates’, as he writes in the Big Typescript, ‘our form of representation, the
way we look at things’ (BT, 417/307e). For a more detailed comment on this
concept, see Majetschak 2000, 273ff.
13 See PI §116. On the question in what sense the everyday use of language can be
seen as a measure of the metaphysical in Wittgenstein’s work, see Puhl 2004,
149 and following.
14 My emphasis. In the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein still oscillates between differ-
ent alternatives of expression in this remark. In PI §124, he has decided for the
version that is quoted above.
15 In the Big Typescript, the critique of philosophically misleading analogies is in
fact still inexact: ‘We’re bringing words back from their metaphysical to their
correct use in language’ (BT, 413/305e; my emphasis). Yet significantly, Witt-
genstein corrected this wording in Philosophical Investigations where he writes
more adequately: ‘We are bringing words back from their metaphysical to their
everyday use’ (PI §116; my emphasis). For how should any speaker justify the
‘objective correctness’ of a certain use of language?
16 For more detailed explanations of the relation between psychoanalytic and
philosophical ‘therapy’ according to Wittgenstein, see Majetschak 2010.
17 On Paul Ernst’s influence on Wittgenstein, see Paul Hübscher’s dissertation
(1985), which also provides an overview over life and works of Paul Ernst, as
well as Rothhaupt 1995 and Künne 1996.
18 See McGuinness 1988, 251–252.
19 This makes it unlikely that ‘Wittgenstein must have reread Ernst’s AFTER-
WORD at the beginning of the thirties’, as Wolfgang Künne holds (1996, note
34). For then he would presumably have noticed his mistake.
20 Ernst 1923, 308. According to Hübscher (1985, 75), this edition has the same
text and pagination as the 1910 edition which Wittgenstein probably owned.
21 See Ernst 1923, 310.
22 Ernst 1923, 297 and 310.
23 Rothhaupt 1995 can support this claim with another example that is not con-
tained in the afterword to Grimm’s Tales.
24 See McGuinness 1988. McGuinness discovered this in his biographical studies
(251–252).
25 Kutzbach 1942, 388.
26 … which brought him the, from today’s perspective, questionable honour to
access the circle of the Nietzsche-archive around Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche!
See Kutzbach 1942, 389.
27 See Ernst’s text Friedrich Nietzsche, translated here from a slightly modified
version from 1904 (Ernst 1942).
28 Ernst 1942, 206.
29 See McGuinness’s comment on the preface of the Tractatus and his later re-
marks on writing for a small circle (1988, 225, note 26).
30 Ernst 1942, 194. For Ernst, ‘[Nietzsche’s] doctrine shall only be valid for the
few, while the many shall stick to the present values’ (209).
31 Ernst 1942, 195.
 Philosophy as Work on Oneself 93

32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ernst 1942, 195–196.
35 Ernst 1942, 218; cf. 219.
36 Ernst 1942, 202.
37 Ernst 1942, 219–220.
38 Ernst 1942, 222.
39 ‘Whether his positive doctrine – namely that this goal must be the “Superman”,
the continuous nobilitation of the human race – will always and to everyone
appear as this goal can surely not be unconditionally confirmed; this depends
on general conditions under which humans live. Even more questionable are
his historical and psychological genealogies and much more in his writings that
may make him appear untrue and unveracious, and as a desperate masquer-
ader. But this all doesn’t matter at all. That he had the courage to show us again
a higher aim at all – this is enough to count him for ever among the greatest
benefactors of mankind’ (cf. Ernst 1942, 222).

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Tractatus,” In Bilder der Philosophie, eds. Richard Heinrich and Helmuth Vet-
ter, 55–90. Wien/München: Oldenbourg Verlag.
Ernst, Paul. (1923). “Nachwort,” In Kinder- und Hausmärchen gesammelt durch
die Brüder Grimm (Vol. 3, 271–314). Berlin.
———. (1942). “Friedrich Nietzsche,” In Völker und Zeiten im Spiegel ihrer Dich-
tung. Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur, ed. Karl August Kutzbach, 194–222.
München: Albert Langen/Georg Müller.
Gabriel, Gottfried. (1978). “Logik als Literatur? Zur Bedeutung des Literarischen
bei Wittgenstein,” In Merkur 359, 353–362.
Hacker, Peter M. S. (1972). Insight and Illusion. Wittgenstein on Philosophy and
the Metaphysics of Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hübscher, Paul. (1985). Der Einfluß von Johann Wolfgang Goethe und Paul Ernst
auf Ludwig Wittgenstein. Frankfurt am Main/Bern: Peter Lang Verlag.
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alles Geschehens und So-Seins liegen,” In Der Denker als Seiltänzer. Ludwig
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­Simon and Schuster.
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­Wittgensteins Philosophiebegriff,” In Erinnerung an Wittgenstein. ‘kein Sehen in
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August Kutzbach. München: Albert Langen/Georg Müller.
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4 Transvaluation and
Rectification
Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche and
Lichtenberg on Values, Poetry,
and Language

Marco Brusotti

“If my name lives on then only as the Terminus ad quem of great occiden-
tal philosophy. Somewhat like the name of the one who burnt down the
library of Alexandria.”1 Akin to Nietzsche, who sees in his thought the
reversal and overcoming of metaphysics, Wittgenstein refers to himself
here as the epilogue of Western philosophy, as its annihilator. In the
Nachlass of the 1930s, he makes Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values”
into a formula first for the whole epoch and then for his own new “move-
ment of thought”.
Whereas my first headword obviously stems from Nietzsche,2 “rectifica-
tion” [Berichtigung] comes from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, to whose
conception of philosophy as “rectification of language use” Wittgenstein
occasionally subscribes. Hence, the subtitle of my essay could be phrased
as follows: Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche on values as well as on poetry and
Lichtenberg on the rectification of language. For it is in Lichtenberg, rather
than in Nietzsche, that Wittgenstein met a critical view of language in
which he at least partly recognised his own approach. Of course, he could
also have found a strenuous philosophical critique of language in Ni-
etzsche, whose texts contain many thoughts going in a direction compa-
rable to Lichtenberg’s. However, it was mainly other aspects of Nietzsche’s
philosophy that attracted Wittgenstein’s attention.3 But even if he largely
overlooks Nietzsche as a philosopher of language, linguistic issues do also
play a role. Besides appreciating Nietzsche’s rare mastery of style, Wittgen-
stein surprisingly self-identifies with him as a poet-philosopher. This self-
identification involves a peculiar conception of his own philosophy in
which he sees a form not only of poetry but also of transvaluation (cf. §§
1–5).
The second part of my chapter (§§ 6–8) goes into Nietzsche’s and Witt-
genstein’s assessment of the proposal to switch from “I think” to “it
thinks” – perhaps the best-known example of the way Lichtenberg con-
ceives of philosophy as “rectification of language use”. With what looks

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-6
96 Marco Brusotti

like Lichtenberg’s alternative to Kant’s pure apperception, neither Ni-

etzsche nor Wittgenstein was really satisfied, but for distinct reasons and
with different conclusions.

1 Wittgenstein, Spengler, and Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all

values”
The almost Nietzschean tone of the remark in which Wittgenstein singles
out himself as the terminus ad quem of Western philosophy is not unre-
lated to the book that helped to shape his Weltanschauung in the early
1930s – and with it his view of Nietzsche. The first volume of The Decline
of the West had appeared in 1918. Wittgenstein discussed Spengler with
his friend Ludwig Hänsel as early as 19214 and began to take a serious
look at the book by 1925 at the latest.5 In 1931 he lists Spengler among the
authors who “influenced”6 him, even if he soon distances himself from his
sweeping generalisations.7 By 1930, Spengler seems to have convinced him
of Nietzsche’s historical significance.

Our age is really an age of the transvaluation of all values. (The procession
of humankind turns a corner & what used to be the way up is now the way
down etc.) Did Nietzsche have in mind what is now happening & does this
achievement consist in anticipating it & finding a word for it?8

Here Wittgenstein adopts the following judgement from The Decline of

the West almost verbatim, if only in part.

When Nietzsche wrote down the word ‘transvaluation of all values’ for
the first time, the spiritual movement of the centuries in which we are
living found at last its formula. Transvaluation of all values is the most
fundamental character of every civilisation. For it is the beginning of a
civilisation that it remoulds all the forms of the culture that went before,
understands them otherwise, practises them in a different way. It begets
no more, but only reinterprets, and herein lies the negativeness common
to all periods of this character. […]9

According to Spengler, Nietzsche “found” the “formula” for the current

epoch with the “word ‘transvaluation of all values’” (my emphasis). In
Wittgenstein’s remark, Spengler’s claim becomes a question, namely,
whether it was Nietzsche’s accomplishment to “have found a word” (my
emphasis) for our times. Here this question is left open, but other remarks
point to an affirmative answer.
In The Decline of the West, the transvaluation of all values is not only
the formula for Spengler’s epoch; the phrase stands for the transition [1] of
 Transvaluation and Rectification 97

every culture [2] to its phase of decay: all cultures decline, not only the
West, and cannot but end in a Zivilisation, the protracted final stage that
is no longer creative, but merely reinterprets the cultural forms already cre-
ated. So, by “transvaluation”, Spengler does not mean the replacement of
one culture by another but rather a process within a culture when it slowly
declines after its flourishing. Wittgenstein, too, understands transvaluation
as an historical phase that every culture goes through; often, but not al-
ways, he also adheres to Spengler’s negative interpretation of transvalua-
tion as the transition of a culture to its final stage of deterioration.
Wittgenstein interprets transvaluation in accordance with his own eth-
ics, which is very far removed from Nietzsche’s point of view. The Lecture
on Ethics (1929) distinguishes between the relative and the absolute use of
ethical expressions. The former is not actually an ethical use since relative
value judgements are ultimately only statements of fact (Wittgenstein’s ex-
amples: a good tennis player, the right way to Grantchester). Absolute use,
in turn, is genuinely ethical; however, absolute value judgements have no
descriptive content and are therefore actually meaningless, even though
this urge “to run against the boundaries of language” is a “tendency” that
Wittgenstein “cannot help respecting deeply”.10
Soon after the Lecture, however, he gives up the idea of language bound-
aries. The reflections influenced by Spengler no longer claim that “nonsen-
sicality” is the “very essence”11 of absolute value judgements. In 1930, a
new emphasis falls on historical mutability. The difference between rela-
tive and absolute value judgements is reinterpreted as a difference between
the practical and the symbolic value of actions.12 Both are historically
changeable, and they are mutually independent. In the transition to a new
age, the mutability even of the symbolic value comes to light. For trans-
valuation means that new actions come to be viewed as valuable in them-
selves and acquire a symbolic character they did not have before, whereas
the ways of acting that were previously symbolic lose the value that hith-
erto seemed to be inherent in them. In the transition to a new epoch, it
turns out to be a deception “that the greatness, significance lies necessarily
in that way of acting”.13 “And this belief is always reduced to absurdity
just when a transvaluation of values comes about through an upheaval,
that is, when true pathos now settles upon another way of acting.”14 This
sudden shift in value is a displacement of the “true pathos”, which some-
how always remains the same, even though it now changes its object. So
Wittgenstein in 1930.
For Nietzsche, however, the issue is not simply that new values emerge; he
is more fundamentally concerned with a redefinition and transformation of
the concept of value itself, with a ‘reversal’ of the metaphysical status of
values. In contrast to Wittgenstein, who, not unlike Spengler, merely regis-
ters the historical turning point in which the “true pathos” changes its
98 Marco Brusotti

object, Nietzsche does not see himself as a mere spectator. Granted, the ste-
reotype of the prophet, a commonplace that Wittgenstein takes up from
Spengler, is not entirely without connection to Nietzsche’s self-image: he re-
peatedly claims the role of the ‘seer’ who foretells, say, the nihilism of the
next two centuries. Nevertheless, transvaluation is, above all, a deed, a feat
that Nietzsche endeavours to accomplish himself as an outstanding person-
ality that overturns traditional values and creates new ones.
In contrast, Spengler understands transvaluation as a fateful epochal
turn whose actual subjects are not single human beings but supra-individ-
ual ‘organisms’, the cultures, epochs lasting about a thousand years. And
whereas Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values” is also a new beginning,
Spenglerian transvaluation stands rather for decline; it is the hallmark of
civilization, the long period of deterioration, after a culture has passed its
zenith and before a still completely unforeseeable new culture replaces this
now-aged and sterile organism. The great deeds that once brought this
culture to adequate symbolic expression belong to a bygone time that has
now inexorably faded away. Western culture reached its peak in Goethe’s
and Beethoven’s works, several decades before Nietzsche foretold and pro-
claimed its downfall. So Spengler.
Wittgenstein subscribes to his view that Western culture, which began in
the tenth century AD, reached its peak with Beethoven’s chamber music.

There are problems I never tackle, which do not lie in my path or belong
to my world. Problems of the intellectual world of the West which
Beethoven (& perhaps Goethe to a certain extent) tackled & wrestled with
but which no philosopher has ever confronted (perhaps Nietzsche passed
close to them) / And perhaps they are lost to western philosophy […]15

Here only Beethoven seems to have undoubtedly “tackled” the fundamen-

tal “problems of the intellectual world of the West”. As to Goethe and
Nietzsche, whose medium is language, Wittgenstein hesitates: “perhaps”
Goethe, too, “tackled” those problems, even if at most “to a certain ex-
tent”. Nietzsche, of the three the only philosopher, is unique insofar he
might have succeeded in glimpsing the basic issues that “no philosopher”
has “ever confronted”, Wittgenstein included. However, even Nietzsche
did not really confront those problems, but merely “passed close to” them.
If at all, he rather hinted at these issues than formulated, let alone solved
them.
Wittgenstein does not think he can do more himself. On the contrary:
he, who at that time does not count himself among the Western thinkers,
does not approach these “problems of the intellectual world of the West”
at all. Firstly, because he does not feel at home in that world; but also
 Transvaluation and Rectification 99

because he, who is influenced by the Decline, considers those problems

now probably “lost to western philosophy”.
Goethe and Nietzsche feature prominently at the end of Spengler’s
preface:

And now, finally, I feel urged to name once more those to whom I owe
practically everything: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe gave me the
method, Nietzsche the question (Fragestellung), and if I were asked to
find a formula for my relation to the latter, I should say that I have made
of his ‘outlook’ (Ausblick) an ‘overlook’ (Überblick).16

Wittgenstein probably would agree that Nietzsche did not go beyond

sketching a future outlook, but he shows no sign of endorsing Spengler’s
claim to have provided an encompassing overview. Wittgenstein’s implicit
objection has itself a Spenglerian touch: decay is now too advanced, and
those who experience the end of a culture cannot adequately “describe”17
it. Only in earlier times would it have been possible to achieve this –
through foresight; anticipating is the only halfway adequate way of de-
scribing; “perhaps Beethoven did it with prevision (as Spengler hints in one
place)”.18 But what his music could accomplish “in advance”19 at the ze-
nith of Western culture, is now out of reach. Nietzsche may still have been
able to provide an outlook. A few decades later, however, the waning cul-
ture can no longer be surveyed for it no longer develops organically; the
historical process “is no longer an epic”, which is why Spengler’s and Witt-
genstein’s epigonal generation cannot “describe” it “as an epic”.20 Going
beyond Nietzsche and providing a comprehensive overview, as Spengler
claims to do, seems no longer possible.

2 Wittgenstein’s new movement of thought as transvaluation

Thus, in the Nachlass of the early 1930s, the word “transvaluation” [Um-
wertung] stands for the current “upheaval” [Umschwung] of Western cul-
ture and is associated more with Nietzsche’s far-sighted description of this
epochal turning point than with a future achievement by Wittgenstein him-
self. By contrast, in a later remark (1938), in which he emphatically claims
to be following Nietzsche, the transvaluation is to be accomplished by
Wittgenstein’s own new “movement of thought”.

If I want to teach not a more correct thinking, but a [different∣new]

movement of thought, my purpose is a ‘transvaluation of values’ and I
come to Nietzsche, as well as by the fact that, in my view, the philoso-
pher should be a poet.21
100 Marco Brusotti

Here Nietzsche is referred to in two respects: 1) Wittgenstein’s own phi-

losophy aims at a transvaluation – not, however, of all values, but, more
modestly, ‘of values’ (and he places the whole phrase in inverted commas);
the “transvaluation” that his philosophy strives for consists in a new
“movement of thought”; 2) in a sense to be further specified, the philoso-
pher who teaches this new ‘movement of thought’ is a poet – or should be
one; for Wittgenstein avows to be “someone who cannot quite do what he
would like to be able to do”.22

1) The concept of transvaluation, Wittgenstein suggests here, implies that

the new values, though different from (and, for Nietzsche, indeed op-
posed to) the old, are not objectively more valid than these; and of his
own new movement of thought, Wittgenstein argues only that it is dif-
ferent from but not “more correct” than the old. He evidently sees a
connection, to which we will return in § 4, between this status of his
own movement of thought and the identification of the philosopher
with the poet.
2) Like the prophet, the poet-philosopher is also a cliché, a then rather
commonplace way of viewing Nietzsche. What is surprising, however, is
that Wittgenstein has no reservations about committing to this under-
standing of philosophy as poetry. Even without referring to Nietzsche,
he thus expresses his own attitude to philosophy: “Philosophie dürfte
man eigentlich nur dichten.”23 The two current English translations are:
“Philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.”24
Or “Really one should write philosophy only as one writes a poem.”25
Without attempting an alternative translation, I would merely point out
that the German verb “dichten” does not exclusively mean or even nec-
essarily involve “writing poetry”. The claim that one should actually
only “dichten” philosophy means more broadly that one should indeed
do (write, create, compose) philosophy as one does (writes, creates,
composes) poetry. Here the whole remark:

I believe I summed up where I stand in relation to philosophy when I

said: really one should write philosophy only as one writes a poem.
That, it seems to me, must reveal how far my thinking belongs to the
present, the future, or the past. For I was acknowledging myself, with
these words, to be someone who cannot quite do what he would like
to be able to do.26

Does Wittgenstein intend the claim that “the philosopher should be a

poet” (MS 120, 145r; 23.4.1938) in the sense that philosophy is
something one should only practise poetically [“dichten” (MS 146,
25v)]? He holds both views but associates only the first one with
 Transvaluation and Rectification 101

Nietzsche as well. The two claims do not necessarily coincide: the one
he connects with Nietzsche could merely mean that, among other
things, the philosopher should also be a poet. If so, the claim that phi-
losophy should exclusively be practised poetically goes much further,
even if Wittgenstein’s avowal that we should “really” [“eigentlich”] do
so sounds somewhat half-hearted, also because he promptly admits that
he can’t quite stick to it.
When he associates his own view that “the philosopher should be a
poet” with the name of Nietzsche, he could merely be meaning that this
philosopher was indeed a poet (that Nietzsche fulfilled the requirement of
being a poet, say, by writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Or does Wittgen-
stein also imply that Nietzsche, like him, claims that the philosopher
should be a poet? Wittgenstein does not overtly state this, and still less
does he explicitly ascribe to Nietzsche his own claim that philosophers
should only “dichten” their philosophy.
Would such ascription be right? The idea that the philosopher should
also be a poet is obviously not alien to “the poet of Zarathustra”, as Ni-
etzsche calls himself.27 However, Wittgenstein’s view that philosophy is
something that one should exclusively do as poetry (dichten) is more radi-
cal, and it is doubtful that Nietzsche held something like this.
Rather, Wittgenstein’s view has a certain Spenglerian touch. The way he
resorts to the concept of poetry to set philosophy apart from the sciences
rather echoes the sharp demarcation between history and the sciences in
The Decline of the West: “Nature is to be handled scientifically, History
poetically.”28 In science “the notions of truth and falsity have validity”;
history, however, “belongs to the domain of significances, in which the
crucial words are not ‘correct’ and ‘erroneous’, but ‘deep’ and ‘shallow.’”29
Nature is a matter of causality; history is a matter of fate, and about the
latter one should only express oneself poetically. Still, Spengler considers
the Decline a philosophical book; and Wittgenstein’s claim that doing phi-
losophy should be doing poetry seems to apply Spengler’s conception of
historiography to philosophy.
Nietzsche, in turn, is not interested in claiming a great divide between
natural sciences and historical studies. But what about philosophy? Does
he hold that philosophy can be practised only as poetry? That philosophiz-
ing is only poetry-making? Given that his position is incomparably more
complex than Spengler’s, it is not possible here to give an exhaustive over-
view. Even if Wittgenstein only addresses the link with poetry, Nietzsche
also frames the issue in terms of art in general, not only when he conjures
up his artist-philosophers. As usual with him, he experiments with differ-
ent figures of thought and plays with opposite images. With intentions that
are different from time to time but not necessarily contradictory, his texts
sometimes equate and sometimes oppose cognition and poetry (or art).
102 Marco Brusotti

On the one hand, he ascribes a creative nature to cognition and con-

ceives of knowledge as an artistic, poetic activity. Now, if cognition in
general and even perception has such an ‘artistic’ or ‘poetic’ character, then
this must also hold for philosophy – but without being sufficient by itself
to demarcate philosophy from science.
On the other hand, Nietzsche often builds up a tension between cogni-
tion and poetry (or art in general). They appear again and again as oppo-
site poles. However, this means often that they must be brought together in
a higher unity. The Emersonian motto of The Gay Science (first edition)
proclaims the synthesis of wisdom and poetry: “To the poet and sage, all
things are friendly and hallowed, all experiences profitable, all days holy,
all men divine.”30 Nietzsche refers to “the Provençal notion of ‘gaya sci-
enza’, that unity of singer, knight, and free-thinker which distinguishes the
marvellous early culture of the Provençal people from all ambiguous cul-
tures”.31 The medieval troubadours who acted like aristocrats (knights)
were poets (singers) and thinkers (free spirits). Nietzsche’s philosopher
should do as they did: “science” – freedom of spirit and wisdom – is only
joyful when it is also poetry, or at least when poetry goes with it. Thus,
poetry also becomes a cipher for the shaping of one’s own life. This is
“What one should learn from artists”32: “[…] we, however, want to be
poets of our lives, starting with the smallest and most commonplace
details”.33
Since The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche claims, his philosophical
“task” has been “to look at science through the prism of the artist, but
also to look at art through the prism of life.”34 The primacy of philoso-
phy lies in the fact that it can assess, evaluate science from the point of
view of art – as well as both science and art from the point of view of
life. In this sense, the point of view of philosophy, while not coinciding
with that of art, seems more akin to it than to the point of view of sci-
ence. Thus, compared to science, philosophy has a clear specificity. Ni-
etzsche urges his contemporaries to “stop mistaking philosophical
laborers and scientific men in general for philosophers”.35 However,
even if scholars are no philosophers, philosophers must have been
scholars – and even “poets”. For the true philosopher, though, having
been a scholar (or a poet) is only one of the many “preconditions for his
task: the task itself has another will, – it calls for him to create val-
ues”.36 Creating new values is a task reserved for “the genuine philoso-
pher”37 and alien to scientists and scholars. Transvaluation is a kind of
artistic creation; and insofar philosophers create new values, they are
artists. Since creating values is like creating new laws, philosophers are
“legislators”: “But true philosophers are commanders and legisla-
tors.”38 “Their ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is a legislating, their
will to truth is – will to power.”39
 Transvaluation and Rectification 103

Is Wittgenstein therefore right if he intends to suggest that Nietzsche –

like him – does not conflate philosophy and science? There are substantial
differences between the two thinkers even if Nietzsche, too, ascribes a spe-
cific aim to philosophy. For, while emphasising this distinctiveness, he con-
siders science to belong to the (many) preconditions of philosophy.
“Precondition” here is to be taken more in the sense of a required capabil-
ity (skill) than of a logical presupposition. But even so, it goes without
saying that Nietzsche, according to whom there is no such thing as purely
factual knowledge, is far from implying a value–fact divide (as in the Trac-
tatus) when he distinguishes value creation and scientific enquiry. Nor
does this distinction coincide with the way the intermediate Wittgenstein
delimits philosophy by demarcating conceptual from empirical issues.

3 Philosophers who want to be learned by heart. Nietzsche’s and

Wittgenstein’s “poems”
In his autograph remarks, Wittgenstein does not dwell on explaining why
or in which sense “the philosopher should be a poet”40 or philosophy
should only be practised poetically.41 In a conversation reported by Rush
Rhees, however, he gives a few more hints. He draws on Nietzsche to em-
phasise the difference between philosophy and science and points out what
the – or, at least, one – relevant commonality between philosophy and
poetry consists of, an analogy which in his eyes is indeed also one between
himself and Nietzsche.

I remember one time when Wittgenstein was mentioning Nietzsche’s

remark: ‘Wir wollen auswendig gelernt werden’ (‘We – i.e. philosophers
– want to be learned by heart’). Wittgenstein was emphasizing the dif-
ference between a book on philosophy and a theoretical or scientific
work. He was completing the Part I of the Investigations. In connection
with this ‘We want to be learned by heart’, he said that he could under-
stand why certain ancient philosophers had tried to write what they had
to say as poems. (Once or twice later he referred to his manuscript of
the Investigations as ‘my poems’.) […]42

So Nietzsche, too, who considered the pre-Socratics exemplary philosophi-

cal existences, belongs to the “philosophers” that “had tried to write what
they had to say as poems” (ibid.). When addressing him as a poet, the
reference to Thus Spoke Zarathustra is obvious, even if Wittgenstein’s
manuscript remark on transvaluation and poetry does not mention this
poem. In the conversation, Wittgenstein quotes from the speech On Read-
ing and Writing: “Whoever writes in blood and sayings [Sprüchen] does
not want to be read, but to be learned by heart.”43 According to
104 Marco Brusotti

Zarathustra, what is to be learned by heart are literary short forms – say-

ings [Sprüche] or maxims [Sentenzen] – rather than poetry in general as
with Wittgenstein.44 Zarathustra counts himself to those who write with
their “blood”, i.e., stand behind their sayings with their whole self. “Of all
that is written I love only that which one writes with his blood. Write with
blood, and you will experience that blood is spirit.”45
Does Zarathustra, who elsewhere calls himself a poet,46 thereby intend
to set himself apart from the scientists? Wittgenstein seems to suggest this.
Zarathustra, however, does not state explicitly from whom he wants to
distinguish himself. The vast group could include not only scholars and
scientists, but, say, journalists, academic philosophers and even classics
such as Kant. The reader may guess. Neither does the speech On Reading
and Writing intend to specify a feature that set philosophical works apart
from scientific treatises. Only with Wittgenstein does conciseness and
memorability become a criterion for distinguishing between philosophy
and science. According to him, those who “want to be learned by heart”
are the philosophers in contrast to the scientists. Wittgenstein reads this
contrast into Zarathustra’s speech. At least, he emphasises it very strongly.
It is his peculiar use of the saying.
A further, more general point should be emphasised: even the late
­Nietzsche, who indeed sees in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the apex of his
­entire philosophical production, does not regard himself exclusively as the
author of this poem; he never declares that he wants to stand exclusively
as the author of sayings and maxims such as those that make up
­Zarathustra’s speeches.
Besides, Wittgenstein is aware that not all philosophers want or are able
to write in such a way that their exact words remain engraved in their
readers’ mind. In a conversation with Theodor Redpath, he contrasts Ni-
etzsche with Russell:

Russell he [Wittgenstein; MB] considered to have high philosophical

talent but little quality as a writer. He said that he could not remember
a single sentence that Russell ever wrote. When I asked him what phi-
losopher he thought did write impressively his immediate reply was
“Nietzsche”.47

That Russell does not belong to the philosophers that are apt to be “learned
by heart” [“auswendig gelernt werden”] distinguishes him not only from
the poet of Zarathustra, but also from Wittgenstein himself. For the Trac-
tatus is teeming with pithy statements that most philosophers know by
heart. But it is the Philosophical Investigations that Wittgenstein playfully
called his “poems”. Despite this half-joke, however, he seems to doubt that
he himself should try to write what he has to say as a poem. For he
 Transvaluation and Rectification 105

acknowledges “to be someone who cannot quite do what he would like to

be able to do”.48
Rhees’ account of the aforementioned conversation with him continues
as follows:

[…] In connection with this ‘We want to be learned by heart’, he said

that he could understand why certain ancient philosophers had tried to
write what they had to say as poems. (Once or twice later he referred to
his manuscript of the Investigations as ‘my poems’.) I made some silly
bantering remark such as: ‘Well, why don’t you do that?’. ‘Yes’, said
Wittgenstein. ‘Now let’s imagine what that would be like. Suppose I
wrote it all in a poem. And then people would write about this, in
Mind….!’49

The fact that these conversations were published precisely in Mind could
perhaps be seen as a late revenge for Wittgenstein’s insinuation that this
prestigious journal was conceivably unsuitable as an organ of literary criti-
cism. He does not complain that too few articles on Thus Spoke Zarathus-
tra appear in Mind, nor does he mean that the Philosophical Investigations
are his own Zarathustra, all the less does he want to use verse meter and
staff rhyme. Rather, he employs the analogy between philosophy and po-
etry to mark the difference between philosophy and science and thereby –
not unlike the claim to revaluate values by teaching a new “movement of
thought” – to define his relationship to his times. From the view that phi-
losophising is making poetry, it should “emerge how far [his] thinking
belongs to the present, the future, or the past”.50 Wittgenstein does not see
his philosophy as really belonging to the present; in some respect, it may
recall a bygone past, reaching back not only to the author of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, but even to the Pre-Socratics, when poetic expression was not
yet alien to philosophy. And as to the future, who can ever know? Here
Wittgenstein leaves the issue open. However, his new “movement of
thought”, even if it is “not a more correct thinking”,51 is supposed to trans-
form the philosophical way of looking at things.
Indeed, ‘transvaluation’ is neither his only nor even his main model. He
also compares the envisaged philosophical ‘change of aspect’ with Kant’s
Copernican and with Einstein’s relativistic turn.52 Wittgenstein, who also
strives for a ‘revolution of the way of thinking’, refers to the “Kantian so-
lution of the problem of philosophy”53 as well as to a “kind of relativity
theory of language”.54 Especially the reference to Einstein’s scientific the-
ory can generate misunderstandings; but even the affinity to Kant can eas-
ily be pushed too far – and of course also the analogy with the transvaluation
of all values. At any rate, Wittgenstein feels a kinship not exclusively, and
not above all, with Nietzsche.
106 Marco Brusotti

4 The Autonomy of Grammar

The new movement of thought leads Wittgenstein to the idea of the au-
tonomy or arbitrariness of grammar. Grammar is autonomous insofar as it
does not depend on reality (i.e. does not have to be isomorphic with it) and
arbitrary insofar as it is not accountable to it (i.e. does not need a founda-
tion or justification).55
Wittgenstein intends his new movement of thought to leave behind the
outlook of the Tractatus. The autonomy or arbitrariness of grammar in-
volves that it does not make sense to think of language as logically isomor-
phic with reality.56 But is Wittgenstein’s early book really entangled in
isomorphism? The “received view”, that has been object of heated contro-
versies in the last decades, is that the reader of the Tractatus should come
to see that this language–world relation shows itself even if it cannot be
meaningfully asserted. There is some merit to this “received view”. In any
case, the question whether logical isomorphism in whatever form can be
attributed to the Tractatus is irrelevant here. What matters is that, from the
early 1930s onwards, Wittgenstein himself, who now openly rejects the
idea of a correspondence between language and the world, sees no reason
to absolve his Tractatus from isomorphism. It is just because he believes
that he is only now on the way to overcoming this previous point of view
that he considers his current movement of thought to be new even for him-
self. Wittgenstein dismisses logical isomorphism not as false, but as utterly
senseless. Together with it, thus, the opposite option also drops out. The
puzzle whether ‘grammar’ corresponds to reality is not to be answered in
the negative but to be exposed as a false question. Like all philosophical
problems, it turns out to be nothing but a misunderstanding.
Philosophy is never concerned with the truth or falsity of propositions,
but only with their meaning, which must be clarified to remove misunder-
standings. Scientists deliver causal explanations, philosophers clarifica-
tions of meaning. These clarifications have no empirical criteria in the
strict sense. They are valid only if the interlocutor allows them to be valid.
The philosopher recalls the actual use of language; but it is up to the inter-
locutor whether to accept the clarification. One is not compelled to admit
that her philosophical confusion arises from a false analogy or a mislead-
ing simile (in philosophy), Neither is one compelled to accept a certain
reading of a work of art (in aesthetics) or to adopt the psychoanalyst’s in-
terpretation of a dream or a joke. Wittgenstein calls recognition by the
interlocutor an aesthetic criterion – the last two examples show why – and
he considers his philosophical arguments closer to aesthetic than to scien-
tific ones.
It is not the philosopher’s task to replace the actual grammar; but even
then it is up to the perplexed to keep the old grammar or adopt a new one,
 Transvaluation and Rectification 107

and this precisely because grammar is autonomous. In any case, the phi-
losopher may perhaps be able to propose a more perspicuous grammar,
but not a more correct one; since a grammar that were correct in and of
itself – or even just a grammar that were more correct than another –
would not be autonomous.
Wittgenstein assumes that grammar is autonomous when he calls his
own philosophy – like Nietzsche’s – poetry. Being interested only in the
sense (rather than the truth) of propositions, his philosophy keeps within
the sphere of autonomous grammar, and for this very reason the philoso-
pher – Wittgenstein himself – is a poet, and his new “movement of thought”
cannot claim to be “a more correct thinking”57 – let alone the ultimately
correct one. This is the very special sense that the analogy between philoso-
phy and poetry takes on with Wittgenstein.
Is claiming a “more correct thinking” alien also to Nietzsche’s inten-
tions? Wittgenstein intends to suggest that Nietzsche’s concept of trans-
valuation implies that the new values are not objectively more valid than
the old. Similarly, Wittgenstein himself only claims that his new movement
of thought is different from the old but not that it is “more correct”. What
to make of this analogy? No doubt Nietzsche rejects the idea of ultimately
correct thought and of an objective truth independent of human perspec-
tive. The question, though, is whether he shares the autonomy of grammar.
Nietzsche clearly denies logical isomorphism and claims that logic and lan-
guage falsify reality. For Wittgenstein, however, isomorphism is not false,
but nonsensical. Therefore, the opposite option turns out to be equally
senseless. Does Nietzsche cling just to this latter option (logic falsifies real-
ity)? To the extent that he does, one cannot ascribe to him the autonomy
of grammar in Wittgenstein’s sense. Thus, the content Wittgenstein gives to
both formulas he associates with Nietzsche, transvaluation and poet-phi-
losopher, seems only loosely related to the latter’s views.

5 Great sayings: Poetry and truth

There is a further unmistakable sign of distance. Wittgenstein declines to
take a stand on the core concern of Nietzsche’s transvaluation of all values:
the overcoming of Christian morality. It would seem that this central issue
belongs to the general cultural problems that Wittgenstein – as he under-
stands himself – “never tackle[s]”.58 In a conversation with Rhees, he ad-
mits to thinking that Christian morality is ‘deeper’ than Nietzsche’s
critique.59 But it does not cross his mind to try to decide the conflict be-
tween these two moralities. In any case, he argues, it is not a matter of
whether one position is “more free from objections” than the other; it is
not a dispute that could be settled with arguments – a point that Wittgen-
stein emphasises rather than Nietzsche.
108 Marco Brusotti

When I was speaking to Wittgenstein about conflicting moralities, and

the question whether one could try to find some way of settling the issue
between them, I mentioned Christian morality (as understood by
­Nietzsche), and Nietzsche’s criticism or opposition to it. Wittgenstein
said something like, ‘Well, if you want to try to find a way of deciding
between such a conflict, – go ahead and good luck to you. It is nothing
I could do or dream of doing. I might say that one of these moralities
was deeper than the other.’
But (and I think this was his point) this is not like trying to see
whether the one is ‘more free from objections’ than the other.60

Wittgenstein comes to the same conclusion in another conversation.61 He

first explains “the use of metaphors”, placing particular emphasis on “the
point that there is not always a sharp line dividing what is metaphor from
what is not”. Then he goes on to discuss three ‘great sayings’. The first and
the last are by Goethe and Lichtenberg, respectively; the second, that is
merely touched on, comes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

How often would you say that, or ask whether a great saying were true
or false? […] I [Rhees; MB] asked: ‘Do you think that is true?’ He [Witt-
genstein; MB] laughed and said, ‘Why in so far as it has any sense to say
that a great saying is true, I suppose I would say it is true.’ Or again
with: Weh spricht: Vergeh.’ […] Remarks which you might call illumi-
nating; from which you can learn; or which crystallise something which
you had only half realized, etc.. You would not say that the question of
whether you can learn from them depends on their being true. […]62

Did Wittgenstein really refer only to the single verse reproduced here?
Does the great saying really consist only of the three words “Weh spricht:
Vergeh<!>”? More likely, he did rather mean the whole conclusion of
“Zarathustra’s roundelay [Rundgesang]”: “Pain says: vergeh! / Yet all joy
wants eternity – / – Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”63
Rhees/Wittgenstein himself does not translate the saying into English; and
the translators of Thus Spoke Zarathustra evidently have difficulty with the
verb “vergehen”.64 When pain says “vergeh!”, it speaks (1) to itself and (2)
to the sufferer. (1) Pain tells itself to wear off, to fade away, to pass away. As
Zarathustra explains: “Pain says: ‘Go! Away, you pain!’” [“Weh spricht:
vergeh! Weg, du Wehe!’”].65 (2) But pain also tells the sufferer to ‘vergehen’.
A person “vergeht vor Schmerzen” when pain makes her think/feel she will
“pass out” or even “pass away”; however, Zarathustra rather means that
pain pushes human beings to transform and overcome themselves and/or
even to pass away (“What became perfect, everything ripe – wants to die!”).
Hence, the contrast between the sufferer and the joyful, i.e., the contrast
 Transvaluation and Rectification 109

between pain, that wants (the present) to pass, and joy, that wants (the pres-
ent) to stay or to return, can be phrased as follows: “Pain says: […] I do not
want myself”, whereas “joy wants itself, wants eternity, wants recurrence,
wants everything eternally the same”.66 Thus, “Zarathustra’s roundelay”67 is
“the song whose name is ‘Once More’ and whose meaning is ‘into all eter-
nity’”,68 and the issue especially of the last three verses is life affirmation as
saying yes to Eternal Recurrence.
Does what Wittgenstein tells the reader about “great sayings” apply for
Eternal Recurrence itself? His point here is that one should not ask if illu-
minating remarks such as those by Goethe, Nietzsche and Lichtenberg are
‘true’ or ‘false’. Just as it often makes no sense to draw a sharp dividing line
between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical, so one must not sim-
ply assume that the question of whether such ‘great sayings’ are ‘true’ can
be meaningfully posed. Does Wittgenstein intend to suggest that this also
holds for Eternal Recurrence? That the question if Zarathustra’s “thought
of thoughts” is true cannot be meaningfully asked? Rhees’ report is too
concise to allow such a speculative inference about Wittgenstein’s inten-
tion. In any case, it is likely that the philosopher who quotes this ‘great
saying’ was familiar with the existential aspect of Eternal Recurrence.69
If the strict distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ does not apply to the
language-games with such sayings, then the question whether poets tell the
truth does not coincide with the question whether one can learn something
from them. Wittgenstein reproaches his contemporaries for expecting in-
struction only from science and complains that it “never occurs to them”
that poets (and musicians) “have something to teach them”.70 Poets do
have something to “teach” us, although what they write need not be “true”
(not in the same sense as a report or a scientific treatise). Relevant here is
less the difference between ‘teaching’ and ‘true’ than that between the
whole language-games in which these words are respectively used. A re-
lated distinction can be drawn involving Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
Granted, even if he calls the Philosophical Investigations his “poems”, it is
doubtful that he considers them to consist of ‘great sayings’ like the one he
finds in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nevertheless, and even though philoso-
phy and poetry are very far apart, there is a certain parallelism: as one can
“learn” from great sayings even if they are not “true”, so can one learn
from Wittgenstein’s new movement of thought even if it does not claim to
be a “more correct thinking” and to discover new truths.

6 “Our entire philosophy is correction of the use of language”.

Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Lichtenberg
It has been frequently pointed out that Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are
strikingly akin in their preference for philosophical short forms, apt to be
110 Marco Brusotti

read slowly or even ‘learned by heart’. Such short forms are the proposi-
tions of the Tractatus and the remarks in the Philosophical investigations
as well as Nietzsche’s aphorisms and the sayings in Zarathustra’s speeches.
Rather than to a direct influence of Nietzsche on Wittgenstein, this affinity
between them can be traced back to a shared philosophical and literary
tradition. Lichtenberg (1742–1799), who introduced the aphoristic form
in the German-speaking world, is undoubtedly a reference author even if
obviously not the only source (in Nietzsche’s case, think among others of
the French moralists). In particular, his Sudelbücher [Waste books] were
important for both philosophers, and Lichtenberg’s example may show
why it is so difficult to determine Nietzsche’s specific ‘influence’ on
­Wittgenstein. Many thoughts on language that we associate with Nietzsche
were familiar to Wittgenstein through Lichtenberg and more in general
through the German-language tradition from Hamann and Herder to
­Wilhelm von Humboldt.
In The Big Typescript, Wittgenstein subscribes to Lichtenberg’s ‘defini-
tion’ of philosophy: “Lichtenberg: ‘Our entire philosophy is correction of
the use of language, and therefore the correction of a philosophy, and in-
deed of the most general philosophy.’”71 This dictum from the Waste books
is known to today’s philosophers mainly, even if not only, because The Big
Typescript refers to it.
Nietzsche, who never comments on this dictum, underlined the words
“Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs” [“rectification of linguistic usage”] in
his hand copy of the Vermischte Schriften.72 Already the young philologist
holds Lichtenberg in high esteem as a critic of style. Even later, however,
Nietzsche only occasionally takes him into consideration as a philosopher
of language.73 But there is at least one relevant exception. Like Wittgen-
stein, Nietzsche, too, refers to the well-known criticism of the Kantian
‘I think’, albeit without mentioning Lichtenberg by name. The proposal to
switch from “I think” to “it thinks” in aphorism K [76] of the Waste books
can be taken as an example of the “rectification of the use of language”
envisaged in aphorism H [146]. So, before dealing with the switch to “it
thinks”, we should dwell a little more on H [146] that defines philosophy
as a rectification of language use. This text is also about the subject as well
as about its grammatical roots.

I and me. I know myself – are two objects.74 Our false philosophy is
incorporated in our entire language; we can, so to speak, not reason
without reasoning falsely. We fail to consider that speaking, regardless
of what, is a philosophy. Everyone who speaks German is a folk phi-
losopher, and our university philosophy consists in restrictions of that
philosophy. Our whole philosophy is rectification of linguistic usage,
thus rectification of a philosophy, and indeed of the most universal and
 Transvaluation and Rectification 111

general. But the common philosophy has the advantage of being in pos-
session of the declensions and conjugations. So true philosophy is al-
ways taught by us with the language of the false one. Explaining words
helps nothing, for by explaining words I do not yet change the pronouns
and their declensions.75

For Lichtenberg’s “university philosophy”, it is not an easy task to “re-

strict” “folk philosophy” and rectify its use of language. The deep gram-
matical layers that this everyday use involves, such as the declension of the
pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’, cannot in fact be simply switched off or replaced. In
the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein sees the difficulty. After quoting Lichten-
berg’s sentence on the correction of linguistic usage, he comments on the
first part of the same aphorism H[146]: “Why are grammatical problems
so tough and seemingly ineradicable? – Because they are connected with
the oldest thought habits, i.e., with the oldest images that are engraved in
our language itself. ((Lichtenberg.))”76 Despite Wittgenstein’s question, it is
rather Lichtenberg who wonders whether he is playing a losing game.
Notwithstanding, Lichtenberg’s criticism of the ‘I think’ shows how the
“rectification of the use of language” aims to be the “rectification of a
philosophy”, though rather of Descartes’ cogito and Kant’s Ich denke than
directly “of the most universal and general” philosophy.77

We should say it thinks, just as we say it lightens. To say cogito is al-

ready to say too much as soon as we translate it I think. To assume, to
postulate the I is a practical requirement.78

What Lichtenberg finds objectionable is indeed already the first person sin-
gular (cogito) but above all the pronoun ‘I’ (in ‘I think’). With the formula ‘it
thinks’, he probably takes up a suggestion in the Critique of Pure Reason;
for Kant himself is concerned with “this I or he or it (the thing) which
thinks”.79 Hence Lichtenberg may have considered his aphorism as a further
development – and not only as a criticism – of Kant’s conception.
The argument that one should say “it thinks” rather than “I think” cer-
tainly goes beyond a witty comment let alone a mere joke. However, it re-
mains quite open if Lichtenberg’s suggestion really is a constructive
proposal or even a kind of theory of consciousness in a nutshell.

Beyond Good and Evil on “it thinks”: making do without this

7 
little “it”?
Nietzsche, who shares Lichtenberg’s scepticism about the possibility of re-
ally reforming the use of language, takes up his criticism of the ‘I think’
and carries it further. Aphorism 17 of Beyond Good and Evil tackles
112 Marco Brusotti

Descartes and Kant and engages with a few other philosophers, albeit
without mentioning them by name, not only with Lichtenberg but also
with minor contemporaries such as Teichmüller, Drossbach, Widemann,
and Spir.80 Here I focus only on Lichtenberg.

As far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned: I will not stop
emphasizing a tiny little fact that these superstitious men are loath to
admit: that a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want.
It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the
condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but to say the “it” is just
that famous old “I” – well that is just an assumption or opinion, to put
it mildly, and by no means an “immediate certainty.” In fact, there is
already too much packed into the “it thinks”: even the “it” contains an
interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself.
People are following grammatical habits here in drawing conclusions,
reasoning that “thinking is an activity, behind every activity something
is active, therefore –.” Following the same basic scheme, the older atom-
ism looked behind every “force” that produces effects for that little
lump of matter in which the force resides, and out of which the effects
are produced, which is to say: the atom. More rigorous minds finally
learned how to make do without that bit of “residual earth,” and per-
haps one day even logicians will get used to making do without this
little “it” (into which the honest old I has disappeared).81

Here Nietzsche concludes by rejecting the suggestion to say ‘it thinks’ in-
stead of ‘I think’; for “logicians” would actually have to renounce not only
the ‘I’ (in ‘I think’) but also the ‘it’ (in ‘it thinks’). On the assumption that
Nietzsche here refers (also) to Lichtenberg, should his text then be under-
stood as dismissing his proposal? This is not excluded, but Lichtenberg’s
proposal can also be given an alternative reading. The German physicist
considers the expression ‘Ich denke’ (‘I think’) more questionable than the
Latin ‘cogito’ because the German translation emphasises the postulated ‘I’
incomparably more. But if ‘cogito’ is better than ‘I think’, wouldn’t ‘cogi-
tat’ be better than ‘it thinks’? So shouldn’t we emphasise only the change
from first to third person, without postulating anything like an ‘it’? If we
read Lichtenberg thus, Nietzsche takes his view further, rather than simply
rejecting it, when he invites contemporary logicians to consider whether
they could at some point do without the little word ‘it’. However, he thinks
that it is still difficult for them to dispense with the ‘it’ and does not really
commit himself as to how far a revision can be pushed. Thus, behind the
possible dissent, there is still a certain agreement with Lichtenberg insofar
the Enlightenment thinker already points out the difficulties faced by a
rectification of language.
 Transvaluation and Rectification 113

Lichtenberg claims an analogy between his suggestion ‘it thinks’ and a

common expression like ‘it flashes’.82 In On The Genealogy of Morality,
still without naming him, Nietzsche explains why the ‘it’ in ‘it flashes’ is
misleading: “Basically, the common people double a deed; when they see
lightning, they make a doing-a-deed [Thun-Thun] out of it: they posit the
same event, first as cause and then as its effect.”83 The ‘doubling’, evident
in ‘the lightning flashes’, is already present in ‘it flashes’ when the folk
theorists misunderstand the expression in such a way that the pronoun
‘doubles’ the verb, i.e., when they detach the ‘it’ from the verb and misin-
terpret it as a “substratum”: as “doer” behind the deed, as “‘being’” be-
hind the becoming – behind the “Thun, Wirken, Werden”.84 Nietzsche
does not refer to Lichtenberg here. But the argument concerns his sugges-
tion: if ‘it’ is misleading in ‘it flashes’, it is a fortiori so in ‘it thinks’.

8 Wittgenstein: “‘It thinks’. Is this sentence true + ‘I think’

false?”
Wittgenstein is also not impressed by Lichtenberg’s suggestion: “‘It thinks’.
Is this sentence true + ‘I think’ false?”85 Nietzsche would have answered
this question in the negative: both sentences are false. ‘I think’ is clearly “a
falsification of the facts”86 and ‘it thinks’, too, turns out to be inadequate.
Logicians must leave behind the metaphysical view that thinking is the
activity of a subject and question the ‘it’ that is the grammatical subject of
‘it thinks’. For Nietzsche, nevertheless, the new sentence ‘it thinks’ is a step
in the right direction. Wittgenstein, in turn, considers Lichtenberg’s sugges-
tion rather a step in the wrong direction, insofar as this proposal tries to
replace a theory by a better one, and any such attempt is completely out of
place in philosophy.
Wittgenstein does not directly answer his question whether ‘I think’ is
false and ‘It thinks’ true. However, already the wording suggests that he
rejects the puzzle. This becomes even clearer if we focus on the textual
context. Wittgenstein raises the issue of Lichtenberg’s proposal within the
scope of the more general problem “is thought an experience or an activ-
ity?” [“ist der Gedanke eine Erfahrung oder eine Tätigkeit?”] (MS 115,
109; my translation) Lichtenberg’s objection against the ‘I think’ serves as
an example because it involves that thinking is only apparently the activity
of an I-subject since thinking is actually merely experienced and not pro-
duced. As Nietzsche puts it, “a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, and not
when ‘I’ want”.87
With Wittgenstein, as expected, the alternative ‘experience versus activ-
ity’ ultimately turns out to be meaningless – and with it his own ironic
question about the two sentences ‘I think’ versus ‘it thinks’ as well as Lich-
tenberg’s objection to Kant. “Yes, does this question make sense? […] The
114 Marco Brusotti

peculiar, tenacious difficulty of this question already shows that it is not

really a question.”88 Such “peculiar, tenacious difficulty” is characteristic
of philosophical puzzles. They are no factual questions – and indeed, as
Wittgenstein puts it, not really questions at all. Hence they cannot be an-
swered by a theory but only be dissolved by grammatical remarks that
expose them as misunderstandings.
The alternative ‘I think’ versus ‘It thinks’ is puzzling insofar as it in-
volves mistaking a grammatical question for a weird factual question:
“The idea of the constituent of a fact &: ‘Is my person (or a person) a
constituent of the fact that I see or not.’ This expresses a question concern-
ing the symbolism just as if it were a question about the nature. / ‘Es denkt’.
Ist dieser Satz wahr + ‘ich denke’ falsch?” (MS 148, 48v). The answer,
again, is: no. For ‘I think’ is a form of representation and not a proposition
of which one can say that it is (true or) false; accordingly, ‘it thinks’ would
also be a form of representation and not a true (or false) proposition. It
would thus be grammar, not experience. What Wittgenstein is getting at is
that Lichtenberg, while he presumes that he is deciding a question about
“nature”, is in fact struggling with a “question concerning the symbolism”
(MS 148, 48v).89 Likewise, The Blue Book describes the solipsist as a phi-
losopher that does not “disagree with us about any practical ‘question of
fact’” (BBB, 59) but “is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expres-
sion” (BBB, 60). Lichtenberg, too, is dissatisfied with current grammar and
intends to replace a common expression (“I think”) with an alternative
that he feels is more accurate. Wittgenstein, however, sees in putting for-
ward a new theory and in proposing a new grammar two distinct tasks –
precisely because symbolism is arbitrary, grammar autonomous.
Lichtenberg’s rectification of grammar, on the other hand, can be at least
partly an empirical task. The false philosophy incorporated into the whole
language encompasses all given systems of opinion and thought, and Lich-
tenberg’s own “university philosophy”, which seeks to restrain and rectify
that popular philosophy, is enlightened knowledge, to which the natural
sciences also belong, and not simply ‘philosophical grammar’.
This is precisely the empirical way in which Wittgenstein does not con-
ceive of the “rectification of linguistic usage”. Thus, while he subscribes to
this task, he actually takes neither “philosophy” nor “rectification” in Lich­
tenberg’s sense. Unlike the Göttingen physicist, Wittgenstein, who strictly
demarcates philosophy from science, does not mean the “rectification of a
philosophy” as the replacement of folk-scientific views by more enlight-
ened conceptions, among which scientific theories can also play a role.
Rather, philosophical problems are to be solved through a (piecemeal) in-
sight in ‘grammar’, and what Wittgenstein ‘rectifies’ is less common usage
than philosophers’ jargon that deviates from it.
 Transvaluation and Rectification 115

Nietzsche, who also leans more toward naturalism than Wittgenstein,

does not see the rectification issue much differently from Lichtenberg even
if he goes further in the critique of science, for he sees cognition as ulti-
mately built on (mostly) useful fictions.
All three thinkers seem to agree in the diagnosis: the root of the problem
with the “I” lies in the grammar of our language. None of them denies that
current grammar is largely up to the tasks of everyday life, in which it is
embedded. Lichtenberg and Nietzsche, however, have similar misgivings:
Lichtenberg regards grammar itself as a superstitious folk-science in need
of (at least partly empirical, scientific) rectification, and for Nietzsche “the
belief [Glaube] in grammar”90 is to blame: “I am afraid that we have not
got rid of God because we still have faith [glauben] in Grammar…”91 For
Wittgenstein, on the other hand, the problem is not that language users
believe in grammar but that philosophers misunderstand it. Grammar it-
self is not a false prototheory in which the speakers believe in the way a
hypothesis can be believed in. What requires rectification is not grammar
itself, but only misunderstandings, which only need to be rectified concep-
tually, not empirically. It is important that philosophers are not deceived
by language traps; however, they do not need to change anything about
grammar; it is not their task to replace it with a ‘better’ one. The reason for
Wittgenstein’s waiver of language reform is not that grammar is ‘correct’
but that it is arbitrary, autonomous.
Thus, although neither Nietzsche nor Wittgenstein is completely satis-
fied with Lichtenberg’s criticism, the conclusions they reach diverge, which
corresponds to the difference in their outlooks. Wittgenstein, however, ig-
nores not only this difference but probably almost all of Nietzsche’s phi-
losophy of language.

9 Conclusion
In his Contributions to a Critique of Language [Beiträge zu einer Kritik der
Sprache], Fritz Mauthner argues that Nietzsche, as a poet and master of
style, was too enthralled by language to be its truly uncompromising critic,
leaving this latter role to Mauthner himself. This antithesis between mas-
tery of style and critique of language is a mere construction. Rooted in
Mauthner’s thought, it ill suits Nietzsche, who from his youth was inspired
by ancient (and modern) rhetoric where the two aspects closely interact. As
a theoretical stance, the clear distinction of the two aspects cannot be at-
tributed to Wittgenstein either – let alone their deliberate opposition. Thus,
he is far from sharing Mauthner’s assessment of Nietzsche. Rather, one of
the two closely interconnected aspects – the critique of language – largely
escapes Wittgenstein: he simply does not take Nietzsche into account as a
116 Marco Brusotti

philosopher of language (what Mauthner does). It is in Lichtenberg – and

not in Nietzsche – that he sees something like a philosopher of language.
While neglecting Nietzsche’s critique of language, he not only appreci-
ates his mastery of style but more substantively self-identifies with the
poet-philosopher and commits himself to a task that he understands as a
kind of transvaluation. In 1938, the transvaluation of all values, that in the
early 1930s stood for the whole age, becomes a formula for Wittgenstein’s
own new “movement of thought”. However, he fills both formulas that he
associates with Nietzsche, not only transvaluation but also the poet-philos-
opher, with a content that has only a distant affinity with the philosopher’s
views. In 1930, the discrepancy could be largely traced to the fact that
Wittgenstein came to the concept of transvaluation in the wake of the De-
cline of the West – so that his transvaluation was close to a Spenglerian
upheaval. In 1938, however, Spengler’s influence is not the main reason for
Wittgenstein’s divergence from Nietzsche. The reason is internal and lies in
the peculiar nature of Wittgenstein’s new movement of thought. Actually,
all models he chooses for this movement, including Kant’s Copernican turn
and Einstein’s revolution, but especially transvaluation, rather than really
having much in common with Wittgenstein’s thought, are different ways of
emphasising the radical turn he intends to give to philosophy.

Notes
1 MS 183, 64, 7.2.1931, in: PPO, 73.
2 Nietzsche’s ‘Umwertung’ is usually translated as ‘transvaluation’ or as ‘revalu-
ation’. The prefix ‘um,’ which makes the word not easy to translate into Eng-
lish, implies reversal as in ‘Umsturz’ (overthrow) or ‘Umschwung’ (upheaval).
Here I will rather use ‘transvaluation’ than ‘revaluation’ – not so much as a
more faithful translation but as a term more typically associated with
Nietzsche.
3 I offered a comprehensive overview of Wittgenstein’s encounters with Nietzsche
in a previous paper. Cf. Brusotti 2009. §§ 1 and 2 are an abridged and much
reworked version of sections 2 and 3 of that paper. The rest is new and partly
based on sources that were not then available.
4 Hänsel spoke with Wittgenstein “about Spengler” in the afternoon of
­November 13, 1921. (Cf. TLH, 98, and on this Kienzler 2013, 321). Hänsel
had “looked into Spengler, Decline of the West” (TLH, 94), on October 26
and had been “engaged” (TLH, 98) with the book in the days leading up to
Wittgenstein’s visit (TLH, 98). Evidently it was because Hänsel had been
reading the Decline that he and Wittgenstein came to talk about Spengler.
Hänsel’s account does not convey whether Wittgenstein already knew of
Spengler beforehand and/or read him shortly thereafter. The second volume
of the Decline did not come out until 1922. In 1921 only the first volume was
available, in the 1918 edition or in one of the many ‘unaltered editions’ [un-
veränderten Auflagen]; it was not until 1923 that the ‘33rd to 47th c­ ompletely
remodeled editions’ of the first volume were successively released. In later
years, Wittgenstein may have read both volumes, most probably using one of
 Transvaluation and Rectification 117

the then accessible revised editions of the first volume. Especially in the case
of this first volume, the question of which edition(s) he resorted to is not in-
significant. For a term not used by Spengler in the first editions of the first
volume, cf. Brusotti 2014, 25, n. 2.
5 Already the fragment of a letter to be dated before October 2, 1925, presum-
ably addressed to Hermine Wittgenstein, is unmistakably “influenced” by
Spengler. It was published under the title „Der Mensch in der roten Glasglocke”
(“The Human in the Red Glass Bell Jar”). Cf. LS, 23–45; on this text, cf.
­Brusotti 2014, 24–27. On Wittgenstein’s reading of Spengler, cf. Brusotti 2014,
27–33, 264–273.
6 MS 154, 15v, in CV 1998, 16e.
7 Cf. MS 111, 119, 19.8.1931 (CV 1998, 21e–22e), and Brusotti 2014,
264–273.
8 MS 183, 53, 22.10.1930, in PPO, 61. “Unsere Zeit ist wirklich eine Zeit der
Umwertung aller Werte. (Die Prozession der Menschheit biegt um eine Ecke &
was früher die Richtung nach oben war ist jetzt die Richtung nach unten etc.)
Hat Nietzsche das im Sinne gehabt was jetzt geschieht & besteht sein Verdienst
darin es vorausgeahnt & ein Wort dafür gefunden zu haben?” (MS 183, 53,
22.10.1930, in PPO, 60).
9 Spengler 1926, 351 (translation slightly modified). „Als Nietzsche das Wort
‘Umwertung aller Werte’ zum ersten Male niederschrieb, hatte endlich die
seelische Bewegung dieser Jahrhunderte, in deren Mitte wir leben, ihre Formel
gefunden. Umwertung aller Werte – das ist der innerste Charakter jeder Zivili-
sation. Sie beginnt damit, alle Formen der voraufgegangenen Kultur umzuprä-
gen, anders zu verstehen, anders zu handhaben. Sie erzeugt nicht mehr, sie
deutet nur um. Darin liegt das Negative aller Zeitalter dieser Art. […]” (Spen-
gler 1923, 451) I have already given this source of Wittgenstein’s remark in
Brusotti 2009, 344–345.
10 LE 1993, 44.
11 LE 1993, 44.
12 I have dealt with this issue more extensively in Brusotti 2014, 27–33.
13 Ms 183, 24, 6.5.1930, in PPO, 31, 33.
14 PPO, 33. “Und dieser Glaube wird immer erst dann ad absurdum geführt,
wenn durch einen Umschwung eine [U]mwertung der Werte eintritt d. h. das
wahre Pathos nun sich auf andere Handlungsweise [sic; MB] legt.” (PPO, 32)
Slightly changed, the implicit Greek model of Nietzsche’s transvaluation of all
values (the old coins are newly minted, e.g. with a new effigy) becomes an ex-
plicit comparison in Wittgenstein’s diary: now a new currency applies and the
old notes are worthless (cf. PPO, 32).
15 MS 110, 12; 12.–16.1.1931; CV 1998, 11e. In Wittgenstein’s remark, as in the
Decline, the word „abendländisch” [western, occidental] stands for European
culture from the tenth century A.D. onwards. On the consonances between his
ideas and such views of Spengler, cf. Brusotti 2009, 343, esp. n. 27. On the
triad Beethoven/Goethe/Nietzsche in The Decline of the West, cf. Brusotti
2009, 343–344.
16 Spengler 1926, 20. Atkinson himself puts “Ausblick” and “Überblick” in
brackets when he translates their relationship as the difference between “out-
look” and “overlook” (instead of this latter term I rather use “overview”). This
passage on Goethe and Nietzsche comes from the preface of the revised edition
of vol. 1. Cf. Spengler 1923, IX.
17 MS 110, 12; CV 1998, 12e.
118 Marco Brusotti

18 MS 110, 12; CV 1998, 12e. Perhaps Wittgenstein makes reference to: Spengler
1923, 300–301.
19 MS 110, 12; CV 1998, 12e.
20 MS 110, 12; CV 1998, 11e.
21 My translation. “Wenn ich nicht ein richtigeres Denken, sondern eine
[andere∣neue] Gedankenbewegung lehren will, so ist mein Zweck eine, Umwer-
tung von Werten’ und ich komme auf Nietzsche, sowie auch dadurch, daß
meiner Ansicht nach, der Philosoph ein Dichter sein sollte.” (MS 120, 145r;
23.4.1938, in BNE. Unless otherwise indicated, texts from Wittgenstein’s
Nachlass come from this edition.)
22 MS 146, 25v; 1933–1934; CV 1998, 28e.
23 MS 146, 25v; 1933–1934; CV 1998, 28e.
24 CV 1980, 24e.
25 CV 1998, 28e.
26 MS 146, 25v; 1933–1934; CV 1998, 28e; cf. CV 1980, 24e. “Ich glaube meine
Stellung zur Philosophie dadurch zusammengefaßt zu haben, indem ich sagte:
Philosophie dürfte man eigentlich nur dichten. Daraus muß sich, scheint mir,
ergeben, wie weit mein Denken der Gegenwart, Zukunft, oder der Vergangen-
heit angehört. Denn ich habe mich damit auch als einen bekannt, der nicht ganz
kann, was er zu können wünscht” (MS 146, 25v; CV 1998, 28).
27 EH 2007, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, § 4, 68.
28 Spengler 1926, 96. “Natur soll man wissenschaftlich traktieren, über Ge-
schichte soll man dichten.” (Spengler 1923, 131) This passage is also quoted by
Kienzler, according to whom Wittgenstein does not intend to versify, but to
carefully craft his prose style. Cf. Kienzler 2006, 17.
29 Spengler 1926, 96. Cf. Spengler 1923, 131. In a similar sense, Wittgenstein’s
above-mentioned remark denies that his movement of thought is “more cor-
rect” than another. See also below 105–107.
30 GS 1974, 8 (from W. Kaufmann: “Translator’s introduction”). Cf. KSA 3, 343.
31 EH 2007, The Gay Science (‘la gaya scienza’), 64.
32 Title of GS 2001, § 299, 169.
33 GS 2001, § 299; cf. Brusotti 1997, 457 ff.
34 BoT 1999, Preface, §2, 5.
35 BGE 2001, §211, 105.
36 BGE 2001, §211, 105.
37 BGE 2001, §211, 105.
38 BGE 2001, §211, 106.
39 BGE 2001, §211, 106.
40 MS 120, 145r; 23.4.1938.
41 Cf. MS 146, 25v; 1933–1934.
42 RR, 62.
43 TSZ 2006, I, “On Reading and Writing”, 28 (translation slightly modified). Cf.
KSA 4, 48.
44 A first version, presumably unknown to Wittgenstein, reads: “Whoever writes
maxims [Sentenzen] does not want to be read, but to be learned by heart.”
(3[1]305, in KSA 10, 90; my translation.)
45 TSZ 2006, I, “On Reading and Writing”, 27. Cf. KSA 4, 48.
46 “Yet what did Zarathustra once say to you? That the poets lie too much? – But
Zarathustra too is a poet. […]” (TSZ 2006, II, “On Poets”, 99). To the Dithy-
rambs of Dionysos belongs the poem “Mere fool! Mere poet!” [“Nur Narr!
Nur Dichter!”], but Nietzsche does not see himself that way. A first version of
 Transvaluation and Rectification 119

the poem is the magician’s song in the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(cf. “The Song of Melancholy”, 242–244; cf. KSA 4, 371-374).
47 Redpath 1990, 41; also Redpath 1999, 18.
48 MS 146, 25v; 1933–1934; CV 1980, 24e; CV 1998, 28e.
49 RR, 62. Wittgenstein marks the same difference between a mathematician (but
it could be any scholar), who wants to publish the results he has achieved right
away, and an artist, who spends ages polishing his work: „For the artist […]
just the apparent trivial details of statement may seem as important as anything
else, and perhaps the most important thing.” (RR, 39) This dichotomy, which
as such would come close to being a questionable commonplace, is actually a
sort of self-portrait: Wittgenstein himself is the detail-obsessed artist who ulti-
mately renounces the publication of the Philosophical Investigations during his
lifetime.
50 MS 146, 25v; 1933–-1934; CV 1980, 24e. CV 1998, 28e.
51 MS 120, 145r; 23.4.1938.
52 In a not-so-different sense, the French philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard
also comes to compare Einstein’s theory of relativity, Kant’s Copernican turn
and Nietzsche’s transvaluation. Cf. Brusotti 2012, 53–55.
53 MS 110, 61.
54 MS 109, 58. Wittgenstein repeatedly compares the new, decisive “step” he
takes in the early 1930s with “that of the theory of relativity” (MS 108, 270;
cf. still OC, § 305). “The movement of thought that is necessary here is again
the typical movement of the theory of relativity.” (MS 109, 199)
55 For more details, also on the connection with Nietzsche, cf. Brusotti 2009,
347–349.
56 This is only the main, though not the only, reason why grammar is autono-
mous or arbitrary.
57 MS 120, 145r; 23.4.1938; my translation.
58 MS 110, 12; 12.-16.1.1931; CV 1998, 11e.
59 A judgement that Wittgenstein had already expressed in 1914. Cf. MS 102,
39v, 40v, 41v (GT, 49–50) and Brusotti 2009, 341–343.
60 RR, 52. In this report to Drury from 30 June 1968, Rhees refers to a conversa-
tion he had had with Wittgenstein many years earlier. The editor, Gabriel Cit-
ron, remarks: “In Rhees 2001b (pp. 410–11), Rhees records Wittgenstein’s
point about depth in a slightly different way: ‘If someone whom I think to be
deeper than I am says, ‘Surely it must be possible to decide which is right’, I
would say, ‘Well, all right, go ahead; good luck to you. I have no idea at all
what sort of thing this will be, but good luck”.” (RR, 52, n. 155, with reference
to OR.) In this latter case, the person Wittgenstein wishes good luck to is some-
one ‘deeper’ than he is, and not simply his interlocutor Rhees.
61 The report is taken “[f]rom Rhees’s notes entitled ‘Contradiction’ (2.5.1965),
Rush Rhees Collection, UNI/ SU/PC/1/11/14.” Cf. the editor’s note: RR, 49, n.
134.
62 RR, 49.
63 TSZ 2006, The Sleepwalker Song, § 12, 264; translation modified. “Weh
spricht: Vergeh! / Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit – / – will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!”
(TSZ 2006, IV, Das Nachtwandler-Lied, § 12; KSA 4, 404). These verses be-
long to a song that appears first in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(TSZ 2006, The Other Dance Song, § 3, 184) and then, with an extensive
verse-by-verse commentary, in the later written fourth part (The Sleepwalker
Song, § 12).
120 Marco Brusotti

64 Kaufmann translates “go!” (TSZ 1978, 324). Alternative proposals like “Let it
go!” (RR, 49, n. 137) or “Refrain!” (TSZ 2006, 264) are even further from the
original. In other contexts, the verb “vergehen” is easier to translate. Its mean-
ing comes close to that of “to pass” when this verb occurs in sentences like “all
things must pass” or is used of time or a period (“the hours pass quickly”).
“Alles vergeht” means “All things are passing”. “Wie die Zeit vergeht!” is akin
to “how time flies!”, and the substantive “Vergänglichkeit” means “tran-
sience”, “impermanence”, “fleetingness”.
65 TSZ 2006, IV, “The Sleepwalker Song”, § 9, 262. Here Zarathustra’s whole
commentary:
“You grapevine! Why do you praise me! I cut you! I am cruel, you bleed –
what does your praise want of my drunken cruelty?
“What became perfect, everything ripe – wants to die!” so you speak.
Blessed, blessed be the vintner’s knife! But everything unripe wants to live, alas!
Pain says: “Go! Away, you pain!” But everything that suffers wants to live,
to become ripe and joyful and longing,
– longing for what is farther, higher, brighter. “I want heirs,” thus speaks all
that suffers, “I want children, I do not want myself” –
But joy does not want heirs, not children – joy wants itself, wants eternity,
wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same.
Pain says: “Break, bleed, heart! Walk, legs! Wings, fly! Up! Upward! Pain!”
Well then, well now, old heart! Pain says: “Go!” (TSZ 2006, IV, “The Sleep-
walker Song”, § 9, 262, translation modified; Das Nachtwandler-Lied, § 9,
KSA 4, 401–402.)
66 TSZ 2006, IV, “The Sleepwalker Song”, § 9, 262.
67 TSZ 2006, 264.
68 TSZ 1978, 324. Cf. TSZ 2006, 264. Cf. TSZ 2006, IV, Das Nachtwandler-
Lied, § 12, KSA 4, 403.
69 This is not the case with the mention of Eternal Recurrence in The Brown Book
(cf. D 310, 43; BBB, 104) and in its unaccomplished German reworking (cf. MS
115, 164–165, 25.8.1936; LWW, vol. 5, 151). Cf. Brusotti 2009, 359-360.
70 MS 162b, 59v; 1939–1940; CV 1998, 42e.
71 Ts 213, § 90, 422, in PO, 183; cf. already MS 112: 70v. Cf. Lichtenberg 1971,
197–198 (= Sudelbücher, Notebook H [146]); the whole aphorism is quoted
below. Klagge/Nordmann and Luckhardt/Aue translate Lichtenberg’s “Berich-
tigung des Sprachgebrauchs” as “correction of the use of language”, Holling-
dale as “rectification of colloquial linguistic usage”. I alternately use
“correction” and “rectification”.
72 Lichtenberg 1867, 79; cf. Campioni et al. 2003, 354–356. Martin Stingelin
chose these words as the title of his monograph on Nietzsche and Lichtenberg.
Cf. Stingelin 1996.
73 To that extent, Nietzsche sees Lichtenberg differently from Wittgenstein.
74 I have changed the meaning of this sentence. Lichtenberg writes “Ich fühle
mich”, and I have replaced “feel” [fühle] with “know”. I have done so because
a reflexive verb is required which contains the two “objects” “I” and “me/
myself”. Whereas the German “ich fühle mich” is reflexive, the corresponding
English “I feel” unfortunately is not. Instead, “I know myself” satisfies this
requirement.
75 Lichtenberg 2000, 122. Hollingdale’s English edition is considerably abridged
(for which reason the numbering of the aphorisms (here: [32]) differs from the
canonical one); therefore, I have integrated his translation with my own version
 Transvaluation and Rectification 121

of the omitted passages. Here is the German original of the first part of the
aphorism: „Ich und mich. Ich fühle mich – sind zwei Gegenstände. Unsere
falsche Philosophie ist der ganzen Sprache einverleibt; wir können so zu sagen
nicht raisonnieren, ohne falsch zu raisonnieren. Man bedenkt nicht, daß Spre-
chen, ohne Rücksicht von was, eine Philosophie ist. Jeder, der Deutsch spricht,
ist ein Volksphilosoph, und unsere Universitätsphilosophie besteht in Ein-
schränkungen von jener. Unsere ganze Philosophie ist Berichtigung des
Sprachgebrauchs, also, die Berichtigung einer Philosophie, und zwar der
allgemeinsten. […]” (Lichtenberg 1971, 197–198 = Sudelbücher, Notebook
H [146]).
76 TS 213, § 90, 422–423, in PO, 183, 185. Here Wittgenstein replaces
­Lichtenberg’s ‘einverleibt’ [incorporated, embodied] with “geprägt” ­[engraved].
­Nietzsche, who does not mention aphorism H [146], uses the verb ‘­ einverleiben’
in a way similar to Lichtenberg’s. According to the author of the Waste Books,
“our false philosophy” is “incorporated into the whole language”; for
Nietzsche, metaphysical fallacies such as the category of substance are
­
­embodied not only in our language, but – in the literal sense – in ourselves, that
is, they are already inherent in the physiology of our sense organs, as nineteenth
century Sinnesphysiologie teaches.
77 Lichtenberg 2000, 122.
78 Lichtenberg 2000, 190. This English translation by Hollingdale abridges the
aphorism. Here the whole text in the original language: “Wir werden uns
gewisser Vorstellungen bewußt, die nicht von uns abhängen; andere glauben,
wir wenigstens hingen von uns ab [[andere, glauben wir wenigstens, hingen von
uns ab]]; wo ist die Grenze? Wir kennen nur allein die Existenz unserer Emp-
findungen, Vorstellungen und Gedanken. Es denkt, sollte man sagen, so wie
man sagt: es blitzt. Zu sagen cogito, ist schon zu viel, sobald man es durch Ich
denke übersetzt. Das Ich anzunehmen, zu postulieren, ist praktisches Bedürf-
nis” (Lichtenberg 1971, 412 = Sudelbücher, Notebook K [76]). On ­Nietzsche’s
reading marks in this aphorism, cf. Campioni et al. 2003, 354-356; Stingelin
1996, 123, n. 147, 179. The present article cannot deal with the full range of
Lichtenberg’s conceptions, which, for example, often insist on the plurality of
the selves of what is apparently the very same person. On this topic, see e.g. the
chapter “Wer ist dieser Ich?”, in Stingelin 1996, 24–33.
79 CPR 2007, 331 [= KdrV A 345–346 / B 404]; my emphasis. Cf. the reference in
Gasser 1996, 691–692; Loukidelis 2013, 51.
80 Among the rich literature, see especially Loukidelis 2013, who also discusses
the minor philosophers mentioned in the text. They are no less important than
Lichtenberg for Nietzsche’s aphorism. On Nietzsche and Lichtenberg about the
“it thinks”, cf. also Canguilhem 1980, 909–910.
81 BGE 2001, §17, 17–18. Cf. KSA 5, 30–31.
82 Cf. Lichtenberg 1971, 501 (=Sudelbücher, Notebook L [806]), also cited in
Stingelin 1996, 123-124, n. 149.
83 GM 2006, I §13, 26. Cf. KSA 5, 279. Just before the sentence quoted in the
text, Nietzsche writes: “And just as the common people separates lightning
from its flash and takes the latter to be a deed, something performed by a sub-
ject, which is called lightning, popular morality separates strength from the
manifestations of strength, as though there were an indifferent substratum be-
hind the strong person which had the freedom to manifest strength or not. But
there is no such substratum; there is no ‘being’ behind the deed, its effect and
what becomes of it; ‘the doer’ is invented as an afterthought, – the doing is
122 Marco Brusotti

everything.” (GM 2006, I §13, 30.) Nietzsche mentions the example of light-
ning more than once. Cf. KSA 12, 2[84], 2[193] as well as Gasser 1996, 693–
694, Stingelin 1996, 124–125, who both refer to Lichtenberg.
84 GM 2006, I §13, 26.
85 MS 148: 48v; my translation. Cf. MS 115: 110; MS 157a: 19v. “Lichtenberg
said: ‘For ‘I think’ we ought to say ‘It thinks’.’ (‘Es blitzt’.)” (MN, 287) “Re-
member the remark: One should not say ‘I think’ but ‘it thinks.’” (WLPP, 156)
There is no reason to assume that Wittgenstein’s recurrent reference to this
passage, repeatedly in oral communications and perhaps from memory, does
not go back to a direct reading of Lichtenberg. However, the well-known apho-
rism from the Waste Books is also mentioned by authors intensively read by
Wittgenstein. Otto Weininger calls Lichtenberg “the philosopher of imperson-
ality” that “soberly corrects the linguistic ‘I think’ with a factual ‘it thinks’;
thus, for him, the I is actually an invention of the grammarians.” (Weininger
1997, 198) – Freud declares that his term ‘id’ (Es = it) goes back to Georg
Groddeck who drew it from Nietzsche. On the possible role of Nietzsche’s
aphorism on “it thinks”, cf. Gasser 1996, 107–117; on BGE 2001, §17 and
Lichtenberg, cf. also 692–693.
86 BGE 2001, §17, 17.
87 BGE 2001, §17, 17.
88 MS 115, 110; my translation.
89 This objection may apply to Lichtenberg’s “It thinks” whereas Kant does not
take his “I think” as an empirical proposition.
90 KSA 11, 639; 40[23].
91 TI 2005, “Reason” in Philosophy, § 5, 170; cf. KSA 6, 78.

References
Brusotti, Marco. (1997). Die Leidenschaft der Erkenntnis. Philosophie und ästhe-
tische Lebensgestaltung bei Nietzsche von Morgenröthe bis Also sprach Zara-
thustra, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
———. (2009). “Wittgensteins Nietzsche. Mit vergleichenden betrachtungen zur
Nietzsche-Reception im Wiener Kreis.” Nietzsche-Studien, 38:1, 335–362.
———. (2012). “Diskontinuitäten. Nietzsche und der ‘französische Stil’ in der
Wissenschaftsphilosophie: Bachelard und Canguilhem mit einem Ausblick auf
Foucault”, in: Renate Reschke / Marco Brusotti (eds.): “Einige werden posthum
geboren.” Friedrich Nietzsches Wirkungen, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 51–78.
———. (2014). Wittgenstein, Frazer und die “ethnologische Betrachtungsweise”,
Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
Campioni, Giuliano et al. (eds.). (2003). Nietzsches persönliche Bibliothek, Berlin/
New York: De Gruyter.
Canguilhem, Georges. ([1980] 2018). Le cerveau et la pensée, in Georges Canguil-
hem: Œuvres complètes, vol. V: Histoire des sciences, épistémologie, commé-
morations 1966–1995. Paris: Vrin, 895–932.
Gasser, Reinhard. (1996). Nietzsche und Freud, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Kienzler, Wolfgang (2006). “Die Stellung des Big Typescripts in Wittgensteins
Werkentwicklung”, in Stefan Majetschak (ed.): Wittgensteins “große Maschi-
nenschrift”: Untersuchungen zum philosophischen Ort des Big Typescripts (TS
213) im Werk Ludwig Wittgensteins, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 11–30.
 Transvaluation and Rectification 123

———. (2013). “Wittgenstein und Spengler”. In: Rothhaupt, Josef G. F./Vossenkuhl,

Wilhelm (eds.): Kulturen und Werte. Wittgensteins Kringel-Buch als Initialtext,
Berlin/Boston, 317–336.
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph. (1867). Vermischte Schriften. Neue
­Original-Ausgabe, 8 vols. (vol. 1). Göttingen: Dieterich.
———. (1971). Schriften und Briefe. Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Promies, 4
Vols. (Vol. 2). München/Wien: Hanser.
———. (2000): The Waste Books, Translated and with an Introduction by
R. J. Hollingdale, New York: New York Review of Books.
Loukidelis, Nikolaos. (2013). “Es denkt” – Ein Kommentar zum Aphorismus 17
aus “Jenseits von Gut und Böse”, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
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———. (1999). “A Student’s Memoir.” In F. A. Flowers III (ed.), Portraits of Witt-
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phologie der Weltgeschichte, vol. 1: Gestalt und Wirklichkeit, 48. bis 52. völlig
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———. (1926). The Decline of the West, vol. 1, Form and Actuality, authorised
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gebrauchs”: Friedrich Nietzsches Lichtenberg-Rezeption im Spannungsfeld
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chung, München: Matthes & Seitz.
5 ‘jenseits der Grenze’
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on
Value and Nonsense

Pascal F. Zambito

1 Movements of Thought
Why does Wittgenstein associate his aim in philosophy to Nietzsche’s ‘Um-
wertung von Werten’ (MS 120, 145r)? He rarely discusses values in the
mathematical, logical or grammatical reflections that make up the bulk of
his writings. In this chapter, I approach this question by looking at both
philosophers’ emphasis on the personal commitment to how one conceives
the world, which might explain the word ‘value’, their attempt to change
their readers’ perspective, which explains the envisaged change of value,
and the role of language and morality in this shift. In particular, I present
a Nietzschean reading of the Tractatus based on some key ideas in
­Nietzsche’s writings of which I focus on Beyond Good and Evil. In order
to motivate and prepare the actual comparison, let me first give some back-
ground of the concepts involved and the historical context of Wittgen-
stein’s reference to Nietzsche as well as some philological discussion of this
remark itself.
There are two connected, but distinguishable, senses of ‘Umwerthung’
in Nietzsche’s writings. Both are present in Beyond Good and Evil where
the first published use of the expression occurs.1 The first concerns a his-
torical revaluation, namely from ancient and ‘noble’ values to Christian
morality which Nietzsche condemns (BGE 2001, §46; similar in §§194–
195 and GM 2007, I, §§7–8). Later in the book, he calls for another ‘Um-
werthung’ of those Christian values into something new (BGE §203).
‘Umwerthung’ in this second and forward-looking sense is, according to
him, the task of future philosophers and becomes a slogan for all his later
writings.2
Depending on their context, the mentions of ‘Umwerthung’ allow for
various interpretations and suggest different translations. The anti-Christian
remarks speak of a historic inversion of the ancient values. It is possible to
understand the second sense of ‘Umwerthung’ as such an inversion too and
hence as a re-valuation, a return to the values that were in place prior to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-7
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 125

Christian morality. This view implies a dichotomy of value systems:

ancient/‘noble’ vs Christian. While Nietzsche’s remarks often point to such a
dichotomy, some suggest an interpretation of ‘Umwerthung’ that has been
called ‘utopian’ because it leaves open what the new values are.3 To indicate
this openness, the word ‘transvaluation’ may be used. Which interpretation
does Wittgenstein have in mind when he speaks of ‘Umwerthung’?
His first use of the expression around 1930 is probably mediated through
Spengler.4 It resembles Nietzsche’s historical usage of revaluation, but
without referring to Antiquity or Christianity in particular. With every
change of culture in a Spenglerian sense, the value that is attached to things
or actions changes accordingly: drinking may at one time be a sacred rit-
ual, at another just booze (MS 183, 22–23). Especially in times of a declin-
ing culture – as which both Spengler and Wittgenstein perceived the West
in early 20th century – such a change amounts to an inversion of the values
of the preceding high culture, a process for which Nietzsche’s expression
‘Umwertung aller Werte’ seems fitting (MS 183, 53).
On 23 April 1938, Wittgenstein speaks of ‘Umwertung’ again. Remark-
ably, he does not refer to the change of values that has occurred in his home
country one month earlier, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.5
Instead Wittgenstein uses the word to refer to his own work, which gives it
a kind of programmatic character. What makes it even more interesting is
the fact that it appears at a critical phase of his development where he was
generally concerned with the aim of philosophy. After the failed attempts to
write a book in the early 1930s, the basis of Philosophical Investigations and
its specific understanding of philosophy were developed primarily during
two stays in Norway 1936 and 1937. In 1938, the Urfassung (MS 142) and
the intermediate version (TS 220–21) were already in place and Wittgenstein
was seriously considering publication; in August 1938 he wrote a preface
(MS 225) which already resembles the final version from 1945. The differ-
ence to the earlier book projects is not so much a new content as a new form.
In contrast to the Big Typescript and the Brown Book, this new form is
marked by openness and methodological diversity, a criss-cross procedure
that presents various perspectives on similar issues to solve philosophical
confusions.6 In this period he writes the remark that interests me:

Wenn ich nicht ein richtigeres Denken, sondern eine andere/neue Ge-
dankenbewegung lehren will, so ist mein Zweck eine ‘Umwertung von
Werten’ & ich komme auf Nietzsche, sowie auch dadurch, daß meiner
Ansicht nach der Philosoph ein Dichter sein sollte.

Considering the emphasis on different or new rather than correct thinking,

I follow Nuno Venturinha’s translation as ‘transvaluation’ rather than
Joachim Schulte’s ‘revaluation’;7 the new Gedankenbewegung or
126 Pascal F. Zambito

Umwertung seems utopian rather than dichotomic.8 The expression

‘komme auf’ requires a free translation to capture Wittgenstein’s associa-
tion of his philosophy with Nietzsche when he thinks about his aim (to
capture this gist, Schulte translates it as ‘I come to resemble Nietzsche’).

If I do not want to teach a more correct thinking, but a new movement

of thought, then my aim is a ‘transvaluation of values’ and Nietzsche
comes to my mind as well as through my view that the philosopher
should be a poet.

The singular in the end is clearly generic (Schulte therefore has ‘philoso-
phers’ and ‘poets’). It is less clear, but likely, that ‘movement of thought’ is
a generic singular too as there is a general emphasis on methodological
pluralism in those years.9 Wittgenstein’s later philosophy can hardly be
said to be one movement of thought (I will say more about Gedankenbe-
wegung below). One should at least qualify it as a highly mobile way of
thinking as the metaphor of criss-cross traveling over a field of thought
suggests (PI, Preface; drafted in June 1938: MS 117, 112).
As Schulte points out further, the whole structure of the sentence is hy-
pothetical and may be read as a reminder that the ambition to teach phi-
losophy could lead to far-reaching and potentially unwanted consequences.10
However, considering that April 1938 was the start of Easter term in
­Cambridge when Wittgenstein returned to teaching after a longer break,11
it is not implausible that he actually thought about what he would tell his
students – especially as he had made such important progress in the
­preceding months. As this progress concerned primarily the question how
to communicate his ideas (hence the new form of Philosophical
­Investigations), the word ‘teach’ does not seem all wrong here. Sure
enough, he does not think about teaching a doctrine of philosophical
­propositions, but a certain attitude or method, a movement of thought.
Lecture notes by Wittgenstein’s students support this assumption. A
good candidate for a ‘new movement of thought’ could be his famous dis-
tinction between first person and third person uses of pain expressions.
The expression ‘transvaluation of values’ is puzzling because it is far from
obvious what values have to do with such ‘grammatical movements’.12 Yet
in the first meeting of Easter Term, two days after the remark on ­Nietzsche,13
Wittgenstein speaks about pain expressions and related confusions. As
­becomes clear in the second meeting, this was an example for his more
general view of philosophy. He uses the metaphor of the fly-bottle, which
shall later become famous as illustrating his ‘aim in philosophy’ (PI §309),
and suggests ‘training’ the fly (our mind) with specific exercises in order to
facilitate certain movements. A connection to the question of values might
be implied by his description of philosophical confusion as ‘in a sense a
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 127

personal question’ and his remark shortly after: ‘What I do is, in a sense,
influence your style. (What I do is alter your style.)’ (WCL, 8).14
Wittgenstein’s emphasis on style and the idiosyncratic form of his writing
might explain the reference to poetry when he mentions Nietzsche. Most in-
terpretations of the remark focus on this aspect.15 It is, however, unclear what
the relation between the first statement (Umwertung) and the second (poetry)
is. They are connected by the conjunction(s) ‘sowie auch’ which enumerates
separate items rather than joining them together – there surely is some connec-
tion, but explaining one does not necessarily explain the other. And although
instructive things have been said about philosophy as poetry, the question of
‘Umwertung’ remains obscure. Schulte is closest to an answer when he says
that a major shift of one’s attitude might be called a ‘revaluation of values’16
– but this already presupposes some understanding of the kind of shift that is
aimed at and of the kind of value that we are talking about.
One reason why poetry has received more attention than value is the
plausible connection between Wittgenstein’s (few but significant) remarks
on poetry and his unconventional style. By contrast, the scarce statements
on ethical or aesthetic value – for now I ignore instances like ‘value of a
variable’ – mostly occur in private remarks whose relation to the philo-
sophical arguments remains unclear. Why should Wittgenstein’s aim be a
transvaluation of values?
To approach this question, I suggest looking at the most prominent dis-
cussion of value in Wittgenstein’s oeuvre, namely the 6.4s of the Tractatus
where he discusses the place (or non-place) of ethics in his system. Al-
though the passage is as laconic and obscure as the whole book, it un-
doubtedly belongs to its philosophical climax and ‘ethical sense’, as he
famously called it.17 While the extent to which his reading of Nietzsche
influenced the Tractatus remains speculative, a Nietzschean perspective on
the Tractatus provides a fresh approach to the book’s aim, presenting it as
an attempted Umwertung.
Interpreting early Wittgenstein with a late remark requires some justifi-
cation. In 1938, he probably did not think of the Tractatus. Let me address
the question of continuity by looking once more at ‘movements of thought’.
The expression Gedankenbewegung, or Denkbewegung occurs in a num-
ber of different contexts which usually concern general remarks on phi-
losophy. The earliest instance is this remark from 1930:

What cannot be expressed, thereof one cannot speak either.

(What I do is not so much the search for a discovery but rather exer-
cises of thought, that is, exercises to make a certain movement of
thought; as one does exercises for the trunk to finally be able to make a
certain difficult movement.)
(MS 108, 248)
128 Pascal F. Zambito

The remark in parentheses clearly resembles the ideas from spring 1938:
the ‘discovery’ – in a later typed version ‘discovery of a new truth’ (MS
210, 61) – corresponds to the ‘more correct’ thinking. Both remarks con-
firm Wittgenstein’s primary interest in intellectual movements, rather than
true propositions. The idea that such movements require some form of
mental exercise reappears in the 1938 lecture. The whole parenthesis com-
ments on the preceding remark which is an echo of the Tractatus’ final
sentence. By bringing together and anticipating ideas from 1918, 1930 and
1938, the remark can be read as a connection between these different
phases in Wittgenstein’s writing which has to do with the role of ‘move-
ments of thought’. What else do we know about them? There are roughly
two interrelated senses in which the expression is used.
First, it is used in the plural, as different ways to conceive of a problem.
The quoted reflection from 1930 belongs to this group. So do other re-
marks from the years 1930–32, where Wittgenstein names concrete move-
ments of thought, like the conception of non-Euclidean geometry, relativity
theory, Freud’s theory of dreams18 and the well-known list of influences
from Boltzmann to Sraffa.19 Later (1946–48) he mentions such movements
more abstractly as methodical tools for his philosophical activity. As if in
response to the express aim to teach new movements of thought ten years
earlier, he considers the difficulty of learning new movements in 1948.20
In a second group of remarks, Wittgenstein speaks about his own Denk­
bewegung, in the singular, as a characteristic of his philosophy. Emphati-
cally he highlights the difference between his and the scientists’ movement
of thought; he is proud of, ‘in love with’, his own Denkbewegung.21 Al-
though its main line has changed since the Tractatus,22 there seems to be
some continuity insofar as his movement of thought can be found in the
history of his mind and – a very Nietzschean idea – its ‘moral concepts’.23
In light of these remarks some questions arise. How many movements of
thought are there? How much continuity is there from early to late Witt-
genstein’s movement of thought? What is the connection between the
movement of thought and morality?
My answer to these questions amounts to a sort of guiding hypothesis
for the remainder of the chapter: Wittgenstein does indeed have a charac-
teristic Denkbewegung. It is his preference of sense over truth, his focus on
methods, ways of thinking and perspectives rather than ‘discoveries’ or
‘more correct thinking’ in an already given framework. This concern with
the conditions of truth rather than truth itself is already present in the
Tractatus. It resembles a basic idea of Kant, as Wittgenstein himself notes
later.24 Like Kant’s prime example of synthetic a priori knowledge is geom-
etry, Wittgenstein’s preferred means to illustrate his Denkbewegung is geo-
metrical imagery. The movement of thought gets modified later by
recognizing that the ‘geometry’ described in the Tractatus is valid ‘only for
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 129

this narrowly circumscribed area, not for the whole of what you were pur-
porting to describe’ (PI §3). From 1930, Wittgenstein repeatedly compares
his movement of thought to relativity theory.25 Extending this analogy, one
might say: the Tractatus with its ‘logical space’ is a limiting case and
roughly relates to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy like special relativity re-
lates to general relativity. As in relativity, the word ‘space’ loses its mean-
ing and gets replaced by a variety of situational geometries, fluid metrics
that depend on local conditions; hence the emphasis on many Gedanken-
bewegungen (and methods of measurement) in the later Wittgenstein.
What remains the same, however, is, first, the focus on sense rather than
truth, on the structures that determine possibility in the first place before
the question of truth comes up at all. And second, that these things cannot
be expressed by means of the same language that constitutes the respective
space of possibilities.26 ‘What cannot be expressed, thereof one cannot
speak either.’ This statement is central to Wittgenstein’s ideas about ethics
in the Tractatus. One of its traces leads to Nietzsche.

2 Nietzsche on Philosophy and the Limits of Language

In this section, I sketch some of Nietzsche’s key ideas that I see at work in
the Tractatus. I have other reasons to discuss mainly Beyond Good and
Evil, but let me make one last philological remark. Wittgenstein’s familiar-
ity with Nietzsche ‘requires no special explanation. It was part of his cul-
tural heritage’, as Brian McGuinness says.27 He and other scholars have
noted similarities of Zarathustra’s motto ‘Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen’
with the preface of the Tractatus. Others have pointed out his sister Her-
mine’s reading of Human, All Too Human in 1917 which may have been
part of the siblings’ discussions and may have influenced the ideas of si-
lence where nothing can be said, and of ‘overcoming’ one’s own posi-
tions.28 More concrete evidence is given in the form of Wittgenstein’s
notebook entry from December 1914, stating that he had ‘bought and read
volume 8 of Nietzsche’ and was ‘deeply moved by his hostility to Christi-
anity’ (MS 102, 39v). It is generally assumed that this refers to vol. 8 of the
Naumann edition, containing some late unpublished texts as well as The
Antichrist, The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche contra Wagner and Twilight of
the Idols.29
While familiarity with Nietzsche can thus be assumed, there is no con-
clusive evidence for Wittgenstein’s reading of a particular work. Instead of
the large format Naumann edition, he might just as well refer to vol. 8 of
the pocket edition which contains BGE and GM – and plenty of hostility
to Christianity.30 Concerning our question, it also contains the first two
published occurrences of ‘Umwerthung’: the historical Christian revalua-
tion (BGE §46; similar in §§194–195) and the utopian task of
130 Pascal F. Zambito

philosophers (§203). Be that as it may, the facts are at least compatible

with my attempt to read the Tractatus through the lens of BGE, but I do
not need to rely on them: ‘Umwertung’ was a widespread concept and as-
sociated with Nietzsche even by people who had not studied his work. The
reason for looking at BGE in particular is its programmatic nature. Con-
sidered by some to be the ‘most important statement of his philosophy’,31
it contains concrete articulations of what Nietzsche rejects in the tradition
of philosophy and expects from its future. In the following I highlight some
elements of it and describe how they can throw light on the Tractatus even
if Wittgenstein did not consciously write his book with BGE in mind.
The first remarkable idea in Beyond Good and Evil is, somewhat sur-
prisingly, not a challenge of morality, but a challenge of truth.32 Nietzsche
calls the ‘will to truth’ into question (BGE §1). Among the ‘prejudices of
philosophers’, which he aims to dismantle, is their belief to pursue the
truth without any personal involvement. Although philosophers purport
to be on a high-minded quest for the eternal and pure, their seemingly
­objective truths are, in fact, steeped in personal values and by no means
opposed to the selfish and worldly sphere of nature (§2). The ‘prejudice’ is
the pretension to achieve metaphysically necessary results ‘through the
self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic’. One example is
Spinoza’s Ethics and its ‘geometrical’ method which appears maximally
objective, but in fact, according to Nietzsche, expresses nothing but ‘the
love of his wisdom’ (§5).

It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till

now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator,33 and a
species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover
that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has consti-
tuted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
(§6)

In other words, the ‘sense’ of every philosophical book is ‘ethical’; every

great philosophy codifies its author’s morality into a philosophical system.
‘It always creates the world in its own image’ (§9). Yet Nietzsche’s critique
is not directed at the personal involvement of philosophers per se, but at
their failure or reluctance to accept it. The codification of values into a
system is a symptom of the Will to Power which is regarded positive as
long as one is aware of it and does not believe to follow a strictly neutral
will to truth. Admitting to oneself and to others one’s personal commit-
ments, even in the seemingly non-moral statements about logic or episte-
mology, is a sign of ‘the good taste of courage’ (§5).
Another major object of this critique are Kant’s synthetic judgements a
priori which are said to belong to ‘the falsest opinions’ (§4) – an interesting
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 131

superlative to which I shall get back later. Nevertheless Nietzsche does not
condemn them: to believe in such apparently apodictic propositions might
be indispensable for human beings although this does not make them true.
The question should be why we need such beliefs, why they are necessary,
and not, as Kant asked, ‘How are they possible?’ – ‘Synthetic judgements
a priori should not “be possible” at all; we have no right to them; in our
mouths they are nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in
their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to
the perspective view of life’. (§11)
The personal involvement in philosophical systems explains why a
change of perspective might be painful. A transvaluation as Nietzsche calls
for ‘has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the inves-
tigator, it has “the heart” against it’ (§23). Accordingly, a doctrine’s capac-
ity to make happy is not a sign of its truth. While these remarks are full of
Nietzsche’s typical questions and ambiguities, their main purpose is clearly
to introduce the idea that unhappiness and wickedness may be just as
good, or better, conditions for ‘free spirits’ than the virtues of traditional
morality. The value of ‘truth’ remains questionable, but at least hypotheti-
cally we are presented a view that was first articulated in Birth of Tragedy:
that truth is terrible and ‘strength of mind might be measured by the
amount of “truth” it could endure’ (BGE §39; cf. BoT §7). While happi-
ness is merely ‘no argument’ here, Nietzsche’s aversion to the utilitarian
pursuit of happiness is expressed more strongly in Zarathustra’s descrip-
tion of ‘the most contemptible person: but he is the last human being’ (TS
Z 2006, 9). A lazy breed of enlightened hedonists who maximise pleasure
and minimise suffering in every situation and have banned everything that
is great and dangerous from the earth: ‘“We invented happiness” – say the
last human beings, blinking’ (10).
The fifth chapter of Beyond Good and Evil sets out to challenge a ‘Science
of Morals’ which takes morality as a ‘given’ whose basics need only be dis-
covered (§186). Against this, Nietzsche emphasises the plurality of possible
value systems and takes up the idea from the first chapter that philosophers
codify their personal preferences in their systems, their notations: ‘systems of
morals are only a sign-language of the emotions’ (§187). Rather than s­ cience,
philosophy resembles poetry in its creation of, and obedience to, certain
rules – not because these rules are true, but because without them no moral
action is possible at all. Creating a language, like the poets do, resembles
creating a way of life. With a side-glance to Wittgenstein’s apparently
­Nietzschean view ‘that the philosopher should be a poet’, we can note that
Nietzsche includes among the great poets ‘some of the prose writers of
­today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness’ (§188).34
Although many systems of morality are possible, the Christian ‘herd
animal morality’35 rejects ‘such a “possibility”’ and claims to be the only
132 Pascal F. Zambito

one: ‘it says obstinately and inexorably “I am morality itself and nothing
else is morality!”’ (BGE §202). While Nietzsche thus emphasises the plu-
rality of value systems, he implicitly assumes a hierarchy in which the
Christian values are ranked low, whereas the free, unrestrained, acting out
of the Will to Power is ranked high. Does he not claim that his preferred
value system is, if not unique, better, the best, the right morality to follow?
By what criteria though? His specification in Genealogy ‘higher value in
the sense of advancement, benefit and prosperity for man in general’ (pref-
ace, §6) does not help much. What is advancement, benefit, prosperity
when all moral concepts have been transvaluated? It seems in this kind of
‘Umwertung’ there is indeed no ‘more correct thinking’, only perspective
and example.
This explains the typical tensions between Nietzsche’s rejection of dog-
matism and his own seemingly dogmatic statements. After his critique of
other philosophers’ naive belief to have found the basis of knowledge and
morality, his own claim ‘life itself is Will to Power’ (§13) seems at least
questionable. After his, almost Wittgensteinian, reconstruction of the
grammatical mistake to infer a single entity from the word ‘will’ – ‘a unity
only in name’ (§19)36 – how are we to understand his thesis (‘mein Satz’)
of ‘explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramifica-
tion of one fundamental form of will – namely, the Will to Power’ (§36)?
Like the philosophers whom he criticises, Nietzsche creates the world in
his image. While he presents his thesis with the same or even greater con-
viction, he prides himself to stand out from other thinkers through his
‘courage’ to reveal the perspective and experimental character of his own
view. In his texts, there are countless warnings not to take every word at
face value: quotations, different voices, the subjunctive mood, ambiguities,
irony and the preference of questions over affirmative statements. Not as
clear as Wittgenstein, but recognizably, he is aware that his view itself can-
not be straightforwardly articulated. ‘Language, here as elsewhere, will
not get over its awkwardness’ (§24). In an insightful interpretation of §24,
especially its performative undermining of a logic of oppositions, Martin
Endres puts the central problem of Beyond Good and Evil thus: how is a
linguistic expression possible beyond this Beyond, ‘jenseits dieses
Jenseits’?37
While the critique of the ruling Christian morality is one of several top-
ics in BGE, Nietzsche contours the problem more sharply in its ‘supple-
ment and clarification’, the Genealogy of Morality: ‘the value of these
values should itself, for once, be examined’ (Preface, §7). Obviously, the
word ‘value’ is used in two senses here. The first is measure, the second is
measured. But the use of the same word can be explained by the fact that
the second is a measure too. Value in the second sense is a system of moral-
ity. ‘Good and bad’ are not two values; it is one value that is opposed to
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 133

another value ‘good and evil’ (GM, I, §16) – at least at this point, N
­ ietzsche
uses the word ‘value’ for an entire framework by which actions can be
measured. This measure shall itself be measured when he asks for the value
of such a system – and the question arises: what are the criteria? The ‘prob-
lem of values’, ‘to decide on the rank order of values’ (GM I, §17, note), is
the task of future philosophers – but this is an impossible task! It is a cen-
tral problem of Nietzsche. While his critique of dogmatic systems makes
sense, he cannot make sense of his positive vision. Creating a morality is
nonsense, but he lacks the philosophical means to clearly express why such
an enterprise is hopeless. The creation and description of a new language
transcends the possibilities that it itself determines. Nevertheless,
­Nietzsche’s frequent signs of irony and self-awareness show a hunch of this
insight. He seems to be on the same page as Wittgenstein. For both, the
task of philosophy is precisely to deal with such nonsense. ‘Our deepest
insights must – and should – appear as follies’ (§30).

3 Value and Nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Nietzsche claims the doctrine of Will to Power as his thesis, ‘mein Satz’
(BGE §36). A pre-stage of this aphorism corresponds to a dictation from
1885 which has become famous, also to English readers, through the
Nachlass publication Will to Power: ‘And do you know what “the world”
is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror?’38 I suggest regarding the
Tractatus under this motto. The book may appear like ‘discoveries’, as
Wittgenstein later regrets (MS 109, 213), but it can also, and perhaps bet-
ter, be understood as a ‘possibility’, as a way to look at ‘the world’ – in his
mirror.
The Tractatus famously begins with ‘the world’. We can, another simi-
larity to Nietzsche, assume a conscious echo of Schopenhauer as well as a
conscious deviation. For Schopenhauer, the ‘world is my representation’
(WWR, 3), for Wittgenstein it is ‘everything that is the case’ (TLP 1). This
opening may be read in a quasi-constructivist sense. It is not a description
that may be true or false, but an announcement: this is what I will call ‘the
world’. Wittgenstein too ‘creates the world in his image’. The definiens
‘everything that is the case’ (‘alles, was der Fall ist’) allows further associa-
tions to the book of Genesis. In an important sense the biblical Fall is in-
deed ‘beyond good and evil’: it is the condition of good and evil – which
raises the question how the ‘original sin’ itself could have been evil.39 Like-
wise, Wittgenstein’s Tractarian system concerns the condition of true and
false propositions – but how can the system itself be true as the preface
confidently claims?
The word ‘Wahrheit’ is emphasised in the preface, inviting the reader to
pay special attention to a word that conflicts to its usage within the book. In
134 Pascal F. Zambito

Wittgenstein’s system, a thought or a proposition is true if it depicts a fact,

an actuality in the logical space of possibilities. The propositions of the Trac-
tatus do not depict such facts. Whereas ordinary thoughts can be true or
false, the ‘truth’ of the thoughts that are expressed in the Tractatus is ‘unas-
sailable and definitive’. They are somehow truer than true, forming a ‘super-
order of ‘super-concepts’ which Wittgenstein later calls a ‘philosophical
superlative’ (PI §§97; 192). Recall Nietzsche’s verdict on a priori beliefs as
the ‘falsest opinions’. The ‘unassailable truth’ resembles the ‘falsest opinion’
in that both are not true or false in the ordinary sense; both cannot be ex-
pressed in conventional language. One need not agree with Maudemarie
Clark and David Dudrick’s whole ‘esoteric’ interpretation to appreciate their
emphasis on the subtlety of Nietzsche’s writing: it is ‘in our mouths’ that
such necessary statements are false (BGE §11) and only to certain ‘ears’ his
insights ‘appear as follies’ (§30). They, like Kant’s synthetic judgements a
priori, are not only ‘false’, but ‘the falsest’ because they do not even make
sense in the language in which they are articulated. A new language is re-
quired to express the thoughts Nietzsche wants to express.40
The remark on truth in the preface is embedded in Wittgenstein’s two-
fold estimation of the ‘value’ of the Tractatus. First, it expresses ‘thoughts’
(in what sense? not in the sense of ‘logical pictures of facts’) and these
thoughts are true (in what sense?). Second, the book’s value lies in r­ evealing
its own limits, in showing ‘how little has been done’ when the problems of
philosophy are solved. Both tasks are achieved by drawing a limit ‘to the
expression of thoughts’. This limit is drawn ‘in language and what is on
the other side of this limit (jenseits der Grenze) will be simply nonsense’.
The drawing of this limit is not concerned with truth, but with its ­condition,
with the possibility of truth which is called ‘sense’. Language has the
­capacity to represent the world truly or falsely because its propositions
have sense, they describe possible situations in logical space which can be
actual or not. Logic is concerned with the totality of such possibilities. The
totality of possibilities itself is not a further possibility among them. In a
sense it is a necessity, like a cube, a die, necessarily, that is, by definition,
has six sides each of which is a possibility when the dice fall.
At least, as long as we exclude other types of dice, or even other games
(cf. TL 1999, 147; KSA 1.882). In the language of each game its rules are
necessary and determine the totality of possibilities. From the outside,
however, the game appears as one game among others, as one possibility
among other possibilities. Yet from the inside this relativism is absurd.
From the inside every totality of possibilities claims to be the only one. It
says, as it were, ‘I am logic and nothing else is logic’. In this sense, the truth
of the Tractatus is unassailable. Yet it aims to make its readers ‘see the
world rightly’ – which implies the possibility to see it falsely, implies the
possibility of other perspectives. At least allowing this possibility,
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 135

Wittgenstein advances his propositions, meine Sätze (6.54),41 like ­Nietzsche

advances his thesis, mein Satz. Nietzsche is prepared to push his thesis ‘bis
zum Unsinn’ (BGE/KSA5 §36) and Wittgenstein even expects the reader
who understands him to finally recognise his propositions as ‘unsinnig’, as
nonsense. While they do not use Unsinn in exactly the same sense, both
thinkers’ readiness to apply such a negative word to their own writing
­reveals an awareness – in different degrees – of the impossibility to describe
a new game without a meta-language that would allow speaking about
games outside any particular game.42
In order to present his view of the world, Wittgenstein introduces a sign-
language. He does so at times explicitly (TLP 3.324, 4.1121), sometimes
implicitly by introducing new terminology and symbols.43 He knows that
the principles of this notation cannot be expressed by means of the nota-
tion itself. The principles and motives to use this notation rather than oth-
ers remain and should remain unexpressed;44 they only show themselves in
the possibilities that the notation allows. Sign-languages and notations re-
main important for Wittgenstein after the Tractatus. In 1930, he com-
plains about Ramsey who did not understand that in a notation ‘the whole
way of seeing an object is expressed, the angle from which I am now look-
ing at things. The notation is the last expression of a philosophical view’
(MS 105, 10–11). The Tractatus is such a notation. A notation determines
possibilities of expression. It is thus not concerned with the actuality (truth)
of these possibilities, but with their condition. For the philosophical con-
cern with the conditions of possibility, Kant coined the term ‘transcenden-
tal’. Wittgenstein holds that logic is ‘not a body of doctrine, but a
mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental’ (TLP 6.13).45 Yet pre-
cisely for this reason it is also ineffable. Like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein ap-
preciates Kant’s method, but considers it naive to advance transcendental
philosophy as ‘true’ propositions. Propositions can only be true if they are
possible; hence the conditions of this possibility cannot themselves be true.
Only what is possible can be expressed in language. And what cannot be
expressed, cannot be said either.
In the 6.4s, these threads are intertwined with the idea that one’s stance
towards the world as a whole, which is codified into the possibilities of
one’s language, is the place of the ethical – and not something that happens
in the world, not something that can be expressed in language. After the
preface, the word ‘value’ recurs for the first time in 6.4 ‘All propositions
are of equal value’ (gleichwertig). The whole ‘sub-chapter’ 6.4 repeats the
idea, expressed in 5.6, that language and world are coordinated, or even
identical, by sharing the totality of possibilities in logical space. The argu-
ment is based on the logical holism that marks the Tractatus from its first
propositions. Propositions (like facts) are treated from the perspective of
totality; as possibilities, which together make up the whole, they all have
136 Pascal F. Zambito

equal value.46 A higher value can only be found ‘outside’ the world. Be-
cause all propositions describe contingent situations in the world, there are
no propositions that concern higher value, no ethical propositions (6.42).
The will cannot change anything in the world, ‘not the facts; not the things
that can be expressed in language’. It can only change the limits of the
world; it affects the perspective as a whole (6.43). The mystical, prominent
in the ending of the Tractatus, is that the world is, not how it is (6.44).47 It
is ‘to see the world as a limited whole’ (6.45).
At least two sub-remarks deserve closer inspection: 6.41 contains the
reflection on value that motivated my focus on the Tractatus. It is one of
the most elegant, but also most obscure passages of the book. Wittgen-
stein’s repetition and variation of the basic theme ‘The sense of the world
must lie outside the world’ almost borders to poetry.48 However, he also
repeats and varies themes of the preceding. The book has said much about
the ‘sense of a proposition’, but the ‘sense of the world’ is new and by no
means a mere application of the previous definitions. The sense of proposi-
tions accounts only for what can happen and be the case in the world, as
Wittgenstein metaphorically says – metaphorically because there is no out-
side to this inside. Yet, having transcended the framework with the expres-
sion ‘sense of the world’, he now starts speaking of such an outside, if only
via negativa. This outside is non-accidental, nicht-zufällig. Taking up and
affirming the absence of Zufall in logic, postulated in the beginning of the
Tractatus (TLP 2.012), Wittgenstein sees the contingency of all events in
the world as the reason for their lack of value. Nietzsche makes similar
claims when he contrasts events in the world with value; he condemns ‘the
frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of
“history” … the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its
game in respect to the future of mankind’ (BGE §203). What is ‘non-acci-
dental’ is the proper field of philosophy, the ‘outside’ of Wittgenstein’s
logical space with its specific necessity. Again like the dice necessarily have
six sides, and when they fall, the result is Zufall, chance, contingency. Yet
the construction of a six-sided die is outside, beyond, the game of dice.
Let us consider another expression. Wittgenstein argues that if there was
value in the world ‘it would be of no value’ and repeats this odd wording
in the next sentence: ‘If there is a value that has value, it must be outside
all happening and being-so’ (TLP 6.41). It is an unusual reasoning which
Wittgenstein shares with Nietzsche: both ask for the ‘value of values’.
Wittgenstein too uses value in the different senses of measure and mea-
sured. The value that is measured is the totality, the whole way of looking
at things. But how shall it itself be measured? How are we to decide if it
has value? This question, Wittgenstein sees, has no sense. We lack a stan-
dard when we deliberately go beyond the standard and try seeing it from
the outside. There are no ethical propositions.49
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 137

From the outside one would see the world as a limited whole – the mysti-
cal that eludes any attempt of expression. The repetition of the word ‘tran-
scendental’ indicates the similar status of logic and ethics (6.421).50 Both
concern the totality of possibilities, a holistic perspective of the world. The
propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical (6.54) because they do not
stand in picturing relations to facts in the world, but constitute the world
as a whole. These propositions are ‘my propositions’, the propositions of a
subject that takes a particular attitude to, and in a certain sense is, ‘my
world’ (5.63).51 It is tempting to put it in Nietzschean terms: the logical
system of the Tractatus, presented with a lucidity comparable to Spinoza’s,
is in fact a ‘confession of its originator’ who codifies his morality into a
sign-language. No single proposition is ethical, but the design of the whole
and the attitude it reveals. The subject, however, which created the world
in its image, the ‘subject of the ethical’, is ineffable (6.423; also 5.631).
In 1916, Wittgenstein writes in a notebook ‘good and evil do not exist’
(MS 103, 18r). At first glance this resembles an immoral position beyond
good and evil. However, the non-existence is as little pejorative as the ver-
dict of non-sense in TLP 6.54. Quite the contrary, a ‘value that has value’
must precisely be nonsense and non-existence. For things that ‘exist’ are in
the world, whereas good and evil willing is not in the world. It concerns
the world as a whole which, depending on the ethical will, ‘must so to
speak wax or wane as a whole. The world of the happy is quite another
than that of the unhappy’ (6.43).
While there are similarities to both, it is hard to decide whether Wittgen-
stein’s statements on the will are closer to Schopenhauer or to Nietzsche.52
Nietzsche’s will seems to be directed at ordinary domination and rule, at
the execution of power in the world.53 But there is more than that: it takes
the will to ‘create values’ in the transcendental sense that I have sketched.
If values concern holistic systems of possibilities, like the logic of the Trac-
tatus, then the Will to Power might be understood as a will to create new
possibilities, to create new possibilities of seeing the world as a whole –
and according new possibilities of action.54 In one of his statements on
philosophy, Nietzsche complains about his time ‘which would like to con-
fine every one in a corner, in a “specialty,”’, a mark of ‘weakness of the
will’. He requires philosophers to oppose these tendencies by fostering
‘strength of will’ and by placing ‘the greatness of man, the conception of
“greatness”, precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in
his all-roundness’ (BGE §212). Obviously, Nietzsche very often uses ‘Will
to Power’ in a more worldly sense, but whenever he considers the creation
or transvaluation of values (§§211, 213), which seems to be his ultimate
aim, his will comes to resemble Wittgenstein’s ethical will. ‘Whatever has
value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its na-
ture – nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time,
138 Pascal F. Zambito

as a present – and it was we who gave and bestowed it. Only we have cre-
ated the world that concerns man!’ (GS §301).
Besides the difference that ‘will’ frequently has a more worldly character
in Nietzsche, the most striking disagreement between the two is that Witt-
genstein does not reject the Christian value ‘good and evil’. After his read-
ing of Nietzsche in 1914, he is impressed by the hostility to Christianity
and admits ‘there is also some truth in his writings’. Convinced that ‘Chris-
tianity is the only secure way to happiness’, he considers Nietzsche’s posi-
tion: ‘But what if someone spurned this happiness? Could it not be better
to perish, unhappily, in a hopeless struggle with the outer world? Such a
life is senseless. But why not live a senseless life?’ (MS 102, 39v-40v). This
is an instance of the sense (meaning) of life as opposed to the sense of a
proposition. Taking world and life as one and the same (TLP 5.621), we
are here on the level of the ‘sense of the world’, that is, on the level of the
‘value of values’ where we no longer have standards of meaningful measur-
ing. The waxing and waning of the world as a result of the ethical will is
specified in the 1916 notebook ‘As if by accession or loss of a sense’ (MS
103, 12r).
While his considerations are on the same level as Nietzsche’s transvalu-
ations of one’s attitude to the world, Wittgenstein does not join him in re-
jecting Christian morality. He associates the good will with sense per se
and the evil will with the absence of sense. While for Nietzsche ‘good and
evil’ is one way to look at the world among other moralities (at least ‘good
and bad’ is an alternative), Wittgenstein, at least in his first book, considers
only good or evil as the two possible moral attitudes (perhaps with degrees
between them). Unlike Nietzsche, he seems to be more attached to moral
absolutism (see also his Lecture on Ethics, LE) and thereby resembles
Schopenhauer’s holding on to Christian values, which Nietzsche later at-
tacked vigorously, despite his basically atheist metaphysics. Happiness
may not be an argument for Wittgenstein, but somehow justified in itself,
like a tautology (MS 103, 35r).

4 Philosophy at the Limits of Language

Let us take stock. Despite the difference in how they value different possi-
bilities to look at the world, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein agree on a number
of basic assumptions. Both share the idea that seemingly objective philo-
sophical systems are based on personal preferences and questions of mo-
rality. Only as such they have value, not in virtue of their objective truth.
Wittgenstein shows what Nietzsche calls ‘the good taste of courage’ by
admitting this personal involvement and by signaling to the reader the
limits of his language. This leads to the second similarity: Both see
the problem to express thoughts that concern the conditions of sense if the
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 139

only thoughts that can be expressed are those that have sense. Thirdly,
however, both agree that it is precisely this level where the work of philoso-
phy begins. What Nietzsche only occasionally admits, the Tractatus makes
very clear: philosophy is nonsense. By drawing the limit of sense it goes
beyond this limit. By exploring the limits and conditions of language and
morality, both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein run up against the limits of
language. The Tractatus has value because it discusses the world as a
whole. It advances a perspective that can only be communicated in a per-
formative, literary manner or exemplary manner where not every word
makes sense in the conventional way. Both thinkers’ views of language
feature a certain tension between the common use of language which has
sense, but no value – and a philosophical (poetic) use of language which
has no sense, but which alone can touch the question of value.55 In this
sense, the Tractatus is an attempted Umwertung, introducing a new lan-
guage with new values and thus resembling Nietzsche’s attempts of a trans-
valuation of values.
If this is somewhat plausible for the Tractatus, there remains the ques-
tion whether Wittgenstein kept this view in his later work. Liam Hughes
holds the later Wittgenstein to locate the sense of the world within it
which would amount to a major difference to his earlier position.56 There
are indeed no traces of an outside of the world in the Investigations or
other late writings. Nevertheless, I claim that the basic movement of
thought has not changed. It depends on how one understands ‘world’. It
is possible to understand it as the structure or perspective through which
we conceive situations. It is holistic only in the sense that a perspective
determines everything that you see, but not in the sense of an absolute
totality which at least resonated with the Tractatus. Revisiting his early
philosophy, Wittgenstein leaves behind this absolutism and allows for a
plurality of language-games, but he keeps the idea that language cannot
go beyond itself. While he now speaks of many systems, many worlds, as
it were – ‘A system is so to speak a world’ (MS 105, 30) – he still sees that
every such system has its language and cannot transcend it. A new move-
ment of thought creates a new world. His remarks about his own phi-
losophy testify to the aim of nevertheless trying to transcend conceptual
systems by presenting alternative views (philosophy as poetry) or by
showing how the current system and its seeming necessities are merely
contingent products of our forms of life (resembling Nietzsche’s genea-
logical method).57 In line with his efforts to change his students’ style of
thinking and to teach new movements of thought, he wants to show his
readers alternative ways of conceiving situations, to show them new lan-
guages, new notations (MS 113, 27r). Apart from the reference to Ni-
etzsche in 1938, he seldom uses the terminology of value in his late work,
but he still thinks about these matters in a similar way.
140 Pascal F. Zambito

The seriousness of his late philosophy, which at first glance seems to

concern only minor grammatical confusions, may count as evidence for
this reading. Changing one’s perspective can be considered an ethical ques-
tion. And it can be hard, like changing one’s habits; it can, in Nietzsche’s
words, have ‘the heart against it’. In 1931, Wittgenstein writes ‘philosophy
requires a resignation of feelings, not of the intellect. It can be difficult not
to use an expression, like it can be difficult to withhold your tears, or an
outburst of anger’ (MS 110, 189). And in 1938, he remarks, with a refer-
ence to Schopenhauer ‘If you find yourself stumped trying to convince
someone of something & not being able to get anywhere, tell yourself that
it’s the will & not the intellect you’re up against’ (MS 158, 34v). The shifts
of perspective that Wittgenstein aspires to can be painful like Nietzsche’s
transvaluations. While this is obvious in the case of Nietzsche’s concern
with will and morality, Wittgenstein emphasises the less obvious connec-
tion – present but less prominent in Nietzsche – of will, value and lan-
guage. Several times, he compares the problem of the will with his major
problem of understanding a language (MS 107, 152 and 231; PI §174).
Willing does not guarantee a successful (or good) action, nor does under-
standing make a proposition true – but both concern the conditions of
possible actions and propositions and hence the perspective that one takes
towards a situation as a whole. It is in this sense that Wittgenstein’s aim
can be said to be a change of how one looks at things, a change of one’s
‘world’ on the level where philosophy works and where value resides. In
this sense the aim of his late philosophy can be called Umwertung. While
the Tractatus resembles Nietzsche’s ‘prophetic’ side which claims to pro-
claim the truth and the right morality, the late Wittgenstein can be com-
pared to Nietzsche’s ‘critical’ side which stresses plurality.58
Let us go back to the remark from 1930 which takes up the Tractatus
idea ‘what cannot be expressed, cannot be said either’ and connects it to
the idea of movements of thought. A few lines before, we find another
prominent occurrence of ‘value’ in Wittgenstein’s oeuvre: ‘The results of
philosophy are the discovery of some piece of plain nonsense and the
bumps that the understanding has got by running up against the limits of
language. They – these bumps – make us understand the value of that
­discovery’ (MS 108, 247). This remark from 1930 got transferred to the
Investigations almost without change (PI §119). The connection of
­nonsense to value thus appears as a constant in his philosophy. The limit
that Wittgenstein drew in the Tractatus and that he keeps on drawing,
­although he changes from unity to plurality, is beyond true and false, like
it is beyond good and evil. It is the limit between what can be expressed
and what cannot be expressed. It is a notation, a perspective, an act of
­linguistic legislation. It determines sense and is itself nonsense, elaborating
on the difference between possibilities and the setting of these possibilities
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 141

which concerns the level of will and value. Although Wittgenstein and
Nietzsche did not always make the same valuations, it seems plausible they
were talking about the same thing.

Notes
1 There are traces of the idea in Nietzsche’s notes earlier than Beyond Good and
Evil (Brobjer 2010, 14), but these do not concern me here, as I focus primarily
on Wittgenstein’s use of the expression who surely did not study the genesis of
Nietzschean concepts. As with most of his ‘influences’ he took up an idea where
he found it – possibly published Nietzsche volumes, but the expression was so
widespread in cultural discourse that its mention cannot prove familiarity with
any particular work – and used it for his own purposes.
2 Prominent instances appear in the preface of Twilight of the Idols and in the
last words of The Antichrist. ‘Umwerthung aller Werte’ was also the title of a
planned book project which remained incomplete due to Nietzsche’s mental
collapse (Brobjer 2010, 20–23).
3 The ‘utopian’ interpretation is similar to the ‘critical’ one: the latter emphasises
the critique of current values, the former the call for, or creation of, new values;
both remain vague about what the new values are. For this reason, Thomas
Brobjer prefers the ‘dichotomy’ interpretation which takes the new values to be
in fact old, namely the noble values of the ancients before the Christian revalu-
ation. It is supported by Nietzsche’s positive references to Antiquity and espe-
cially the Renaissance as a return to old values (GM, I, §16; Brobjer 1996,
2010, 25). In BGE, however, there remains Nietzsche’s emphasis on novelty,
experiment and openness to vindicate utopian readings.
4 See Brusotti 2009, 344.
5 Ray Monk highlights the decisive change that this event brought about, espe-
cially for Wittgenstein and his family: ‘it marked the difference between being
an Austrian citizen and a German Jew’ (Monk 1990, 391). It does not seem
far-fetched to call this a ‘revaluation’ if one considers how formerly respected
citizens like the Wittgensteins or Sigmund Freud were now discriminated and
threatened by an ideology which exploited Nietzschean thought.
6 See especially Conant 2011 and Pichler 2013 for accounts of Wittgenstein’s
developments after autumn 1936.
7 Venturinha 2018, 167 and Schulte 2013, 349.
8 One may argue that the idea ‘to bring words back from their metaphysical to
their everyday use’ (PI §116; in 1937, Wittgenstein changed an earlier version
from ‘correct use’ to ‘everyday’) implies a dichotomy between everyday and
metaphysical, analogous to the dichotomy between ancient and Christian. The
shift of perspective would indeed be a re-valuation in Brobjer’s sense. It could
be supported by Nietzsche’s call for etymological studies of moral concepts
which connects linguistic and moral re-valuations (GM I, §17). I leave this
question to future work.
9 See Conant 2011.
10 Schulte 2013, 351.
11 Before his lecture on Knowledge in Easter Term 1938, he had not taught for
five terms (WCL, x).
12 The word ‘grammatical movement’ occurs, for instance, in PI §401, first
drafted in December 1937 (MS 120, 46v).
142 Pascal F. Zambito

13 In a letter to G.E. Moore, Wittgenstein states that his first meeting will take
place on 25 April 1938 (WCL, 3).
14 Wittgenstein often regards a situational contrast more important than termino-
logical consistency. Elsewhere, he draws a distinction between ‘Gedankenbe-
wegung and ‘Stil’, between thinking and writing (MS 183, 100–101). Not
much later in the same notebook he compares a new movement of thought to
a painter’s change of style (Richtung) (141; cf. ‘Malweise’ in PI §401) – he
seems to use the word ‘style’ in a broader sense only in his English lectures. See
also Philip Mills’ essay in this volume.
15 Besides Brusotti 2009, Schulte 2013 and Venturinha 2018, see Oskari Kuuse-
la’s and Philip Mills’ essays in this volume.
16 Schulte 2013, 350.
17 See CC, Wittgenstein’s letter from October 1919 to the publisher Ludwig
Ficker. To get an idea of this ethical sense of the book, he recommends to read
the preface and the end – I take this to include the 6.4s.
18 See MS 109, 189, 199 and 291. Freud’s ideas and grammatical moves in the
context of his theory of dreams are also discussed in the second lecture in 1938
– another connection between the early and the late 30s (WCL, 8).
19 It is less well known that Wittgenstein qualifies his remark ‘I have never in-
vented a movement of thought’ (MS 154, 15) a few pages later, saying that he
did create new movements at the time of writing the Tractatus, whereas now,
in 1932, he was only applying old ones (MS 154, 19).
20 See MS 130, 184; MS 131, 122; MS 133, 47; MS 136, 31a; MS 137, 47b. The
remark on learning is in MS 137, 89b.
21 See MS 183, 100; MS 109, 207. The scientific methods that he does appreciate
(Hertz’s geometrisation of mechanics, Boltzmann’s models, Einstein’s metrol-
ogy) are exempt here; he was not against science, but against scientism.
22 See MS 183, 14.
23 ‘Die Denkbewegung in meinem Philosophieren müßte sich in der Geschichte
meines Geistes, seiner Moralbegriffe & dem Verständnis meiner Lage wieder-
finden lassen’ (MS 183, 125).
24 Based on a remark from 1930 (MS 110, 61), Brusotti connects Wittgenstein’s
‘movement of thought’ with Kant’s ‘intellectual revolution’ (2009, 347) – the
connection is plausible but must not be pushed too far, as Brusotti admits.
25 See again Brusotti 2009, 347, but also Penco 2010 and Kusch 2011 for more
detailed discussions.
26 In Wittgenstein’s own view, his similarity to Einstein and Kant consists pre-
cisely in this awareness of the limits of representation (MS 108, 271 and MS
110, 61; cf. Brusotti 2009, 347–348).
27 McGuinness 1988, 36.
28 See Pilch 2019, 102–109.
29 McGuinness 1988, 225. In this volume, the reprinted articles by Majetschak
and Venturinha follow this assumption.
30 See Brusotti 2009, 361; the 1905 pocket edition has been published by Kröner
(JGB).
31 Clark and Dudrick 2012, 2; similar Horstmann 2001, vii, and Sommer 2016,
28.
32 A similar connection is made in the 1873 essay On Truth and Lie in an Extra-
Moral Sense. I prefer the translation of ‘außermoralisch’ as ‘extra-moral’ rather
than ‘non-moral’ because, like ‘beyond good and evil’, it claims a non-commit-
ted perspective on morality ‘from the outside’ and not necessarily its negation.
 ‘jenseits der Grenze’ 143

Apparently once good and evil are challenged, true and false are challenged too
– as indicated by the unusual opposition of truth and lie.
33 Friedrich Waismann uses this passage almost literally, but without quotation
marks, in Sprache, Logik, Philosophie. The book had started as a collaboration
with Wittgenstein in the early 1930s, but was completed much later by Wais-
mann alone. It should summarise Wittgenstein’s key ideas and integrate them
into the programme of the Vienna Circle. In this context, Waismann seems to
agree with Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the failures of traditional philosophy and
suggests the new philosophy of language as a means to overcome them (see
Brusotti 2009, 352).
34 Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophical dichten is not restricted to lyric poetry (see
Janik 2018, 144; Klagge 2021, 84).
35 Occasionally, Wittgenstein speaks of the ‘herd’ and its language too. Philosophy
is only possible for those who resist the grammatical confusions of the common
‘herd’-language (MS 113, 23v; see Majetschak’s contribution to this volume).
36 It is only almost Wittgensteinian because the ‘unity’ that is questioned is re-
placed not by a network of ‘family-resemblances’ (PI §§66–67), but by a com-
posite phenomenon which still seems to have an essence for Nietzsche.
37 Endres 2013, 233. In this context, it is another striking coincidence that both
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein call the theoretical quest for truth a ‘refinement’
(Verfeinerung) of a primitive level of practical life which is itself neither true
nor false, but beyond (or prior to) this opposition (BGE §24; cf. MS 119, 147)
38 See Sommer 2016, 272–277; WP, 1067; in an early German edition of WP, the
passage marked the end of the volume: ‘Diese Welt ist der Wille zur Macht –
und nichts außerdem! Und auch ihr selber seid dieser Wille zur Macht – und
nichts außerdem!’ (Nietzsche 1921, 696) – ‘This world is the Will to Power –
and nothing else! And you too are this Will to Power yourselves – and nothing
else!’. The published version in BGE is much more tentative, starting with ‘Sup-
posing’ and largely put in the subjunctive mood.
39 Nietzsche frequently refers to the Fall (e.g. BGE §202) which is not surprising
given his general concern with the origins of Jewish-Christian morality. His
ideal of a ‘second innocence’ is discussed in P.K. Westergaard’s essay in this
volume. The Genealogy of Morality is one of the Philosophical Myths of the
Fall that Stephen Mulhall presents (2005). He also explores Heidegger and the
late Wittgenstein, but not the Tractatus.
40 Clark and Dudrick 2012, 83. They link BGE §11 to §4 where Nietzsche explic-
itly speaks of his ‘new language’.
41 The possessive pronoun corresponds to that in TLP 5.6 (‘my world’).
42 Wittgenstein’s later method of language-games solves the problem of universal-
ity, which permeates the Tractatus, by presenting every language-game as one
among others. But he holds on to his view that one cannot transcend a game.
Therefore he tries to change the reader’s perspective by presenting examples
and alternative views rather than conventional arguments that would require
an objective standpoint outside any system.
43 See Kuusela 2019, 13.
44 Wittgenstein claims to express the ethical by remaining silent about it (see CC,
letter to Ficker, October 1919). For Nietzsche, it is one feature of the philo-
sophical sign-language that much may remain unexpressed in it (BGE §196).
45 While I mostly follow, Ramsey and Ogden’s authorised translation, here Pears
and McGuinness’s translation is better because it keeps the Schopenhauerian/
Nietzschean language of ‘mirroring’.
144 Pascal F. Zambito

46 In this sense, they come to resemble the valueless ‘value of a variable’ as Quirin
Oberrauch has pointed out to me.
47 The language of how and that has a Schopenhauerian ring just like the coordi-
nation of subject (will) and world. I am inclined to think that Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche and early Wittgenstein share a similar view of ethics as far as its
transcendental function is concerned. Nietzsche’s later attacks on Schopen-
hauer do not nullify his theoretical metaphysics, but inverse his valuation: in-
stead of negation, Nietzsche calls for affirmation of the will.
48 See Perloff 2019, 22.
49 This implies that for Wittgenstein, as for Nietzsche, ethics is not a science (see
Hughes 2000, 85).
50 I cannot address the question why ‘ethics and aesthetics are One’ here, but a
Nietzschean approach seems again promising. Both thinkers’ literary attempts
to change their readers’ perspective might be a fruitful trace.
51 The connection between 5.6 and 6.4 goes beyond the scope of this paper (on
solipsism see Venturinha’s chapter in this volume). I only want to highlight a
performative movement of linguistic self-overcoming, similar to the one that
Endres reconstructs for BGE §24. Having stated that ‘we cannot say in logic,
“The world has this in it, and this, but not that.”’ (TLP 5.61), Wittgenstein
writes, only a few lines later, ‘there is no such thing as the subject that thinks
and entertains ideas’ (5.631). The subject, with clear allusions to Schopen-
hauer, does not ‘exist’ in the sense of being in the world, but is its transcenden-
tal limit (5.632).
52 Glock also brings in Kant because of the distinction between good and evil will-
ing (1999, 443).
53 Or in the soul of the subject: Nietzsche’s idea of ‘subjective multiplicity’ (BGE
§12) as an arena of competing drives is a point of disagreement with Wittgen-
stein for whom a ‘composite soul would not be a soul any longer’ (TLP 5.5421).
54 At the end of the first essay of GM, Nietzsche calls for ‘etymological’ studies of
moral concepts. While he probably thinks of traces like the connection from
‘schlecht’ (bad) to ‘schlicht’ (simple, plain), we can apply the method to his
own thesis: the German ‘Macht’ comes from the Middle High German verb
‘mugen’ from which also ‘möglich’ (possible) is derived. The same connection
of possibility and power is visible in the English word ‘might’.
55 Maria Alvarez and Aaron Ridley, who are otherwise very critical of compari-
sons between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, admit and elaborate this similarity
with regards to PI §531-352 (Alvarez and Ridley 2005, 13–15).
56 Hughes 2000, 87–88.
57 In his very last writings on certainty, Wittgenstein speaks of forms of life as
‘beyond justified and unjustified’ – one of the few instances of the word ‘jen-
seits’ in his oeuvre: ‘jenseits von berechtigt und unberechtigt’ (MS 175, 56r).
58 Peter von Zima distinguishes a prophetic and a critical, more dialogical, side of
Nietzsche (2012, 111–117).

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6 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and
Future Philosophers
The Notion of Truth in
Philosophy

Oskari Kuusela

Wittgenstein compares his attempt to teach a ‘new movement of thought’

with Nietzsche’s reevaluation of values, and connects his conception that
philosophy should be written as poetry with Nietzsche’s approach to phi-
losophy. This chapter develops an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks
in light of his rejection of philosophical or metaphysical theses in the sense
of true/false propositions regarding universal/exceptionless essential
­necessities. Whilst philosophical accounts can on Wittgenstein’s view be
true, truth in philosophy, as in poetry, isn’t to be understood in terms of
the truth of propositions, regardless of whether the truths in question are
contingent or necessary. I suggest that Wittgenstein’s conception of truth in
philosophy can help to understand what Nietzsche may have had in mind
by questioning the value of truth and by proposing a revaluation of
­philosophers’ will to truth. On this account Wittgenstein emerges as one of
the non-dogmatic future philosophers, whose arrival Nietzsche predicts.
I conclude by outlining how Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals can
be seen, not as a poorly justified piece of empirical history, but as an
instance of philosophical poetry in Wittgenstein’s sense. On this
­
­interpretation, Nietzsche articulates an account of morality by proposing a
novel picture (a mode of representing or envisaging) its genealogy. By
putting forward this possibility he is able to question widely held
­
­assumptions about the systematicity of morality, whilst the justification
and truth of Nietzsche’s alternative account is judged on the basis of its
clarificatory capacity in accordance with how Wittgenstein conceives of
the justification and truth of philosophical accounts. Nietzsche’s approach
in Genealogy can also be usefully compared with Wittgensteinian natural
history, understood as a special case of philosophical methodology.

1 Philosophy, Truth and Philosophical Theses

There are few things that philosophers agree about and haven’t questioned.
This isn’t surprising, given how the critical examination of extant views is

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-8
148 Oskari Kuusela

an essential part of philosophy. This constant critical attitude can be con-

nected with philosophy’s commitment to truth. Critical examination is im-
portant, because it helps to avoid untruth. Significantly, however, this
commitment to truth itself, what it means and involves, hasn’t been simi-
larly subjected to critical examination. One of the few critical examiners of
this commitment, or the will of philosophers to truth, is Nietzsche who
maintained that not even this matter is beyond revaluation (BGE 2001,
§§1–5; GM 2006, III, §24). Here a disputed question arises: whether and
in what sense Nietzsche’s critical examination of the commitment or will
of philosophers to truth amounts to a rejection of the notion of truth,
­either generally or in philosophy specifically.1 In what follows I’ll argue
that Nietzsche only rejects the notion of philosophical truth in the specific
sense of metaphysical theses about an ideal reality or the real world behind
a world of appearances which is similarly criticised and rejected by
­Wittgenstein in his later philosophy. Arguably, Wittgenstein’s account of
truth in philosophy can help to understand what Nietzsche might have had
in mind. This, at least, is suggested by how the proposed interpretation
helps to solve certain problems that otherwise arise for Nietzsche or the
interpretation of his philosophy. (For example, if there’s no truth, how is
the project of revaluating the value of truth itself possible?) Accordingly,
I propose that Wittgenstein can be envisaged as one of the future
­philosophers whose arrival Nietzsche predicts, characteristic of whom is
that they are not afraid of ‘dangerous perhapses’ and that their approach
can avoid ‘the prejudices by which metaphysicians of all ages can be
­recognized’ (BGE, §2).
Another almost never questioned assumption is that the proper way to
articulate philosophical truths are philosophical or metaphysical theses,
understood as true/false propositions concerning universal/exceptionless
necessities or the essential characteristics of philosophy’s objects of investi-
gation. This assumption, which isn’t the same as the first one albeit con-
nected, was questioned by Wittgenstein. Similarly to the difficulties of
interpreting Nietzsche, Wittgenstein’s readers have struggled to make sense
of his critique of philosophical theses. It has been confused with the rejec-
tion of philosophical views, as if theses were the only way to articulate
philosophical views.2 Notably, the latter kinds of interpretations of Witt-
genstein give rise to similar problems that have occupied the readers of
Nietzsche. If there are no theses, is there such a thing as truth in philoso-
phy? What might truth mean in philosophy, if it’s something distinct from
the truth of empirical claims and metaphysical theses? As I will explain,
Wittgenstein has an answer to these questions, and it seems helpful to read
Nietzsche in a similar way. However, this way of interpreting Nietzsche is
possible only insofar as he doesn’t reject the possibility of philosophical
truth altogether. We must therefore start with this issue.3
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 149

Nietzsche writes about truth and philosophy:

Suppose that truth is a woman – and why not? Aren’t there reasons for
suspecting that all philosophers, to the extent that they have been dog-
matists, have not really understood women? That the grotesque serious-
ness of their approach towards the truth and the clumsy advances they
have made so far are unsuitable ways of pressing their suit with a
woman?
(BGE, Preface)

Evidently, this isn’t to deny the possibility of truth, but to express doubt
that philosophers as dogmatists can reach it. Perhaps there are better suit-
ors for truth, such as the future philosophers that Nietzsche predicts. He
comments further:

And perhaps the time is very near when we will realize again and again
just what actually served as the cornerstone of those sublime and un-
conditional philosophical edifices that the dogmatists used to build –
some piece of folk superstition from time immemorial (like the
soul-superstition that still causes trouble as the superstition of the sub-
ject or I), some word-play perhaps, a seduction of grammar or an over-
eager generalization from facts that are really very local, very personal,
very human-all-too-human.
(BGE, Preface)

What has gone wrong according to this isn’t that there’s no such thing as
truth in philosophy. It’s rather that, trying to establish metaphysical truths,
philosophers have promoted folk superstitions, word plays, grammar, or
an overeager generalization into ‘sublime and unconditional philosophical
edifices’. Thus, again nothing is implied about the possibility of philosoph-
ical truth as such, only whether dogmatic philosophers can reach it. As
Nietzsche also writes, dogmatic philosophy is a ‘monstrous and terrifying
mask’ such as ‘all great things’ seem to have first worn when wondering
about the Earth (BGE, Preface). But how could philosophy qualify as one
of the great things, if there were no way for it to eventually realize its great-
ness? This gives rise to the following question: How can we overcome
dogmatic philosophy, and unmask philosophy from this monstrous mode
of existence? How should mature philosophy approach things in order to
reach the truth? Relatedly, in order for Nietzsche to describe ‘Plato’s inven-
tion of pure spirit and the Good in itself’ as an error, and as involving
‘standing truth on its head’ (BGE, Preface), it seems he must assume that
it’s possible to say something true in philosophy – at least that Plato’s phi-
losophy constitutes an error. Indeed, even if Nietzsche’s claim about Plato
150 Oskari Kuusela

turned out to be erroneous itself, presumably it must be so by some crite-

rion of truth. We can also ask: How could anyone stand truth on its head
if there were no truth? As this illustrates, philosophy can’t easily rid itself
from the notion of truth.
Accordingly, Nietzsche comments on the new arriving breed of
philosophers:

Are they new friends of ‘truth,’ these upcoming philosophers? Probably,

since all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they certainly
will not be dogmatists. It would offend their pride, as well as their taste,
if their truth were a truth for everyone (which has been the secret wish
and hidden meaning of all dogmatic aspirations so far).
(BGE, §43; cf. §42)

Nietzsche thus isn’t claiming that the new breed of philosophers will aban-
don the notion of truth or that their philosophizing won’t be motivated by
the will to truth. Accordingly, as he explains in the Genealogy, ‘the value
of truth is tentatively to be called into question’ (GM, III, §24), i.e. not
conclusively or permanently. The point is only that the future philosophers
won’t be dogmatists who claim to establish the truth on behalf of every-
one, as if there were no different perspectives or all perspectives could be
reduced to the philosophical truth.4 Notably, however, with Wittgenstein
we can add the following. That a philosophical truth isn’t ‘a truth for ev-
eryone’ needn’t have any relativistic implications. It can be taken to merely
indicate the problem-relativity and consequent historicity of philosophical
clarifications, i.e. that there are no ‘general purpose clarifications’, but
clarifications constitute responses to particular problems in particular
­historical contexts (for Wittgenstein on the historicity of philosophy, see
­Kuusela 2008, chapter 7.2). Because the completeness of such ­clarifications
depends on what needs to be said in response to the problems in question,
different things might be said when addressing different problems ­pertaining
to the very same objects of investigation, but this implies nothing about the
relativity or subjectivity of truth (cf. PI §132; for Nietzsche’s ­perspectivism,
see Mitchenson 2013, chapter 2).
Explained in different terms, the problem with the claim to truth of dog-
matic metaphysical philosophers is that: ‘You rob reality of its meaning,
value and truthfulness to the extent that you make up an ideal world…
The ‘true world’ and the ‘world of appearances’ – in plain language, the
made-up world and reality…’ (EH 2005, 71). Interpreting this in Wittgen-
steinian terms, the characteristic universality/exceptionlessness of philo-
sophical statements isn’t to be explained by postulating an ideal, neat and
orderly, non-temporal reality as their target. Although this postulation
might seem to explain the characteristic universality of philosophical
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 151

statements that makes it hard to see how they could be true of the messy,
complex and changing empirical world full of exceptions, ultimately this
way of construing the function of philosophical statements merely seems
to result in the falsification of reality. The idealised accounts of philoso-
phers, put forward as claims about what is really real, can’t do justice to
the complexities of reality as we encounter it, thus robbing it of its mean-
ing, value, and truthfulness. As Nietzsche also explains:

– the truthful man, in that daring and final sense which faith in science
presupposes, thus affirms another world from the one of life, nature and
history; and inasmuch as he affirms this “other world”, must he not
therefore deny its opposite, this world, our world, in doing so?
(GM, III, §24)

The truthful man in this remark is the dogmatic metaphysical philosopher

who by postulating an ideal world denies the actual world of appearances
as the real world. It then remains for Nietzsche and the future philosophers
to find a way to philosophize about the actual world without falsifying it
and denying its reality in the manner of metaphysical dogmatists. What we
want to get to is this:

The true world is gone: which world is left? The illusory one, perhaps?
… But no! we got rid of the illusory world along with the true one!
(Noon; moment of shortest shadow; end of longest error; high point of
humanity; incipit Zarathustra).
(TI 2005, 171)

Nietzsche’s aim, I conclude, is to find his way out of this longest error,
rather than to deny that there’s truth at all or truth in philosophy. Let’s
turn next to how this way out of metaphysical philosophy can be con-
strued with the help of Wittgenstein who worked it out for himself in re-
sponding to the errors of his early philosophy. There he had postulated a
neat and regular ideal reality underlying the world of experience, assuming
that its essential characteristics could be clarified through logical analysis.
Later, however, he came to recognize this postulation as an instance of
dogmatic metaphysics, characteristic of which is that the philosopher proj-
ects onto reality their mode of representing it, elevating this model of real-
ity into a truth about what is really real. But this involves a failure to
recognize what is really going on, i.e. that one has articulated a model of
reality which now gets reified and turned into the true reality behind
appearances.
The influence of Nietzsche on Wittgenstein’s view of the problem with
dogmatic metaphysical philosophy can’t be excluded, but it’s difficult to
152 Oskari Kuusela

document. Wittgenstein himself only speaks of similarities between their

views. Nevertheless, there’s a certain overlap in their terminologies that
might indicate influence, with Wittgenstein describing metaphysical ac-
counts as sublimated or as treating their object as something sublime (cf.
PI §§38, 89, 94). Like Nietzsche he also identifies dogmatism as the prob-
lem with metaphysics, and similarly characterizes dogmatic metaphysics as
turning particular observations, examples, and considerations into univer-
sal ‘truths’, through which reality is falsified (cf. note 4). Let’s start from
how Wittgenstein explains the similarity between his philosophy and
Nietzsche’s.

2 Wittgenstein on Nietzsche, Philosophy, and Truth

Wittgenstein writes: ‘As I don’t want to teach more correct thinking, but
a new movement of thought, my purpose is the “revaluation of values”,
and thus I come to Nietzsche, just as through my view that the philoso-
pher should be a poet’ (MS 120, 145r). About philosophy and poetry
Wittgenstein writes: ‘I believe I have summed up my attitude towards
philosophy by saying: philosophy should really only be written as poetry’
(MS 146, 50).5 Neither remark is self-explanatory. However, given other
similar remarks, by a ‘new movement of thought’ we can understand
Wittgenstein’s new approach to philosophy developed in his later work.6
This involves the revaluation of the value of truth in the sense that Witt-
genstein rejects philosophical theses as the proper way to articulate or
express what is true in philosophy. Instead, he proposes to understand
the logical function, role or use of philosophical statements in a different
way that helps to eliminate the risk of dogmatic falsification. It’s in this
sense that Wittgenstein wants to teach a ‘new movement of thought’
rather than ‘more correct thinking’ that merely replaces old theories with
better ones (see below and PI §§130–131). How he understands the con-
nection between philosophy and poetry requires clarification in terms of
other remarks.
Wittgenstein writes about poetry and philosophy: ‘The poet too must
always ask himself: “is what I write really true?” – which need not mean:
“does it happen like this in reality”’ (MS 124, 29; cf. MS 161, 44v-45r).
Given that in the context of both occurrences of this remark Wittgenstein
is commenting on his own philosophical approach – ‘You must in any case
only say something old – and yet new!’ – the phrase ‘the poet too’ can be
understood in the sense of ‘the poet like the philosopher on my [Wittgen-
stein’s] account’. Again it’s not evident how the distinction between saying
something true and saying how things happen in reality ought to be inter-
preted. However, clarification can be found in Wittgenstein’s remarks that
contrast propositions with sentences in poems.
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 153

The sense of a sentence, the sense of a picture. If we compare a sentence

with a picture, we must consider whether we are comparing it with a
portrait (a historical representation) or with a genre-picture. And both
comparisons make sense.
(Sentences in poems correspond to genre-pictures.)
(MS 114, 154; cf. PI §522)

How is it with sentences that come up in poems. Here we certainly can-

not speak of verification, and yet these sentences have sense. They relate
to sentences for which there is verification like a genre-picture to a por-
trait. And this comparison ought to represent the matter completely.
[…] When I look at a genre-picture I do not take the people there to
be real humans, on the other hand their similarity with real humans is
essential for understanding the picture.
(TS 213, 85–86; cf. TS 212, 281–282, TS 211, 336)

Wittgenstein’s distinction between the truth of historical representations,

such as portraits, and propositions on the one hand, and the truth of genre-
pictures or genre-paintings and poems on the other can be explained as
follows. Whilst a historical representation or a proposition is true if things
are as it represents them as being, this isn’t true of genre-pictures because
they don’t represent any actual state of affairs. Accordingly, the truth of a
genre-picture doesn’t depend on the obtaining of any such particular state
of affairs. For example, a genre-picture that represents a scene from a cer-
tain period, such as the Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from
1568, couldn’t be regarded as true if some people in it wore contemporary
clothes and had mobile phones. But the reason why the picture isn’t true
isn’t that no one dressed like that or had a mobile phone at the wedding
depicted, because it doesn’t represent any actual wedding. The question,
rather, is whether the genre-painting captures something characteristic of
such weddings. Is this how people in general behaved, dressed up, and so
on in peasant weddings? One might also compare such a picture with real-
ity in some specific respect, for instance, whether this kind of food was
usually served in such weddings. Similarly to genre-pictures, philosophical
statements don’t normally constitute assertions about particular cases but
say something more general. Consequently, their truth doesn’t depend on
any particular state of affairs but – roughly – on whether they capture
something characteristic of the object of investigation, like a genre-pic-
ture.7 I’ll return to this in due course.
The preceding can be further clarified with reference to another character-
ization Wittgenstein gives of his method, although here he compares his
clarifications with paintings of landscapes rather than genre-pictures.
154 Oskari Kuusela

However, what he says about philosophy, poetry and genre-pictures seems

to hold similarly for landscape paintings. Just as a genre-picture, a landscape
painting, in the sense relevant for Wittgenstein’s comparison, is meant to
capture something characteristic of what it depicts. It’s not meant as an em-
pirically accurate representation of the landscape at any particular moment.
Wittgenstein writes about his logical or grammatical clarifications:

If we look at the actual use of a word, what we see is something con-

stantly fluctuating.
In our investigations we set over against this fluctuation something
more fixed, just as one paints a stationary picture of the constantly al-
tering face of the landscape.
When we study language we envisage it as a game with fixed rules.
We compare it with, and measure it against, a game of that kind.
If for our purposes we wish to regulate the use of a word by definite
rules, then alongside its fluctuating use we set up a different use by codi-
fying one of its characteristic aspects.
(MS 140, 33/PG, 77)

The point of Wittgenstein’s clarifications of language therefore isn’t to de-

scribe its uses exactly as they are in all their complexity and fluctuation.
Instead, such clarifications are meant to capture characteristic aspects of
use that are relevant for the particular clarificatory tasks, i.e. for ‘our pur-
poses’. Herein lies the similarity between philosophical clarifications and
landscape pictures.8 A landscape might look quite different depending on
light and weather. A landscape painting can’t capture all these different
faces of a landscape; it’s, literally, a static representation of something dy-
namic and changing. The same goes for philosophical or logical descrip-
tions of language use. Thus, philosophical clarificatory statements differ
from true/false propositions about actual language use. A proposition re-
garding actual language use is true if it represents its object accurately,
similarly to a portrait or a historical painting. Although it’s a complex is-
sue how we judge the similarity between a portrait and a person, a portrait
is true/false depending on whether it accurately captures the pictured per-
son. Likewise a historical painting is true if it accurately depicts what hap-
pened. With regard to Wittgenstein’s comparison between poetry and
genre-pictures we can now say that philosophical clarifications resemble
poems and genre-pictures by not being verifiable propositions about actual
reality, including actual language use. However, insofar as we can raise the
question ‘is what I write really true?’ in both poetry and philosophy, phi-
losophy and poetry can nevertheless be understood as saying something
true. To explain this, more needs to be said about the difference between
philosophical statements and true/false propositions.
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 155

First, Wittgensteinian philosophical clarifications of language use may

simplify (by abstracting away features of use) and idealize (by presenting
use as more regular or neater than it is), as illustrated by Wittgenstein’s
method of describing fluctuating uses of language by means of fixed and
definite rules. Importantly, as he notes, language is here only compared
with a game according to fixed and definite rules, not claimed to be one.
His approach thus doesn’t involve putting forward any theses about the
rules according to which language is actually used, or even claiming that
language use really is governed by fixed and definite rules. Instead rules
function here as the philosopher’s mode of representing language use. As
Wittgenstein notes elsewhere, ‘[…] we do not actually assert that lan-
guage is a game which is played according to rules (for otherwise we are
asserting something false), but we compare the phenomena of language
with such a game, and the one is more or less similar to the other’ (VW,
35/MS 302, 14; cf. PI §§81–83). The truth of philosophical clarifications
of language therefore differs from the truth of propositions about actual
language use in that whilst a proposition is false if it represents actual
reality as different from what it is, for example as simpler than it is, this
needn’t be so with a philosophical clarification. Rather, a philosophical
clarification only needs to capture what is relevant for clarifying and
solving the problems at hand. For this purpose something simplified and
idealized that brings out something characteristic may suffice. Indeed, in
philosophy something simplified and idealized may be just what is needed
in that simplification and idealization can importantly help to achieve
clarity by cutting through complexities that obscure what we are trying
to understand. Rather than on empirical accuracy, the truth of a philo-
sophical clarification depends on whether it clarifies the issues and en-
ables one to solve relevant problems.
Second, Wittgenstein’s point that the task of philosophy isn’t to repre-
sent actual reality empirically accurately can be further elucidated with
reference to what he says about natural historical descriptions in philoso-
phy (cf. PI §415). Distinct from descriptions given in terms of statements
of rule employed to clarify uses of language, natural historical descriptions
provide another example of Wittgensteinian methods (see Kuusela 2019,
chapter 6). Wittgenstein comments on the role of natural historical
considerations:

If concept formation can be explained by facts of nature, shouldn’t we

be interested, not in grammar, but rather in what is its basis in nature?
– We are, indeed, also interested in the correspondence between con-
cepts and very general facts of nature. (Such facts as mostly do not
strike us because of their generality.) But our interest is not thereby
thrown back on to these possible causes of concept formation; we are
156 Oskari Kuusela

not doing natural science; nor yet natural history since we can also in-
vent [erdichten] fictitious natural history for our purposes.
(PI II xii/PPF §365)

Insofar as philosophers can invent natural history for their purposes, they
are evidently not in the business of true/false representation of reality in the
sense of true/false propositions. A proposition that represents a made-up
state of affairs says something false. By contrast, something made up and
imaginary can in philosophy be used to bring out or draw attention to
something that is true about the objects of investigation. For example,
imagining or representing natural facts as different from what they are can
serve the purpose of drawing attention to connections between language
use and natural historical facts that are really there. In this way the natural
historical method can then be used to highlight certain aspects of language
use that, due to their familiarity, might otherwise escape our notice (cf. PI
§129). Wittgenstein explains the point as follows:

It is only in normal cases that the use of a word is clearly laid out in
advance for us; we know, are in no doubt, what we have to say in this
or that case. The more abnormal the case, the more doubtful it becomes
what we are to say. And if things were quite different from what they
actually are – if there were, for instance, no characteristic expression of
pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became exception and exception rule; or if
both became phenomena of roughly equal frequency – our normal lan-
guage-games would thereby lose their point. – The procedure of putting
a lump of cheese on a balance and fixing the price by the turn of the
scale would lose its point if it frequently happened that such lumps sud-
denly grew or shrank with no obvious cause.
(PI §142)

Here we have sketches of examples of how imagining natural historical

facts to be different can help to clarify the uses of language or their aspects
or features. For instance, our usual language-game of fixing the price of
cheese by weighing it would become impossible if cheeses grew and shrank
randomly. The natural historical regularity that they don’t do so thus un-
dergirds the language-game. However, given how accustomed we are to
this regularity, it’s very easy to take it for granted. Consequently, its impor-
tance might only become obvious by imagining things to be different. Like-
wise, if Wittgenstein is right, our language-game with ‘pain’ would become
impossible in the absence of characteristic external expressions of pain,
such as crying, moaning, and other bodily expressions. This is so, insofar
such external expressions are the basis of applying the concept to others in
the third person case, and insofar as the basis of the language-game and its
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 157

most basic form is the first person expressive uses of relevant words, as
Wittgenstein maintains. Were there no characteristic expressions of pain, it
wouldn’t be possible to teach a child to replace the natural expressions of
pain with their linguistic expressions which, according to Wittgenstein, is
how the connection is first established between relevant linguistic expres-
sions and pain.9 If this is right, the language-game couldn’t get off the
ground in the absence of such reactions. Wittgenstein writes:

How do words refer to sensations? […] This question is the same as:
how does a human being learn the meaning of names of sensations? For
example, of the word ‘pain’. Here is one possibility: words are con-
nected with the primitive, natural, expressions of sensation and used in
their place. A child has hurt himself and he cries; and then adults talk to
him and teach him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the
child new pain-behaviour.
(PI §244)

It’s significant that Wittgenstein only proposes this account as a possibility.

For his purposes of offering an alternative to the account of knowledge of
mental states as based on private definitions a possibility is enough. Noth-
ing more is needed, because already this possibility suffices to undermine
the supposed necessity of the traditional account, insofar as it provides us
with the basis for a better way of thinking that can solve relevant prob-
lems, such as the problem of other minds. (Not just any possibility can
achieve this, as illustrated by the proposal that understanding other’s men-
tal states depends on demons mediating between us. This explanation in-
volves notions that are equally or more problematic than those of the
original account.) Accordingly, Wittgenstein’s remark about how children
learn to use ‘pain’, doesn’t constitute a merely asserted, unjustified empiri-
cal claim, although, significantly, no evidence is given in its support.
Rather, the justification of this observation as a philosophical clarification
(or the starting point of one) depends on its problem solving capacity, i.e.
whether this alternative way of thinking can render relevant matters com-
prehensible (see Kuusela 2019, 185–188 for discussion). As I’ll explain in
section 3, Nietzsche’s genealogy can be understood analogously.
By outlining possibilities, including imagining natural historical facts to
be different, we can therefore bring out and draw attention to philosophi-
cally important features of the use of linguistic expressions. Seemingly
paradoxically, we can thus bring to view something that is true about ac-
tual language use and our concepts by imagining or describing what isn’t
the case. Accordingly, on Wittgenstein’s account philosophers should in-
deed be interested in possibilities and untruth, and not narrowly focused
on articulating true theses. A yet different illustration of philosophical
158 Oskari Kuusela

clarification by saying something strictly speaking false is Wittgenstein’s

grocery language-game at the start of the Investigations. Here he presents
the reader with a strange example of buying apples:

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping.

I give him a slip of paper marked ‘five red apples’. He takes the slip to
the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked ‘apples’; then he looks
up the word ‘red’ in a chart and finds a colour sample opposite it; then
he says the series of elementary number-words – I assume that he knows
them by heart – up to the word ‘five’, and for each number-word he
takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.
(PI §1)

This isn’t how we usually buy apples. Wittgenstein’s description says some-
thing false about our actual linguistic practices; it’s not an empirically ac-
curate description. Nevertheless, the way in which the example
misrepresents what it’s like to buy apples serves an important philosophi-
cal purpose of illustrating the differences between the uses of the words
‘five’, ‘red’, and ‘apple’. As the grocery example is set up, the way in which
the shopkeeper uses each word is clearly different: ‘five’ is used to deter-
mine a certain quantity of apples by correlating them with number words
said out loud; ‘apple’ is used as a name similarly to a label or a name tag;
‘red’ is used as a quality word with the shopkeeper identifying relevant
quality on the basis of a colour sample. Again the point is to bring out
something characteristic about the use of relevant words, but this isn’t the
same as representing the situation in a way that corresponds to how we
actually buy apples. Rather, here the differences between the uses of rele-
vant words are clarified by exaggerating them similarly to how one might
bring out something characteristic of a person’s face in a caricature by
­exaggerating its features. (These differences between the uses of relevant
words don’t stand out as clearly in their usual use.) Here then is a third
way in which saying something false can serve the purpose of understand-
ing what is true. Let’s now look more closely into how this is possible and
what it reveals about the notion of truth in philosophy.
In order to get clearer about this, let’s revisit Wittgenstein’s comparison
between philosophy, poetry and genre-pictures, the purpose of which is to
clarify the notion of truth in the case of philosophy and poetry. Provided a
genre-picture isn’t a representation of any particular state of affairs on
which its truth depends, what does such a picture represent or communi-
cate? How can it say anything true at all? Wittgenstein writes:

When I look at a genre-picture, it ‘tells’ me something, even though

I don’t believe (imagine) for a moment that the people I see in it really
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 159

exist, or that there have really been people in that situation. For suppose
I ask: ‘What does it tell me, then?’
A picture tells me itself is what I’d like to say. That is, its telling me
something consists in its own structure, in its own forms and colours.
(PI §§522–523; cf. TS 213, 86)

A genre-picture, and similarly the imagined grocery scene, tells us some-

thing, but not about anything in actual reality, i.e. that such and such
happened. Rather, the picture ‘tells me itself’, as one might say of a poem
or a novel. If so, however, how can a genre-picture be true at all, i.e. tell
us anything about what is actually the case? How can such a picture even
say anything that is characteristic or generally true, as I described genre-
pictures? Significantly, the same question arises for philosophical state-
ments generally, as Wittgenstein conceives them. This can be helpfully
discussed with reference to statements of grammatical rules, whose use
Wittgenstein characterizes as non-temporal and non-spatial, and in the
case of which the problem stands out. Unlike empirical statements that
concern particular cases in time and space, grammatical rules don’t state
anything about particular cases in time and space, either individually or
generalizing over them (MS 117, 24–25/MS 118, 18r; TS 221, 156–157;
RFM I § 102). On the one hand, this notion of non-temporal/non-spatial
use explains the exceptionless generality or universality of philosophical
statements without any need to postulate ideal non-temporal metaphysi-
cal entities as their target. Wittgensteinian philosophical statements are
universal/exceptionless, because they don’t concern any particular cases
to begin with, not because they concern something ideal that allows for
no exceptions. On the other hand, however, this view gives rise to the
questions I just asked about genre-pictures: What are philosophical state-
ments true about in this case? How can they be true about anything, if
they don’t speak of any actual cases? Wittgenstein’s answer is given in
terms of his account of the use or logical status of philosophical models
as objects of comparison:

Our clear and simple language-games are not preliminary studies for a
future regimentation of language – as it were first approximations, ig-
noring friction and air- resistance. Rather the language-games stand
there as objects of comparison which, through similarities and dissimi-
larities, are meant to throw light on features of our language.
For we can avoid unfairness or vacuity in our assertions only by pre-
senting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison – as a sort of
yardstick; not as a preconception to which reality must correspond.
(The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.)
(PI §§130–131)
160 Oskari Kuusela

Although this explanation refers to simple language-games, the point ap-

plies to other Wittgensteinian models too, including grammatical rules and
natural historical pictures (as exemplified by Investigations §244 above).
As it stands, such a model, like a genre-picture, merely ‘tells me itself’. By
simply stating a rule for the use of a word or constructing a simple lan-
guage-game, such as the grocery language-game, one hasn’t yet said any-
thing about the actual reality of language use. Nevertheless, such a model
can be brought into contact with reality by comparing actual reality with
it. By so doing we can then, for example, highlight specific aspects of the
actual use of language, such as the differences in the use of ‘five’, ‘red’, and
‘apple’. Thus, we can state something true (assuming these differences are
real), although, as explained, truth doesn’t here depend on empirical ac-
curacy, unlike the truth of empirical statements. Neither are philosophical
statements true of an ideal reality, however.
Wittgenstein’s method explains the possibility of simplification and ide-
alization in philosophy as follows. From this point of view, the purpose of
an idealized philosophical account isn’t to make a claim about a postulated
ideal reality or ideal entities. Rather, idealized notions and models can be
employed in philosophy to clarify specific aspects of the messy actual real-
ity, whereby actual reality is presented as being neater and simpler than it
is for the purposes of clarification by comparing actual reality with such
models (cf. the quote from MS 140/PG). Because actual reality isn’t claimed
to perfectly correspond to such a model, however, the problem of dogma-
tism is avoided. Now philosophers don’t have to insist that reality is actu-
ally like their models, because when reality is only compared with a model,
exceptions can be readily acknowledged. They no longer automatically
question the value of the model and falsify it, as counter-examples can
falsify philosophical theses, because on Wittgenstein’s approach no claim
is made about what all cases must be (RPP §633). Put in a yet different
way, rather than a feature of reality which philosophers make claims
about, essential exceptionlessness necessity is a characteristic feature of
philosophical models: such a necessity is what a philosophical model pres-
ents us with. Unlike the philosophical tradition has assumed, however, phi-
losophers’ statements about exceptionless necessity don’t constitute
truth-claims about ideal exceptionless regularities found in reality, being
true insofar as they correspond to such necessities. Rather, statements
about exceptionless necessities are instruments for clarifying the features
of actual messy and fluctuating reality. The truth of philosophical state-
ments therefore doesn’t depend on any ideal reality. A criterion for their
truth is whether the statements can clarify whatever they purport to clar-
ify, i.e. whether they enable us to understand what we are trying to under-
stand, and help us resolve our philosophical difficulties without giving rise
to other similar difficulties. (As noted, different things might be said about
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 161

the same objects of investigation in response to different problems regard-

ing them. Importantly, however, this doesn’t mean that what is true or the
case depends on the problems we happen to have. What problems preoc-
cupy us is a matter of contingent interests, but only the relevance of what
is said, not truth, depends on our interests; see Kuusela 2019, chapter 6.6.)
In conclusion to this section it’s worth noting how far Wittgenstein’s ap-
proach takes us from thinking of philosophical truth in terms of corre-
spondence between philosophical statements and reality. Due to their
function as objects of comparison, Wittgensteinian models enable us to
bring into focus features of reality or language use also by showing how
relevant cases differ from the models. The basic point is simple: by observ-
ing how certain cases differ from a model in specific respects, we can
achieve an understanding of those cases too without the model represent-
ing them or saying anything about them directly. As §130 says, objects of
comparison can throw light on things not only by way of similarities but
also dissimilarities. A particular variant of this method is using cases as
(what Wittgenstein calls) centres of variation (MS 152, 15–16; MS 115,
220–221). Here certain cases, models, descriptions or definitions thereof
are treated as centres of variation,10 whereby other cases can be seen as
differing from them in specific ways, oscillating around the centres. (There
can also be mixed cases that exhibit the features of more than one centre
of variation.) This method gives yet another illustration of how we can
achieve a perspicuous view of a complex objects of study without risking
false simplification that results from our requiring that all relevant in-
stances neatly fit our account.

3 Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals as Philosophical Poetry

In the preceding I have outlined how the notion of truth can be understood
in philosophy without postulating an ideal reality or entities which the
universal/exceptionless statements of philosophers would be true of. Im-
portantly, this rejection of ideal realities doesn’t require us to reject tradi-
tional philosophical statements. Certainly, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to
argue for the reduction of philosophical statements to merely empirical
ones, but maintains that this would make it impossible to explain excep-
tionless logical necessity (PI §240–242; RFM VI §49/MS 164, 149–150;
see Kuusela 2019, chapters 4 and 6, especially sections 4.6 and 6.3). In-
stead, Wittgenstein outlines a novel non-metaphysical way of using univer-
sal/exceptionless philosophical statements that makes it possible to avoid
the problem of dogmatism that arises when statements about exceptionless
necessities are put forward as true/false theses about exceptionless necessi-
ties in reality to which all relevant cases supposedly must conform. Ac-
cording to Wittgenstein, such statements also involve a confusion about
162 Oskari Kuusela

the use of ideal notions in philosophy (PI §§100–102; see Kuusela 2019,
chapter 4, especially sections 4.2–4.4). Ideal notions, such as exceptionless
logical or grammatical rules, are better understood as instruments of philo-
sophical clarification that function as modes of representing reality, rather
than being regarded as targets of true/false representations concerning an
ideal reality or ideal entities. As explained, by only comparing reality with
such models, we can then acknowledge exceptions to philosophical ac-
counts, and reach a richer and more nuanced understanding of reality in its
complexity.
It’s not possible to know for certain whether Nietzsche would welcome
this Wittgensteinian approach as an example of future philosophy, as he
envisages it. However, as I have presented Wittgenstein, there seems to be
a good fit between what Nietzsche wants and what Wittgenstein delivers.
Philosophy, as Wittgenstein conceives it, involves a revaluation of the
value of truth as the object of philosophers’ theses in the sense that phi-
losophers could claim to possess truth in their theses like a bottle contains
wine. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean giving up the commitment or will to
truth, only rejecting the dogmatism of philosophers and their theses about
ideal realities, as Nietzsche does on the interpretation outlined in section 1.
Insofar as philosophical theses risk or involve the dogmatic falsification of
reality, they are not the way to understand what is true. Rather, if Wittgen-
stein is right, grasping truth requires us to employ various methods and
modes of representation to bring truth to view or make it reveal itself.
Truth might also be hiding in plain sight, too familiar for us to be able to
grasp its significance. Certainly, it may be more complex than traditional
philosophical theses can account for.
Further, Wittgenstein’s approach helps to make sense of what Nietzsche
is trying to do in his Genealogy of Morals which seems helpfully compared
with Wittgenstein’s natural historical methods. (Nietzsche calls for a natu-
ral history of morals in BGE, §186.) Notably, just as Wittgenstein’s remark
about how children learn the use of pain (PI §244) isn’t an empirical claim
in need of empirical support, Nietzsche’s Genealogy can hardly be under-
stood as history in the sense of an empirical study backed up by evidence.
The absence of any supporting evidence is equally striking in both cases,
suggesting that this isn’t merely an accident. But if Nietzsche’s genealogy
can’t be understood as a historical study in the usual empirical sense, how
ought it to be understood? Note also the lack of philosophical significance
of usual kind of empirical historical claims. How can Nietzsche then claim
such significance for his study?
In outline, Nietzsche sketches in his Genealogy an account of the devel-
opment of ‘contemporary European morality’ from two different sources,
what he calls the morality of the nobles, associated with the Ancient
Greeks, and slave morality, associated with Jews and Christians. Due to
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 163

this genealogy, Nietzsche suggests, our contemporary morality is irreduc-

ibly complex. It involves different conceptions of the good, one contrasted
with evil and the other with bad, that are not consistent with one another.
If this is correct, contrary to what philosophers such as Kant have as-
sumed, morality doesn’t constitute a consistent systematic whole, and it
can’t be grounded on any single thesis regarding the nature of the good.
Accordingly, moral judgments and actions may be informed and backed
up by a variety of different, perhaps incompatible considerations, as if lit
up by different suns. ‘[W]e modern men are determined by a diversity of
morals; our actions shine with different colors in turn, they are rarely un-
ambiguous – and it happens often enough that we perform multi-colored
actions’ (BGE, §215). But if in the absence of proper evidential grounding,
this is just a story or a picture, or a poem in the sense of the German ‘Dich-
tung’, what philosophical work can it do?
Like Wittgenstein puts forward his account of how children learn the
use of ‘pain’ as a mere possibility, so Nietzsche’s genealogy can be read as
presenting us with a possible picture of the development of morality. Cru-
cially, just as it suffices for Wittgenstein to bring up a mere possibility to
question the necessity that philosophers have claimed for the traditional
account of knowledge of mental states, likewise for Nietzsche. If it’s pos-
sible that our contemporary morality is the result of a development such as
Nietzsche outlines, it can’t be taken for granted that a systematic account
of morality can be given. Hence, all needed to justify the project of the re-
valuation of values, and of examining our moral notions, is a possibility
(as long as it doesn’t introduce notions more problematic than it replaces;
cf. section 2 above). In order for Nietzsche to problematize systematic ac-
counts of morality, he therefore doesn’t need a properly documented his-
tory, just as Wittgenstein doesn’t need to appeal to developmental
psychology.
But is Nietzsche’s genealogy therefore merely speculative, something
which can’t be established as true or justified? No. The truth of Nietzsche’s
genealogy can be understood in light of what Wittgenstein says about the
truth of genre-pictures, poetry, and philosophy. Nietzsche’s account seems
indeed like a genre-picture in that it describes no scenes that could be docu-
mented as having actually happened (such as the Sack of Rome by Vi-
sigoths). There’s no answer to the question which historical persons
correspond to the different types of characters in Nietzsche’s genealogy,
such as the priests. Instead it provides us with a general picture that tries
to capture something characteristic of the development of morality, for
example, that certain conceptual regimes and modes of life collided during
this history and produced what we now know as morality. The way that
Nietzsche describes these conceptual regimes and modes of life may then
be left impressionistic or idealized. Nietzsche only needs to include
164 Oskari Kuusela

whatever he needs for the purpose of challenging the assumption about the
systematicity of morality, other details being irrelevant. Hence, we might
speak here of an idealized historical picture of the development of moral-
ity, corresponding to Wittgensteinian idealizations.
If the preceding is accepted, we have in place an account of the truth and
justification of Nietzsche’s genealogy. This isn’t a matter of whether his
account is empirically accurate, contrary to what we demand of history. As
explained, lack of empirical accuracy isn’t a problem for a philosophical
account, as long as it captures whatever is relevant for dealing with the
philosophical problems at hand. Accordingly, the philosophical work it
can do provides the criterion of truth for Nietzsche’s account of morality.
It can be regarded as true insofar as it successfully problematizes our as-
sumptions about the systematicity of morality, i.e. if upon examination we
conclude that our contemporary morality is indeed not systematic, and
that it can be better understood as made up of different elements, such as
Nietzsche describes. The truth of Nietzsche’s account therefore depends on
neither its empirical accuracy nor its capturing the ideal essence of moral-
ity underlying our moral practices. Rather, Nietzsche’s genealogy is an in-
strument of philosophical thought, a philosophical device designed to
clarify the nature of morality. Accordingly, its justification and truth can
be assessed on the basis of whether it can clarify these matters to us. (On
this account it’s possible to also maintain that an account of morality is
partially correct, insofar as it can clarify merely some of its aspects.)
As a final point, let’s return to Wittgenstein’s point that philosophy can
only be written as poetry. Another variant of the remark quoted earlier
puts the point about philosophy and poetry as follows: ‘The re/presenta-
tion [Darstellung] of philosophy can only be poetic [kann nur gedichtet
werden]’ (MS 115, 30). We are now in a better position to understand
what Wittgenstein means. As explained, a philosophical representation or
model isn’t justified, like a proposition, with reference to a corresponding
fact that makes it true. Neither can a philosophical representation be de-
rived from any facts, so to speak, because philosophical representations
are not representations of any facts, either empirical or metaphysical/ideal.
Instead of representing any facts, a philosophical representation articulates
a way of organizing or conceptualizing facts with the purpose of enabling
us to render them perspicuous. As Wittgenstein conceives philosophy, this
often involves the introduction/invention of new ways of conceptualizing
and envisaging things, such that the problems plaguing the old way of
thinking no longer arise in the context of these new ways of thinking (see
Kuusela 2023). As this brings out, the design of a philosophical mode of
representation, such as Nietzsche’s genealogy, is a creative act. Designing a
philosophical representation resembles in this sense composing a poem
rather than recording facts.11
 Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Future Philosophers 165

Notes
1 See Clark 1990, chapter 1 for an overview of different interpretative positions
with regard to whether and in what sense Nietzsche rejects the notion of truth.
A somewhat different approach that emphasizes the connection of truth with
value and its transformative potential is taken by Mitchenson 2013. Whilst
Wittgenstein too emphasizes the importance of being able to transform one’s
thinking in philosophy, and regards philosophy as requiring the development
of certain intellectual and other virtues, my focus here is on the notion of truth.
I’ll therefore not comment on these further similarities between the two phi-
losophers. See Kuusela 2023 for discussion of the notion of transformation of
thinking in Wittgenstein.
2 According to so-called therapeutic and liberatory readings, Wittgenstein merely
aims to dissolve philosophical problems without committing to any views as
true or correct (see Read and Hutchinson 2010, Read 2021). For a criticism
and alternative to this view of dissolution, see Kuusela, 2023.
3 My aim in the following isn’t to offer anything like a conclusive argument for
the view that Nietzsche doesn’t reject the possibility of truth or philosophical
truth, which is beyond the scope of this discussion. It’s only to establish that it’s
reasonable to read his late published works in this way.
4 Nietzsche’s criticism of the Stoics as projecting their idea of nature onto nature,
thus turning nature into their own image illustrates his point. What results is a
‘huge eternal glorification and universalization of Stoicism! For all your love of
truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hyp-
notic rigidity to have a false, namely Stoic, view of nature, that you can no
longer see it any other way’ (BGE, §9). This criticism is parallel to how Witt-
genstein criticises his early Tractatus as having projected a particular model of
language onto language claiming it to capture its hidden sublime essence,
whereby he fell captive to a certain dogmatic picture of language (PI §§89, 94,
104, 108, 114–115, 130–131). See Kuusela 2008, chapter 3 for the problem of
dogmatism and Wittgenstein’s solution to it.
5 ‘Wenn ich nicht ein richtigeres denken…’ and ‘… Philosophie dürfte man ei-
gentlich nur dichten’. He adds: ‘It seems that this reveals also how far my think-
ing belongs to the present, future or past. For herewith I have also revealed
myself as someone who cannot quite do what he wishes’ (MS 146: 50). The
interpretation suggests itself that Wittgenstein’s reservations about his abilities
have to do with his difficulties with writing philosophy mentioned in the pref-
ace to the Philosophical Investigations. It’s unclear, however, how this helps to
understand his relation to the present, future and past (cf. note 8). The two
remarks are from 1938 (MS 120) and 1933 (MS 146), that is, from a period
when Wittgenstein was still working out how exactly to characterise his new,
the so-called later approach, although by 1938 a typescript version of the early
parts of the Investigations (TS 220) was already in existence. For another re-
mark on the revaluation of values, see MS 183, 54 from the same period.
Klagge 2021 approaches the issue of Wittgenstein, philosophy, and poetry
somewhat differently from what I propose below. Wittgenstein’s remarks on
philosophy and poetry are also discussed by Schulte 2013 who connects them
with Wittgenstein’s characterizations of himself as a painter. Again the way I
develop these points is somewhat different.
6 Wittgenstein also describes himself as making propaganda for ‘one style of
thinking as opposed to another’ (LC, 28).
166 Oskari Kuusela

7 Wittgenstein’s later clarifications are not falsified by counter-examples in the

same way as traditional philosophical theses understood as exceptionless true/
false claims. See below.
8 Note the connection of this remark with Wittgenstein’s characterization of his
clarifications as sketches of landscapes in the preface to the Investigations. Al-
though paintings are not the same as sketches, the comparison between philo-
sophical clarifications and landscape pictures evidently retains its significance
for Wittgenstein after the early 1930s too, when the remark just quoted is
drafted.
9 According to the so-called private language argument, this connection can’t be
established by giving private definitions to words with reference to inner states
inaccessible to others. If so, not only does the traditional account, according to
which we know mental states from our own case, make knowledge of the men-
tal states of others impossible. It also makes it impossible to explain our rela-
tion to our own mental states (PI §243ff.).
10 Wittgenstein’s examples are punishment as retribution, deterrent and reform;
cf. Nietzsche’s discussion of different types of punishment in Genealogy (GM,
II, §4).
11 I’m grateful to Paul Deb, Tom Greaves, and the editors of this collection for
their comments on this essay.

Bibliography
Clark, Maudemarie. (1990). Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Klagge, James. (2021). Wittgenstein’s Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry. Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press.
Kuusela, Oskari. (2008). The Struggle against Dogmatism. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press.
———. (2019). Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press.
———. (2023) ‘Dissolution of Philosophical Problems and the Transformation of
Thinking.’ In Lucilla Guidi (ed.), Wittgensteinian Exercises: Aesthetic and Ethi-
cal Transformations. Leiden: Fink/Brill, 111–136.
Mitchenson, Katrina. (2013). Nietzsche, Truth and Transformation. Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Read, Rupert. (2021). Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy. New York:
Routledge.
Read, Rupert and Hutchinson, Phil. (2010). ‘Therapy’. In K.D. Jolley ed., Wittgen-
stein: Key Concepts. Durham: Acumen, 149–150.
Schulte, Joachim. (2013). ‘Wittgenstein on Philosophy as Poetry’. In M.F. Molder,
D. Soeiro, and N. Fonseca eds., Morphology: Questions on Method and Lan-
guage. Bern: Peter Lang.
Part II

Dialogues
Philosophical Intersections between
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
7 Philosophical Style
Between Philosophy, Poetry, and
Aphoristic Writing

Philip Mills

One of the most striking features of Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s writ-

ings, at least at first glance, is their specific styles which contrast with
the philosophical norm of structured argumentation. But is this feature
only superficial or does it involve deeper philosophical roots? In other
words, to what extent is style a philosophical concern for them? And
how does style help us connect them to one another? In this investiga-
tion of style, philosophy encounters one of its oldest ‘rivals:’ poetry.
Indeed, when Plato banishes poets from his ideal city and takes side
with philosophy in what he calls ‘an ancient quarrel,’ he operates a
philosophical move that marks the history of philosophy and places
style in the second rank of philosophical concerns. Following this line
of thought, philosophy should be written clearly and not poetically or
stylistically.1 At the same time, however, philosophy shares with poetry
the fact that both are written and therefore concerned with language,
perhaps even more so since the ‘linguistic turn.’ As Donald Verene ar-
gues: ‘Philosophy shares with the poetic and rhetoric a dependence on
the power of the word. Whatever philosophy does or can do is accom-
plished in language.’2 Philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric all rely on the
performativity of language. In this sense, style is of central significance
as ‘what’ is said is dependent on ‘how’ it is said.
Against the idea that style should be erased from philosophical concerns,
Manfred Frank argues that style is central to understanding:

The language of philosophy belongs to traditions whose content can

never be dissolved into transparent insight, and is influenced by a style
in which ultimately a noninterchangeable individual manner of access-
ing the world demands a hearing. All understanding is based on this
individual manner. Therefore, one does not get any closer to philosophy
by extinguishing style; instead, by dispensing with style, one will be left
without access to any understanding at all.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-10
170 Philip Mills

According to Frank, one of the reasons for which style is a central philosophi-
cal concern comes from the fact that the style of writing is related to a specific
‘individual manner of accessing the world’ which grounds the possibility of
understanding. Without style, without this individual manner, there can be no
understanding at all. If style is central to understanding and if philosophy
aims, at least in part, at understanding what ‘understanding’ is as well as at
being understood, then it cannot forego an investigation of style.
In this chapter, I therefore aim to show that Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
share a common concern with style that is rooted in core philosophical is-
sues, especially their critique of metaphysics and their revaluation of the
relation between philosophy and poetry. My argument is divided into
three steps: first, I focus on style as a tool for criticism to show how Ni-
etzsche and Wittgenstein use stylistic criticism against traditional (system-
atic) philosophy; second, I show how this criticism leads to a revaluation
of the relation between philosophy and poetry; third, I argue that the aph-
oristic writing they each practise is a way of finding a philosophical style
that embraces the poetic rather than rejecting it.

1 Style as Critique
If style is related to thinking and understanding as Frank suggests, how
should a philosopher write? As often with Nietzsche, this question can be
asked first from a negative perspective: how should a philosopher not
write? This question leads Nietzsche to criticise the style of other philoso-
phers as well as his own. For instance, he calls Plato the ‘first stylistic deca-
dent’ which leads him to the conclusion ‘Plato is boring’ (TI 1998,
‘Ancients’ §2/KSA 6.155). Similarly, he criticises Spinoza’s ‘hocus-pocus of
mathematical form’ which ‘disguised his philosophy (“the love of his wis-
dom” ultimately, if we interpret the word correctly and fairly)’ (BGE 1998
§5/KSA 5.19). Interestingly, as these two criticisms show, the critique of
style leads to a critique of the philosopher behind the style, i.e. stylistic
criticism leads to philosophical criticism and even personal criticism inso-
far as ‘every philosophy is the unconscious memoir of his author’ (BGE §6/
KSA 5.19). Behind every philosophy, there is a centre that is personal and
subjective and the systematic style of Spinoza (or even Plato to some ex-
tent) aims to hide it, aims to reach an artificial objectivity.
But why does Nietzsche criticise Plato and Spinoza? What is wrong with
their style? Nietzsche’s criticism concerns the fact that their styles aim to
hide something; as he says about Spinoza, to ‘armour and disguise.’ His
critique of Hegel’s style on the same grounds offers a clear explanation:

Of the celebrated Germans, none perhaps possessed more esprit than

Hegel—but he also possessed so great a German fear of it that this fear
 Philosophical Style 171

was responsible for creating the bad style peculiar to him. For the es-
sence of his style is that a kernel is wrapped round and wrapped round
again until it can hardly peep through, bashfully and with inquisitive
eyes as ‘young women peep through their veils,’ to quote the ancient
misogynist Aeschylus—but this kernel is a witty, often indiscreet inspi-
ration on the most intellectual subjects, a daring and subtle phrase-coin-
age such as is appropriate to the society of thinkers as a condiment to
science—but swathed in its wrapping it presents itself as the abstrusest
of sciences and altogether a piece of the highest moral boredom!
(D 1997, §193/KSA 3.166–7)

The two elements of criticism noted above with Plato and Spinoza can be
found in Nietzsche’s critique of Hegel: first, like Spinoza, Hegel hides and
disguises his philosophy, wrapping its kernel with layers of artificial veils;
second, like Plato, this wrapping, this style makes him boring, and even ‘a
piece of the highest boredom.’ Hegel’s style is a way of diverting the eye, of
hiding something under layers of ‘subtle phrase-coinage.’ By hiding the
kernel of his philosophy, that is his personal and subjective ‘esprit,’ Hegel’s
systematicity shows a lack of integrity. As Nietzsche suggests in Twilight of
the Idols: ‘I mistrust all systematists and avoid them. The will to system is
a lack of integrity’ (TI ‘Arrows’ 26/KSA 6.63). This lack of integrity comes
from the fact that the systematists refuse the personal core of their philoso-
phy and attempt to conceal it behind layers of veils. Although Plato, Spi-
noza, and Hegel have very different styles, Nietzsche considers them all to
be systematists whose style aims at concealing something.
This criticism is precisely the one Nietzsche makes to David Strauss in
the first Untimely Meditation:

A philosophy which chastely concealed behind arabesque flourishes the

philistine confession of its author invented in addition a formula for the
apotheosis of the commonplace: it spoke of the rationality of the real,
and thus ingratiated itself with the cultural philistine, who also loves
arabesque flourishes but above all conceives himself alone to be real and
treats his reality as the standard of reason in the world.
(UM 1, § 2/KSA 1.69–70)

The relation to Hegel is quite explicit in the ‘rationality of the real

[Vernünftigkeit alles Wirklichen]’ that originates in Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right: ‘What is rational [vernünftig] is actual [wirklich] and what is actual
[wirklich] is rational [vernünftig].’4 In his criticism of Hegel’s style, Ni-
etzsche uses the same vocabulary of concealment as in his critiques of Plato
and Spinoza: style conceals philosophy and its author, conceals it ‘chastely’
like Spinoza’s armour and Plato’s boredom. This concealment behind
172 Philip Mills

‘arabesque flourishes’ hides precisely the fact that the philosopher ‘treats
his reality as the standard of reason in the world.’ Behind this criticism of
style is the idea of the subjective character of philosophy and of the lack of
integrity of philosophers who consider their subjective perspective as the
standard for reason. In this sense, and as we will see with Nietzsche’s re-
marks on his own style, style becomes for Nietzsche a way to think per-
spectivism: he criticises other philosophers because their style aims to hide
the fact that their philosophy is only one perspective among others. But
before moving to consider Nietzsche’s own style in positive terms, let us
look at how he criticises his own style.
Indeed, Nietzsche does not only criticise others, but he also criticises
himself, thus showing where his style has been somewhat inferior to what
he expected, especially in his retrospective criticism of The Birth of Trag-
edy. In this ‘Attempt at self-criticism,’ he discusses two points where his
language was stylistically insufficient. First, he criticises the fact that he
used the language of others to express his own thought:

How much I now regret that at that time I lacked sufficient courage (and
arrogance?) to allow myself to express such personal and risky views
throughout in my own personal language—that instead I laboured to
express in the terms of Schopenhauer and Kant new and unfamiliar
evaluations, which ran absolutely counter the spirit, as well as the taste,
of Schopenhauer and Kant!
(BoT 2008, ‘Attempt,’ §6)

One of the problems of his style in The Birth of Tragedy is that he borrowed
the style of Schopenhauer and Kant rather than using his own. It thus creates
a discrepancy between the ideas expressed and the style used. He used the
style of Schopenhauer and Kant, that is the style of metaphysics, to express
something that ‘ran absolutely counter the spirit, as well as the taste, of
Schopenhauer and Kant!’ Second, this idea that he used a language counter
the spirit of his thought leads Nietzsche to think that ‘It should have sung,
this “new soul”—rather than spoken! What a pity that I did not dare to say
what I had to say then as a poet: I might have managed it!’ (BoT ‘Attempt’
§3/KSA 1.15). Rather than saying what he had to say as a poet, he used the
language of metaphysicians. Rather than entering the realm of poetic lan-
guage, he remained within the bounds of metaphysical language.
For Nietzsche, there is therefore a relation between style and subjectiv-
ity, which Wittgenstein mirrors by quoting Buffon’s famous sentence ‘Style
is the man.’ In Culture and Value, he makes a remark on this sentence: ‘“Le
style c’est l'homme.” “Le style c’est l'homme même.” The first expression
has a cheap epigrammatic brevity. The second, correct, one opens a quite
different perspective. It says that style is the picture of the man’ (CV 1998,
 Philosophical Style 173

89). By translating this idea to philosophy, we could say that style is the
picture of the philosopher, thus coming back to Nietzsche’s idea that there
is a relation between style, philosophy, and philosopher.5 Unlike Nietzsche,
Wittgenstein does not criticise the style of other philosophers, but reflects
on the limits of his own style which he describes as ‘bad musical composi-
tion’ (CV, 39). There are two ideas in this sentence: first, Wittgenstein lik-
ens his style to composition, and we will see that this idea affects the
relation between philosophy and poetry (through the musical connection);
second, he criticises his style as bad. Like Nietzsche, who considers that his
new soul should have sung, Wittgenstein considers his style to be poor.
However, Nietzsche considers his style to have improved, as he retrospec-
tively criticises his style in previous works whereas Wittgenstein constantly
regrets his incapacity to write better. The question then remains: how can
one improve one’s style?

2 Improving One’s Style

The question of style is important because it involves the possibility of un-
derstanding. To make explicit this connection, Wittgenstein uses the notion
of ‘style of thinking’ in his Lectures on Aesthetics. Although this notion only
appears in lecture notes and is therefore not typical of Wittgenstein, it epito-
mises his reflections on the relation between style and thought. Joachim
Schulte acknowledges the importance of style of thinking: ‘Under style of
thinking [Stil des Denkens], Wittgenstein does not only understand the way
or the technique of thought, its form of expression, but also to a certain de-
gree style as what can be found as a possible object of thought because this
style marks the investigation and justification procedures.’6 The notion of
style of thinking not only denotes the form or way the thought is presented
but is at the core of philosophical investigation. In this sense, the style of
writing reflects the style of thinking. Against the idea that there can be style
on the one hand and thought on the other, both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
argue that style and thought are united. Style of thinking is one way of unit-
ing them and is central to Wittgenstein’s way of doing philosophy:

I am in a sense making propaganda for one style of thinking as opposed

to another.
(APR, 28)

How much we are doing this changing the style of thinking and how
much I'm doing is changing the style of thinking and how much I'm do-
ing is persuading people to change their style of thinking.
(APR, 28)
174 Philip Mills

(Much of what we are doing is a question of changing the style of

thinking.)
(APR, 28)

These three remarks from his Lectures on Aesthetics reveal Wittgenstein’s

way of doing philosophy: philosophy should bring people to see things in
the right perspective (or, to the extent that ‘right’ can be problematic, in a
different perspective). More than new perspectives, the ideas from the Lec-
tures on Aesthetics bring to the fore the notion of style: philosophy is not
only a matter of changing our ways of seeing, but also our ways or styles
of thinking. This new style of thinking calls, in turn, for a new style of
expressing or writing: finding the right style is like searching for the right
perspective.
Style of thinking is, for Wittgenstein, a central element in conducting
philosophical research, and not only in presenting it. Wittgenstein dis-
cusses further this idea of style as a core element of philosophy with the
carriage on tracks metaphor.

Writing the right style means, setting the carriage precisely on the rails.
(CV, 44)

We are only going to set you straight on the track, if your carriage
stands on the rails crookedly; driving is something we shall leave you to
do by yourself.
(CV, 44)

In these two remarks, Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of a carriage on

tracks to express the idea of style of writing and thinking. Writing in the
right style aims at setting the reader’s thought on the right tracks. This is
the task of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: to show a way or style of thought
which brings the reader to a better understanding. It is important to note
that Wittgenstein considers that his task is only to set someone on the right
tracks, and not to guide her along these tracks because his philosophy does
not aim at establishing doctrines or truths and therefore at bringing some-
one to a specific point, be it the world of ideas, the absolute spirit, or a logi-
cal certainty, but at showing someone a different way of thinking, at
bringing her to change her way of thinking.7 Or to use another of Wittgen-
stein’s metaphors, his task is ‘To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle’
(PI §309).
What is interesting in the carriage on tracks and the fly-bottle metaphors
is precisely that they are metaphors. Philosophy, for Wittgenstein and Ni-
etzsche, cannot survive without using such poetic elements because they
 Philosophical Style 175

bring something that the language of metaphysics cannot bring. It is pre-

cisely that subjective element, the affective component of thought that the
language of metaphysics misses and that Nietzsche’s style aims to bring to
the fore:

Instruction in the best style.—Instruction in style can, on the one

hand, be instruction on how to find the expression that will let us
convey any mood to the reader and hearer; or else instruction on
how to find the expression for a human’s most desirable mood, the
one that it is therefore most desirable to communicate and convey:
the mood of a human who is moved from the depths of his heart,
spiritually joyful, bright and sincere, someone who has overcome his
passions. This will be instruction in the best style: it corresponds to
the good human being.
(WS 2013, §88/KSA 2.593)

More than bringing the affective to the fore, Nietzsche’s idea of style brings
up an ethical dimension. The relation between style and the man is pushed
one step further in saying that the best style is the good human being. A
linguistic consideration leads to an axiological one. Similarly, we can un-
derstand that best style leads to good philosophy, while the bad styles of
Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel lead to bad philosophies that lack integrity.
In this sense, one crucial skill is to be able to write well:

Learning to write well.—The time of speaking well is past, because the

time of civic cultures is past. […] Therefore anyone who is European-
minded must now learn how to write well and to write better all the
time: it is no use even if he was born in Germany, where writing badly
is treated as a national prerogative. Writing better, however, also means
thinking better; constantly discovering things that are more worth com-
municating and really being able to communicate them; it means being
translatable into the languages of our neighbors, making ourselves ac-
cessible for the understanding of foreigners who learn our language,
working toward making everything good into a common good and
­everything freely available to those who are free, and finally, preparing
for that still far-distant state of things where their great task falls into
the hands of good Europeans: the direction and oversight of the entirety
of world-culture.—Anyone wo preaches the opposite, not concerning
ourselves with writing well and reading well—both virtues grow along
with each other—is in fact showing people a way in which they can
become more and more nationalistic: he is increasing the sickness of this
century and is an enemy of good Europeans, an enemy of free spirits.
(WS §87/KSA 2.592–3)
176 Philip Mills

‘The time of speaking well is past,’ Nietzsche argues, and we can under-
stand from this that rhetoric must move from being the art of speaking
well to being the art of writing well. Writing well means being translatable
for neighbours to understand, means being opened to the culture of others.
Interestingly, Nietzsche connects here the question of style to the problem
of nationalism. Those not concerned with writing well in the sense of a
writing accessible to others are being nationalistic, are excluding others
from entering into communication. It does not mean that style should be
simplified for others to understand, but that it should remain opened to the
other. If we translate this in terms of perspectivism: a culture which is un-
translatable, which is not understandable for others, isolates itself and
therefore lacks the multiplicity of perspectives which makes the world
richer.
We have seen so far that style can be a tool for criticism and that, conse-
quently, one must learn to write well. However, how do Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein enact these ideas? It is one thing to say one needs to write
well; it is another to do it. Their reflection on their own style leads to a
reconsideration of the relation between philosophy and poetry. Indeed,
Wittgenstein famously states that ‘really one should write philosophy only
as one writes a poem’ (CV, 28). Much has been said about this sentence
and how it reflects upon Wittgenstein’s own writing. The term ‘dichten’
that he uses does not necessarily refer to lyric poetry and he probably con-
siders other aspects of the term, such as the notion of composition men-
tioned in relation to his comparison of style with music. Another aspect of
which Wittgenstein might be thinking in this term ‘dichten’ is the notion of
rhythm that often comes to the fore in his discussions of poetry.
Indeed, when describing his experience of reading Klopstock, Wittgen-
stein considers that the way of stressing the words is important in poetry:

Take the question: ‘How should poetry be read? What is the correct way
of reading it?’ If you are talking about blank verse the right way might
of reading it might be stressing it correctly—you discuss how far you
should stress the rhythm and how far you should hide it. A man says it
ought to be read this way and reads it to you. You say: ‘Oh yes. Now it
makes sense.’ […] I had an experience with the 18th century poet Klop-
stock. I found that the way to read him was to stress his metre abnor-
mally. Klopstock put ∪–∪ (etc.) in front of his poems. When I read his
poems in this new way, I said: ‘Ah-ha, now I know why he did this.’
(APR, 4)

There are ways of reading poetry which make more sense than others and
the poet, like Klopstock, might give a few hints on how the poem should
be read. Other poets, by contrast, give no instructions at all, leaving the
 Philosophical Style 177

reader free to read as she likes. In both cases, poetry requires from the
reader that she stresses the words in a way different from everyday reading.
A poem makes sense only once it is read in the right way. We should not
understand ‘right way’ as something too specific: there can be multiple
right ways to read a poem; more precisely, the right way to read a poem is
the one that makes sense for the reader. Although the reader is free to read
the poem as she likes, the poet can indicate how it should be read and
Klopstock does so by indicating the rhythm. Reading a poem in one way
might not make sense whereas reading it following the instructions does.
Similarly, in reading philosophy, ‘Sometimes a sentence can be understood
only if it is read at the right tempo. My sentences are all to be read slowly’
(CV, 65). Like Klopstock who indicates the rhythm in front of his lines,
Wittgenstein indicates that his sentences must be read slowly. Understand-
ing a sentence is therefore related to rhythm and tempo.
Nietzsche suggests something similar:

How many Germans have the knowledge—and expect it of them-

selves—that there is an art in every good sentence—art that must be
perceived if the sentence is to be understood! Misunderstand its tempo,
for example, and the sentence itself is misunderstood.
(BGE §246/KSA 5.189)

There is art in every good sentence, i.e. style in every good sentence, and
understanding this style is necessary to understand the sentence. Style is
related to understanding and one component of style is rhythm. Nietzsche
further often suggests that reading and writing must be compared to danc-
ing, which includes not only the idea of rhythm and tempo, but also the
embodiment of these ideas.
It is precisely this tempo or rhythm that makes it hard to translate a
language, and perhaps that makes it harder to translate poetry or some
forms of philosophy:

The hardest thing to translate from one language to another is the tempo
of its style; this style has its basis in the character of the race or to speak
more physiologically, in the average tempo of the race’s ‘metabolism.’
(BGE §28/KSA 5.46)

Nietzsche relates language to a certain physiology. Some language will

have a faster tempo than others. And it is this tempo that is so difficult to
translate. We could push this idea further in suggesting that every writer
has her own tempo and that makes it so specific to translate. However, this
difficulty must not hide the fact that good writing should be translatable in
the abovementioned sense of being opened to others. Although Nietzsche’s
178 Philip Mills

remark can sound problematic – and probably is to some extent – insofar

as it connects style to a physiological dimension, we must keep in mind the
openness required for good perspectival writing.
Furthermore, if style is related to an inner tempo and that this inner
tempo is related to the affects of the body, there might be many different
styles in someone. Nietzsche considers himself, for instance, to have many
stylistic possibilities:

At the same time I’ll say something about my art of style in general.
Communicating a state, an inner tension of pathos through signs, in-
cluding the tempo of these signs—that is the point of every style; and
considering that in my case the multiplicity of inner states is extraordi-
nary, in my case there are many stylistic possibilities—altogether the
most multifarious art of style anyone has ever had at their disposal.
(EH ‘Books’ §4/KSA 6.304)

This idea of having multiple styles comes back to the notion of perspectiv-
ism. Having a ‘multifarious art of style’ is being able to change perspective,
to shift from one perspective to another. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein both
acknowledge the importance of tempo in style, but how do they consider
their own style?

3 Poetic and Aphoristic Writing

The focus on rhythm and tempo brings to the fore the poetic dimension of
style. For Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, this poetic dimension is to be found
in their use of aphorisms or remarks. Indeed, this specific form of writing
condenses the ideas and requires choosing the words wisely. As Wittgen-
stein suggests, his style is not original in form but in the choice of words:

It’s possible to write in a style that is unoriginal in form—like mine—but

with well chosen words; or on the other hand in one that is original in
form, freshly grown from within oneself. (And also of course in one
which is botched together just anyhow out of old furnishings.)
(CV, 60)

Although one might think that Wittgenstein’s style is original in form, that
philosophy is usually not written as remarks, there is a long tradition of
aphorisms and epigraphs in philosophy. The form is not original as such
because Wittgenstein’s writings belong to an established tradition in phi-
losophy. However, Wittgenstein considers that there is another way for
writing to be original; that is, to choose the words well. This reminds us of
what he says about poetry in PI §531:
 Philosophical Style 179

We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be

replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which
it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme
can be replaced by another.)

In the one case, the thought in the sentence is what is common to differ-
ent sentences; in the other, something that is expressed only by these
words in these positions. (Understanding a poem.)

There are two forms of understanding for Wittgenstein: one in which

words can be replaced by others, another in which they cannot. Wittgen-
stein does, however, not consider these two forms of understanding to be
two different concepts of understanding, but to be showing two aspects of
the concept of understanding. Understanding a poem, although it focuses
on aspects different from understanding an everyday sentence, is still a
matter of understanding. And we have seen that the question of style is
related to the question of understanding. His way of writing might be po-
etic in the sense that he focuses on ‘well chosen words’ that are perhaps
impossible to replace by others.
He describes his way of writing in the preface to the Philosophical
Investigations.

I have written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs,

and sometimes in longer chains about the same subject, sometimes
jumping, in a sudden change, from one to another.—Originally it was
my intention to bring all this together in a book whose form I thought
of differently at different times. But it seemed to me essential that in
the book the thoughts should proceed from one subject to another in
a natural, smooth sequence. After several unsuccessful attempts to
weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should
never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than
philosophical remarks; my thoughts soon grew feeble if I tried to
force them along a single track against their natural inclination.—
And this was, of course, connected to the very nature of the investiga-
tion. For it compels us to travel criss-cross in every direction over a
wide field of thought.—The philosophical remarks in this book are,
as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in
the course of these long and meandering journeys. The same or al-
most the same points were always being approached afresh from dif-
ferent directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were
badly drawn or lacking in character, marked by all the defects of a
weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected, a number of half-
way decent ones were left, which then had to be arranged and often
180 Philip Mills

cut down, in order to give the viewer an idea of the landscape. So this
book is really just an album.
(PI, Preface)

Wittgenstein acknowledges his original intention of writing up the remarks

in the form of a book, which he defines as thoughts proceeding ‘from one
subject to another in a natural, smooth sequence.’ This is Wittgenstein’s
understanding of what philosophical books traditionally are, and he claims
to be incapable of writing in such a manner. Such an incapability is, how-
ever, not the consequence of an inability to write but is ‘connected to the
very nature of the investigation.’ If, as argued above, style and thought are
closely related, thoughts cannot be expressed in any style, but style pro-
ceeds from the thoughts themselves. Edward Kanterian considers this di-
mension in Wittgenstein’s style to be an important one:

The style answers in part to an aesthetic ideal, in part is justified by

philosophical reasons pertaining to what is investigated, our conceptual
scheme. This conceptual scheme is logically independent of the style and
can be described in various other ways, but it lends itself in a natural
way to an album-type investigation, just as much as a certain landscape
can be captured by a series of loosely related sketches. But also by a
‘linear’ series of loosely connected sketches, or by a single wide-format
panorama.8

Style intertwines aesthetic and conceptual aspects, and what might appear
as a formal or ornamental feature is in fact related to the investigation it-
self. Although there is an independence between the conceptual scheme
and style for Kanterian, Wittgenstein’s conceptual scheme ‘lends itself in a
natural way’ to his specific style. Bringing Wittgenstein’s conceptual scheme
in another style would somehow go against its nature and force it into be-
ing something it is not.
Inasmuch as Wittgenstein’s style is compositional both in words and re-
marks, so is Nietzsche’s, and he acknowledges this double aspect in his
writing of aphorisms. When describing his own style, Nietzsche considers
words as central:

My feeling for style, for the epigram as style, was stirred almost the mo-
ment I came into contact with Sallust. […] One will recognize in me,
even in my Zarathustra, a very serious ambition for Roman style, for
the ‘aere perennius’ in style.—My first contact with Horace was no dif-
ferent. To this day I have never had the same artistic delight in any poet
as I was given from the start by one of Horace’s odes. In certain lan-
guages, what is achieved here cannot even be desired. This mosaic of
 Philosophical Style 181

words, in which every word radiates its strength as sound, as place, as

concept, to the right and to the left and over the whole, this minimum
in the range and number of its signs, the maximum which this attains in
the energy of the signs—all this is Roman and, if I am to be believed,
noble par excellence. All the rest of poetry becomes, in comparison,
something too popular—a mere emotional garrulousness.
(TI ‘Ancients’ §1/KSA 6.154–5)

Like Wittgenstein’s, Nietzsche’s style is not original in form inasmuch as it

belongs to the long tradition of epigrams, going back to the Romans and
even before them. His style also focuses on words and his ideal of style,
Horace, makes the words radiate in many ways. The words are central for
they carry the possibility of radiating to the other words. The meaning of
a word can affect another, radiate on another as it were, and therefore
modify its meaning. The French philosopher Henri Maldiney elaborates on
this use of words in poetry and how it differs from the ordinary use: ‘If
words in language have no neighbours, if in discourse they are in mutual
servitude along the co-ownership regime of the sentence, in the poetic se-
quence their relations are of pure neighbourhood.’9 According to Mal-
diney, words in poetry are autonomous, they are not ruled by the
grammatical necessity of syntax. In an everyday sentence, the relation be-
tween two words is defined by their grammatical functions: subject, object,
verb, etc. In contrast, in poetry the relation between words is independent
of grammar; it is a ‘relation of pure neighbourhood’ in the sense that it is
the proximity between two words which creates an association, which
makes sense, which creates meaning, rather than their grammatical func-
tions. Poetry brings to the fore this aspect of language, according to which
there is a radiation of meaning from every word. A word in a poem radi-
ates and, by doing so, irradiates its neighbours.
This radiation is what I would call a ‘semantic contamination:’ the
meaning of a word in poetry contaminates its neighbours. Although
Maldiney considers this contamination to be a feature specific to poetic
language only, I would argue that ordinary language also presents such
a contamination: puns, jokes, and many aspects of our everyday use of
language are examples of it. It is a feature of language altogether which
poets use to a wider extent, but which is at work in our everyday use of
language. Inasmuch as poetic language is not separate from ordinary
language, ‘semantic contamination’ belongs to both poetic and ordi-
nary uses of language. Such a contamination is sometimes a ground for
misunderstanding and it is also what is at play in Max Black’s interac-
tionist view of metaphor: in a metaphor words interact in such a way
that one word’s meaning modifies the other, and his understanding of
metaphor is not limited to poetic language but also appears in everyday
182 Philip Mills

idioms.10 The radiation of words in every direction makes us perceive

the words differently, gives them a different meaning, brings us to an-
other interpretation.
Although Nietzsche is rather critical of words and concepts in On Truth
and Lie, this does not mean that he cannot use words to overcome these
critical aspects. On the contrary, Nietzsche – and the poet of whom he at-
tempts to recreate the style – uses words in order to create new meanings and
values. Words are therefore not only considered negatively as they can be
used in a creative way, but the blind following of the ordinary use of words
– that is for Nietzsche the following of the established moral and social order
– needs to be overcome. The creative use of words, like in poetry, is a way to
contest the ordinary order. Many avant-garde art movements, for instance,
contest the established order by contesting the established language. Hugo
Ball’s critique of the words in his Dada Manifesto is a perfect example of it:
‘I don’t want words that other people have invented. All the words are other
people’s inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and
consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own.’11 Ball considers that
the words have been contaminated because they help to sustain the bour-
geois order, and thus the bourgeois definition of art he aims to disturb. The
creation of new words and new uses for words is a way for him to overcome
this established bourgeois order and its related definition of art.
Within the aphorisms, words can therefore contaminate each other in a
poetic fashion. But this contamination also occurs among the aphorisms
where their succession plays a role. To discuss this idea, Wittgenstein fur-
ther describes aphorisms with a strange metaphor of raisins and cake:

Raisins may be the best part of a cake; but a bag of raisins is not better
than a cake; & someone who is in a position to give us a bag full of
raisins still cannot bake a cake with them, let alone do something better.
I am thinking of Kraus & his aphorisms, but of myself too & my philo-
sophical remarks. A cake is not as it were: thinned out raisins.
(CV, 76)

For Wittgenstein, aphorisms and remarks are like raisins in a cake, and
raisins alone are not sufficient to bake a cake. Wittgenstein expresses here
the same problems of expression as those from the preface to the Philo-
sophical Investigations: his incapability to write a book. The remarks he
writes do not amount to a book in the sense already discussed of thoughts
that ‘proceed from one subject to another in a natural, smooth sequence.’
This does not mean however that aphorisms and remarks cannot form a
coherent whole. Wittgenstein spends quite some time arranging and rear-
ranging his remarks and Nietzsche has similar concerns with his collection
 Philosophical Style 183

of aphorisms. Collections of aphorisms are compositions in which the

meaning of an aphorism will influence another. The same ‘semantic con-
tamination’ occurs between aphorisms as it does between words. Such a
contamination occurs within Nietzsche’s collection of aphorisms, and
Wittgenstein’s description of his remarks as ‘jumping’ from one another in
the preface to the Philosophical Investigations is a way of saying that the
organisation of the remarks functions by making meanings jump from one
remark to another. While this remark can apply to the Philosophical Inves-
tigations on which Wittgenstein constantly worked until reaching an al-
most final version, and hence shows an attention to the order of the
remarks as significant as in Nietzsche’s case, it needs to be nuanced regard-
ing Wittgenstein’s collections of remarks that have been edited posthu-
mously, such as Culture and Value.
That the meaning of aphorisms and remarks is related to the surround-
ing ones brings the notion of interpretation to the fore. Indeed, it is the
interpretative task which reveals the connections between aphorisms. This
notion of interpretation is central to Nietzsche’s understanding of the aph-
orism as he describes it in the preface to The Genealogy of Morals:

In other cases, the aphoristic form presents problems: this stems from
the fact that nowadays this form is not taken seriously enough. An aph-
orism, honestly cast and stamped, is still some way from being ‘deci-
phered’ once it has been read; rather, it is only then that its interpretation
can begin, and for this an art of interpretation is required. In the third
essay of this book I have offered a model for what I mean by ‘interpreta-
tion’ in such a case—the essay opens with an aphorism and is itself a
commentary upon it. Admittedly, to practise reading as an art in this
way requires one thing above all, and it is something which today more
than ever has been thoroughly unlearnt—a fact which explains why it
will be some time before my writings are ‘readable’—it is something for
which one must be practically bovine and certainly not a ‘modern man:’
that is to say, rumination…
(GM 1996, Preface §8/KSA 5.255–6)

An aphorism cannot be read quickly; the reader needs to ‘decipher’ it, to

interpret it, in order to understand it. A specific style, a specific writing
calls for a specific reading. One cannot run through the aphorism if one
aims to understand it. Digesting aphorisms takes time and this digestion
process is one of interpretation. The right style calls for the right reader
and the right reading. For Nietzsche, aphorisms require slow readers who
are ready to actively engage with the text, interpreting it, rather than re-
ceiving it passively.
184 Philip Mills

Wittgenstein too asks for slow readers who do not rush through the text:
‘Really I want to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctua-
tion marks. For I should like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)’ (CV,
77). For Wittgenstein, the purpose of punctuation is to slow down the
readers. The form he uses, that of remarks, could be seen as inviting a fast
reading, jumping from one remark to another as the remarks themselves
jump from one theme to another. If one did so, many of Wittgenstein’s re-
marks would appear rather trivial and uninteresting. To the contrary, the
careful reading that Wittgenstein calls for directs the reader’s attention to
the words themselves, and we have seen that this focus on words is an
important aspect of Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s styles.
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein therefore share a common concern with
style that highlights some of their views on language and on the task of
philosophy. Rather than rejecting the poetic as many philosophers have
done, they consider to the contrary that philosophy can gain something
from using the full range of linguistic possibilities. In their works, using
this full range of possibilities leads them to write aphorisms and remarks,
short forms of writing that share some characteristics with poetry. Their
style is poetic in the etymological sense of poiesis: their style is a making.
Insofar as style and philosophy are bound to one another, their concern
with style reflects some of their philosophical concerns, as Nietzsche’s
‘multifarious art of style’ reflects his perspectivism and Wittgenstein’s care-
ful choice of words reflects the idea of the importance of the positions of
words in understanding a sentence. Against the idea that philosophy
should avoid style, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein show and enact that style is
central to philosophical understanding.

Notes
1 This line of thought that traverses the whole history of philosophy up to some
trends in analytic philosophy can already be found in Aristotle who criticises
Heraclitus for being obscure: ‘What is written should generally be easy to read
and easy to speak—which is the same thing. Use of many connectives does not
have this quality, nor do phrases not easily punctuated, for example, the writ-
ings of Heraclitus. To punctuate the writings of Heraclitus is a difficult task
because it is unclear what goes with what, whether with what follows or with
what precedes.’ Aristotle 2007, 208, 1407b11–18.
2 Verene 2006, 92.
3 Frank 1999, 146.
4 Hegel 2008, 14.
5 More than merely stating a relation between style and subjectivity, Wittgen-
stein’s remark suggests that such a relation is one of picturing. There is a rich-
ness to the concept of picture in Wittgenstein that I cannot discuss extensively
here, especially in relation to his ‘picture theory of meaning’ in the Tractatus,
see Plourde 2017. The notion remains central to the later works as David Egan
 Philosophical Style 185

for instance suggests that the term picture plays a foundational role in Wittgen-
stein’s later philosophy, see Egan 2011.
6 Schulte 1990, 60–61. My translation: ‘Unter dem Stil des Denkens versteht
Wittgenstein nicht nur die Art und Weise oder die Technik der Überlegung bzw.
die Form ihrer Darstellung, sondern der in diesem Sinne aufgefasste Stil
bestimmt in gewissem Masse auch, was als möglicher Gegenstand des Denkens
vorkommen kann, denn dieser Stil prägt die Verfahrensweisen des Unter-
suchens und Begründens.’
7 To that extent, what Stegmaier says about Nietzsche’s philosophy as giving
signs rather than doctrines could also be applied to Wittgenstein. Stegmaier,
‘Nietzsche’s Doctrines, Nietzsche’s Signs’. This idea that philosophy aims at
effecting change can be coined in the idea that philosophy is a therapeutic activ-
ity, a characterisation that has been applied both to Nietzsche and to Wittgen-
stein but mainly separately. Peterman 1992; Ahern 1995; Ure 2008; Mills
2019.
8 Kanterian 2012, 129.
9 Maldiney 2012, 57. My translation: ‘Si les mots en langue sont sans voisinage,
si dans le discours ils sont en servitude mutuelle selon le régime de la copro-
priété de la phrase, dans la séquence poétique leurs rapports sont de pur
voisinage.’
10 Black 1955.
11 Ball 2011, 128.

References
Ahern, D.R. (1995). Nietzsche as Cultural Physician, University Park: Pennsylva-
nia State University Press.
Aristotle (2007). On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, tr. G. A. Kennedy,
New York: Oxford University Press.
Ball, H. (2011). ‘Dada Manifesto’, in: Danchev, A. (2011), ed., 100 Artists’ Mani-
festos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists, London: Penguin Books, M25.
Black, M. (1955). ‘Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55, no. 1:
273–294.
Egan, D. (2011). ‘Pictures in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’, Philosophical Inves-
tigations 34 (1): 55–76.
Frank, M. (1999). ‘Style in Philosophy: Part I’, Metaphilosophy 30, no. 3
Hegel, G.W.F. (2008). Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Stephen Houlgate,
trans. T. M. Knox, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kanterian, E. (2012). ‘Philosophy as Poetry? Reflections on Wittgenstein’s Style’,
Wittgenstein-Studien 3 (1): 95–132.
Maldiney, H. (2012). L’art, l’éclair de l’être, ed. C. Chaput et al., Paris: Cerf.
Mills, P. (2019). ‘La Philosophie Comme Thérapie Chez Nietzsche et Wittgenstein’,
in Die Frage der Medizin in Nietzsches Philosophie / La Question de La Méde-
cine Dans La Philosophie de Nietzsche, ed. Isabelle Wienand and Patrick Wot-
ling, Basel; Berlin: Schwabe Verlag, 347–366.
Plourde, J. (2017). ‘Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory and the Distinction between
Representing and Depicting’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25
(1): 16–39.
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Schulte, J. (1990). Chor und Gesetz: Wittgenstein im Kontext, Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp.
Stegmaier, W. (2006). ‘Nietzsche’s Doctrines, Nietzsche’s Signs’, Journal of Ni-
etzsche Studies 31(1): 20–41.
Peterman, J.F. (1992). Philosophy as Therapy: An Interpretation and Defense of
Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophical Project, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press.
Ure, M. (2008). Nietzsche’s Therapy: Self-Cultivation in the Middle Works, Lan-
ham: Lexington Books.
Verene, D.F. (2006). ‘Philosophical Aesthetics’, Journal of Aesthetic Education
40(4), 89–103.
8 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on
Language and Knowledge
Pietro Gori

In Philosophical Investigations, §109, Wittgenstein famously argues that

“philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by
means of language”. Similarly, in the Blue Book (27), he observes that
“philosophy (…) is the fight against the fascination which forms of expres-
sion exert upon us”. In this chapter, I will try to explore to what extent this
view of philosophy can be applied to Nietzsche.1 In doing so, it is not my
intention to argue that the Nietzschean conception of proper philosophical
activity is exhausted by this definition – I am fully aware that Nietzsche’s
writings contain much more than a critical reflection on our linguistic en-
gagement with the world and that what he believes philosophy can and
should do goes far beyond this thematic framework. On the other hand,
however, Nietzsche’s interest in language seems to be a fundamental refer-
ence for his considerations on ethics, aesthetics, anthropology, and the
like. That is, based on the idea that our experience of states of affairs is
constantly translated into a human form of expression which, according to
Nietzsche, does not literally reproduce what is described, he deals with
language not only to reflect on epistemological issues such as the extent to
which we have access to both the outer and the inner world and how we
interpret or eventually “know” it, but also to develop further consider-
ations on the role of language in our life. Thus, our philosophical interest
in how the forms of expression we ordinarily use shape our world-picture
need not be limited to the linguistic investigation that seems to characterize
Wittgenstein’s approach, for it leads us through different paths which may
also be relevant. In the following pages, I will try to elaborate on this, start-
ing from the apparent agreement between Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s
remarks on the function and value of language, knowledge, and truth.
I would like to make it clear that my aim is not to find direct correspon-
dences between their views but only to explore issues that Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein seem to have addressed in comparable – and sometimes even
consistent – ways.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-11
188 Pietro Gori

The philosophical dialogue between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein that

I will attempt to outline in the following sections will be structured as fol-
lows. In Section 1, I will deal with Nietzsche’s criticism of the traditional
philosophical approach and will explore the basic tenets of his reflections
on language. Section 2 will provide a tentative comparison between these
reflections and how Wittgenstein approached the issue of language in The
Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty.
In Section 3, I will therefore argue that the Nietzschean concept of the
“herd perspective” may be interpreted as a Wittgensteinian world-picture
or form of life. Finally, Section 4 will be devoted to a tentative approach to
the similarity between Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s views of language
and knowledge in light of the broad pragmatist strategy that can be attrib-
uted to their philosophical attitudes.

1 On the Prejudices of Philosophers

In his late period (1885–1888), Nietzsche was especially concerned with
the prejudiced view held by the philosophers of his time. For him, their
prejudice consisted in attributing a greater value to “truth” than to “illu-
sion” – in devaluing the world of the appearances, the world of our actual
experience, as a fabricated and misleading picture of a realm of pure es-
sences with reference to which the value of those appearances was sup-
posed to be assessable. As Nietzsche argues in BGE 2002, §2, “the prejudice
by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized” is typified by the
view that “things of the highest value must have another, separate origin of
their own – they cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, decep-
tive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and desire”. As he
continues, “from these ‘beliefs’ they try to acquire their ‘knowledge,’ to
acquire something that will end up being solemnly christened as ‘the
truth’”. The metaphysicians believe especially “in opposition of values”;
i.e. they pretend that “true” and “false”, as well as “good” and “bad”,
“beautiful” and “ugly”, etc., are radically contraposed. Moreover, they
argue that these contrapositions can be justified with reference to a context
that is separate from that of the evaluation itself. “But”, Nietzsche contin-
ues, we can doubt, first, whether opposites even exist and, second, whether
the popular valuations and value oppositions that have earned the meta-
physicians’ seal of approval might not only be foreground appraisals. Per-
haps they are merely provisional perspectives, perhaps they are not even
viewed head-on (BGE §2). The aim of the “new breed of philosophers”
foretold by Nietzsche (ibid.) is therefore to deal with these fundamental
prejudices – and to finally be rid of them.
Furthermore, Nietzsche deplores the philosophers’ “lack of historical
sense, (…) their hatred of the very idea of becoming” (TI 2005, “Reason” 1).
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 189

Philosophers – especially metaphysicians – fail to see that concepts do not

have a fixed meaning, that they are the product of an historical and cul-
tural development, and that their value resides precisely in this. On the
contrary, the Western tradition attributed great value to those features that
were believed to stand still, eternally stuck in a state of unchanging perfec-
tion. But this is a mere illusion for Nietzsche, for he thinks that the things
we pretend to “know” and the values we pretend to be the principles of
our judgements are in fact a mere product of our valuational perspectives
(individual, human, cultural, etc.). In Nietzschean terms, we might say that
the “eternal idols” we fervently believe in are merely an expression of our
creative engagement with the world, and the reason we believe in them is
the important role they have played in the natural and cultural history of
mankind (cf. e.g. HH 1996 I, §16 and GS 2001, §110). Furthermore, these
idols have no hidden essence, nothing that could justify their value once
and for all. They are in fact hollow, and Nietzsche argues that, as a phi-
losopher, one should reveal this lack of content by sounding them out (TI,
Preface). The revaluation of all values of which Nietzsche speaks, for ex-
ample, in the Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols may be inter-
preted accordingly, as an attempt to provide a historico-critical analysis of
the “old truths” that constitute the frame of reference of our being-in-the-
world and, consequently, to reassess the value of the principles of our
world-description based on a non-essentialist justification of their mean-
ing. But this can be done only by genealogically tracing the origin of our
evaluations and examining their natural and cultural foundation. In fact,
this seems to be the only way for us to appreciate the “fluidity” of both the
form and the meaning of most of the concepts we use daily, the historical
and perspectival character of which we have forgotten (cf. GM 2006, II,
§12).
How might this premise be relevant to an investigation into Wittgenstein
and Nietzsche, and how is it related to their view of language? First, we
can appreciate the apparent agreement between the philosophical ap-
proach to the ordinary depiction of the world which Nietzsche tries to
outline in his late works and Wittgenstein’s description of philosophy as a
“fight against the fascination which our forms of expression exert upon
us”. Second, it should be recalled that for Nietzsche, the world-picture we
assume as the background of our engagement with the world is couched in
language – and sometimes even depends on it. In Twilight of the Idols, for
example, Nietzsche decries language for introducing us to a mindset where
we cannot avoid making use of unity, identity, permanence, substance, and
all the metaphysical entities made up by the prejudice of reason (TI, “Rea-
son” 5). And this is not limited to the ontological plane. On the contrary,
Nietzsche’s concern with how we depict states of affairs is focused on the
general dogmatic approach that he considers to be the most distinct trait
190 Pietro Gori

of Western philosophy. For him, the “seduction of grammar” has influ-

enced our overall conception of the world and drove the philosophers to
speculate on the actual existence of substance entities and absolute values
(cf. BGE, Preface). As a result, we believe our world to be as we categorize
it; we believe it to be understandable and knowable when we reduce its
features into restricted artificial dichotomies such as “subject and object”,
“cause and effect”, “good and bad”, etc. But this, for Nietzsche, is a ter-
rible mistake, for we basically mistake a human representation of the
world for a truthful explanation of it. In other words, we treat our human,
all-too-human “criterion of truth” as a “criterion of reality”, and the “cat-
egories of reason” as much more than a mere “adjustment of the world for
utilitarian ends” (PF 1888, 14[153]). On the contrary, Nietzsche maintains
that what we ordinarily call “truths” are only conventional and provi-
sional resting points in our active relationship with the world, which is
biology- and culture-laden.2
A deeper exploration of this issue may reveal further features that Ni-
etzsche’s view apparently shares with Wittgenstein’s. When Nietzsche reflects
on the origin of our world-picture in the first edition of The Gay Science, he
famously observes that during the evolutionary history of mankind the intel-
lect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and
species-preserving. (…) Such erroneous articles of faith were passed on by
inheritance further and further, and finally almost become part of the basic
endowment of the species (GS §110). These “basic errors” have been “incor-
porated since time immemorial”, and consequently “even in knowledge
those propositions became the norms according to which one determined
‘true’ and ‘untrue’” (ibid.). However, “the strength of knowledge lies not in
its degree of truth, but in its age, its embeddedness, its character of condition
of life” (ibid.). Accordingly, in Human, All Too Human Nietzsche remarks
that that which we now call the world is the outcome of a host of errors and
fantasies which have gradually arisen and grown entwined with one another
in the course of the overall evolution of the organic being, and are now inher-
ited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past – as treasure: for the
value of our humanity depends upon it (HH I, §16). Furthermore, Nietzsche
maintains that human experience “has gradually become, is indeed still fully
in the course of becoming, and should thus not be regarded as a fixed ob-
ject”, and he therefore argues that the world-picture we refer to as the back-
ground of our practical activity is in fact a product of our experience itself:

We have for millennia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the

world, [and it] has gradually become so marvellously variegated, fright-
ful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired colour – but we have been the
colourists: it is the human intellect that has made appearance appear and
transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things. (…) The [very]
idea of the world spun out of intellectual errors we have inherited (ibid.).
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 191

Our language conveys all this and fixes, once and for all, that inherited
world-picture. In fact, Nietzsche argues that the words we use are the
expression of an intellectual systematization involving all levels of human
engagement with the world (epistemic, moral, aesthetic, etc.). Yet when
we use names such as “subject”, “object”, “will”, “cause”, “good”,
“bad”, “ugly”, and the like, we ordinarily conceive of them as an ade-
quate expression of a state of affairs, not the result of an ongoing process
of depicting world-events. That is, we attribute the greatest value to these
concepts and to the dichotomies they imply while at the same time de-
valuing our actual experience as a merely “apparent” realm (cf. TI, “True
World”). Why is this? Why – to use Nietzsche’s words – has man “for
long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veri-
tates”, pretending “that in language he possessed knowledge of the
world” (HH I, §11)? Why was “the sculptor of language (…) not so mod-
est as to believe that he was only giving things designations”, instead be-
lieving “that with words he was expressing supreme knowledge of things”
(ibid.)?
Nietzsche gave some thought to these questions in the 1873 unpub-
lished writing On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, which is
worth considering in order to glean further elements that may allow us
to compare Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on language.3 In On Truth and
Lie, Nietzsche conveys his critical attitude towards the idea that lan-
guage is “the full and adequate expression of all realities” (TL 1999,
143). For him, language is only a matter of legislation; its origins rest in
the establishment of conventions and designations which might be fruit-
ful for the preservation of social groups (ibid.). Within this picture,
words are mere “tokens of designation”, and what counts as the “truth”
and a “lie” depends on how we use these tokens (ibid.). Nietzsche fur-
ther defends the metaphorical value of “truths”, insofar as they are the
mere translation of neural stimulations into concepts “which, after they
have been in use for a long time, strike a people as firmly established,
canonical, and binding” (TL, 146).4 Notably, Nietzsche conceives of this
translation as a creative determination and not as the sort of direct mir-
roring that is at work in the correspondence conception of truth en-
dorsed by common sense naïve realism (cf. HH I, §11). Nietzsche is
quite clear on this and argues, for example, that “where words are con-
cerned, what matters is never truth, never the full and adequate expres-
sion” (TL, 144). Furthermore, he remarks that truthfulness is only a
moral obligation imposed by society, “i.e. the obligation to use the cus-
tomary metaphors, or (…) firmly established conventions” (TL, 146).
But if our judgements are based on social or cultural agreement, then,
contrary to what is ordinarily believed, the value of truth and lies is not
fixed and unchanging, but rather depends on the context within which
these evaluations are made.
192 Pietro Gori

2 Family Resemblances
Elaborating on what has been explored thus far, we can now tentatively
compare Nietzsche’s view with Wittgenstein’s. As a preliminary remark,
we can say that the frameworks underlying their interest in language are
quite different, for likewise are their aims. In particular, one might argue
that Nietzsche’s engagement with the value and function of language
should be seen as part of his overall diagnosis of the anthropological de-
generation of Western society (cf. e.g. GM, Preface and III, §§24–27; BGE
§203; and Schacht 2006), while for Wittgenstein language is of primary
interest to philosophical investigation.5 In addition, Nietzsche seems to be
convinced that inquiry into the origin of the intellectual “articles of faith”
reproduced by our language may allow us to counter the dogmatic world-
view. That is, Nietzsche is especially interested in stressing how the forms
of expression we use arose, because he believes it to be crucial to his philo-
sophical project that we disclose the actual role they played (and continue
to play) in our engagement with the world, namely as nothing more than
fruitful means of communication with no metaphysical value. Wittgenstein
may agree with this conclusion, but at the same time he seems to give few
or even no emphasis to such a genealogical examination, also arguing that
it is not explanation that should interest us but description alone (PI §§109
and 126). In On Certainty, §559, Wittgenstein remarks that “the language-
game (…) is there – like our life” and maintains that our aim as philoso-
phers is only to reflect on how language works and “how the concepts that
make up the different regions of our language actually function” (McGinn
1997, 13; cf. also Gray 2012, 115).
With that said, if we look at Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s general ap-
proaches to language as a phenomenon pertaining to each of us as human
beings in relations with each other, we may find comparable features at the
basis of their philosophical views. For example, both Wittgenstein and Ni-
etzsche agree that language is an instrument for communication and that the
meaning of the words we use lacks an essentialist foundation. Similarly to
what Nietzsche argues, for example, in On Truth and Lie, right after the
remark on philosophy as a fight against the fascination exerted upon us by
our forms of expression, in the Blue Book Wittgenstein states that “words
have those meanings which we have given them” (BBB, 27), and a few pages
later he reiterates that “a word hasn’t got a meaning given to it, as it were,
by a power independent of us (…). A word has the meaning someone has
given to it” (BBB, 28). It should also be noted that, for Wittgenstein, the
meaning of a word originates in its use in practice, and the word itself is like
“a label [which] would only have a meaning to us in so far as we made a
particular use of it” (BBB, 69). By focusing on the practical foundation of
meaning, Wittgenstein further argues that it may occur that,
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 193

impressed by merely seeing a label on a thing, [we] forget that what

makes these labels important is their use. In this way we sometimes be-
lieve that we have named something when we make the gesture of point-
ing and utter words like ‘This is…’ (the formula of the ostensive
definition). We say we call something ‘toothache,’ and think that the
word has received a definite function in the dealings we carry out with
language when, under certain circumstances, we have pointed to our
cheek and said: ‘This is toothache’.
(ibid.)6

Thus, it seems that Wittgenstein and Nietzsche would have agreed that
meaning is something that we attribute to words and that it does not de-
pend on the adequacy of each word to convey the object it denotes (cf. e.g.
OC §191). On the contrary, we should “think of words as instruments
characterized by their use” (BBB, 67; cf. PI §569) and conceive of the
meaning of a word only as “a kind of employment of it” (OC §61), trying
not to be deceived by their practical fruitfulness as means of communica-
tion. But this is what in fact happens, as both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
remark. That is, “we easily forget how much a notation, a form of expres-
sion, may mean to us” (BBB, 57), and consequently we forget that the
“truths” we rely on are in fact illusions (TL, 146). Therefore, we ordinarily
– although erroneously – believe that great value attaches to our language,
as if with words we could establish a definition (i.e., a function) once and
for all. But meanings have no fixed character at all. Rather, they change;
they are flexible, fluid. Nietzsche expresses this by talking of a “mobile
army of metaphors” (my emphasis), while Wittgenstein observes that “the
meanings of words change with the concepts”, which may themselves
change “[w]hen language-games change” (OC §65; cf. also BBB 67).7 We
can understand this view as the principle of a shared philosophical project
aimed at stressing the merely instrumental value of language and of words,
i.e. notations, i.e. “forms of expression” – one that allows humankind to
look at the world in an unprejudiced way.
This leads us to another important feature that can be found in both
Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s reflections, that is, a view of language as the
background of our practical engagement with the world – the background
of our evaluations and actions, of our epistemic and practical behaviour.
As is well known, Wittgenstein calls this “substratum of all my enquiring
and asserting” a “world-picture” (Weltbild; OC §162), further arguing
that it is something that we do not invent on our own but rather learn in
childhood.8 It is the “matter-of course foundation” of how we look at the
world and practically engage it (OC §167), “the conceptual environment
within which we live” and which “provides the criteria of correctness” for
our judgements.9 It is a neutral – i.e. neither true nor false – framework of
194 Pietro Gori

reference for our knowledge claims, the realm of certainty, which Wittgen-
stein contrasts with knowledge (cf. OC §205). At the same time, however,
each world-picture has its own origin; that is, the “inherited background
against which I distinguish between true and false” (OC §94) must be the
product of a natural, historical, or cultural development – and for this
reason it must be value-laden. I would like to stress this point because
I think that, although Nietzsche’s sensibility to epistemological concerns
such as the difference between “certainty” and “knowledge” was not as
sharp as Wittgenstein’s, and given that both their aims and the background
of their philosophical investigations differed, one can argue that their views
on the linguistic framework of our engagement with the world do converge
on some important details, which are therefore worth considering in
detail.
For example, it could be argued that the Wittgensteinian concept of a
“world-picture” can be applied properly to Nietzsche’s view in Human, all
too Human and The Gay Science. As noted above, the intellectual repre-
sentation of a state of affairs is described by Nietzsche as a picturing activ-
ity that is based on the human perspective. Nietzsche indeed stresses that
“we are the colourists” of the marvellous painting that is our world of
representation, whose traits replicate our “moral, aesthetic, and religious
demands” (HH I, §16). This conceptual framework is in fact, for Ni-
etzsche, the inherited background of our further evaluations, which of
course presupposes a series of judgements on which we instinctively rely.
Although it would be wrong to say that this view is a proper anticipation
of Wittgenstein’s ideas, given the subtle and yet relevant differences be-
tween them, the similarity between Nietzsche’s remarks on the human
world of representations and Wittgenstein’s conception of a “world-pic-
ture” is nevertheless palpable. This resemblance can be further appreciated
if we compare OC §94 with the above-considered §110 of The Gay Sci-
ence, where Nietzsche refers to the basic intellectual errors inherited by
humankind as “the norms according to which one determined ‘true’ and
‘untrue’”. GS §354 is also significant, for in this aphorism Nietzsche traces
the origin of consciousness and language to our instinctive need for com-
munication, arguing that we can only access the world from what he calls
“the herd perspective”. In fact, it could be argued that the herd perspective
can be interpreted as a Wittgensteinian world-picture or form of life – as
I will try to show in the next section.

3 The Herd Perspective as a Form of Life

In his 2017 paper The Epistemological Investigations of On Certainty,
Michael Kober argues that, for Wittgenstein, “the notion of world picture
describes a familiar cultural or anthropological phenomenon: the intuitive,
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 195

practical (cf. OC §§103, 167; PI §129) rather than discursive sharing of

views exhibited in customs or institutions somehow overlapping, support-
ing, or supplementing each other (OC §§102, 275, 281, 298)”.10 Kober
further observes that a world-picture is not necessarily a theory of the
world, although it guides the behaviour of those holding fast to it. (…) A
world-picture serves as a basis, a foundation (Grundlage, OC §167) or a
‘point of departure’ (OC §105) of a community’s looking at the world,
though it contains both certainties and knowledge claims resting on them”
(Kober 2017, 450). Moreover, Kober helps us to better appreciate the no-
tion of a “form of life”, which is related to Wittgenstein’s reflection on
language, insofar as the latter argues that “the speaking of language is part
of an activity, or of a form of life” (PI §23, cf. PI §19). As Kober remarks,
for Wittgenstein “forms of life consist of a plurality of language-games.
They are not related to individual performers, but require a community
sharing practices, customs, uses, institutions. (…) The notion of a form of
life describes, or labels, the setting in which language-games are practiced,
i.e., the concept of a practice or a language-game has to be linked with the
concept of a community”.11 Finally, Kober deals with Wittgenstein’s con-
ception of certainty by focusing on its groundedness in shared practices
and thus its relation to “a community or a form of life whose members are
engaged in these practices”.12 For Kober, in the notes in On Certainty Witt-
genstein aims to explore “the epistemic foundations of our practices” and
to contextualize “our knowledge and our certainty within our practices”.
Therefore, certainty should be seen not as a strict indubitability but rather
as “what is (…) not doubted within ongoing acting”.13 “Certainties”, Ko-
ber continues, “induce you to follow them, if you want to participate in
certain practices of one community or another – that is, they determine
your acting if you want to communicate with others”.14 I will use these
definitions of the mutually related notions of a world-picture, language-
games, forms of life, and certainty as a reference for my further remarks.15
In what follows, I will focus in particular on the relationship between these
notions and their social or communitarian framework, in an attempt to
argue that this may be a crucial element of comparison between Wittgen-
stein’s and Nietzsche’s view of language and knowledge.
Before turning to Nietzsche’s GS §354, let me just add a few consider-
ations on the Wittgensteinian concept of a “form of life”, which will be
relevant to the comparison I would like to suggest. Following Cavell
(1989), Daniel Whiting argues that “one can distinguish ‘vertical’ and
‘horizontal’ senses of ‘form of life’. The vertical, broadly-speaking biologi-
cal, sense concerns the life form all human beings share, with all its physi-
ological peculiarities. (…) The horizontal, broadly-speaking social, sense
concerns ways of life, which humans might or might not share”.16 As
Whiting further remarks, Wittgenstein seems to view language-games as
196 Pietro Gori

depending on certain “very general facts of nature” (PPF §365), but also
on “a whole culture”’ (APR, 8). They are therefore an expression of per-
spectival viewpoints which “reflect their participants’ sense for what is or
is not important”, and, most significantly, they can change depending on
the framework in which they are based. Wittgenstein in fact remarks that
“an education quite different from ours might be the foundation of quite
different concepts” (Z §387) and that “an entirely different game is played
in different ages” (APR, 8; I owe both references to Whiting). Thus, Witt-
genstein seems to endorse a relativistic conception of judgement – but not
in the detrimental sense of a complete lack of principles of judgement. The
relativization in fact concerns only the foundation of our truth- (or value-)
claims, which are not fixed, as has traditionally been thought.17 Couched
in the actual use we make of our language, the meaning of words is fluid,
for Wittgenstein: “When language-games change, then there is a change of
concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of the words change” (OC
§65, cf. also BBB, 56, 67, and 69). Therefore, our certainties themselves,
i.e. the inherited background of the truth-values we attribute to states of
affairs, aren’t fixed at all, for they reflect a context that can change both
synchronically (different frames of reference or language-games may exist
at the same time) and diachronically (the rules of a language-game may
change at different times).
As I will try to show, it is possible to ascribe to the herd perspective that
Nietzsche outlines in GS §354 almost all of the abovementioned features
that pertain to forms of life. In that text, Nietzsche conceives of conscious-
ness as the product of the biological history of humankind, arguing that
“consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need to com-
municate”. He further argues that “consciousness is really just a net con-
necting one person with another. (…) Consciousness was necessary, was
useful, only between persons (…) and it has developed only in proportion
to that usefulness” (GS §354). Nietzsche’s fundamental idea is that think-
ing is an activity that takes place at the unconscious level, independently of
our being aware of it. In fact, he argues that we are unaware of most of our
thought, while “the thinking which becomes conscious is only the smallest
part of it (…) – for only that conscious thinking takes place in words, that
is, in communication symbols [Mittheilungszeichen]. (…) In short, the de-
velopment of language and the development of consciousness (…) go hand
in hand” (GS §354). This is already of some interest for our purposes here;
indeed, it allows us to argue that Nietzsche agrees with Wittgenstein that
we should give thought to the social foundation of our linguistic practices,
focusing especially on how language works as a means of communication.
Nietzsche indeed remarks that “language serves as a bridge between per-
sons”, also claiming that this connection is made possible through the in-
vention of “signs” (Zeichen), i.e. words. Thus, the aforementioned
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 197

instrumentalist view of language seems to be reiterated here. But the most

important observation, to my mind, can be found in what Nietzsche goes
on to argue, namely that

consciousness actually belongs not to man’s existence as an individual

but rather to the community- and herd-aspects of his nature; that ac-
cordingly, it is finely developed only in relation to its usefulness to com-
munity or herd; and that consequently each of us (…) will always bring
to consciousness precisely that in ourselves which is “non-individual”,
that which is “average”; that due to the nature of consciousness (…) our
thoughts themselves are continually as it were outvoted and translated
back into the herd perspective.
(GS §354)

How we look at the world is therefore couched in an inherited background

which has been naturally selected along the history of humankind because
of its fruitfulness for the preservation of the species (we may want to avoid
utilitarian language). Nietzsche appears to be arguing something even sub-
tler, however. He mentions not only the community but the herd, a crucial
concept in Nietzsche’s critical engagement with European-Christian mo-
rality. He in fact repeatedly deplores the detrimental effect morality has
had on the development of the human type (GM, Preface §6), given that it
brought about the “degeneration and diminution of humanity into the per-
fect herd animal” (BGE §203; cf. also BGE §§199, 201 and 202). There-
fore, the herd perspective is not at all a neutral frame of reference. On the
contrary, it is value-laden, which means that any judgement we are capable
of pronouncing is morally oriented, and it may take significant effort for us
(philosophers) to win the fight against the forms of expression that deter-
mine our cultural framework.
Given what has been shown thus far, the similarities between the Witt-
gensteinian conceptions of a “world-picture” and a “form of life” and the
Nietzschean “herd perspective” are evident.18 Nietzsche describes the
frame of reference of our being in the world by stressing the influence of
our need for communication on its development. Conscious thinking arises
both as a natural, i.e. biological, feature and as a social one. It embeds a
well-defined attitude towards the world which can be properly described
as a cultural or anthropological phenomenon that guides the behaviour of
those who hold fast to it.19 The herd perspective is thus the “point of de-
parture” of a community’s perspective on the world, a viewpoint which
finds expression in the language we use. In fact, Nietzsche seems to endorse
Wittgenstein’s view that “the speaking of language is part of an activity, or
of a form of life” (PI §23). Most importantly, he is especially concerned
with the social features lying at the origin of the herd perspective, in a way
198 Pietro Gori

which resembles Wittgenstein’s approach to language and language-games.

Indeed, we can apply to Nietzsche’s herd perspective the same remarks that
Kober makes regarding forms of life: the herd perspective, too, is “not re-
lated to individual performers, but require[s] a community sharing prac-
tices, customs, uses, institutions. (…) [It] describes, or labels, the setting in
which language-games are practiced”.20
There is one final aspect to be considered and which may ultimately al-
low us to conclude that the herd perspective can in fact be interpreted as a
Wittgensteinian form of life: the contextualization of knowledge within
the human world-picture and the consequent revaluation of the value of
“truth” which is implied in Nietzschean perspectivism.21 In the final part of
GS §354, Nietzsche provides us with the only proper definition of perspec-
tivism that can be encountered in his published writings:22 “This is what
I consider to be true phenomenalism and perspectivism: that due to the
nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become
­conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world (…) – that everything which
enters consciousness thereby becomes (…) a sign, a herd-mark [Zeichen,
Heerden-Merkzeichen]” (GS §354). This is consistent with what has been
argued above: we are only conscious of those thoughts that reach the
higher (superficial) level of our mental awareness and which are therefore
translated into words, i.e. communication symbols or herd-marks.23 These
words are the frame of reference of our action and behaviour; they repre-
sent the perspective on the world that we, as members of a social or cul-
tural community, share. This is of some interest because, contrary to what
Nietzsche remarks in other classic passages devoted to our perspectival
engagement with the world (namely PF 1886–1887, 7[60] and GM, III,
§12), in GS §354 perspectivism is presented as the shared view of a group
of individuals playing the same language-game.24 But it closely resembles
what Wittgenstein has in mind when he reflects on the meaningfulness of
our linguistic tokens: our individual relationship with the world always
depends on shared viewpoints, on the perspective provided by the rules of
the language-game we are playing.
These premises imply an important consequence: if our engagement
with states of affairs can only be perspectival (in the aforementioned sense),
if there is no way for us to access the world directly and describe it literally
(or “truthfully”, according to the correspondence theory of truth), then
our very concept of “knowledge” must be reconceived. Accordingly, in GS
§354 Nietzsche argues that “we simply have no organ for knowing, for
‘truth’: we ‘know’ (or believe or imagine) exactly as much as is useful to
the human herd, to the species.” By stating this, Nietzsche apparently
agrees with Wittgenstein that “knowledge” rests on a different plane than
our certainties, i.e. that we can only “distinguish between true and false”
against the background we inherit (for example by learning it in our
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 199

childhood; OC §§94 and 167; GS §110).25 It would therefore be appropri-

ate to give up the ordinary idea of knowledge as an adequate description
of the world and instead endorse a contextualist view which focuses on the
dependence of our judgements on their frame of reference (whether bio-
logical, historical, cultural, etc.).26 That framework is where the language-
game is actually played; therefore, it is only with reference to it that we can
assess the meaning of the words we use. As noted above, this implies a rela-
tivization of the value of our knowledge claims which does not necessarily
lead to nihilism about values, for truth and falsehood can in fact still be
adopted as meaningful categories, but only if we conceive of them in a new,
re-valued way – that is, only if we view them as the result of perspectival
judgements couched in shared linguistic practices (on this, cf. e.g. BGE
§34).

4 Pragmatist Humanism
What has been argued thus far allows us to offer some closing thoughts on
the similarity between Wittgenstein’s and Nietzsche’s views of language
and knowledge, which I have tentatively explored in this chapter. What
I would like to argue in this final section is that the agreement between their
views may be profitably approached by focusing on the broad pragmatist
commitment that both seem to endorse, namely the idea that the human
viewpoint is the sole reference and actual justification of our judgements.27
Both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein in fact focus on humankind (and its so-
cial and cultural dimension) as the frame of reference of our value- and
knowledge-claims; they both maintain that what can be assessed as “true”
or “false” lies within the human context, within the human perspective,
and it is only with reference to our practical activity that our words acquire
their meaning. “We behold all things through the human head and cannot
cut off this head”, Nietzsche writes in Human, all too Human I, § 9, and
in 1887 he reiterates that “we cannot look around the corner” and avoid
seeing ourselves under our perspectival forms (GS §374). Although it can
be argued that “there might be (…) other kinds of intellects and perspec-
tives”, and therefore that the world “includes infinite interpretations”
(ibid.), Nietzsche continues, it would seem that we are stuck within our
own perspective or form of life.28 Similarly, for Wittgenstein it is impossi-
ble for us to consider our world-picture in a neutral and unprejudiced
way:29 as a precondition of our valuational activity, a world-picture cannot
be judged as true or correct (OC §162). On the contrary, truth can only be
determined within the framework of a language-game, which is a practical
framework.30 Therefore, we can agree with Kober that “if one accepts
Wittgenstein’s descriptive conception of knowledge, [one must admit that]
any question as regards the truth of a sentence or a theory is embedded
200 Pietro Gori

within a certain practice”,31 and, consequently, one must consider that

practice the sole justification of our knowledge-claims.
In a 1992 lecture, Hilary Putnam argued that “even if Wittgenstein was
not in the strict sense a ‘pragmatist’ (…), he shares with pragmatism (…) a
central – perhaps the central – emphasis: the emphasis on the primacy of
practice”.32 Commenting on this, David Backhurst and Cheryl Misak ob-
serve that there is indeed a sense in which we may agree with Putnam,
given that Wittgenstein invites us to see mind and meaning “in their rela-
tion to human activity, as aspects of our natural history. Accordingly, ex-
planation of mind and meaning finds its terminus in an appeal to practice
– to custom, traditions, and forms of life.” Furthermore, they argue that
“Wittgenstein and the pragmatists are united” in a defence of the view that
“we should think of ideas, concepts, beliefs, and theories, not on the model
of pictorial representations of reality, but as tools or instruments we de-
ploy in our engagement with the world”.33 But these observations can be
applied to Nietzsche as well. As I have tried to show in the previous sec-
tions, Nietzsche in fact maintains that the human world-representation –
the “apparent” world of our actual knowledge – is the framework we
inherit from the historical past of humankind. In addition, he argues that
language and especially its tokens are the product of human practices
aimed at communication, valuable only as fruitful designations of states of
affairs. Finally, one of the basic tenets of Nietzsche’s attempt to develop a
new (unprejudiced and anti-dogmatic) philosophical attitude is the idea
that if we want to enlighten the various features of human life – and even-
tually understand them properly – we must deal with their origins as natu-
ral and cultural phenomena. That is, we must look at the practical
framework of customs, traditions, etc., out of which they arose and with
reference to which their significance may be justified. Thus, it is possible to
say that both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche defended a form of anti-essen-
tialism about knowledge according to which (i) the meaning of our world
can be determined within our world itself and (ii) it is nonsense to search
for it beyond the boundaries of our actual experience and practice – i.e.
beyond the boundaries of our form of life.34
In a 2012 paper, Sami Pihlström stressed the pragmatist feature of
­Wittgenstein’s view based on a conception of pragmatism which is much
more nuanced and philosophically significant than the “mythical
­pragmatism (which the real pragmatists all scorned) which says ‘It’s true
(for you) if it is good for you’” (Putnam 1995, 51). For Pihlström (2012,
§22), ­pragmatism should be seen first and foremost as an attempt to focus
on the ­humanly contextualized word-representation, which is the only one
we can develop. We look at the world from our human standpoint and we
pronounce our judgements accordingly; therefore, each judgement is
­value-laden, for it depends on the individual (not necessarily subjective,
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 201

but also social, cultural, etc.) perspective which represents its frame of
reference. Therefore, things have no meaning in themselves, independently
of our judgement activity; there is no hidden essence which we might grasp,
and the only value we can attribute to states of affairs is a human value
that can be assessed only within the boundaries of our inherited
background.
With this definition of pragmatism in mind, Pihlström (2012, §7) finds
it “easy to suggest at a general level that Wittgenstein provides us with a
‘pragmatist’ picture of human language-use and meaning”, for his “later
philosophy generally can be read as an attempt to show that it is only
against the background of our human form(s) of life, our habits of doing
various things together in common environments, that meanings are pos-
sible”. This pragmatist point, Pihlström continues, “is highlighted by the
fact that (…) the notion of language [that appears in Wittgenstein] must be
construed (…) as a genuine human practice within the natural world” and
that “the possibility of language and meaning is grounded in (…) habits of
action whose radical contingency and continuous historical development
are among their key features” (Pihlström 2012, §§9 and 39). Finally, Pihl-
ström stresses that Wittgenstein leaves no room for a “higher standpoint
for us to adopt than the humanly accessible perspectives internal to our
language-games”, an observation which allows us to further compare
Wittgenstein’s view with Nietzsche’s and to ascribe to both the pragmatist
commitment outlined thus far. As noted above, in reflecting on the herd
perspective as the inherited background of all our judgements, Nietzsche
indeed remarks that any access to the world as it is in itself is precluded to
us, and therefore no “knowledge” is possible – if we conceive of it as an
adequate description of the state of affairs. For him, the world we “know”
is only a representation based on one among several possible ways of con-
ceptualizing reality. Any attempt to consider our world-picture as the sin-
gle correct or privileged interpretation of experience is ill-founded, for
there is no metaphysical foundation for it, as inquiry into its origin may
reveal.
But if language does not mirror an independent reality, if our engage-
ment with the world can only be perspectival, should we give up all at-
tempts to provide a meaningful description of it, that is, a description that
might be consistently justified? Pragmatist thinkers aim precisely to answer
this question in a non-sceptical way, arguing that, although deprived of
metaphysical references, we can still assess the value of our judgement
claims based on their function. I think that both Nietzsche and Wittgen-
stein adopted a consistent strategy.35 Indeed, their focus on the human
perspective may be seen as an attempt to determine the context within
which knowledge claims can be meaningfully assessed, leaving aside any
metaphysical foundation that, for them, does not pertain to language.
202 Pietro Gori

They indeed maintain that the role that language plays in our practical
engagement with the world and in our social activities is the proper back-
ground against which we can determine the meaning of the words we use.
It is only when a word is actually employed and thus “incorporated into
our language” that it becomes meaningful (OC §61; PI §43), but “it is our
acting, which lies at the bottom of language-game” (OC §204), the latter
being superficial, perspectival –, which means that its significance isn’t
grounded on a direct correspondence with the world (GS §354; PI §§92
and 116; OC §§90 and 215). Yet ordinary language deceives us and makes
us believe it is the expression of a metaphysical reality. Fascinated by our
forms of expression (e.g. because of their practical fruitfulness as a means
of communication), we forget that they are the mere product of a natural
and historical ongoing process involving a variety of language-games that
may themselves change in time (which implies the sort of synchronic and
diachronic relativism mentioned in Section 3; on this, cf. e.g. HH I, §16,
BBB, 67 and OC §65). The philosophical attitude that Nietzsche and Witt-
genstein outline (with the due differences, of course) aims especially to rid
us of this fundamental prejudice: by focusing on how language actually
works within our lives (cf. e.g. OC §147), we can appreciate what the
words we use do in deed mean (OC §342), thus making a crucial strategic
move in the battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of
language.

Notes
1 An early interesting attempt to reflect on the correspondence and terminologi-
cal coherence between Nietzsche’s view of grammar as the seductor of thought
and Wittgenstein’s concern with philosophy in PI §§109 and 110 is provided in
Steuer 1995.
2 In the late notebooks, for example, Nietzsche argues that “truth is not some-
thing that’s there and must be found out, discovered, but something that must
be made and that provides the name for a process (…). Inserting truth as a
processus in infinitum, an active determining, not a becoming conscious of
something that is ‘in itself’ fixed and determinate” (PF 1887, 9[91]).
3 Relevant studies on Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie and the beginning of his re-
flection on language include, e.g., Crawford 1988 and Reuter 2009.
4 On Nietzsche’s view of metaphors and the relationship between language and
knowledge, see Emden 2005.
5 I agree with Maria Alvarez and Aaron Ridley that “Nietzsche, unlike Wittgen-
stein, is not primarily interested in the concepts of understanding, language,
meaning, thinking, etc., but in ethics and human excellence, and in the effects
that the historical character of our experience has on these. His remarks about
language are thus subservient to a quite different sort of project” (Alvarez and
Ridley 2005, 12). For that reason, I am not interested in defending any of the
four theses that Alvarez and Ridley discuss in their paper and that refer to the
general claim that “Nietzsche was more of a Wittgensteinian than he might at
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 203

first appear” (ibid., 2). Also, I think that it is possible to consistently reflect on
the striking resemblances between Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s views (espe-
cially on language) without necessarily attempting to either “construe Ni-
etzsche as a proto-Wittgensteinian about language” or argue that these
resemblances are an indication that Nietzsche arrived at Wittgenstein’s insights
first (ibid., 15). The view that “for Wittgenstein, language is not the means, but
the actual object of a philosophical research” is also defended in Steuer 1995,
502.
6 These remarks may be compared with the following passage from TL (145):
“We call a man honest; we ask, ‘Why did he act so honestly today?’ Our an-
swer is usually: ‘Because of his honesty.’ Honesty! (…) We have no knowledge
of an essential quality which might be called honesty, but we do know of nu-
merous individualized and hence non-equivalent actions which we equate with
each other by omitting what is unlike, and which we now designate as honest
actions; finally we formulate from them a qualitas occulta with the name
‘honesty’”.
7 Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of fluidity in On Certainty, § 96: “It might be
imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were
hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were
not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid
proposition hardened, and hard ones became fluid.” Walter Kaufmann stresses
this parallel between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein in his edition of Nietzsche’s
works. For a discussion on this, cf. Alvarez and Ridley 2005.
8 On Wittgenstein’s “world-picture”, cf. especially Hamilton 2014.
9 Boncompagni 2016, 116–117; cf. also Kober 2017, 450, 453–454.
10 Kober 2017, 450–451.
11 Kober 2017, 449–450.
12 Kober 2017, 449.
13 Kober 2017, 443.
14 Kober 2017, 458–459.
15 As is well known, Wittgenstein conceives of certainties “as a form of life” (OC
§358) and as “something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified”, like a
world-picture (OC §359).
16 Whiting 2017, 424.
17 On this topic, see Boncompagni 2016, 8 and 123.
18 It is interesting to note that Wittgenstein mentions the herd in an important
passage from the Big Typescript (TS 213/423): “Human beings are deeply im-
bedded in philosophical, i.e. grammatical confusion. And freeing them from
these presupposes extricating them from the immensely diverse associations
they are caught up in. One must, as it were, regroup their entire language. – But
of course this language developed as it did because of human beings had – and
have – the tendency to think this way. Therefore extricating them only works
with those who live in an instinctive state of dissatisfaction with language. Not
with those who, following all of their instincts, live within the very herd that
has created this language as its proper expression.” It is clear how this passage
is relevant for this chapter. In a paper devoted to that text, Stefan Majetschak
comments that “Wittgenstein’s clear and direct reference to Nietzsche is aston-
ishing; it can hardly be considered a mere coincidence of words and thoughts,
of which Wittgenstein could be unaware” (Majetschak 2006, 73. A translation
of this paper is also published in this volume). As an explanation, Majetschak
argues that Wittgenstein could have encountered references to Nietzsche’s view
204 Pietro Gori

of the issue in the work of Paul Ernst. But it seems to be much more plausible
that, in this case, the bridge between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein was Fritz
Mauthner, as argued by Janet Lungstrum in a 1995 paper. Indeed, Mauthner’s
Beiträge zur einer Kritik der Sprache (1901–1902) and Wörterbuch der Phi-
losophie (1910–1911) “received much public attention during Wittgenstein’s
formative years in Vienna“, and in these works Mauthner “publicized an im-
plicitly Nietzschean insistence on the underlying metaphoricity of language”
(Lungstrum 1995, 302–303). Most importantly, Lungstrum observes that Mau-
thner echoes Nietzsche in his own mention of the “herd instinct” (Herdenins-
tinkt; Mauthner 1906, 90), the “herd language”, and the “herd life”
(Herdensprache and Herdenleben; Mauthner 1901–1902, I, 39–40). The latter
may be the actual source of Wittgenstein’s remark in TS 213/423, for in that text
Mauthner also refers to the human instincts and develops some considerations
that are consistent with Wittgenstein’s. In particular, both the authors refer to the
herd in a significantly different way than Nietzsche. While that notion is philo-
sophically relevant for Nietzsche, who attributes to the herd a moral value and
mentions the herd instinct and the herd animal in crucial passages of his oeuvre,
both Mauthner and Wittgenstein talk of the herd as the “average viewpoint” of
mankind. This difference in facts reflects the dissimilarity between Nietzsche’s and
Wittgenstein’s philosophical projects that, as I have mentioned, undermines any
attempt to establish an actual correspondence between their views on language.
It might be worth mentioning that the excerpt from TS 213 contains another
important element of connection, albeit indirect, between Wittgenstein and Ni-
etzsche, namely Georg Lichtenberg’s remarks on language. In TS 213/422–423,
Wittgenstein writes: “Lichtenberg: ‘Our entire philosophy is correction of the
use of language, and therefore the correction of a philosophy – of the most
general philosophy.’ /…/ You ask why grammatical problems are so tough and
seemingly ineradicable. – Because they are connected with the oldest thought
habits, i.e. with the oldest images that are engraved into our language itself.
((Lichtenberg))”. For what I could see, this reference remained unnoticed to the
scholarship on Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s views of language, but its impor-
tance is undisputable, given that Lichtenberg – one of the few authors cited by
Wittgenstein in his writings – is a direct source of Nietzsche’s critical remarks
on the “seduction of grammar” (GM, I, §13. See also BGE Preface; §§12, 20,
34, and 54; and TI Reason 5. The issue is also addressed in GS §354, where
Nietzsche refers to “those epistemologists who have got tangled up in the
snares of grammar (the folk metaphysics)”. On Nietzsche and Lichtenberg see
e.g. Stingelin 1996, sec. 3.3; Sommer 2016, 54–55). This “missing link” may in
fact provide a point of reference for any study devoted to the similarity between
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche: by relating both the authors to a third view that
inspired them one might solve some of the interpretive problems that still con-
cern the relevant literature.
19 See Kober 2017, 450.
20 Kober 2017, 449–450.
21 In fact, one of the seminal studies devoted to a comparison of Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein deals with perspectivism: Wallace 1973.
22 It might be worth remarking that Nietzsche uses the term “Perspektivismus”
only once in his published writings, namely in GS §354. Of course, this does
not undermine the relevance of the other passages where Nietzsche deals with
the perspectival character of life and with perspectival seeing (e.g. BGE, Preface
 Wittgenstein and Nietzsche on Language and Knowledge 205

and GM, III, §12), but at the same time I am firmly convinced that how this
issue is addressed in The Gay Science is especially significant for appreciating
Nietzsche’s view on the issue (I have tried to defend my view, e.g., in Gori
2019a, chap. 3).
23 On Nietzsche’s view of consciousness and his philosophy of mind, see Riccardi
2021.
24 Of course, the perspective addressed in GS §354 is not the only possible view-
point for humankind. The evolutionary approach to the issue which Nietzsche
endorses in that text should not mislead us: the path which led to the herd
perspective is only one among several others, each one depending on the envi-
ronment (biological and/or cultural) that surrounds – and therefore shapes –
one’s particular social community. As Nietzsche observes as early as 1873, the
actual existence of a variety of languages shows us that states of affairs can be
expressed in many ways, which implies that the meaning of the words we use
is not an essential property of the world but only the product of a contextual
interpretation of it (cf. WL, 144).
25 I am not trying to avoid one of the most delicate questions concerning Ni-
etzsche’s view of knowledge and truth, namely his “falsification thesis”. I
simply do not have enough space to deal with it exhaustively. Very briefly,
the problem at stake concerns Nietzsche’s coherence in rejecting the idea
that we may reach the plane of things in themselves, thus grasping the
“true” features of states of affairs, while describing our actual knowledge as
an erroneous representation (e.g. HH I, §16 and GS §110) or even a falsifi-
cation (GS §354) of the events we experience (on this, see Clark 1990, Hus-
sain 2004, Andresen 2013, Nehamas 2015 and 2017). I recently tried to
make a case for a fictional realist approach to the issue as a possible way to
make sense of Nietzsche’s reiterated criticism of the ordinary approach to
truth and the sceptical phenomenalist tenet he endorses. According to the
modern fictionalist view, it is possible to take as true a representation the
falsehood of which we are conscious. Insofar as it leads to productive re-
sults relative to particular interests and scopes, an inaccurate representation
can in fact be a fruitful means of orientation, and within these boundaries
it can be accepted as veridical, i.e. true enough (cf. on this Teller 2009;
Remhof 2016). I am inclined to maintain that Nietzsche’s perspectivism can
be interpreted consistently with this view, namely as the idea that the only
“knowable” world is (for us) that of useful or regulative fictions, which are
literally false but true enough to be accepted as principles of a world-de-
scription (cf. Gori 2019b and 2019a, chap. 2, §4).
26 In the Blue Book (25), for example, Wittgenstein argues that “there is no exact
usage of the world ‘knowledge’; but we can make up several such usages, which
will more or less agree with the ways the word is actually used”.
27 The question of the relation between Wittgenstein and pragmatism and be-
tween Nietzsche and pragmatism is an interesting but delicate one, as shown by
the relevant literature on the topic. In this section, I will try to explore this rela-
tion by dealing with one feature which may be ascribed to pragmatism, without
directly comparing either Wittgenstein or Nietzsche to classic pragmatist think-
ers such as Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. On this, I have
little to add to the existing scholarship, including e.g. Haack 1982; Goodman
1998 and 2002; Bakhurst and Misak 2017; Boncompagni 2016 and 2019;
Hingst 1998; Fabbrichesi 2009; Gori 2017 and 2019a. For those who are
206 Pietro Gori

interested, the 2012 issue IV/2 of the European Journal of Pragmatism and
American Philosophy hosted a symposium on Wittgenstein and Pragmatism.
28 Commenting on the comparison between Wittgenstein and Pragmatism, Anna
Boncompagni makes the following interesting remark, which I think may be
consistently applied to Nietzsche as well: “What emerges is a new way of con-
ceiving the idea of the beginning of philosophical activity, no longer in need of
an absolute primum, but wholly at ease in the framework of a human objectiv-
ity, feasible, solid but (and because of its being) to a certain extent changeable”
(Boncompagni 2016, 10).
29 See Kober 2017, 465–466.
30 Cf. von Wright 1982, 178: “The fragments of a world-picture underlying the
uses of language are not originally and strictly propositions at all. The pre-
knowledge is not propositional knowledge. But if this foundation is not propo-
sitional, what then is it? It is, one could say, a praxis” (I owe this quotation to
Moyal-Sharrock 2017). As is well known, in On Certainty (§§341–343) Witt-
genstein maintains that our epistemic practices rest on non-propositional rules
– or hinges, as he calls them – “whose certainty stems from the foundational
role they play in given practices” (Salvatore 2018, 251; cf. also Pihlström 2012,
sec. 2). On Wittgenstein’s notion of a “form of life” as “a path to evading the
epistemic domain” and on the practical nature of certainties, see Boncompagni
2016, 72, 126 and 170.
31 Kober 2017, 465.
32 Putnam 1995, 52.
33 Bakhurst and Misak 2017, 733.
34 Cf. on this Haack 1982, 170 and Gray 2012, 115.
35 Of course, this does not imply that Nietzsche and Wittgenstein may have con-
sistent views on the various aspects which pertain to this particular issue. Their
conceptions of the metaphysical value of language itself or of our ordinary
commitments towards language may be different, for different are their philo-
sophical sensibilities, as remarked above. Nevertheless, it is possible to ascribe
to them a comparable approach, a comparable attitude towards an issue that
deeply interested both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. It is this approach itself
which is pragmatist at its very core. Staring at the consequences of anti-essen-
tialist and instrumentalist commitments about evaluation claims, pragmatist
thinkers do not give up to relativism. Rather, they search for consistent princi-
ples of evaluation in the realm of human praxis, thus providing a practical
meaning to something that had eventually lost any metaphysical meaning.

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Wallace, Kyle (1973). “Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s Perspectivism”, in: The
Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 4/2, 101–107.
Whiting, Daniel (2012). “Languages, Language-Games, and Forms of Life”, in: A
Companion to Wittgenstein, eds. H.J. Glock and J. Hyman, Oxford: Blackwell,
420.432.
9 A Nietzschean Critique of
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Quietism
Paul S. Loeb

Introduction
In this essay I want to discuss the interesting fact that Nietzsche and the
later Wittgenstein draw very different metaphilosophical lessons from their
similar critiques of the philosophers’ tendency to be misled by language.
Nietzsche offers this critique in order to clear the way for a future philoso-
phy that will be able to make new progress because it will no longer be
misled in this way. By contrast, Wittgenstein offers this critique as an end
in itself. In his view, that is, philosophy is not able to offer any insights that
are not already evident to the non-philosophical mind, and the only goal
of future philosophy is to teach new philosophers how to avoid being mis-
led by language so that they too might be able to reconcile themselves to
these commonplace observations.
Why is that? Why do both these thinkers strive to liberate philosophers
from the traps set by language, but only Nietzsche expects that this critique
will open the way to new philosophical progress?1 Why does Nietzsche
propose an activist philosophical agenda while Wittgenstein rests content
with a kind of philosophical quietism?2
In a few places, and very briefly, Wittgenstein suggested his own answer
to these questions, namely that Nietzsche was simply mistaken in thinking
that he had made any kind of new philosophical progress. In particular, he
suggested that the theory of eternal recurrence, which Nietzsche thought
was his most important discovery, was still a product of linguistic confu-
sion (BBB, 103–109).3 This criticism is interesting, but his implied general
point is less so, namely, that insofar as Nietzsche was still hoping to gain
philosophical insights that are not evident to the non-philosophical mind,
he was bound to be led astray by language. This is a somewhat dogmatic
and uncharitable reading, since Wittgenstein most likely knew that Ni-
etzsche had presented a similar linguistic critique of philosophical error.
Indeed, as I explain below, Nietzsche claimed that his new philosophical
insights—including his discovery of eternal recurrence (Loeb 2022b,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-12
210 Paul S. Loeb

136–142)—were gained as a result of moving past this traditional kind of

error.
So I will concentrate here instead on trying to understand how Nietzsche
might have answered these questions. This is why I have entitled my essay
a “Nietzschean” critique—meaning an extrapolation of Nietzsche’s views
that will help us see how he might have argued against the later p ­ hilosopher
who extended his linguistic critique and yet refused to follow his ­optimistic
metaphilosophical conclusions.4 My interpretive argument depends on my
distinction between their critique of the philosophers’ linguistic confusion
and their diagnosis of this confusion. First, I will explain why ­Nietzsche
would claim that his diagnosis is more thorough and more accurate than
Wittgenstein’s. Second, I will explain why Nietzsche would claim that
Wittgenstein’s flawed diagnosis leads him to overreach by drawing
metaphilosophical lessons that don’t actually follow from his linguistic
­critique. Thus, Nietzsche might admit that Wittgenstein’s critique is more
detailed and extensive than his own, and he might agree that Wittgenstein’s
metaphilosophical conclusions are more parsimonious than his own.
­Nevertheless, he would insist that he is the one who actually digs up the
roots of the philosophical error and is for that reason able to restrict
­himself to metaphilosophical conclusions that actually follow from his
­critique. ­Finally, in my concluding section, I will explain Nietzsche’s likely
suggestion that Wittgenstein’s philosophical quietism is actually inspired
by his dogmatic faith in Christian virtues, values and morality.

1 A Shared Linguistic Critique: Reified Grammar

I will begin with Nietzsche’s linguistic critique because it came first and
probably had a significant influence on Wittgenstein’s linguistic critique.5
Beyond Good and Evil is the text that presents the most detail in Ni-
etzsche’s critique of the philosophers’ misuse of language and also his full-
est discussion of metaphilosophy.6 Right away in the Preface, Nietzsche
accuses previous philosophers of incorporating some seduction on the part
of grammar as the cornerstone in the construction of their theoretical edi-
fices (BGE 2014, Preface). He then elaborates this hint at much more
length in the first two parts of the book. His basic point is that philoso-
phers up to now have fallen under the invisible spell of the grammatical
functions that govern whatever languages they have used to philosophize.
In particular, he claims, they have been subconsciously led to construct
theories of the world that mirror the grammatical and syntactic structure
of the sentences in which they think and write.
Here are the examples Nietzsche offers. In the field of ontology, the phi-
losophers’ reification of nouns has led them to believe that the world con-
tains unitary, self-identical, and enduring substances, objects, and things
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 211

(GS 2023, §110; TI “Reason” 5);7 their reification of nominalized adjec-

tives and adverbs has led them to believe that the world contains properties
and opposites (BGE §§4, 24, 34); their reification of the nominalized verb
“is” has led them to believe that there is being in the world (BGE §2; KSA
14.347); and their reification of the subject and object functions in the
subject–predicate–object grammatical structure has led them to believe
that there are mechanistic causes and effects in the world (BGE §§16–17,
21; GM, I, §13; KSA 11:2[139]). In the field of epistemology, this same rei-
fication of the subject and object functions has led philosophers to believe
that there is a gulf between the knowing subject and the object of knowl-
edge (BGE §34; GS §354; KSA 11:40[20]). In the field of philosophical
psychology, philosophers have tended to assume that where there is a sin-
gle noun there must be a corresponding simple and unitary phenomenon in
the world—as in the case of “will,” for example, which is envisioned as a
kind of cause or capacity (BGE §19; TI “Reason” 5; KSA 11:40[27]). Simi-
larly, their reification of the pronoun “I” has led them to believe that there
is a simple, unitary, self-identical and disembodied ego-substance which
can be known with immediate certainty, while their reification of the as-
sociated subject–predicate function has led them to believe that all mental
activity is caused by this ego-substance (BGE §§16–17, 54; TI “Reason” 5;
KSA 11:35[35], 11:40[16, 20]).8 Indeed, Nietzsche even finds the latter
sort of unconscious grammatical habit at work in the beliefs of scientific
philosophers who suppose that forces must reside in material atoms (BGE
§17; GM, I, §13; TI “Reason” 5); or in the beliefs of theologian-philoso-
phers who suppose that the world must have been created by God (BGE
§34; TI “Reason” 5). Finally, in the field of ethics, Nietzsche claims that
the philosophers’ reification of the subject function in the grammatical
subject–predicate structure has led them to believe in a split between the
doer and the deed and in the related idea of agents who are free to choose
their actions and who can therefore be praised and blamed accordingly
(BGE §21; GM, I, §13; TI “Reason” 5). In sum, Nietzsche writes in one of
his unpublished notes: “Up to now faith in grammar, in the linguistic sub-
ject, object, in verbs has subjugated the metaphysicians: I teach the renun-
ciation of this faith” (KSA 11:35[35]; see also KSA 12 6:[13]).
All these philosophical beliefs, Nietzsche writes, are actually supersti-
tions (Aberglauben) and fictions (Fiktionen) (terms also used by Wittgen-
stein in PI §§35, 49, 110, 307) that are invented by philosophers who are
still being subconsciously guided by the childish faith they placed in gram-
mar when they first learned their languages (BGE Preface, §§4, 5, 20, 34;
KSA 11:40[20, 27]). These philosophers may claim in their defense that
they have strong intuitions supporting these beliefs, but they don’t realize
that these intuitions are themselves the product of their grammatical habits
(BGE §16; KSA 11:35[35], KSA 13:14[79]). More generally, Nietzsche
212 Paul S. Loeb

argues, we should expect that philosophers who have learned similar

grammatical categories, structures and functions in their respective lan-
guages will be subconsciously guided into positing similar philosophical
systems that they will mistakenly believe they have discovered by looking
into the world. This “linguistic kinship” and “shared philosophy of gram-
mar” helps to explain what he calls—using a term perhaps adopted by
Wittgenstein (PI §67)9—the “family resemblance” (Familien-Ähnlichkeit)
of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing. These fetishistic systems
of syntactic fictions are then considered to be accurate interpretations of
the world simply because they are shared by many diverse philosophers in
many different ages and cultures. But a study of philosophies devised in
quite different languages—for example, language groups in which the
grammatical subject function is least developed—shows that linguistic kin-
ship is the actual source of the similar philosophizing.10 Where such kin-
ship is present, everything lies ready from the beginning for a similar
development and sequence of philosophical systems; while the route to
certain other possibilities of interpreting the world seems almost barred
(BGE §20; KSA 11:40[6]).
Let me turn now to Nietzsche’s likely reading of Wittgenstein. I think he
would have noticed right away an affinity in Wittgenstein’s focus at the
start of the Philosophical Investigations on Augustine’s account of his
childhood experience of learning language (PI §1; BBB, 77).11 This is be-
cause Wittgenstein singles out two features of this account as offering a
particular picture of the essence of human language: first, that all words
are names and second, that all names stand for objects. According to Witt-
genstein, these are both radically mistaken assumptions, but they help to
explain why philosophers such as Augustine become confused when they
start philosophizing.12 Like Nietzsche, that is, Wittgenstein argues that phi-
losophers are led astray by their subconscious tendency to nominalize and
then reify most of the grammatical elements of the languages in which they
speak and write (BBB, 108–109).13 Indeed, he quotes Plato’s explicit appeal
to nominalization and reification in order to explain why he himself used
to believe that reality is composed of simple constituent parts (PI §§46–
47). As he puts it at the start of The Blue Book, one of the great sources of
philosophical bewilderment is that philosophers use substantives to which
no ordinary physical objects correspond and then look in vain for things
that correspond to them (BBB, 1, 5–6, 36, 108–109).14 They ask philo-
sophical questions like, “What is X?”, which call for nominalized words in
the place of X (BBB, 26)—for example, “What is time?” (BBB, 6, 26–27)
or “What is knowledge?” (BBB, 26–27)—and then experience puzzlement,
or a mental cramp, because they feel that they can’t point to anything in
reply and yet ought to point to something. Their next move, then, is to as-
sume that there is indeed something to be pointed to, but that they can’t
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 213

point to it because it is queer, strange, remarkable, extraordinary, unique,

hidden, shadowy, invisible, immaterial, outside this world, and so on
(BBB, 36, 47; PI §§36–38, 89). In other words, philosophers are prompted
by a drop of grammar to invent a whole cloud of philosophy or to imagine
an aura around certain ordinary phenomena (PPF §315, PI §97). They fall
prey to grammatical illusions and fictions and, as a result, produce philo-
sophical superstitions (PI §§110, 307).
The examples that Wittgenstein offers to support these claims are quite
often taken from areas of philosophy that he explored in his own first book
while under the influence of Frege and Russell (PI Preface). These are areas
that didn’t interest Nietzsche very much—philosophy of language, philoso-
phy of logic, and philosophy of mathematics. For example, Wittgenstein
points out that philosophers reify the word “meaning” and then expect to
find a meaning-entity, such as a thought or an image, that accompanies all
words and propositions (BBB, 1, 5, 18; PI §§40, 120). Or they are misled
by the substantive “object of thought” and by the different meanings of
“exist” and become puzzled by the philosophical question, “How can one
think what is not the case?” (BBB, 30–32). Or they reify the word “num-
ber” and mistakenly look for something like numerals as a correspondent
for this word (BBB, 27; PI §§133, 339). Or they nominalize and then reify
demonstratives and indexicals such as “this,” “here,” and “now” and look
for correlated simples, or sense-data, or indivisible places or times (BBB,
80–81, 108–109, PI §§38–39, 410).
Nevertheless, there is still a considerable overlap with Nietzsche when
Wittgenstein explores related areas of philosophical inquiry, such as ontol-
ogy, epistemology, and especially philosophy of mind or philosophical
psychology. But whereas Nietzsche tends to gesture quite generally and
vaguely in the direction of subject–predicate structures, Wittgenstein mi-
croscopically examines the misleading analogies among a wider and more
diverse array of grammatical structures. Thus, for example, he considers
the analogy between singular first and third personal sentences as leading
to the philosophical problem of other minds, the mind–body problem,
sense-data, and solipsism (BBB, 46–74; PI §244); or the analogy between
transitive and intransitive verbs as leading to the philosophical problem of
intentionality (BBB, 22, 29, 160); or the analogies among past, present and
future tenses as leading to problems in the philosophy of time (BBB, 6,
26–27, 31, 103–109; PI §89; CV 1998, 22). As Wittgenstein puts it, all
these misleading analogies between forms of expression in different regions
of language send philosophers in pursuit of chimeras (PI §§90, 94). In each
of these cases, and many others, Wittgenstein points to the process of nom-
inalization and reification that produces grammatical illusions: for exam-
ple, with the pronoun “I” (PI §410) and the word “pain” (PI §257) or with
the direct object of the verb “to will,” or with the indexical word “now.”
214 Paul S. Loeb

However, unlike Wittgenstein, and except for a couple of places (BGE

§§16, 19), Nietzsche simply tends to dismiss what Wittgenstein calls the
cloud of philosophy that philosophers invent when they become obsessed
with any of these particular drops of grammar. By contrast, Wittgenstein
spends most of his time minutely analyzing and dismantling all the various
elements that make up this cloud of philosophy (see Suter 1989)—as, for
example, in the first analogy mentioned above, with his famous private
language argument and its associated analysis of rule-following (PI §§243–
315).15 He explains that philosophy as he does it is complex because it
strives to untie the knots in our thinking which we have tangled up in an
absurd way and to do that it must make movements which are just as com-
plicated as the knots (PR §2, Z §452).

2 Diverging Diagnoses: Too Much Common Sense and Too

Little
Having just shown that Nietzsche would have read Wittgenstein as offer-
ing a similar kind of linguistic critique of philosophical error, I will now
explain why Nietzsche would claim that they differ in their diagnoses of
this error. Obviously neither thinker is claiming that there is anything in-
herently mistaken about the philosophers’ predilection for nominalizing
the non-substantival elements of their languages. Instead, like many of
their predecessors in the history of philosophy, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein
locate the error in the process of reification that follows this nominaliza-
tion. Both of them are concerned to show that philosophers mistakenly
believe that something exists in the world which doesn’t actually exist
there. However, they have very different accounts as to why philosophers
are led to believe this and what can be done to correct this error. Nietzsche
thinks that this error is an instance of a more general tendency on the part
of all human beings to project themselves into all of reality. By contrast,
Wittgenstein thinks that this error is made only by philosophers who are
intellectually confused by syntactic analogies and similarities. Thus,
whereas Nietzsche thinks that this error is embedded in common sense,
Wittgenstein thinks that this error is avoided by common sense. Accord-
ingly, whereas Nietzsche aims to help philosophers escape the pitfalls of
common sense, Wittgenstein aims to help philosophers recover their com-
mon sense.16
Again, I’ll start with Nietzsche. He is very clear that philosophers com-
mit the error of reifying grammar because they inadvertently fall under the
sway of a very common tendency among humans in general. This point is
easy to overlook since he says the most about this error in the first part of
BGE, which is devoted to the topic of philosophical prejudices, and in the
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 215

section of TI called “Reason’ in Philosophy.” But even in these two places

he compares this error to folk superstition (Volks-Aberglabe) (BGE, Pref-
ace); he says that the philosophers need to avoid doing what the common
people (das Volk) do when they commit this error (BGE §16); he says that
this error is a folk prejudice (Volks-Vorurtheil) that has triumphed over the
habitually minimal caution of philosophers (BGE §19); he says that when
philosophers commit this error they are perpetuating the mythological
thinking of their ancestors (BGE §21); and he complains that in making
this mistake philosophers have fallen prey to a crude fetishism and a rudi-
mentary form of psychology caused by the emergence of language among
humans (TI “Reason” 5).17 In GS §354, Nietzsche explains these points at
more length when he identifies the snares of grammar with folk metaphys-
ics (Volks-Metaphysik).18 Here, and in BGE §268, Nietzsche claims that
language, regarded as a system of shared signs, is by definition a social or
public phenomenon that evolved so that endangered primitive human be-
ings might communicate quickly with each other and help each other sur-
vive. But then these same primitive human beings reified these shared signs
and came to believe in a metaphysics that was a falsification of actual real-
ity—a metaphysics that was then inherited by their evolutionary descen-
dants (see also GS §§110–112, BGE §21).19
Next, Nietzsche argues that the reason these primitive human beings rei-
fied their shared signs is that they, like all living beings, were striving to
expand their sphere of influence as much as possible in their surrounding
environment. In their quest to comprehend, assimilate, and control every-
thing around them, they subconsciously projected themselves and their dis-
tinctive traits into all of reality. They imagined themselves as divine beings
who created and governed the whole universe. They located their home in
the center of the universe and fantasized that the sun, the stars, and every-
thing else revolved around them. They thought of the universe in animist
terms that reflected their own biological nature. They assumed a panpsy-
chist conception of the universe that reflected their own psychology. They
invented a rational, orderly, and purposive universe that reflected their
own need for security and predictability. They were value realists who be-
lieved that their values inhered in the world as a whole. And finally, to re-
turn to our topic, they imagined an isomorphic correspondence between
the syntactic structure of their languages and the world as a whole.
Strictly speaking, then, Nietzsche does not think that the philosophers’
reification of grammar is a linguistic error. Instead, just like God and all
these other falsifying and obscuring projections that he calls the shadows
of God, this is a “composition” fallacy—namely, the weak inductive infer-
ence according to which properties that belong just to a part of the whole
are said to belong to the whole itself.20 As he explains in GS §109, human
216 Paul S. Loeb

beings, their defining traits, their evolution, and their planet, are an infini-
tesimal and radical exception to the norm, so projecting them into all of
reality is an especially egregious instance of the composition fallacy. Yet
this is what most human beings have done since they first evolved, driven
by their need to make everything familiar, comprehensible, and predict-
able. Correcting this fallacy, then, means transcending this evolutionary
history and the “common sense” projective errors that still preoccupy
most human beings today. The key to doing so is summarized by Nietzsche
in a Nachlass sentence that is contemporaneous with GS §109: “In earlier
times, h[umans] and philosophers projected humans into nature—let’s
deanthropomorphize nature!” (KSA 9:11[238]). This new “naturalistic”
project is something he thinks philosophers and natural scientists have
been pursuing in concert for a long time: for example, Xenophanes’ cri-
tique of ancient Greek theology, Copernicus’ critique of geocentrism, Des-
cartes’ critique of final causes, Boscovich’s critique of atomism, Hume’s
critique of the law of causality, and Darwin’s critique of creationism.21 In
particular, since the reified grammatical structures of human language do
not actually exist, philosophers can make new progress in understanding
the world as a whole—and then human beings as a part of this world (GS
§109, BGE §230, KSA 9:11[211])—if they identify these falsifications and
remove them as much as possible. So, for example, Nietzsche argues that
philosophers will understand the world, and themselves, better when they
replace atoms with forces, permanence with flux, order with chaos, human
reason with animal instincts, the Cartesian ego with multiple competing
drives, value realism with value creation, and so on.
Turning now to Wittgenstein, we find a very different diagnosis of the
error involved in the philosophical reification of grammar, and hence a
very different remedy as well. In his view, the error is purely linguistic be-
cause it involves the two misconceptions about human language mentioned
in the quote from Augustine: that all words are names and that all names
stand for objects. More specifically, Wittgenstein suggests that the second
misconception involves a background assumption that the philosophically
reified objects will be comparable to the kinds of physical and material
objects that actually exist in the real world and that in ordinary life we call
“objects” or “things” (BBB, 81)—for example, the tulips in our garden or
the chairs in our dining room set (BBB, 36, 46–47, 61–64, 68–74; PI §253).
For example, Plato converts modifying adjectives and adjectives such as
“just” into the noun “Justice” and then expects to find an ontological cor-
respondent for the latter that really exists in the sense that these ordinary
physical or material objects exist in everyday life. Or Descartes takes sin-
gular first-personal sentences, which we use as forms of expression, and
confuses them with singular third-personal sentences, which we use to
name people, and then expects to find an ontological correspondent to the
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 217

first-person pronoun that really exists in the sense that these physical or
material objects exist in everyday life. But these expectations are frustrated,
which then leads these philosophers to invent a cloud of philosophy that
floats above these drops of grammar. They come to believe that the onto-
logical correspondents still do exist but are just very different from the
kinds of ordinary objects that surround us and play a role in our everyday
life—that is, they are aethereal, invisible, immaterial, indestructible, inde-
pendent of the sensible world, and so on (BBB, 47).
The remedy, Wittgenstein argues, is to remind philosophers about the
actual ordinary uses of these words and sentences in everyday life, to show
them their syntactic confusion, and to dissipate the clouds of philosophy
(PI §133).22 This is progress in the sense that philosophers will no longer
feel so frustrated by seemingly intractable problems—like the participation
of non-sensible Forms in the sensible world, or the nature of the interac-
tion between the non-physical mind and the physical body. But it is not
progress if by this is meant discovering new aspects of the world that had
not been recognized before. As Wittgenstein puts it, with his approach to
philosophy everything already lies open to view, everything is left as it al-
ready is, and there is nothing new that remains to be discovered (PI §§98,
109, 124, 126, 128, 599). Non-philosophers, or commonsense people
(BBB, 48), don’t get confused about syntax in the way that philosophers do
when they are simply staring at language that is idling or gone on holiday
(PI §§39, 132). They already know how language is actually used at home,
or in ordinary and everyday life, and so “progress” in philosophy is just a
matter of guiding philosophers away from their grammatical superstitions
and back to the firm ground of common sense that is inhabited by non-
philosophers (BBB, 44–45; PI §§107, 116). As he famously writes, his aim
in philosophy is to show the fly (that is, the philosopher) the way out of the
fly bottle (that is, grammatical confusion) (PI §309).23 Like Kant before
him (CPR, B xxx–xxxi), whose critical method he favored (Monk 1990,
322), Wittgenstein asks why his philosophical investigations should be
considered important since they seem only to destroy everything that is
interesting, great, and important. His answer is that he is only destroying
castles in the air (Luftbäude) and clearing up the ground of language on
which they stood (PI §118). But these castles in the air have been around
since the time of the ancient Greeks and will continue to be built as long as
language and grammar keep seducing us into asking the same kinds of
questions. So there will always be a need for his kind of philosophical in-
vestigation, that is, for this struggle against the bewitchment of our under-
standing (CV, 15, 18; PI §109).24 At one point, Wittgenstein even imagines
an exasperated interlocutor saying, “But then we will never come to the
end of our job!”—to which he responds: “Of course not, because it has no
end” (Monk 1990, 325–326). Nevertheless, in a diary entry from 1931, he
218 Paul S. Loeb

anticipates his true legacy as an endpoint and a destroyer: “If my name

lives on, it will do so only as the Terminus ad quem of great western phi-
losophy. Just like the name of the person who burned down the Alexan-
drian library” (Brusotti 2009, 343).

3 The Physics of Physical Objects

Now I want to explain why Nietzsche would claim that he has a better
diagnosis of the philosophers’ linguistic confusions. As we have seen,
Wittgenstein’s diagnosis of philosophical reification depends on his back-
ground assumption that there are ordinary physical objects surrounding
us and playing a role in our everyday life—like the chairs in our dining
rooms, or the tulips in our gardens. According to Wittgenstein, philoso-
phers reify their grammatical constructs, such as the Cartesian ego, when
they think of them as actually existing in the world just like these ordi-
nary physical objects. Nietzsche, by contrast, makes no such assumption
and his diagnosis of philosophical reification does not depend on it. In-
deed, as I mentioned at the start of this essay, he actually criticizes this
assumption as just one more instance of philosophers falling prey to the
commonsense error of reifying grammar (TI “Reason” 5)—which means,
more generally, that it is just one more instance of the commonsense er-
ror of anthropomorphizing all of reality. Thus, right after criticizing this
general kind of error in GS §109, Nietzsche singles out the following
propositions as examples: that there are enduring things, that there are
same things; and that there are things, substances, bodies (“dass es dau-
ernde Dinge gebe, dass es gleiche Dinge gebe, dass es Dinge, Stoffe, Kör-
per gebe”) (GS §110). Against these errors, he explains that nothing is
ever the same, that everything is in flux, and that we are always con-
fronted by a continuum. But because we turn everything into our own
image, we operate only with entities that do not exist: substance, cause
and effect, motion, lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible times, and divis-
ible spaces (GS §§111–112). Of course, none of this is commonsensical,
but then neither is any of what we learn about the latest advances in
modern physics. For Nietzsche, this point is essential: when he is apply-
ing his deanthropomorphic and naturalistic method, he thinks he is do-
ing the same kind of thing that is done in the most advanced
non-mechanistic physics of his time. He believes he is making discoveries
about the nature of reality that are in harmony with the kinds of discov-
eries that are being made, or that are about to be made, by physics. More
specifically, he argues that the consistent application of his naturalistic
method, and the correction of all the errors mentioned above, shows that
reality consists of nothing but competing forces that exist only in a con-
stantly changing relation to each other (BGE §36; KSA 11:38[12]).25
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 219

Wittgenstein doesn’t say much about the physics of ordinary physical

objects, but there is an interesting and important place in The Blue Book
where he discusses the atomistic theory of physical objects.26 This is the
theory, first proposed by Democritus, according to which all of reality
consists of nothing but atomic particles and empty space. For example,
Wittgenstein writes, popular scientists tell us that the floor on which we
stand is not solid, as it appears to common sense, because it consists of
particles filling space so thinly that it can almost be called empty. This
picture, he says, is liable to perplex us because of course we know that the
floor is solid, or that, if it isn’t solid, this may be due to the wood being
rotten, but not to its being composed of electrons. So whereas popular
scientists seem to have shown that nothing is really solid, they have in fact
just misused the word “solid” by using it in such a way that it has no an-
tithesis. To say that the floor is not solid because it is composed of electrons
is to misuse language because the atomistic theory of the structure of mat-
ter is meant to explain this very appearance of solidity.
Here Wittgenstein makes several debatable assumptions. He assumes
that only popular scientists say this kind of thing; that the atomistic theory
is meant to explain the appearance of solidity; that the floor is actually
solid in the commonsensical use of that term; and, most importantly, that
there even is a solid floor (as opposed to just atomic particles and empty
space). I take it that Wittgenstein would say the same kinds of things about
the atomistic theory and the ordinary physical objects that surround us in
everyday life, and that in doing so he would be making similar debatable
assumptions: that only popular scientists would say that these ordinary
physical objects do not really exist according to atomistic theory; that
these ordinary physical objects in our commonsensical use of that term
actually do exist; and that the atomistic theory of the structure of matter is
meant to explain the nature of these ordinary physical objects.
So who is right? Do ordinary physical objects that play a role in our
everyday lives, such as the chairs in our dining rooms, really exist? I won’t
take a stand here, but I will note that many non-popularizing physicists
and philosophers of physics would reject Wittgenstein’s assumptions and
argue against his commonsensical realism about these ordinary physical
objects.27 I will also note Nietzsche’s contrasting perspective, according to
which the true scientific method instructs us to deanthropomorphize our
theory of reality as much as possible, which means that we simply move
past our previous projective errors. For example, once we realize that the
sun is not a gendered god, we simply abandon the theological concept. We
certainly don’t say that our new astronomical theory is meant to explain
this appearance of gender.28 Similarly, insofar as Nietzsche thinks that our
commonsensical realism about these ordinary physical objects is another
such projective error, he would say that the atomistic theory—or better yet,
220 Paul S. Loeb

his own theory of forces—does not aim to explain this realism but rather
leave it behind.29
As the surrounding context of his discussion makes clear, Wittgenstein
deploys this discussion of scientific theory as a means of illuminating his
linguistic critique of philosophical theories—in this case, of phenomenal-
ism (the theory that our personal experiences are the material of which
reality consists). But there is an important difference. Whereas he rejects all
philosophical theories as a product of linguistic error, he does not likewise
reject scientific theories—only what he calls their misapplication (for
­example, by popular scientists). Thus, in this surrounding context, for
­example, he dismisses philosophical phenomenalism as nonsense, but he
accepts atomistic physics as an accurate account of reality. However, this
atomistic physics was in fact first proposed as a philosophical theory and
is very much like the theory of forces that Nietzsche proposes after correct-
ing what he claims is the general projective error of anthropomorphism
and the fallacy of composition (of which he thinks the reification of gram-
mar is an instance). So I don’t think Wittgenstein is justified in drawing
such a sharp line between philosophical and scientific theories. Nor would
he be justified in saying that Nietzsche’s own theory of forces is a scientifi-
cally unsupported philosophical theory and that this is why it must be a
product of linguistic error. For it could very well be that this theory—just
like Democritus’ philosophical theory of atomism—does end up earning
scientific support (and some would argue that it already has, with the suc-
cess of field theory). Indeed, if atomism was originally a philosophical
theory that later received scientific support, is Wittgenstein committed to
saying that the scientific support somehow removes the linguistic error?
How would that process work exactly? In Wittgenstein’s view, one way to
tell that scientific theories are not grammatical illusions is that they don’t
make any claim to a special modal status (BBB, 55). But then neither does
Nietzsche’s theory of forces. For Wittgenstein to claim that Nietzsche’s
theory is a product of linguistic error, he would also have to claim that
Nietzsche was not as aware of this error as he explicitly and repeatedly
says he is, or that he simply did not succeed in keeping this error out of all
his thinking—even when he claims to be discovering his theory of forces as
a result of correcting this very linguistic error. Finally, notice Wittgenstein’s
claim that all philosophical theories depart from common sense and that
this is why they must be rejected. However, he seems to admit that scien-
tific theories, such as the atomistic theory of the structure of matter, also
depart from common sense because they have a more subtle knowledge of
fact (BBB, 59). So how does he think we should tell the difference between
them? According to Nietzsche, by contrast, common sense is saturated
with anthropomorphic and linguistic errors and it is only when both phi-
losophers and scientists are able to depart from common sense that these
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 221

errors can be avoided. In any case, if Nietzsche’s own philosophical theory

of forces is anything like the earlier philosophical theory of atoms, then
Wittgenstein is not in a position to claim that Nietzsche needs to abandon
this theory in favor of a commonsense realism about ordinary physical
objects.
To summarize, I have argued here that Nietzsche would claim that Witt-
genstein’s metaphilosophy doesn’t actually follow from his critique. In-
deed, Wittgenstein doesn’t ever explain why philosophers shouldn’t just
correct the linguistic errors he criticizes and then be in a position to make
new progress. He can’t do this, Nietzsche would say, because his diagnosis
is flawed, incomplete, and idiosyncratic. It’s flawed because physics re-
futes his background commonsensical realism about ordinary physical
objects. It’s incomplete because the philosophers’ reification of grammar is
just an instance of the more general error of humans projecting themselves
and their distinctive traits into all of reality. And it’s idiosyncratic because
there is a perfectly standard logical fallacy that explains this error, namely,
the sort of weak inductive inference that is called the composition
fallacy.

4 Contrasting Metaphilosophies: Philosophical Legislation and

Philosophical Quietism
In this final section, I want to compare the two metaphilosophies and ex-
plain how I think Nietzsche would criticize Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy.
I have already mentioned that Nietzsche thinks there is an overlap between
the philosophical method and the scientific method, namely, deanthropo-
morphism.30 But he also thinks that philosophy and natural science need to
part ways when it comes time for philosophy to perform its distinctive and
essential function, which is to create or legislate values (BGE §211).31 At
this point, natural science becomes a tool of philosophy by opening up the
space that is needed for philosophers to feel free to perform this function.
This is because once human beings erroneously projected their values into
all of reality, for example by thinking of them as divine commandments,
they forgot that they created them in the first place and they lost track of
their ability to change these values or create new ones. More specifically,
philosophers lost track of the value-legislating power that makes them
unique and superior to all other human types (GS §301). So the allied
deanthropomorphic theories of natural science and philosophy are impor-
tant because they undermine value realism and in that way remind philoso-
phers of what they can and must do in practice.
Wittgenstein, by contrast, has no use for natural science and believes
that philosophy and natural science have nothing in common (BBB, 18;
Monk 2023). But he also refuses to assign philosophy any positive role
222 Paul S. Loeb

in any area of human life. Whenever philosophy is active, it is mistaken.

The best thing he and his followers can do is prevent philosophy from
becoming active in the first place or stop philosophers who have al-
ready become active (PI §133). When done right, then, philosophy is a
purely critical and self-consuming activity. It doesn’t make any new
discoveries, it doesn’t extend human knowledge, it doesn’t solve any
problems, it has no special methodological insights to offer other disci-
plines, it has no contributions to make to public intellectual life, it
doesn’t offer any existential advice, and it certainly doesn’t create or
legislate any values. This is why I have said that Wittgenstein endorses
a kind of philosophical quietism.32 Again, what really matters to Witt-
genstein is, as he puts it, to “defend common sense against the attacks
of the philosophers […] by curing them of the temptation to attack
common sense” (BBB, 58).33 When Wittgenstein uses this kind of thera-
peutic language, his implication is that philosophy (as it is usually prac-
ticed) is a kind of mental illness—especially when it is tempted to attack
healthy common sense (BBB, 143; PI §§133, 255, 593; Z §382; RFM
II-4, IV-53; OC §§467–468; CV, 44).34
Why is there such a big difference between these two metaphilosophies
that are supposed to stem from a shared critique of philosophical error?
The answer, I think, has to do with a fundamental divide between ­Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein that has far-reaching implications. Whereas Nietzsche is
a ferocious critic of Christian virtues, values and morality, Wittgenstein
accepts these without question throughout his whole philosophical ca-
reer.35 We know this from his lectures, his unpublished notes, his diaries,
his letters, his study and praise of the Gospels (Monk 1990, 318; CV 30,
35), his favorite authors (for example, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky),36 and
the recollections of his family, lovers, friends, colleagues, and students.
Although there is some effort in the scholarly literature to represent Witt-
genstein’s ethical views as esoteric or idiosyncratic or philosophically com-
plex, the details of his biography show otherwise. In his biography, Ray
Monk provides an especially clear overview of Wittgenstein’s simple and
unwavering commitment to Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Christian Gos-
pels from the moment he encountered it during his wartime service in Au-
gust 1914 (Tolstoy 2011; Monk 1990, 115–117, 132, 136; see also
McGuinness 1988, 220–221, 273). Wittgenstein’s subsequent proselytiz-
ing was so insistent that he was known as “the man with the gospels,” and
Monk describes him as “not only a believer, but an evangelist” (Monk
1990, 116, 132, 192, 213, 318). As McGuinness (1988, 273) and Monk
(2023, 8–9) note, and as Edwards elaborates (1982, 60–76), it’s surely no
coincidence that, a few years after feeling reborn through this conversion
experience, Wittgenstein followed Tolstoy’s example by giving away all his
newly inherited wealth (Monk 1990, 170–173) and going to live and teach
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 223

among the peasants in remote rural villages (Monk 1990, 192–194, 212–
213, 224–228).37
To be sure, Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Bible is unorthodox, but
­Nietzsche knew about it and located it squarely within the mainstream
Christian tradition.38 Nietzsche would also emphasize Wittgenstein’s
priestly inclinations: for example, his conviction that he had been called by
God to become a Christian priest and that he had sinned by refusing this
call (McGuinness 1988, 281; Monk 1990, 199–200);39 his spurned at-
tempt to take holy orders and become a Christian monk (Monk 1990,
234); the times he spent living, or working as a gardener, in Christian
monasteries (Monk 1990, 191, 234–235, 575); and his arrangements to
consult a Christian priest shortly before dying (Monk 1990, 573–575).
Turning to Christian psychology, Nietzsche would call our attention to
Wittgenstein’s obsessive preoccupation with his guilt and sinful nature—
especially in relation to his pride, vanity, and dishonesty (Monk 1990,
185, 366, 373–376, 408–410, 428, 554, 580). He would also point to
Wittgenstein’s lifelong invocation of Christian prayer and confession as a
means of overcoming his guilt (Monk 1990, 137–149, 142, 225, 316–318,
382, 534; CV 18, 46), as well as his repeated and elaborate staging of pub-
lic confessions in which he recited his sins (Monk 1990, 18, 185–187,
366–372). Last, but not least, Nietzsche would cite Wittgenstein’s loathing
of Bertrand Russell’s atheism and anti-Christianity (Russell 1957; Monk
1990 294, 410), Russell’s own contempt for Wittgenstein’s Christian be-
liefs (Monk 1990 210–211, 294), and the fact that the final break between
them was precipitated by a mutual antipathy regarding this issue (Monk
1990, 210–212, 294).
I think Nietzsche would say that all this evidence points to Wittgen-
stein’s dogmatic faith in Christian virtues, values and morality, but with-
out meaning that he necessarily believed in the Christian God or in the
details of Christian theology.40 Nietzsche thought that this was already a
very common tendency in his own time and he attacked it as philosophi-
cally shallow because he thought that Christian virtues, values and moral-
ity could not stand alone without the background Christian theology (TI
“Skirmishes” 5). Indeed, it is interesting that Wittgenstein’s commitment
to Tolstoy’s version of Christianity was so strong that it was not disturbed
even while living in a culture that was saturated by Nietzsche’s influence
and even after having studied Nietzsche and some of his most famous intel-
lectual heirs (such as Freud).41 In a conversation with Rush Rhees, Witt-
genstein says that he wouldn’t dream of deciding a conflict between
Christian morality, on the one hand, and Nietzsche’s criticism of it, on the
other, since it’s not like trying to see whether one is more free from objec-
tions than the other (RR, 52; OR, 410–411). Here Wittgenstein is simply
assuming a Tolstoyan and Kierkegaardian conception of Christianity that
224 Paul S. Loeb

prioritizes ethical practice over doctrinal belief and that refuses to concede
any need for philosophical or scientific proof (CV, 28–33, 53, 56, 62, 64,
72, 85–86; APR, 53–64; Monk 1990, 410–411, 490–491, 572–573).42 But
of course Nietzsche’s whole point is that this is precisely what the conflict
is about, since he doesn’t spend much time thinking about Christian doc-
trinal beliefs but rather presents a host of philosophical objections to the
psychology and practice of Christian morality.43 This just shows how little
Wittgenstein absorbed or cared about Nietzsche’s criticism.
It’s strange, then, that most Wittgenstein scholars don’t mention his core
background faith in Christian morality, or that they compartmentalize it
as a part of his eccentric personal biography, or that they elide the specifi-
cally Christian nature of his ethics by simply referring to his devoutly reli-
gious inclination or his ethical seriousness, rigor, and integrity.44 Nietzsche
wouldn’t do that. He would say that this dogmatic faith must have played
an important role in his philosophizing (BGE §6), just as it played a crucial
role in the thinking of most canonical figures in the history of philosophy
since Christianity became an established religion.45 He would say, for ex-
ample, that it’s no accident that Wittgenstein begins the Philosophical In-
vestigations by quoting the religious Confessions of the Christian saint
Augustine—a book that Wittgenstein said was possibly the most serious
book ever written (Monk 1990, 282, 366).46 And Nietzsche would add
that Wittgenstein’s virulent and apocalyptic opposition to scientific and
technological progress (CV, 6–8, 48–49, 56, 63; Monk 1990, 404, 484–
489)—as alluded to in the motto attached to the Investigations—is a tradi-
tional priestly defensive maneuver that can be traced all the way back to
the biblical warning about eating from the tree of knowledge (A §§48–
49).47 Indeed, Nietzsche would say that all of Wittgenstein’s discussions
about religion and Christianity are superficial because they don’t recognize
the controlling role of the priestly type of human being.48 Or rather, that
they are actually biased on behalf of this priestly type because Wittgenstein
himself is a priestly philosopher. Finally, Nietzsche would insist that it is
this priestly bias—and not his linguistic critique—that is the actual source
of Wittgenstein’s philosophical quietism.49
Here is how I think this Nietzschean critique would go. Nietzsche would
say, first of all, that Wittgenstein, whether he knows it or not, is a Chris-
tian apologist who is concerned above all else to defend and reinforce his
Christian values and morality. Second, he would say that the defense as-
pect of this apologetics is specifically directed against philosophers like
Nietzsche who claim to undermine value realism in general, and Christian
values in particular, in order to make room for their own creation of new
values. More specifically, Nietzsche would say, this defense can be found
in Wittgenstein’s refusal to go beyond his critique of reified grammar and
to attack the generalized version of this error—that is, the projection of
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 225

distinctive human traits (such as language) into all of reality. This refusal
leaves intact the projection of human values, especially Christian morality,
and allows Christians to claim that their values are grounded in some kind
of ontological reality. Third, Nietzsche would say that the reinforcement
aspect of this apologetics can be found in Wittgenstein’s inversion of the
usual relation that is supposed to obtain between philosophers and ordi-
nary people.50 Whereas Nietzsche claims that genuine philosophers are an
exceptional and superior type of human being, Wittgenstein suggests that
they are all, almost by definition, confused, tormented, and even perhaps
mentally ill. And whereas Nietzsche describes most ordinary people as su-
perstitious group-thinkers, Wittgenstein follows Tolstoy in insisting that
ordinary people51—especially working people who enjoy manual labor52—
are clear-sighted, at ease in the world, and the picture of mental health.
Finally, Nietzsche would say that the reinforcement aspect of this Chris-
tian apologetics can be found in Wittgenstein’s systematic attempt to an-
nihilate the kind of pride that genuine philosophers usually take in
themselves and their work.53 Nietzsche views himself and other genuine
philosophers as extraordinary human beings with wisdom, passion, and
reasoning talents far exceeding those of ordinary people. He believes that
he is uniquely equipped to invent values and ideals that can guide and
shape the course of human history. By contrast, Wittgenstein sets out to
humble such arrogant and grandiose self-conceptions by showing that phi-
losophers are actually devoid of wisdom, endlessly ruminating in delusions
and flawed reasoning, and desperately in need of advice from ordinary
people.54 Wittgenstein’s ultimate priestly goal, Nietzsche would say, is to
convince those who believe they are destined to be philosopher-leaders that
they should instead choose to live ordinary, humble, and unpretentious
lives—that is, good Christian lives.55

Conclusion
The history of philosophy is often viewed and taught as a kind of dialogue
or conversation in which participants digest, and then build and improve
upon, and perhaps even bring to fruition, the thoughts of their predeces-
sors. So, for example, it is said that Aristotle built and improved upon the
thoughts of the Presocratics, Socrates, and Plato. Or that each of the Mod-
ern rationalists and empiricists refined the thinking of their forerunners in
their respective philosophical traditions, and that Kant built and improved
upon all of them collectively. This progressive conception is problematic,
however, because it feeds the prejudice that the history of philosophy is
merely of antiquarian interest. There is really not much point in studying
each of these individual figures for their own sake if we believe that their
philosophical contributions have already been assimilated and improved in
226 Paul S. Loeb

the work of later figures. Indeed, there is really not much point in studying
the history of philosophy at all if we can simply study the most recent and
up-to-date philosophical ideas which are presumed to have assimilated,
and improved upon, all previous philosophical ideas. Even where there are
competing lines of philosophical thought, why not just emphasize and
study the most recent and up-to-date formulation of each of these lines of
thought? This indifference to the history of philosophy is then exacerbated
by the idea that natural science is making significant advances all the time
and that only the most current philosophical ideas are able to keep up with
these advances. Why should we study Aristotle’s ideas about the mind
when he didn’t know anything about brain science? Or why should we
study Kant’s ideas about spacetime and causality after the discovery of
relativistic physics and quantum mechanics?
Those of us who actually practice the history of philosophy look at
things differently. We think that we should study these earlier figures be-
cause they have something important to teach us that has not been noticed
and that we don’t understand yet. In fact, we claim that our most current
philosophical ideas—and perhaps even some of our most advanced scien-
tific theories—may be mistaken and that we may be able to correct them
by studying the ideas of earlier philosophers who avoided these kinds of
mistakes or even pointed them out in advance.56 Nietzsche, who wrote
over a hundred years ago, is an especially instructive figure in this regard
and I think we still have much to learn from him—including what we may
be doing wrong still, despite all the philosophical and scientific advances
since his time. He’s also an especially interesting figure because his ideas
don’t seem to be the culmination of a long philosophical tradition but
rather the beginning of a new one.57 No matter how influential he has been
already, it appears that we are only getting started in understanding his
philosophical significance.
In this essay, I have presented one such case study by juxtaposing the
very similar ideas about philosophical error in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.
Both thinkers believed that philosophers reify the nominalized grammars
of the languages in which they write and that this error leads them to sup-
pose that reality is quite different than it actually is. Since these ideas are so
similar, and since Nietzsche probably influenced Wittgenstein in this re-
spect, and since Wittgenstein develops a much more extensive and detailed
version of this critique, shouldn’t we just leave Nietzsche’s ideas behind in
favor of Wittgenstein’s more advanced contribution? Shouldn’t we just
suppose that Wittgenstein absorbed everything Nietzsche had to say about
this topic and built upon it and improved it, so that there is no more need
for us to study Nietzsche’s contribution? This is a very natural suggestion
and indeed it is the one I find most often when I read scholars who write
about Nietzsche’s linguistic critique of philosophical error or about the
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 227

relation of his critique to Wittgenstein’s.58 Nevertheless, I think it is a mis-

taken suggestion and in this essay I have given my reasons for thinking
this. In short, I have argued that, although they have similar critiques, the
two philosophers offer very different diagnoses: Nietzsche thinks this error
is just an instance of the more general error of projecting ourselves into all
reality and committing the composition fallacy, whereas Wittgenstein
thinks it has to do with treating all words in the human language as if they
were names that stand for objects that exist in the world just like the ordi-
nary physical objects that surround us and play a role in our everyday
lives. I then showed why Nietzsche would say that his own diagnosis is
superior because he is more thorough in claiming that even this back-
ground assumption about ordinary physical objects is still part of the same
projective error and because physics appears to support his argument
against the commonsense realist assumption of ordinary physical objects.
Finally, I explained how Nietzsche would say that Wittgenstein’s flawed
diagnosis is the reason why his philosophical quietism doesn’t follow from
his critique but is inspired instead by his dogmatic faith in Christian vir-
tues, values and morality. Thus, although Nietzsche and Wittgenstein seem
to be saying the same thing, I think there are some interesting reasons for
thinking that the earlier philosopher gets it right and can help us correct
the later philosopher’s mistaken ideas about language, reality, and the na-
ture of philosophy.59

Notes
1 Nietzsche’s expectation, in contrast with Wittgenstein, is especially surprising
because he offers so many other criticisms of philosophers besides linguistic
confusion, for example, their lack of historical sense, their excessive rational-
ism, their dogmatism, their moral bias, their fixation on generalities, their reli-
ance on folk superstitions, their mistrust of the senses, and so on (see, for
example, BGE Preface and Part One; and TI “Reason”).
2 Here I am disagreeing with some prominent philosophical scholars who think
that Nietzsche was a philosophical quietist just like Wittgenstein. See for ex-
ample Strong (1975, 76–86), Williams (1994, 237–238), Pippin (2010, xiv–
xv), Branco (2015, 454–455) and Stegmaier (2017). Others, like Harries (1988,
32–33) and Leiter (2004, 1–23) would probably agree with the contrast I’ve
drawn here. Still others, for example Alvarez and Ridley (2005, 15), argue that
we should avoid construing Nietzsche as a proto-Wittgensteinian about lan-
guage due to the relevant history that separates them and the crucial differences
between their central concerns. But they don’t consider the shared linguistic
critique that I outline below. The French philosopher Badiou (2019) identifies
both thinkers as “antiphilosophers,” but his discussion is focused mostly on
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
3 Although Wittgenstein doesn’t mention it, the idea he criticizes in The Brown
Book—“that what can happen must have happened before” (BBB, 104)—
seems to be taken directly from Nietzsche’s proof of eternal recurrence in the
228 Paul S. Loeb

“Vision and Riddle” chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (see also Brusotti
2009, 359n. 87). This would indicate that Wittgenstein was familiar with Ni-
etzsche’s book (as Moore reports in his diary at the beginning of October
1913), and more specifically with what he elsewhere calls Nietzsche’s “Be-
gründung” of eternal recurrence (Brusotti 2009, 359–361). But Wittgenstein
misinterprets this idea (as many do), because what Nietzsche means by “hap-
pened before” is numerical, not temporal, precedence. What Nietzsche pro-
poses is that, in order for a numerically preceding recurrence to be qualitatively
identical, it has to happen at the same time. See Loeb 2022a.
4 See also Alvarez and Ridley: “[T]he ambition of this [ethical] version of Witt-
genstein is, ultimately, to cure us of the need for philosophy altogether; whereas
Nietzsche’s ethical ambitions require us only, and at most, to free ourselves
from certain kinds of (what he regarded as) bad philosophy”(2005, 17n.20).
5 For a philological survey of the evidence regarding Nietzsche’s influence on
Wittgenstein, see Brusotti 2009. Despite the influence of Lichtenberg on both
thinkers, and despite Mauthner’s acknowledgement of his debt to Nietzsche’s
linguistic critique, as well as Carnap’s quotation of Nietzsche’s linguistic cri-
tique in BGE and Waismann’s observation of the close relation between the
linguistic critiques of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Brusotti suggests that we
can’t know for sure whether Wittgenstein was familiar with this very famous
precedent (Brusotti 2009, 337, 347n.41, 361; see also Branco 2015, 456–457).
But I think this is an unreasonable standard of evidence: probability and likeli-
hood are sufficient. Indeed, given the commonalities I outline in this paper, I'm
inclined to think that Wittgenstein's failure to mention this precedent is evi-
dence of his anxiety of influence with respect to Nietzsche's linguistic critique
of philosophy (similar to Freud's anxiety about Nietzsche in the realm of
psychology).
6 In a diary entry from 8 December 1914, Wittgenstein records his purchase of a
volume from the collected works of Nietzsche that may have included Beyond
Good and Evil (Brusotti 2009, 341–342).
7 In TI “Reason” 5, Nietzsche argues that we first reify the pronoun “I” and then
project this I-substance into the world, which then leads us to believe in the
existence of substances, objects, and things. See also KSA 11:35[35] and KSA
13:14[79]. As I show below, Wittgenstein does not follow Nietzsche in making
this particular criticism because he takes for granted the existence of ordinary
physical objects, such as chairs or flowers, that play a role in our everyday lives.
8 Riccardi (2021, 169–172) argues that this point of Nietzsche’s anticipates Witt-
genstein’s later critique of the Cartesian ego.
9 Wittgenstein’s use of this term might also have been an allusion to Francis Gal-
ton’s term for hereditary likeness. But see Brusotti (2009, 352–354) on Wais-
mann’s connection between the two philosophers’ use of this term and his close
working relationship with Wittgenstein. Alvarez and Ridley (2005, 17n.16)
argue that Nietzsche does not use this term in order to make a Wittgensteinian
point, but rather to refer to similarities between the metaphysical presupposi-
tion of different languages that are induced by similar grammatical functions.
But I am arguing that this kind of inducement is precisely Wittgenstein’s point,
something that is missed in their comparative review and analysis.
10 He adds that this linguistic kinship can be traced back to shared geography,
race, physiological conditions, etc. See also BGE §268.
11 It’s not clear whether Wittgenstein agrees with Nietzsche that philosophers are
unduly influenced by the grammatical habits they learned as children. On the
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 229

one hand, he seems to criticize Augustine’s account of language learning during

childhood (PI §32) and to suggest an alternative account in terms of primitive
or simple language games (BBB, 17, PPF §161). On the other hand, he often
suggests that philosophers think like children when they philosophize (BBB, 26;
PI §§47, 282; PPF §§205–206).
12 See BBB, 18, 82 and PI §27 for Wittgenstein’s criticism of the first assumption;
and BBB, 18, 82 and PI §§38–44 for his criticism of the second assumption. For
a similar interpretive emphasis, see Fogelin (2018). Notice that Wittgenstein’s
criticism still allows that some words are ordinarily used as names and that
some names are ordinarily used to stand for objects.
13 These grammatical elements belong to what Wittgenstein calls “surface gram-
mar” (Oberflächengrammatik), meaning for example the placement of words
in the sentence structure (Satzbau), or the uniform appearance of words when
we hear them in speech or see them written or in print, as opposed to “depth
grammar” (Tiefengrammatik), or the way in which words are actually used in
ordinary everyday language (PI §§664, 11). In this essay, I am using the term
“grammar” only in the former, syntactic, sense. See Wittgenstein’s 1930–1932
lectures (Stern et. al. 2019, 367–378; and Monk 1990, 322–323) for his ex-
tended account of the relation between the two senses of “grammar” during his
response to G.E. Moore.
14 Wittgenstein’s qualification that this is only one of the great sources of philo-
sophical bewilderment points us in the direction of other psychological sources
he mentions, such as the craving for generality, the preoccupation with the
scientific method, the quest for perfection and exactitude, the search for es-
sences, the image of an ideal, being held captive by a picture, and so on. But for
Wittgenstein all these other psychological sources are either the result of lin-
guistic confusion or contribute to linguistic confusion. On their own, these
criticisms are not distinctive of his approach and Nietzsche would say that they
don’t help to ensure Wittgenstein’s claim that there can’t be any new philo-
sophical progress of the sort he, Nietzsche, has in mind.
15 Again, however, I think Nietzsche would argue that this aspect of Wittgen-
stein’s critique is not enough to justify his philosophical quietism. For example,
he would say that nothing in Wittgenstein’s private language argument shows
that he, Nietzsche, was mistaken in moving from his similar linguistic critique
of the Cartesian ego to his new philosophical theory of the soul as an embodied
structure of competing drives and affects that work at the sub-personal uncon-
scious level (BGE §12). See for example Riccardi 2015, 542–545.
16 However, as he explains at more length in On Certainty, this is not philosophi-
cal common sense in the way that G.E. Moore, for example, uses it to refute
skepticism about the external world: “Now the answer of the common-sense
philosopher—and that, n.b., is not the common-sense man, who is as far from
realism as from idealism” (BBB, 48, my italics).
17 See also KSA 11:35[35], where Nietzsche writes that, just like the common
people (das Volk), metaphysicians have believed in grammatical fictions.
18 Danto (2005, 104–106) rightly contrasts Nietzsche’s claim that past philoso-
phy has been a projection of the grammatical structure of ordinary language
onto the neutral screen of reality with Wittgenstein’s claim that all philosophy
is a deviation from ordinary language.
19 For a further discussion of Nietzsche’s theory of language as having to do with
commonality and community, although without mention of Nietzsche’s cri-
tique of reified grammar, see Richardson 2015 and 2020, 204–233. However,
230 Paul S. Loeb

Richardson does briefly discuss this critique in connection with Nietzsche’s

doubts against the subject/agent (2020, 164–165) and he describes as “Witt-
gensteinian” a couple of early unpublished notes in which Nietzsche says that
the philosophers are seduced by words and caught in the nets of language
(2020, 218n.24).
20 This is Aristotle’s term, not Nietzsche’s. For further discussion, see Loeb 2021c
and 2022c.
21 However, Nietzsche will often criticize the natural scientists of his time for not
applying this method consistently or thoroughly enough, especially the mecha-
nistic and materialistic paradigms in physics (BGE §§21, 36).
22 In his lectures in 1930–1932, Wittgenstein announced that he had discovered
this philosophical method (or set of methods, PI §133) and was no longer in-
terested in solving philosophical problems or formulating philosophical theses,
doctrines, or theories. Monk (1990, 296–304) argues that this is a really deci-
sive moment and the turning point between Wittgenstein’s transitional phase
and his mature later philosophy. Monk also says that this method “has no
precedent in the entire tradition of Western philosophy” (1990, 316), but I am
arguing that Nietzsche’s linguistic critique was an important precedent and
probably a significant influence (especially from his own reading of Nietzsche
and his interactions with the members of the Vienna circle).
23 More specifically, Wittgenstein also has in mind a way out of philosophical
solipsism (Monk 1990, 428).
24 For some examples of Wittgenstein commentators who endorse this anti-theo-
retical and deflationary interpretation of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy, see
Edwards 1982, Suter 1989, Monk 1990 and 2019, Stern 2004, Horwich 2012,
and Fogelin 2018. See also the commentators included in The New Wittgen-
stein anthology (Crary and Read 2000)—for example, James Conant and Cora
Diamond—who are described in the Introduction as advancing a “therapeutic
understanding of Wittgenstein’s conception of the aim of philosophy” (Crary
and Read 2000, 1). See also Rorty’s essay on Wittgenstein and the linguistic
turn (in Ahmed 2010, 300–333) and Horwich’s response to this essay (in
Ahmed 2010, 336–372).
25 See my essay on will to power and panpsychism (Loeb 2015). For some debate
on this issue, see Meyer (2023). I agree with Meyer, against Remhof, that
­Nietzsche is an eliminativist about physical objects, not a constructivist.
26 See also his observation that the following is a question of physics: “What are
the ultimate constituents of matter?” (BBB, 35). Of course, Nietzsche rejected
this atomistic theory long before Wittgenstein wrote this book, and indeed
precisely because he thinks it commits the error of reifying grammar (BGE
§§12, 17). Nevertheless, we can look at what Wittgenstein says about this at-
omistic theory in order to see what he might have said about an un-common-
sensical theory of physical objects like the one that Nietzsche prefers.
27 Again, and especially in OC, Wittgenstein sharply distinguishes his own com-
monsensical realism that is rooted in the role these ordinary objects play in our
everyday life from the philosophical commonsensical realism of philosophers
such as G.E. Moore who try to defend statements that aren’t used in ordinary
everyday life, such as “There are physical objects,” or “I know that that’s a tree
there.” In fact, he wouldn’t call this background assumption “realism” at all,
since he avoids all theses and theorizing. Also, at the start of The Brown Book
and Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein invents primitive language
games for a society of builders that provide a complete communication system
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 231

in which it is an ordinary part of everyday life to speak of actually existing

material or physical objects that are called “building stones” (such as “blocks,”
“pillars,” “slabs,” and “beams”) (BBB, 81). But I am arguing here that
­Nietzsche would say that Wittgenstein’s examples of dining-room chairs and
building stones, which are the basis of his diagnosis of philosophical reifica-
tion, are themselves reified grammatical constructs that do not actually exist
and hence cannot be contrasted with other non-existent reified grammatical
constructs such as the Cartesian ego.
28 “Everything has its day. — When human beings gave all things a sex they
didn’t think that they were playing, but rather that they had gained a profound
insight: — they did not admit to themselves the enormous extent of this error
until very late and perhaps they have still not entirely admitted this even now.
— In the same way, humans have ascribed to all that exists a connection with
morality and laid an ethical significance on the world's back. One day this will
have as much value, and no more, as the belief in the masculinity or femininity
of the sun has today.” (D 1982, §3).
29 Similarly, once he has disposed of the grammatical illusion of the Cartesian
ego, Nietzsche claims that there is now room for new conceptions and refine-
ments of the soul-hypothesis, including his own conception of the soul as an
embodied structure of competing drives and affects working at a sub-personal
unconscious level—a concept which is in no way supposed to explain the Car-
tesian ego (BGE §12).
30 See my review of Leiter’s book on moral psychology with Nietzsche (Loeb
2021a).
31 See my essay on BGE §211 (Loeb 2019b).
32 See also Leiter’s Introduction to The Future for Philosophy (2004, 1–23). In
this overview, Leiter doesn’t discuss Wittgenstein’s work and doesn’t find
any anticipation of Wittgenstein’s linguistic critique in Nietzsche. Instead, he
draws a contrast between a small set of English-speaking “Wittgensteinian”
philosophers who became quietist under the pressure of Wittgenstein’s argu-
ments and a much larger set of philosophers who became naturalists under
the pressure of Quine’s very different arguments. Also, Leiter ascribes a
Quinean naturalism to Nietzsche, whereas I am arguing that Nietzsche’s
naturalism consists in his methodological deanthropomorphism (see Loeb
2021a).
33 Here Nietzsche would probably cite his observation about Kant’s similar criti-
cal philosophy: “Kant wanted to prove in a way that would dumbfound the
‘whole world’ that ‘the whole world’ was right: —that was the secret joke of
this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of popular prejudice, but for
scholars and not for the common people” (GS §193). See also BGE §210:
“They [the philosophers of the future] consider it no small disgrace for phi-
losophy when people decree, as is popular nowadays: “Philosophy itself is
criticism and critical science—and nothing whatever besides. […] [O]ur new
philosophers will say nevertheless: critics are instruments of the philosopher
and for that very reason, being instruments, a long way from being philoso-
phers themselves. Even the great Chinese man of Königsberg was merely a
great critic. —”
34 See footnote 24 above where I cite Wittgenstein scholars who call his metaphi-
losopy “therapeutic.” Compare Leiter’s very different characterization of one
aspect of Nietzsche’s metaphilosophy as “therapeutic” (Leiter 2013, 582–84,
596).
232 Paul S. Loeb

35 Alvarez and Ridley (2005, 17n.20) also note that Nietzsche inveighed against
the kind of ethical values held by Wittgenstein, but they don’t consider Witt-
genstein’s Christianity or its impact on his philosophical quietism.
36 See Schönsbaumsfeld (2007, 10–37) for an extended account of Kierkegaard’s
influence on Wittgenstein—starting with Maurice Drury quoting Wittgenstein
as saying that Kierkegaard was a saint and by far the most profound thinker of
the last century (RW 87). Notice how Wittgenstein here elevates the Christian
philosopher not just above Nietzsche, but also above two of his other impor-
tant nineteenth-century influences, Schopenhauer (Monk 1990, 18–19, 143–
144) and Marx (Monk 1990, 247–248, 343, 486–487). For Wittgenstein’s
interest in Dostoevsky as a Christian thinker, see Ilse Somavilla (in Bru et al.
2013, 263–288), Brian McGuinness (in Bru et al. 2013, 227–242) and Monk
(1990, 136, 342, 490, 549).
37 Edwards also notes (1982, 70–71), correctly I think, that both Tolstoy and
Wittgenstein were engaged in the traditional Christian practice of imitatio
Christi, that is, living their lives as they imagined Jesus lived his and advised
others to live theirs (see also Monk 2023, 7). In my view, Edwards offers the
most insightful—although uncritical--scholarly account of Wittgenstein’s
Christian ethics and of the relation Wittgenstein saw between this ethics and
his later philosophical work.
38 See for example Section 7 of The Antichrist, and the Tolstoyan figure of the
voluntary beggar in Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as well my commentary
on this figure in Loeb and Tinsley (2022, 529–530).
39 According to McGuinness (1988, 274), a friend in prison camp, Franz Parak,
reports that Wittgenstein said to him at the end of the war: “I’d most like to be
a priest, but when I’m a teacher I can read the Gospels with the children.”
40 However, sometimes, including during the time he was writing PI, Wittgenstein
seems to suggest that he might also have faith in the divine nature of Jesus and
in the event of Jesus’ resurrection (CV, 32–33; Monk 1990, 383-384). Here
Wittgenstein says that his faith would have to stem from his love and passion
instead of his speculative intelligence and abstract mind (see also Monk 1990,
489–490)-—a contrast that Nietzsche would have said is standard fare in tra-
ditional Christian thinking. Monk also points to the circularity in Wittgen-
stein’s reasoning here—that he needs to have this faith in order to be saved but
also that he needs to be saved in order to have this faith. But, again, for Ni-
etzsche this is just a traditional Christian circularity that he specifically criti-
cizes in A §50.
41 In a diary entry from 8 December 1914, Wittgenstein records his purchase of a
volume from the collected works of Nietzsche that may have included The
Antichrist (see Brusotti 2009, 341–342). He writes that he was strongly af-
fected by Nietzsche’s hostility against Christianity because his writings also
have some truth in them. It’s not clear what Wittgenstein means by this and the
rest of the entry doesn’t really help to clarify his point. But I don’t think we
should infer that he means there is truth in Nietzsche’s hostility against Chris-
tianity. Rather, his point seems to be that he is disturbed by this hostility pre-
cisely because Nietzsche also says some other true things about Christianity.
For Wittgenstein, these other true things in The Antichrist would have included
especially Nietzsche’s insistence on Christian psychology and practice rather
than doctrinal beliefs (A §39). It might also have included Nietzsche’s claim
that Paul corrupted the message and example of Jesus (A §§41–47)—some-
thing Wittgenstein seems to echo in his own later notes (CV, 30–33; see also
 A Nietzschean Critique of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Quietism 233

Monk 1990, 121–123, 540–542). In this same diary entry, Wittgenstein adds
that Christianity is indeed the only sure way to happiness, but wonders about
someone—presumably Nietzsche—who spurned this happiness (Monk 1990,
122). In A §50 Nietzsche criticizes this traditional Christian formula that faith
brings happiness, therefore it is true.
42 Again, this idea that true faith requires a lack of proof is a traditional Christian
idea that is targeted by Nietzsche in A §§50–55. But following Wittgenstein’s
own presentations, in which he uses technical phrases like “the grammar of our
language about God” or “the historical proof-game” (OR, 413–415, CV, 32),
scholarly commentary tends to interpret Wittgenstein’s remarks about religious
belief as guided only by his philosophical investigations into language.
43 McGuinness (1988, 225–226) makes the interesting observation that Tolstoy,
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein all had the same starting point in David Friedrich
Strauss’ pivotal rejection of the miraculous and mysterious in Christianity.
44 See for example Monk, who writes that Wittgenstein lived a “devoutly reli-
gious life” in a way that is “difficult to define” (1990, 580), or that “he sought
a state of ethical seriousness and integrity that would survive the scrutiny of
even that most stern of judges, his own conscience” (1990, 580). Here Monk,
like Wittgenstein (in most places) and like most of his scholarly commentators,
simply takes it for granted that Christian religion and morality are morality
and religion per se.
45 Thus, Nietzsche would say that, no matter how much the later Wittgenstein
took himself to be combating the dogmatism of his Tractarian period (Monk
1990, 320–321), this effort did not extend to the faith in Christian ethics which
he came to cultivate during that period.
46 See also Wittgenstein’s remark to Norman Malcom that he began PI with the
quotation from Augustine because “the conception must be important if so
great a mind held it” (Monk 1990, 478). Compare Nietzsche’s estimation of
Augustine in BGE §§50, 200, GS §359, and A §59. Of these, BGE §200 is the
most interesting appraisal, since Nietzsche would have probably applied some
of the same cultural and psychological analysis to Wittgenstein. In a letter to
Overbeck, Nietzsche writes: “— Just now I’ve been reading the Confessions of
St. Augustine for relaxation, with great regret that you weren’t with me. Oh
this old rhetor! How false and ridiculous (augenverdreherisch)! How I
laughed!” (March 31, 1885; KSB 7, 34).
47 This is not to say that there aren’t some similarities between the rejections of
scientism in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein—especially in connection with aesthet-
ics and music. See, for example, GS §373 and Monk 2019, Chapter 10. The
difference is that Nietzsche considers natural science a valuable tool of philoso-
phy, whereas Wittgenstein sees no philosophical role for natural science.
48 See my essays on Nietzsche’s account of the priestly type and the priestly phi-
losopher (Loeb 2018, 2019a).
49 In this essay, I am only concerned with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, but
there is a case to be made that he was also a philosophical quietist in his first
book, and for similar reasons (see Crary and Read 2000, 1–18). This would
make sense if his Christian values and morality were the actual source of his
quietism. Since Schopenhauer was an influence on both Wittgenstein and Tol-
stoy, there is also a case to be made for the influence of Schopenhauer’s quiet-
ism (WWR 2, Chapter 48), which he links to Christian thinkers and doctrines.
McGuinness (1988, 225) even suggests that Tolstoy espoused a Schopenhaue-
rian version of Christianity.
234 Paul S. Loeb

50 See the chapter on famous sages in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche
has Zarathustra criticize those philosophers who are servants and advocates of
the common people and thereby turn wisdom into a poorhouse.
51 Wittgenstein uses the English phrases, “the common-sense man” and “the man
in the street” (BBB, 48, 59). Heller (1988, 155) suggests that Wittgenstein valo-
rizes ordinary language because, following Tolstoy, he valorizes ordinary
people.
52 See for example Monk 1990, 247–248, 345–351, 569. Wittgenstein’s self-de-
scription as a communist at heart, his hatred of class distinctions, and his Tol-
stoyan infatuation with Russia and the Soviet Union as communist sites of an
almost religious worship of working people, led him to visit Russia and petition
the government to allow him to perform manual labor on a collective farm.
However, Nietzsche would say that Wittgenstein’s political preferences and his
Christianity have a common origin in a ressentiment morality that undermines
the workers’ instincts and teaches them to be envious and vengeful (A §§24, 57).
53 See CV, 26 and Monk 1990, 366–367, 371, 413.
54 In this vein, it is interesting that Gilles Deleuze, who presents himself as an heir
to Nietzsche’s philosophical legacy, remarks that the Wittgensteinian school
was a philosophical catastrophe, a massive regression of philosophy, and an
attempted assassination of philosophy (Deleuze 2004, letter “W”). However,
Deleuze doesn’t try to explain why Wittgenstein’s animus against traditional
philosophy seems to extend beyond his linguistic critique—an animus which I
think Nietzsche would trace back to his Christian Weltanschauung. See, by
contrast, Badiou (2019), who draws a connection between antiphilosophy and
Christianity, but implausibly argues that Nietzsche is an antiphilosopher be-
cause he is still tied to Christianity by his hatred of it.
55 See the many anecdotes in Monk’s biography about Wittgenstein advising his
students to leave the academic study of philosophy and join the working class
and do honest work, especially manual labor (Monk 1990, 6, 181, 323,
402–404).
56 In Leiter’s terms (2004, 2, 8–11), I am arguing that the history of philosophy has
intrinsic value and I am articulating a Nietzschean criticism of the role assigned
to the history of philosophy by Wittgensteinian philosophical quietists—namely,
as a means of dissolving philosophical problems by showing how we came to
make the mistake of thinking there were such problems in the first place.
57 See my essay on Nietzsche’s place in the Aristotelian history of philosophy
(Loeb 2017).
58 Poellner (1995, 3–4) also criticizes this scholarly tendency.
59 I am grateful to Daniel Blue, Chris Janaway, Scott Jenkins, and Mattia Riccardi
for their helpful comments. Thanks also to the editors of this volume, Shunichi
Takagi and Pascal Zambito, for their helpful information and valuable feed-
back. This paper also benefited from the questions and comments of the par-
ticipants at the Tenth Annual Boston University Workshop on Late Modern
Philosophy

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10 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell
and Nietzsche
Gordon C. F. Bearn

1
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche are existential philosophers: their philoso-
phies are composed in response to the threat of nihilism. This is familiar
enough to readers of Nietzsche who can all recite that nihilism stands at
the door, uncanniest of guests (WP, 9). It is rarer among readers of Witt-
genstein where it is Cavell who most consistently insists on this reading,
although it is true that Cavell refers to nihilism by what he calls its older
name: skepticism (1990b, 94). Both Wittgenstein and Nietzsche under-
stand philosophical work as work on oneself, an effort to become what
one is, but with the codicil that one hasn’t a clue what one is (BT, 407/300e;
EH 2021, 243).1 In this vein, philosophy is a way of living or becoming,
not a body of doctrine. And if it seems that Wittgenstein is more focused
on technical questions about language than Nietzsche, it helps to remem-
ber that Nietzsche was a professional philologist and that, for Wittgen-
stein, to imagine a language was to imagine a form of life (PI §19). There
is much to recommend this parallel reading of Nietzsche and (Cavell’s)
Wittgenstein.
Nietzsche’s approach to becoming what one is comes out most clearly
in Ecce Homo, where we find Nietzsche turning away from a long list
of what in other hands would have been topics of philosophical trea-
tises: “God,” “Soul,” “Virtue,” “Sin,” “the Beyond,” “truth,” “eternal
life” (EH, 245). For Nietzsche, not those big things but little ones,
“petty things,” are actually the “essential concerns of life”: “nourish-
ment, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness”
(245). For Nietzsche, caring for these little things is essential also to
becoming who we are. His scattered, strangely precise suggestions for
living – such as avoiding tea in the afternoon and alcohol always, or
insisting:

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-13
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 239

Sit as little as possible; give no credence to any thought unless it is born

in the fresh air when you are on the move – while your muscles are cel-
ebrating a festival as well.
(EH, 233)

– these scattered suggestions are a description of the practice that Nietzsche

found essential to becoming who he was. In one telling of the arrival or
approach of something he called the great liberation, Nietzsche writes of
warming breezes and, describing a convalescing free spirit, he tells us:

It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is near. He is as-
tonished and sits silent: where had he been? These near and nearest things:
how changed they seem! what bloom and magic they have acquired!
(HH 1987, 8)

The near may be another way of saying little things, petty things, but these
nearest things are now suddenly new, enlarged, seen for the first time.
One aspect of Cavell’s existential reading of Wittgenstein is his sense
that the experience of “intimacy with existence, or intimacy lost”, which is
fundamental to his reading is conveyed “most directly and most practi-
cally” not by Austin and Wittgenstein, but by Emerson and Thoreau
(Cavell 1981, 145–146). In Emerson, this shows up in “the familiar, the
low”: “the meal in the firkin, the milk in the pan”.2 In Thoreau, it shows
up in his recalling the intimacy of things after a gentle rain by the pond:
“Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and be-
friended me… I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.”3
There is much to recommend a parallel reading of (Cavell’s) Wittgenstein
and Nietzsche. Nevertheless, in what follows, I will be trying to tease apart
their philosophical trajectories.

2 
Emerson is a natural enough starting point, since Nietzsche and Cavell,
almost uniquely in a long century of philosophers, find Emerson’s writings
to be sources of genuinely philosophical inspiration.4 After looking at Em-
erson’s invocation of chagrin, I will suggest that Cavell attempts an over-
coming of chagrin by a practice of return, recovering the long material
histories of our words, reigniting their lost grammatical energies. On the
other hand, Nietzsche attempts an overcoming of chagrin by educating us
out of the historical grammar of our words into the sensual enjoyment of
240 Gordon C. F. Bearn

innocent becoming. The tone or sound of Cavell’s response to chagrin is

serious, recovering a walking pace, andante, on rough ground. Nietzsche’s
response bubbles with sounds of cheerfulness; his gait, dancing, touching
the earth only to return to the air. It is the difference between going gram-
matically back and going creatively, perhaps even agrammatically, on. I
sometimes think the best mnemonic for this elusive difference is as the dif-
ference between what Cavell called “aversive thinking” and what Foucault
called “thinking otherwise”.5
It sounds simple enough. One is seriously slowing down to a walk, let-
ting gravity ground us on the earth, the other is dancing, fluttering like a
butterfly or a soap bubble, overpowering the spirit of gravity with laughter
(PI §107, TSZ 2005, 36). What makes this comparison delicate is that the
opposite trajectories of Cavell and Nietzsche, going back and going on, are
equally features of Emerson and of Wittgenstein, so these divided trajecto-
ries may never precipitate into any crisp shape. But let’s go on.
Let’s start with this phrase from Emerson: “every word they say chagrins
us.”6 Cavell calls it an “outcry” or “outburst,” and it is something he has
never ceased exploring (2003, 145; 1989, 81). It comes from Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance,” and shows up towards the end of a paragraph beginning
with this sentence: “The objection to conforming to usages that have
­become dead to you is that it scatters your force” (Cavell 1989, 155).
“Scattering your force,” taken as an objection, is additional confirmation
of the inheritance of Emerson by Nietzsche that Cavell insists upon (2004,
212ff). But it is “conforming to usages that have become dead to you”
that, by invoking dead usages, starts Wittgensteinian concerns.
Wittgenstein began his notes for students now called The Blue Book by
asking the question “What is the meaning of a word?” (BBB 1965, 1). But
he refused to answer. He was afraid his students would succumb to the
temptation to look around “for some object which you might call ‘the
meaning’ (1).” Such an object would have to have special properties, un-
like those of moist pine needles, and so Wittgenstein can smear such pur-
ported special properties as “occult” (4). Yet without occult meanings, we
seem to be left with only material signs, a position close to formalism in
mathematics, which Frege had ridiculed (4). It is Wittgenstein’s Blue Book
articulation of Frege’s ridicule that bring us to death.

Frege’s idea could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if

they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninterest-
ing, whereas they obviously have a kind of life… And further it seems
clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And
the conclusion which one [such as Frege] draws from this is that what
must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is
something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 241

But [Wittgenstein comments] if we had to name anything which is

the life of the sign, we should have to say it was its use.
(4)

In this passage, the use of signs, not special occult meanings, brings signs
to life. This familiar Wittgensteinian ground nevertheless raises the natural
question of what governs those uses. The Investigations returns to this is-
sue asking what is it about use that brings life to signs:

Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life? -- In use it lives. Is it
there that it has living breath within it? -- Or is the use its breath?
(PI §432)

Does the living breath of meaning enter the word while it is in use, or is it
rather that nothing enters, and it is the use itself which is the breath? It
feels as though Wittgenstein is inclining towards the use itself being the
breath of linguistic life.
We were looking for linguistic death in Wittgenstein because Emerson
spoke of “conforming to usages that have become dead to you”.7 But now
it seems that Emerson’s is a different form of linguistic death which Witt-
genstein, or anyway The Blue Book, had not prepared us for, namely, the
fact that even properly used signs can sour. Or sounding more like Cavell,
just out of the gate, we could say that we sometimes find ourselves feeling
that there are proper usages we are no longer seriously able to mean, al-
though what precisely that comes to is the question itself. For Wittgen-
stein, the use of signs was their life, but Emerson is chagrinned by proper
uses that have become dead. How did we ever let ourselves be convinced
that the proper was alive?
Let’s now turn directly to what Cavell calls Emerson’s outcry or outburst
against conforming to usages which have lost their lives, and thereby also
against the emptied lives of those who don’t sense that their proper usages
have soured, those who have succumbed to the most requested virtue, con-
formism.8 Here, then, is Emerson’s outcry, itself:

This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a

few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true.
Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every
word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them
right.9

Who is this they, whose every word chagrins us? It is those who conform
to names, customs, usages.10 Many of us, caught in the midst of an argu-
ment, find ourselves saying things like: Well, as a representative of [this or
242 Gordon C. F. Bearn

that philosophical position], I would say… But our conversational part-

ners knew that already: “if I know your sect I anticipate your argument”.11
When we catch ourselves doing this, we can be brought up sharp by our
words sounding thin, formulaic, hollow. The very argument in which they
appeared can seem suddenly merely mechanical or staged, thoughtless
manekins dueling to the death. When we catch others doing this, our un-
ease with their words can ricochet back to ourselves. Are my words any
less formulaic? Their words, every word they say, chagrins us, chagrins
me.
Dictionaries tell us that what chagrins us gnaws at us, vexes or mortifies
us, and this “mortifying” links chagrin to what Emerson calls usages that
have become dead to us. Bringing in death makes chagrin bad enough, but
what cranks it up for me is Emerson’s saying that in our chagrin “we know
not where to begin to set them right” (Emerson 2014, 155). We don’t
know where to begin to set them right, because the offending words are
not wrong, they are being used correctly. How, nevertheless, can they be
dead to us?

3 
To help us understand what he is saying, Emerson, in the last lines of the
same paragraph, reminds us of a “mortifying experience” of pushing out a
“forced smile… in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to
conversation which does not interest us”.12 It’s a fine example of the thin,
hollow, or formulaic. The very word “hollow” makes it seem that what is
missing here is content, as though the form needed to be filled with genuine
emotion or intention. There is a vulgar version of the methods of Stanislav-
ski, what in the US is called his “system”, that promises just such a solu-
tion to chagrin, filling the hollow smile with memories of a joy. We might
understandably be a little skeptical about whether a lying kiss could be
turned into a true one, simply by filling it with memories of a different one,
however true. But in this Wittgensteinian context, we should be particu-
larly suspicious of the idea that the person forcing the smile could turn it
into a genuine smile by adding the recollected experience of genuine smiles,
for Wittgenstein insists that “[m]eaning something is as little an experience
as intending” (PPF §279). Nevertheless if we restrict ourselves to theatrical
acting, so that every smile, every word said, is literally on stage, scripted,
we are still able to distinguish stronger, convincing stage acting from
weaker stage acting, thin, hollow, and formulaic. So it is not incredible to
imagine even Stanislavski offering some real help with the problem of cha-
grin. Cavell may even have had a sense of this.
Early on in Little Did I Know, Cavell avers that, incited by a difficult
moment in his relation to his father, and intending to explore the capacity
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 243

of moral imagination to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, he signed up

for an acting class at Berkeley whose text, by Stanislavski, was then called
An Actor Prepares. Later on, Cavell will think the exercises in that class
might be relevant to the existence of other minds, although in a way that
his philosophy professors would have likely refused (2010, 14). If we re-
member that Wittgenstein felt that philosophical work was really work on
oneself, we could be encouraged by the full title of Stanislavski’s An Ac-
tor’s Work, as it is now called (BT, 407/300e). The full title of Part I of that
work is: “An Actor’s Work on Himself in the Creative Process of Experi-
ence,” Part II was similarly titled but was addressed to the creative process
of physical characterization.13
Much of the work on oneself that Stanislavski presented in An Actor’s
Work can be construed as invented to deal with chagrin, or at least the
false smile. For example, in his chapter on Concentration and Attention,
Stanislavski is trying to overcome the unsurprising phenomenon that when
students rehearse on stage with the curtain closed, their performances are
stronger than when, a moment later, the curtain is opened to the empty,
dark hall. With the curtain opened, one of the students, reports: “without
realizing it, I had gone right off the track and fallen victim to ‘playact-
ing’”.14 Opening the curtain had revealed the “big black hole” of the audi-
torium and its possible audience. Somehow, the attraction of that darkness
overpowered the concentration of the students, and their words began to
sound as scripted as they were.15
The exercises on oneself prescribed by Stanislavski’s fictional representa-
tive, Tortsov, were designed to teach his students how to hold their concen-
tration by learning to “look and see,” thus anticipating another well-known
Wittgensteinian remark.16 Tortsov’s exercises involved things like blacking
out the stage, leaving only one light illuminated on a little table. The vari-
ous things on that table were then the only things in view and the hope was
that if the students gave themselves over to the knickknacks, then those
little things would be able to hold and deepen their attention. It is a spiri-
tual no less than a dramatic practice, a spiritual practice that recalls the
Nietzschean insistence I have already invoked, namely, that we give up the
capitalized abstractions and focus on “…these petty things -- nourishment,
place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness… It is right
here that people should start to change their ways” (EH, 245).
Tortsov’s exercises involved expanding and contracting that circle of at-
tention so the students would come to be able to sink into those objects
with the stage in full light, and even in front of a gaping black hole. Where
successful, such exercises may have turned the little, petty objects into
something other than props. Would it be too much to say that they might
acquire “bloom and magic” (HH, 8)? A prop, whatever else it is, is sym-
bolic. On stage, a clock on the mantle symbolizes a clock on the mantle, so
244 Gordon C. F. Bearn

it is easy to register: it’s a clock. It can almost seem that the clock could be
replaced by a little cardboard sign:

C L O C K.

The exercises of attention and concentration on the clock are meant to

bring life back to the merely symbolic clock, and by means of that life, to
help the scripted performance of the actor become more than merely
scripted. Furthermore, this work on oneself is more generally relevant than
simply to the theatrical situation, because, as Bergson never tired of insist-
ing, we mostly don’t see things, we simply read the conventional labels we
collude in attaching to them: “tree” “leaf” “stick” “bark”.
When every word chagrins us, this can be attributed to their having be-
come only symbols of communication rather than living communication.
The problem is not, as one interpretation of the forced smile might imply,
that our speaking is not filled with genuine emotion. During an investiga-
tion of what happens when we exclaim “Now I can go on!” Wittgenstein
discovered that almost anything, or even nothing, may be going on in our
minds while we are speaking, or speaking our lines (PI §151). Although
someone’s stage acting might in this or that case be improved by reigniting
old emotions, the general problem, on- or off-stage, of being chagrinned by
every word, is not a problem of what emotional liquid we pour or do not
pour into the proper uses of words. As Stanislavski suggests, we abandon
ourselves to the singularity of the clock, not contenting ourselves with its
being an instance of the category clock, so Cavell will suggest that we
abandon ourselves to the singular history of each word. This is nothing we
add from our side of speech, it is something we receive from the side of
words. We are “abandoned” to our words (1994, 125).

4 
Cavell is the reason I have been focusing on the Emersonian idea of our
being chagrinned by correct uses of words becoming dead to us. But even
before he took Emerson seriously, something like the idea chagrin ap-
peared in Cavell’s writing as disappointment, our disappointment with cri-
teria, which in his terms is almost to say our disappointment with our
linguistic life itself (Cavell 1979, 79, 81, 83).
Our disappointment with criteria is due to the fact that criteria do not
answer the skeptic; indeed they make skepticism possible. There are crite-
ria for being in pain, as there are for smiling, but it is precisely those crite-
ria which the simulator enlists in simulating pains or smiles. Criteria,
Cavell insists, are criteria for what kind of thing something is, but not for
whether it exists or is real (51). “The difference between real and
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 245

imaginary, between existence and absence, is not a criterial difference, not

one of recognition” (51). It is from such a thought that Cavell reaches his
difficult, but well-known result that there is a truth in or of skepticism,
even if skepticism is not true (1979, 241). In an essay on Emerson, he tells
us that Emerson’s correct answer to skepticism

…does not consist in denying the conclusion of skepticism but in recon-

ceiving its truth. It is true that we do not know the existence of the
world with certainty; our relation to its existence is deeper -- one in
which it is accepted, that is to say, received… [E]xistence is to be
acknowledged.
(1981, 133)

Our relation to the existence of the world is not one of knowledge: we

neither know the world with certainty nor fail to (1979, 45). What you
may think of as the space between words and things, between being
called a smile and being a smile, cannot be closed by criteria, and hence
the threat of being chagrined by our every word can never be fully and
finally set aside (51). Somehow, without obliterating the threat, some-
thing like reception or acceptance or acknowledgement is meant to si-
lence the threat. For a spell. This momentary silence, peace and quiet,
Wittgenstein’s Ruhe, is one aspect of what Cavell means by the ordi-
nary (2001, 353–354).
I will better be able to explain how this is meant to work if I draw on a
related concept from early in Cavell’s writing career: alignment.17 In a
memorable passage from his first defense of the philosophical appeal to
what we say, Cavell imagines looking up the word “umiak” in a dictionary
of the English language. He remarks that although dictionaries are not
about boats, looking up that word will teach us both what an “umiak”
means and what an umiak is. And he comments, “if this seems surprising,
perhaps it is because we forget that we learn language and learn the world
together, that they become elaborated and distorted together, and in the
same places” (2002, 18). On the same page, Cavell names this feature of
learning: “learning is a question of aligning language and the world” (18).
What Emerson calls chagrin can itself be construed as a failure of align-
ment. When words properly used nevertheless become dead to us, it is as if
they have fallen off things. Smiling appropriately but lifelessly, it is almost
as if we pasted the smile on our lips. Apologies forced out of our mouths
by parents. Reciting some philosophical argument, we feel it has lost its
life. When we are chagrined by our words, things and words have fallen
out of alignment. Overcoming chagrin will then be a matter of realign-
ment. Cavell will describe this in terms of receiving each words literality,
but it is more than what is usually meant by the literal meaning of a word.
246 Gordon C. F. Bearn

In his book on Walden Cavell doesn’t speak of this deadening of lan-

guage in terms of chagrin, but in terms of defeating literality, evading each
word’s literality (1981, 63). In these terms, chagrin threatens us when we
lose our grip on each word’s literality, when we speak formulaically, merely
conforming to correct usage. Here is Cavell:

In religion and politics, literality is defeated because we allow our

choices to be made for us. In religion our hymn books resound with a
cursing of God because the words are used in vain. We are given to say
that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. But we
do not let the words assess our lives, we do not mean what they could
mean, so what we do when we repeat those words becomes the whole
meaning of “man,” and “chief,” and “glorify,” and “God,” etc., in our
lives; and that is a curse.
(1981, 63–4)

These instances of evading a word’s literality, where the “object named

does not exist for us in its name,” are instances of chagrin (64). They will
be overcome by returning to each word its literality. But what does Cavell
mean by literality? Cavell invokes the notion of literality in a passage
which begins:

…we have a choice over our words, but not over their meaning. Their
meaning is their language; and our possession of the language is the way
we live in it, what we ask of it. (“To imagine a language is to imagine a
form of life.”)
(63)

If we try to choose the meanings of our words, or fall in with the choices
of those others to whom we would conform, then however correctly those
words are employed, they will taste artificial in our mouths. Chagrin. The
passage continues:

That our meaning a word is a return to it and its return to us… is ex-
pressed by the word’s literality, its being just these letters, just here,
rather than any others.
(63)

A word’s literality is linked to its materiality, its letters, and its literality is
also, if I may put it this way, linked to the materiality of its long history of
usages. As Virginia Woolf put it: “Words, English words, are full of echoes,
of memories, of associations -- naturally. They have been out and about,
on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 247

centuries… they are stored with so many meanings, with memories, they
have contracted so many famous marriages.”18 And it is to those histories
of the words themselves that Cavell would return. A word’s literality is, in
effect, its entire genealogy, not a little nugget of meaning, but the whole
history of its usage, the whole extraordinary energy it brings to its every
appearance. Tracing and abandoning oneself to the genealogy of each use
of every word is what I imagine Cavell to have meant by providing a tran-
scendental deduction of every word in our language (1989, 81). Some-
times, he simply calls this process philosophizing (1979, 125).

5 
What Cavell construes as “philosophizing” may be his answer to the exis-
tential discovery of chagrin, although he was not yet ready to call it cha-
grin (1979, 125). At this point he spoke of our words feeling “merely
conventional” which is another aspect of words feeling thin, hollow, or
formulaic, and that feeling is what chagrins me. This philosophizing is in-
deed a kind of work on oneself, a kind of caring for oneself that he first
learned from Austin and Wittgenstein, even if his understanding of this
philosophizing was further extended by his readings, first of Thoreau, and
then of Emerson. Here he is:

In philosophizing, I have to bring my own language and life to imagina-

tion. What I require is a convening of my culture’s criteria, in order to
confront them with my words and life as I pursue them and as I may
imagine them; and at the same time to confront my words and life as
I pursue them with the life my culture’s words imagine for me: to con-
front the culture with itself, along the lines in which it meets in me.
(1979, 125)

Whatever else the convening of my culture’s criteria is, it seems to require

a recollection of my words and life as I imagine them in order to confront
them with the life my culture’s words imagine for me. When every word we
say chagrins us by its mere conventionality, Cavell’s response is a gram-
matical investigation of the words of our shared language in order to re-
veal how the rich historical grammar of those words has, in our own
mouths, become embarrassingly thinned, emptied. The idea seems to be
that by reminding ourselves of the rich grammatical genealogy or our
words, we will overcome chagrin, and bring our words once again to life.
Someone might be skeptical about there even being a rich grammatical
genealogy of our words, skeptical about what a grammatical investigation
of a word like “chair” might turn up, or even how to begin such an inves-
tigation. For Cavell, since “learning is a question of aligning language and
248 Gordon C. F. Bearn

the world” (2002, 18), it is no surprise that he is fond of the way the de-
monstrative in this line from the Blue Book, enforces the entanglement of
grammar and our life with things:

It is part of the grammar of the word “chair” that this is what we call
“to sit on a chair”.
(BBB, 24; Cavell 1979, 71)

The relacing or realigning of our human lives with the word chair requires
a grammatical investigation, and this relacing or realigning is a matter of
memory. It involves being reminded of a variety of structurally, but not
especially systematically connected aspects of our lives with chairs. In a
late essay, Cavell notes that the articulation of the grammar of the word
chair will recall

that the family of things we call chairs, hence the family of postures we
describe as sitting on a chair, plays a distinct family of roles in human
existence, essentially related to (what we call) sitting on a canvas camp
stool or on a fence or a swing or on a bottom step and hence related to
getting up and standing still and walking and resting and chatting and
dining and presiding and squatting or kneeling and cushioning and
leaning and stretching out and writing alone for hours at a table.
(2012, 24)

The grammar of the word chair brings in an enormous swathe of linguistic

life, and by recovering that swathe we can evade the formulaic emptiness
of our uses of words which is the source of our chagrin.
Later in the same essay Cavell remembers his teacher Ernest Bloch inter-
rupting himself while teaching, to ask his class of composition students:
“‘By the way, do you know what a triad is?”’ (2012, 26). Cavell implies
that this was as incredible a question in that context, as any philosopher
asking grownup students: by the way, do you know what a chair is? And
when one of Bloch’s students offered an example of a triad – “‘Well C, E,
G, for example’” – Bloch responded to the student by covering a wall of
musical staves with an overwhelming variety of different versions of a the
C, E, G triad, only commenting, when the board was full, that he could fill
up another board with the various ways these triads would be affected by
instrumentation, dynamics, surrounding musical phrases and so on (26).
Bloch was introducing his students to the grammar of what is called a
triad, in just the way Cavell began introducing his readers to the grammar
for being a chair. This is how he would revive our linguistic life, or, given
the role of language in our lives, we could say simply say: revive our life.
Wittgenstein was an existential philosopher.
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 249

Someone might wonder how this could ever work. What does it mat-
ter whether I know the literal, grammatical genealogy of our words,
that history will be there whether or not I know it. My learning the
genealogical grammar of my words changes nothing. But it does. It
changes us, and therefore it changes our linguistic life. The sounds
made by an orchestra are unchanged whether or not you can tell an
oboe from a clarinet, but if you can hear that difference, then the or-
chestral sounds will be that much richer. Each word is like a symphony
and when your life with language acknowledges more aspects of the
grammar of each word, your use of each word will be richer, your lin-
guistic life, more alive. Literally. In this passage, cited now a second
time, Cavell says more or less just that:

…we have a choice over our words, but not over their meaning. Their
meaning is their language; and our possession of the language is the way
we live in it, what we ask of it. (“To imagine a language is to imagine a
form of life.”)
(1981, 63)

A word’s literality is linked to its materiality, including its spelling on the

page, its sound in our voices, and the genealogy of its appearance at this
singular moment in our mouths and on the page. Recovering that literality
is how Cavell means to overcome chagrin, realigning words and things so
that finally things begin to exist for us in their names (64).
But for Cavell, recovering from Chagrin is not a place of excitement
or dance or even life so much as a place of silence, of quiet. In the midst
of an early discussion of the problem of other minds, focussing on pain,
Cavell concludes a sketch of the grammar of the words pain and plea-
sure by remarking that rummaging so comfortably around in our life
with those words “rather dampens the mood of worry about whether I
ever know another is in pain” (1979, 78–79). I think this dampened
mood is related to his thought, later on, that philosophizing is punctu-
ated, both at its start and at is momentary end, by silence. He even says
death (2001, 354). Another name for the silence which begins philoso-
phy could be chagrin:

The silence with which philosophy begins is the recognition of my lost-

ness to myself, something Wittgenstein’s text figures as the emptiness of
my words, my craving or insistence upon their emptiness, upon wanting
them to do what human words cannot do. I read this disappointment
with words as a function of the human wish to deny responsibility for
speech.
(2001, 353)
250 Gordon C. F. Bearn

In addition to the themes I have already entered, Cavell here shows that
there is a sense in which we bring chagrin, this opening emptiness, upon
ourselves by trying to automate our speech, fruitlessly trying to secure it
against that very emptiness which our failed efforts and automation deliver
us to. Othello’s “I’ll have some proof” (Cavell 1979, 484). Cavell’s re-
sponse to this silence is what he calls philosophizing, “a convening of my
culture’s criteria” (125). But when we are reminded of the rich grammati-
cal genealogy of each word we speak, we are delivered over again to si-
lence. “The silence with which philosophy ends is the acceptance of the
human life of words,” and Cavell tells us what this comes to in a series of
five clauses which I have separated with dashes

— that I am revealed and concealed in every word I utter,

— that when I have found the world I had lost, that is, displaced from
myself, it is up to me to acknowledge my reorientation (Wittgenstein
describes the work of philosophy as having to turn our search around,
as if reality is behind us),
— that I have said what there is for me to say,
— that this ground gained from discontent is all the ground I have,
— that I am exposed in my finitude without justification.
(2001, 353)

Cavell remarks that what is hardest in the news that the end of philosophy
is silence, a peace without proof or system, is that “being at the end of my
words strikes me as being at the end of my life, exposed to death” (353).
As surprising as this may be it is not too far from what it quite literally
means to accept our human life with words. More surprising perhaps is
that what Cavell calls philosophizing, punctuated by these two silences,
can be construed in Socratic terms as learning how to die, and thus “in
ordinary language philosophy the ordinary is the scene of the recognition
of one’s own death” (353).
Usages that have become dead to us are to be revived in such a way that
our chagrin and our anxiety about what we say are, by grammatical inves-
tigations, silenced. It is a long way from Nietzsche’s life affirming turn
from decadence. Nietzsche would overcome chagrin not by learning to die
but by intensifying life, not by remembering, reorienting backwards, but
by forgetting, by beginning anew:

Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play, a self-

propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes-saying.
(TSZ, 24)
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 251

6 
My main text for this interpretation of forgetting as another way of over-
coming chagrin will be Twilight of the Idols, from 1888, but I want to seed
my reading with a few words from an earlier and possibly even more fa-
mous little essay characterizing a nonmoral sense of truth and lying, from
1873.
The nonmoral sense of lying comes from Nietzsche’s interpretation of
words and concepts. He suggests that every word begins by being a re-
minder of an utterly singular thing, although Nietzsche speaks not of
things but of a “unique and entirely original experience” (TL 1979, 83).
Nietzsche introduces this idea with a well-known Leibnizian example of
singularity: the unique shape of each leaf, even from the same tree. Each
word reminds us of just such a unique singularity. A word becomes a con-
cept when it is enlisted to remind us of multiple different leaves, ignoring
their differences. The mismatch between the general use of the word and
all the different singular leaves can incite the invention of the meaning of
the word “leaf” which putatively governs the use of that word to apply to
all the different singular leaves. But, according to Nietzsche, as also to the
author of the Investigations, there need be no meaning of the word “leaf”
which regulates its usage according to a rule (see PI §82).19 And therewith
comes the nonmoral sense of lying: every concept ignores the differences
between leaves and so fibs them into a single kind. Here is Nietzsche sum-
ming this up:

We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is indi-

vidual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no
concepts, and likewise no species, but only with an X which remains
inaccessible and undefinable for us.
(TL, 83)

There are two aspects of this early account that become clearer in Twilight.
The first is the disappearance of that inaccessible and undefinable X. What
use could there be for this inaccessible X, “let us do away with it” (TI
2021, 63). The second is that overlooking the differences between singular
things might have a pragmatic purpose, the nonmoral sense of lying might
be used to accomplish some desired situation. Nietzsche: “We have long
ago gone beyond what we have words for. In all speech there is a grain of
contempt. It seems that language was only invented for the average, the
middling, the communicative. With speech the speaker has already vulgar-
ized himself” (103). But now, a quick glance at Twilight.
252 Gordon C. F. Bearn

However motivated by mockery, Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols was

nevertheless titled as if the ancient idols of the philosophical tradition were
not going to be preserved. In complete contrast to Nietzsche’s shaking off
traditional idols, Cavell would preserve them by returning to their genea-
logical origins. Nietzsche’s book was to be a “war” against all those an-
cient idols which Nietzsche’s delicate little hammer sounded out, only to
discover “that famous hollow tone that speaks of bloated guts” (TI, 43).
That hollow tone also speaks of what incites our chagrin at continuing to
use words for those idols formulaically. For Cavell, a grammatical investi-
gations of those idols, a convening our culture’s criteria, would be able si-
lence that chagrin. Grammar, the literal, would be our way to overcome
chagrin. But Nietzsche is afraid “we shall not get rid of God because we
still have faith in grammar…” (TI, 60). From Nietzsche’s point of view, if
thinking is impossible except in the atmosphere of grammar, then we will
never be rid of God. But Nietzsche’s was a war against those ancient idols
which were already in their twilight.
All the ancient idols are hollow because they are only grammatical
forms, the very features of concepts which made them lies in a nonmoral
sense. In Twilight, this criticism appears under the dismissive heading
“metaphysics of language”, and this hollow metaphysics is a result of
grammar being what Nietzsche calls a science of forms: “like logic and that
applied logic, mathematics. In these reality does not exist, not even as a
problem” (60, 58).20 Cause, Being, Will, Truth: these are just words (60).
But they are words which Nietzsche thinks are the “most believed in” (44).
The firmness of that belief, the bullying laughter which still greats their
criticism today, is a measure of the power of the ways we speak, even the
ways we yearn to live. The virtue in most request? Conformity.
In a section concerning what the German’s lack in the way of education,
and by way of preserving his Yes-saying, Nietzsche defines three tasks for
educators which are, in effect, three aspects of a spiritual practice breaking
the very alignment Cavell seeks to recover by means of grammatical inves-
tigations. These three aspects of Nietzsche’s own educational practice are
learning to see, learning to think, and learning to speak and write (85).
To learn to see, we need “not to react at once to a stimulus” (86). Our
immediate, routine responses blinker our vision in just the way that words
in use conceal the unique, sensual singularity of each thing. But learning
“to delay making judgement… to examine and grasp the individual case
from all sides,” this takes strength (86). Paradoxically, the quick strong
reaction comes from weakness; it takes strength to “be able to defer a deci-
sion” (86). Looking at things from all sides will reveal smells, sounds,
beautiful sensual irregularities in the most common things. Each purport-
edly identifiable stick can reveal inordinate colors and textures and sounds
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 253

and tastes, becoming so much more than what it was identified as: A Twig.
This indeed is a way for the ordinary to become extraordinarily alive.
To learn to think also requires learning to resist the old steps, the old
plodding logical steps, breaking the familiar customary implications, re-
moving our heavy boots, becoming lighter: thinking “as a form of danc-
ing” (86). Learning to think is learning to think otherwise, initiating
thinking as dancing, with the bright flashes of sensual singularity we may
have found the strength to see, to enjoy. To learn to write is also to learn
to dance, this time with ink and paper. “This mosaic of words where every
word pours out its force as sound, as place, as concept, right and left and
all around, this minimum in range and number of signs, this maximum of
energy in the signs thereby received” (125–126). These practices sever the
alignment of words and things, releasing dancing singular things and
words from their learned alignment with each other. Chagrin in this way is
overcome by forgetting, by forgetting grammar, forgetting the idols, com-
ing at last to enjoying: dancing the “innocence of becoming” (76). Dancing
right over chagrin.

7 
Emerson’s mentioning chagrin illuminated the ways in which even prop-
erly used words, used by others or by ourselves, can mortify us. But it is
not just words. Properly resolving into the tonic in the cadence of clarinet
sonata, or properly using the word “outrage”, or recognizably sketching a
cat or John Lennon, each of these properly performed procedures can sour.
They can come to seem thin, hollow, formulaic. And this feeling has its
own expansive power so that we can sometimes feel that every word they
say chagrins us.
Cavell overcomes chagrin by recalling more and more of the grammar of
resolving into the tonic, or the grammar of the word “outrage”, or the vi-
sual grammar of portraiture. Such grammatical investigations, the conven-
ing of my culture’s criteria, reaching back to the whole linguistic or musical
or pictorial history of those practices, can bring us to a place where we find
that our chagrin rather evaporates. I do not deny that this can happen, al-
though it is never more than momentary. It happened to Cavell in his early
grammatical investigations of pain and pleasure (1979, 78–79). Wittgen-
stein himself counts on, or hopes it happens to his readers when they ap-
proach the same philosophical landmark from many, and many more,
directions, with luck, achieving peace, for a spell. It happens to many of us
when, while reading Austin, we can then seem to feel for a moment that
our concerns about knowing it was a goldfinch, have dissipated into si-
lence. The deadening of merely correct usages dissipates as we recover the
254 Gordon C. F. Bearn

rich historical grammar of every word, this brings us quiet and silence,
recognition of our own death, our finitude (Cavell 2001, 354).
Cavell’s overcoming of chagrin, taking our words, our tones, our lines,
seriously, is however not the only way chagrin can be overcome. Nietzsche
danced his overcoming.
The way to dancing is to realize that while grammatical forms are gen-
eral, they are instanced in singularities. Every properly resolved cadence is
more than a properly resolved cadence. Every word properly used and
properly pronounced is more than properly pronounced and properly
used. Every line indicating John Lennon’s little round glasses does more
than represent those little round glasses. This is the side of the problem of
participation that unleashes dancing. Becoming-lithe.
Every F#, from the same octave, is the same F#, whatever instrument it
is played on. But there is a difference between that F# on a cello or on a
clarinet or an oboe. And there are differences in sound even between clari-
nets, differences we attend to when we are deciding which clarinet to pur-
chase or to perform with tonight. And even on the very same clarinet each
production of that F# sounds differently. For grammatical or harmonic
purposes we won’t mostly care, but the differences remain and they reach
out to us differently. In order to feel them, it helps to break the grammar,
to write agrammatically, or as with Cage, to prepare the piano.21
We can dance our way right over chagrin by approaching the linguistic
and other aspects of our lives agrammatically. If we would but attend af-
fectionately to the irregularities of every singular thing, we could enjoy the
boundless novelty in every utterance, every sound, every line. If we do, we
may find that every little pine needle expands and swells with sympathy.
What bloom and magic they have acquired.

Notes
1 “Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading
for? These are totally useless questions” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 25).
2 Emerson 2014, 71
3 Thoreau 2012, 305.
4 Cavell 2003, Zavatta 2019.
5 Cavell 1990a, 36, 46; Foucault 1985, 9.
6 Emerson 2014, 155.
7 Emerson 2014, 155.
8 Emerson 2014, 153.
9 Emerson 2014, 155.
10 Emerson 2014, 153.
11 Emerson 2014, 155.
12 Ibid.
13 Benedetti 2004, 103.
14 Stanislavski 2017, 93.
 Overcoming Chagrin in Cavell and Nietzsche 255

15 Stanislavski 2017, 95.

16 Stanislavski 2017, 96; see PI §66.
17 My focus here on alignment was provoked by the use of that notion by my col-
league Filippo Casati in his studies of Cavell and logic.
18 Woolf 1942, 203. Here at a similar place is Ezra Pound:

And the good writer chooses his words for their ‘meaning’, but that mean-
ing is not a set, cut-off thing like the move of a knight or a pawn on a chess-
board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the
word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or
memorably.
(Pound 1960, 36)

19 The Investigations opens with a description of a linguistically mediated shop-

ping trip which can be understood without raising any question about the
meanings of the words involved (PI §1). Soon enough we are told that the
“general concept of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language
with a haze which makes clear vision impossible” (PI §5). The very notion of
the rule by which we proceed loses its strength when (i) we don’t look up the
rule in order to proceed and (ii) don’t give the rule when asked to supply one,
and (iii) where it is a mathematical triviality that for any way of proceeding,
there are countless rules that would descriptively model that way of proceeding
(PI §82).
20 Conversation with my colleague Barry Hulsizer drew my attention to this di-
mension of Twilight.
21 In his 2018, Venturinha provides a provocative reading of Wittgenstein, him-
self, as drawn to agrammatical writing and so rather dissatisfied with his own
philosophical prose (167).

Works Cited
Benedetti, J. (2004). Stanislavski: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Cavell, S. (1979). The Claim of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.
———. (1981). Senses of Walden, an expanded edition. San Francisco: North
Point Press.
———. (1989). This New Yet Unapproachable America. Albuquerque, NM: Liv-
ing Batch Press.
———. (1990a). Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
———. (1990b). Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown
Woman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. (1994). A Pitch of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. (2001). “Silences Noises Voices,” in Floyd, J. & Shieh, S. (eds.) Future
Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy. New York: Ox-
ford University Press.
———. (2002). Must We Mean What We Say? (first published: 1969). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
———. (2003). Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, ed. by David Justin Hodge.
Stanford: Stanford University Press
256 Gordon C. F. Bearn

———. (2004). Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral

Life. Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———. (2010). Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
———. (2012). “Philosophy as the Education of Grownups,” in Saito & Standish
2012, 19–32.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Emerson, R.W. (2014). The Portable Emerson, ed. by J.S. Cramer. New York: Pen-
guin Books.
Foucault, M. (1985).The Use of Pleasures. New York: Pantheon Books.
Pound, E. (1960). A B C of Reading. New York: New Directions Paperback.
Saito, N. & Standish, P. (eds.) (2012). Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grown-
ups. New York: Fordham University Press.
Stanislavski, C. (2017). An Actor’s Work. New York: Routledge.
Venturinha, N. (2018). “Agrammaticality”, in New Essays on Frege, ed. by G.
Bengtsson, A. Pichler, S. Säätelä, Cham: Springer, 159–175.
Woolf, V. (1942). “Craftsmanship,” in The Death of the Moth. New York: Har-
court Brace.
Zavatta, B. (2019). Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson. New
York: Oxford University Press.
11 A Remark on “the Particular
Peace” in Philosophy in
Wittgenstein and Nietzsche
Peter K. Westergaard

Don’t stop thinking!

Let me begin by admitting a certain personal disquiet in relation to the
discussion that follows. In Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, the
cluster of remarks about philosophy concludes with the well-known re-
mark that “[t]he real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stop-
ping doing philosophy when I want to”. He adds that what he hopes to
achieve through his remarks on philosophy is a linguistic grammatical
clarification “that gives philosophy peace” (PI §133). Which, he says,
“simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disap-
pear” (PI §133). Judging from these remarks, it would seem that what
Wittgenstein wants is an end to philosophising. “Thoughts that are at
peace. That’s what someone who philosophizes yearns for” (CV 1980, 43).
His philosophical enquiries are “conceptual investigations” (Z §458) that
carry an impetus towards their own dissolution. Not only do the descrip-
tions of philosophy and the work of clarifying our forms of representation
solve the problems of philosophy; they also abrogate the need for philo-
sophical practice: thinking. It has been claimed, for example, that these
remarks confront us with “the striking fact that the principal philosopher
[Wittgenstein] of the twentieth century was intent upon the dissolution of
philosophy and the destruction of its central problems”.1 And yet not so!
For we also have Maurice O’C. Drury’s account of his final meeting with
Wittgenstein and their parting in April 1951. A friend and student of Witt-
genstein, Drury tells us that Wittgenstein accompanied him to the station
in Cambridge, where, “before the train pulled out he said to me, ‘Drury,
whatever becomes of you, don’t stop thinking.’”2
At first glance, Wittgenstein’s statements that the objective of philosophy
should be its own cessation seem incompatible with his injunction to Drury
not to stop thinking. But on closer consideration, this is not the case. For
Wittgenstein, thinking can still continue after philosophy has performed its
conceptual clean-up work. If paradoxes are what one wants, then

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219071-14
258 Peter K. Westergaard

Wittgenstein’s cessation of thinking, the fact that thinking is brought to

rest, is in fact the beginning of thinking. And it is in seeking to clarify this
aspect of Wittgenstein’s thought that Nietzsche can be of help. Let me be-
gin at the beginning.
A number of affinities between Wittgenstein and Nietzsche are fairly
obvious. But so too are the differences between the two. Both the affinities
and the differences have been established in many contexts. In the follow-
ing, I will focus on a train of thought in the late Nietzsche that exhibits
certain similarities with several of Wittgenstein’s remarks on philosophy as
such and the nature of its objectives. In drawing these parallels, I wish to
emphasise, and perhaps even overemphasise, some of Nietzsche’s late re-
marks on the same subject. I shall also read several of Wittgenstein’s re-
marks in the light of those of Nietzsche in order to clarify Wittgenstein’s
account of the objectives of philosophy and his words to Drury: Don’t stop
thinking! Thus, I invite the reader to see Wittgenstein’s philosophy from a
Nietzschean perspective. And I do so in the conviction that this approach
will throw light on certain aspects of Wittgenstein’s late remarks on the
“particular peace of mind [die besondere Beruhigung]” (BT, 416/307e) for
which philosophy strives. In more general terms, in the following I present
a Nietzschean reading of certain features of and ideas in Wittgenstein’s
remarks on philosophy. At the same time, this undertaking encompasses a
particular reading of the prefaces Nietzsche wrote for the new editions of
The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human I and II, Daybreak, and
The Gay Science that were published in 1886–87. These prefaces are my
primary point of reference in Nietzsche.
One essential underlying assumption in the following is that Nietzsche
and Wittgenstein share a desire to guide the reader back to himself and his
world. Both wish to lead the individual “back” to a situation from which
he has become remote, namely himself and his surroundings. Both assume
that the route home can be found through the practice of philosophy and
that this practice will point the individual back to “the rough ground” (PI
§107) where he belongs. Both advocate the motto: “Peace all around me
and goodwill to all things closest to me” (WS §350). It is a motto and an
attitude that points the individual back to a more nuanced and deeper view
of himself and his landscapes. The point I wish to establish with the fol-
lowing Nietzschean clarification of the grammar of “the peace of philoso-
phy”, is that one aspect of the “particular peace of mind” that philosophy
aims for is a renewed ability “to go down deep” into our “most immediate
and familiar surroundings” (MS 131, 182), and that “to go down deep”
does not imply a cessation of thinking, but rather the injunction not to stop
thinking. In short, my aim in the following is to pursue the trajectory of
Nietzsche’s reflections on his own development and philosophical practice
in the aforementioned prefaces in order to tease out certain meanings of
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 259

Wittgenstein’s remarks on the “particular peace” of philosophy. In this

context, “peace” is to be understood as a particular attitude of being at
ease or familiar with oneself and one’s world, which includes a determina-
tion to continue thinking, and which I call Wille zur Durchsichtigkeit –
will to transparency. To this end, I shall also explore Wittgenstein’s
extensive ruminations on philosophy in his Pre-War Investigations (TS
220, 66–93), and the well-known cluster of remarks on the same in Philo-
sophical Investigations.3 And in addition to Nietzsche’s late prefaces, I
shall also briefly consider his remarks on “active forgetting” and a “second
innocence” in On the Genealogy of Morals with reference to the “three
metamorphoses” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
From a slightly different angle, in Nietzsche’s account of his own philo-
sophical practice, he occasionally returns to a description of the particular
state that ensues as a result of critical philosophical thinking. It is a state
characterised by a certain duality, viz., in part a calmness and willingness
to act, in part a sober-minded openness to complexity and becoming. Here,
peace is not a form of passive stagnation, but rather an attitude towards
everyday life that encompasses an “everyday thinking”, an attitude that
acknowledges and is attentive to the in-depth grammar of everyday life. In
the following, I shall place the account of this state in dialogue with Witt-
genstein’s remarks on the work and effects of philosophy, as exemplified
by those that concern “clearing up the ground of language” (PI §118) and
“peace” (PI §133). Thus, I begin by taking a closer look at Nietzsche and
his account of the philosopher’s path to conceptual clarity, which gives the
philosopher peace. Subsequently, I take a closer look at the content and
features of this mode – “second innocence” and “forgetfulness” – before
moving on to an examination of Wittgenstein’s remarks on the same sub-
ject in the light of Nietzsche’s discussions.
Perhaps some will already be a little sceptical about my declared inten-
tion to explore Nietzsche’s use of a benign concept of “peace”. For it is
well known that Nietzsche typically associates those who “seek quiet, still-
ness, calm sea, redemption from themselves through art and insight”, with
the type of people “who suffer from an impoverishment of life” and who
seek to distance themselves from the vicissitudes and turbulence of life – in
contrast to “those who suffer from a superabundance of life” and are “ca-
pable of turning any desert into bountiful farmland” (GS 2001, §370). As
we know, Nietzsche had reservations about the former. But at the same
time, he remains aware that the desire for quietness – like the desire for
destruction and the will to immortalise – “prove ambiguous upon closer
examination”. For while an inner calm can be a state that releases and
isolates the individual from his environment, as it does when it equates
with evasion and personal insecurity, on the other hand it can also “be the
expression of an overflowing energy pregnant with the future”, a state that
260 Peter K. Westergaard

allows the individual to experience “the present” and to flourish (GS

§370). A state in which “peace” amounts to a desire for “becoming
[Werden]”, a desire for all that is in motion, emerging and changing, and
hence the opposite of “a desire for fixing, for immortalising, for being
[Sein]” (GS §370). Wittgenstein and Nietzsche both talk in their respective
ways about “peace” as becoming. And perhaps some will accuse me of
ignoring some of Wittgenstein’s central ideas and of presenting “the ordi-
nary thing – with the wrong gesture” (Z §451). Which may well be the
case! But what interests me here or what I wish is to read Wittgenstein in
the light of Nietzsche in order to uncover a little of what Wittgenstein
might have had in mind when he uttered his parting injunction to Drury.
Let me come to the point.

The great liberation

In recent decades, Nietzsche’s prefaces to the second editions of The Birth
of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human I and II, Daybreak and The Gay Sci-
ence in 1886–87 have attracted renewed interest. As has frequently been
pointed out, collectively they form a kind of autobiographical account of
“how each book took its place in the arc of his becoming a philosopher”.4
The prefaces constitute an autobiographical story of personal developmen-
tal, in which Nietzsche describes the circumstances and questions from
which his thinking grew, the course and content of his authorship. ­Nietzsche
himself proposed this interpretation in his letters. His prefaces describe
“a kind of ‘developmental story’” (KSB 8, 908). In the following I will
sketch a train of thought contained in the prefaces that strikes a t­ ypological
note, an approach that presupposes a view of the prefaces as an
­autobiographically framed narrative exemplifying the philosopher’s path
to conceptual clarity, that which gives the philosopher peace. Nietzsche
himself alludes to this typological approach. Nietzsche ends the preface to
Human, All Too Human II by asking: “Shall my experience – the history
of an illness and recovery, for a recovery was what eventuated – have been
my personal experience alone? And only my ‘human, all-too-human’?
­Today I would like to believe the reverse; again and again I feel sure that
my travel books were not written solely for myself, as sometimes seems to
be the case” (HH 1987 II, Preface 6).
In making this point, I wish simultaneously to suggest an affinity be-
tween the descriptive genre of Nietzsche’s prefaces and especially Wittgen-
stein’s expansive discussion of philosophy in the Pre-War Investigations,
an enquiry that also constitutes an autobiographically framed narrative in
which Wittgenstein describes the circumstances and questions from which
his respective thinking grew, and the course and content of his own author-
ship. It too is an account with typological characteristics. A central and
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 261

recurring metaphor in both Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s accounts is

“sickness – health” / “sickness – recovery”. And in his prefaces, Nietzsche
even attributes his personal liberation, or that of philosophy, and the dis-
covery of the path to himself and his authentic thought to the fact that he
“turned” his “perspective around” (HH II, Preface 5). This foreshadows
Wittgenstein’s words that “the axis of reference of our examination must
be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need” (PI §108). It is this
turning around that duly results in “the great health” (GS §382), which for
its own part is characterised as the healthy, liberating relationship to life
that allows one to “‘become a man’ again” (D, Preface 1). This turning
around, Nietzsche claims, is the root of “what is most important”. Ulti-
mately, “from such abysses, from such severe illness, also from the illness
of severe suspicion, one returns newborn, having shed one’s skin, more
ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a more ten-
der tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, joyful with a more
dangerous second innocence, more childlike, and at the same time a hun-
dred times subtler than one had been before” (GS, Preface 4).
What I want to focus on in the following is the relationship between, on
the one hand, this condition of “return[ing] newborn”, an outcome for
Nietzsche of his philosophical work, and on the other Wittgenstein’s allu-
sion to the “particular peace of mind” that philosophy seeks and achieves.
Let us now take a closer look at Nietzsche’s typological account in the
prefaces, concerning the path to the state that allows one to “‘become a
man’ again”.
Viewed as a single narrative, the account Nietzsche gives in his new pref-
aces of his authorship and thinking, with the accompanying elements of
sickness, recovery, relapse, convalescence, and health, is laid out as an Ent-
wicklungsgeschichte. It describes a development or trajectory towards
ever-greater clarity. The narrative describes a formative journey, in the
course of which a fettered spirit undergoes a metamorphosis to a free spirit.
Nietzsche recounts how he found “the way to ‘myself’, to my task” (HH
II, Preface 4) and points out the conditions under which the individual can
become a free spirit, with a “more dangerous innocence, more childlike”.
The prefaces emphasise that the author has a “peculiar scruple” which
is, in effect, morality, a scruple that challenges us to regard morality as a
human, all-too-human concern that has no anchorage in absolute, tran-
scendent, and divine values. “My writings have been called a schooling in
suspicion” (HH I, Preface 1). Nietzsche describes how the exercise of sus-
picion compels the one who entertains it to pause once in a while, and that
this relaxation from suspicion opens the mind for new and essential in-
sights that may further clarify thought: “[i]t is only now, at the midday of
our life, that we understand what preparations, bypaths, experiments,
temptations, disguises the problem had need of before it was allowed to
262 Peter K. Westergaard

rise up before us, and how we first had to experience the most manifold
and contradictory states of joy and distress in soul and body, as adventur-
ers and circumnavigators of that inner world called ‘man’” (HH I, Preface
7). His account also takes the form of a story that describes how an indi-
vidual achieves selfhood by first seeking distance from the self. In describ-
ing the conditions under which “one becomes what one is”, Nietzsche
distinguishes between the steps that lead to the “mature freedom of spirit”,
which is also “the sign of great health” (HH I, Preface 4). The route to
great health goes via “a great liberation” (HH I, Preface 3) and a number
of “midway conditions” (HH I, Preface 4).
The first decisive condition for the formation of a free spirit is Loslösung
from the state of being a fettered spirit (HH I, Preface 3). The fettered spirit
is one that does not act freely, because it sees itself confined and chained
“to its pillar and corner”; the various philosophical, moral and religious
ideals that are handed down to us, in other words, the inherited ideals that
we assume to be the highest values and truths, whereas they are in fact
pure constructs that fail to represent the inherent value of life and the
world. Here Nietzsche is thinking of Platonism, Christianity, and dogmatic
philosophy with its “poor superstition” of conflicting values. Such systems
of thought claim the existence of a different, more exalted world than the
real one. Platonism, Christianity, and dogmatic philosophy all propose al-
ternative, postulated, imaginary worlds that form the measure of every
value that is considered desirable and worth striving for: Plato’s world of
ideas, Christianity’s realm of the divine beyond, and the various rational
and logic-bound systems of philosophy. All of these deny the real world
and render its associated values nihil, null and void, relative to the con-
structed counter-world and its imaginary counter-values. As a consequence
of the bonds that bind the fettered spirit to this counter-world and its coun-
ter-values, all assessments of the good, the true, and the beautiful are
rooted not in the abundance, variability, and becoming of the real world,
but in the supposedly exalted and eternal nature of the other imaginary
world. The fettered spirit is the nihilist. The fettered spirit is spellbound by,
feels at home in, and is committed to the mindset and values of the meta-
physics inherited by tradition. The attitudes, longings, and ultimate goals
of the fettered spirit are determined by ideals beyond “the rough ground”.
Here Nietzsche also has in mind the “crude errors and over-estimations”
of his own thinking, the fetters that bound him to the “romantic pessi-
mism” of Schopenhauer and Wagner (GS §370).
Nietzsche points out that the consequences of the “great liberation” and
its impact on the fettered spirit are ambiguous. Certainly, when it comes,
the emancipation is sudden, like “the shock of an earthquake”, “the youth-
ful soul is all at once convulsed, torn loose, torn away – it itself does not
know what is happening” (HH I, Preface 3). And in being torn free from
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 263

its accustomed shackles, the fettered spirit is placed at a distance from it-
self. Written in 1876, the fourth of Nietzsche’s early Untimely Meditations,
entitled Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, amounted to his own “liberation, a
farewell” (HH II, Preface 1). It was his “first victory”, the first hesitant step
towards selfhood as a free spirit, a victory that is at the same time “a sick-
ness that can destroy the man” who has it (HH I, Preface 3). Hence the
ambiguity: liberation is dangerous.
The first manifestation of strength and will to achieve autonomy, to de-
termine values for oneself, is ambivalent. The emancipation awakens curi-
osity and a will to conquer. “Better to die than to go on living here.” But
emancipation drives the fettered spirit away from the “home” to which he
was bound. The spirit is moved by a restlessness and curiosity, which en-
compasses a “sudden terror and suspicion of what it loved”, a scepticism
towards what was hitherto taken for granted (HH I, Preface 3). Emancipa-
tion leaves one free to encounter life, phenomena, and the world on one’s
own terms, to examine and sample things that have hitherto had a bad
reputation, things that were previously condemned. But at the same time,
it is a sickness, insofar as the restlessness, curiosity and yearning it brings
with it manifest themselves without any plan or objective. Henceforth one
lacks both fetters and coordinates. In short: “I don’t know my way about”
(PI §123). Recall the madman’s description of man’s “continuously falling
away” from all suns into a colder, darker empty space (GS §125). Accord-
ing to Nietzsche, this aimlessness and scepticism culminates in a new form
of nihilism, one of a different kind from the nihilism of the fettered spirit.
This restless, aimless curiosity concludes that meaning as such no longer
exists: “Presupposition of this hypothesis. That there is no truth; that there
is no absolute nature of things, no ‘thing-in-itself’. – This is itself a nihil-
ism, and indeed the most extreme one” (KSA 12, 9 [35], 351). Nihilism is
now also a consequence of the “history of the great emancipation”, of the
liberation from the condition of being fettered, rather than of the bonds
that bind one to an imaginary counter-world. It is a nihilism that encom-
passes a sickness, a “morbid isolation” from the world. The individual is
cast out and alone. But at the same time this sickness is a means for the
individual to transcend nihilism. Thus nihilism contains a “fish-hook of
knowledge” that can lead “to that mature freedom of spirit”. A freedom
that stems from a “self-mastery and discipline of the heart”, and which
“permits access to many and contradictory modes of thought” (HH I, P 4).
Eventually one makes a personal, well-thought-out effort to explore every-
thing: to undertake a critical, self-controlled investigation. Accordingly,
the emancipated person turns his gaze towards himself and examines the
premises and motives behind his own attitudes. And in doing so he returns
to the place, the surroundings, the world he left behind. But by this point
he is free of his former bonds to the ideals; he has recovered from the
264 Peter K. Westergaard

“fever” of the sickness, and is no longer in thrall to the values of the fet-
tered spirit and categorical “Yes and no!” For now he has moved beyond
the moral, religious, and dogmatic philosophical judgments that previ-
ously blocked his view of what was closest to him. Previously, he saw the
world in the light of imagined and constructed ideals. Now he sees it in all
its abundance, richness of nuance, and Farbenpracht [splendour of colour]
(GS §152). Here he has achieved mature intellectual freedom, the condi-
tion also characterised as “the great health”. A health that encompasses a
“superfluity of formative, curative, moulding and restorative forces” (HH
I, Preface 4).

All things closest to me

Having achieved this metamorphosis, the philosopher leaves his moral,
religious and dogmatic philosophical prejudices behind him. He is free
from the “pillar and corner” to which he was previously chained, from
where he was unable to see what was closest to him. Previously, he saw
himself and his surroundings in the light of imagined and constructed ide-
als. Now he sees the full abundance, variety and Farbenpracht of both
himself and his surroundings. By means of this transformation, Nietzsche
concludes, the free spirit finds its way closer to life – albeit by gradual
steps. As he puts it:

It again grows warmer around him, yellower, as it were; feeling and feel-
ing for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kind blow across him.
It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand.
He is astonished and sits silent: where had he been? These close and
closest things: how changed they seem! what bloom and magic they
have acquired!
(HH I, Preface 5)

Freed from his bonds and ideals and healed from his sickness, he is sur-
prised by a new happiness and love for all that is close. He recognises the
“depth” of his surroundings, and having sloughed off his “hardness and
self-alienation”, he adopts a new attitude. His journey has brought him to
a new perspective that includes a new openness towards himself, his sur-
roundings, and the world. This is how Nietzsche describes the new quali-
ties, gaze and state of calm of the homecomer:

What a good thing he had not always stayed ‘at home’, stayed ‘under
his own roof’ like a delicate apathetic loafer! He had been beside him-
self: no doubt of that. Only now does he see himself – and what sur-
prises he experiences as he does so! What unprecedented shudders! […]
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 265

How he loves to sit sadly still, to spin out patience, to lie in the sun!
Who understands as he does the happiness that comes in winter, the
spots of sunlight on the wall! They are the most grateful animals in the
world, also the most modest, these convalescents and lizards.
(HH I, Preface 5)

The return to oneself and one’s environment after shaking off the shackles
of the fettered spirit constitutes the attainment of great health. It is the
calm intoxication of convalescence, “an amusement after long privation
and powerlessness, the jubilation of returning strength” – “the gratitude of
a convalescent” (GS, Preface 1).

Finally, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses,
from such severe illness, also from the illness of severe suspicion, one
returns newborn, having shed one’s skin, more ticklish and malicious,
with a more delicate taste for joy, with a more tender tongue for all
good things, with merrier senses, joyful with a more dangerous second
innocence, more childlike, and at the same time a hundred times subtler
than one had been before.
(GS, Preface 4)

The “golden watchword” of the homecomer is: “Peace all around me and
goodwill to all things closest to me” (WS §350). But what does it mean in
more precise terms for the homecomer to be surrounded by peace and
quiet and the good neighbour of everything close? My suggestion is that
one’s physical surroundings assume greater depth, an unimpeded transpar-
ency and immediacy – that the human attitude is, as Nietzsche puts it,
“more childlike”, “innocent”, and marked by “forgetfulness”. Let me
elaborate on these three qualities.
The consequences of the great liberation are one of the themes in
Zarathustra’s first speech “On the Three Metamorphoses” in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. Here the attitude of the homecomer is described as
possessing the immediacy of the child’s relationship to life. The trans-
formation from submissive, tradition-laden camel to the lion who fights
for freedom by challenging every “Thou shalt” returns the individual to
a condition comparable to the uninhibited spirit of the child. Nietzsche
asks: “Why must the preying lion still become a child?” His answer:
“The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-
propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes’.” And concerning the
active moment that this attitude entails, he adds: “For the game of cre-
ation, my brothers, a sacred ‘Yes’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own
will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own”
(TSZ, I, On the Three Metamorphoses).
266 Peter K. Westergaard

This familiar and paradigmatic account of the emancipated homecomer

has a number of characteristics. At this point, I shall merely draw attention
to that of the active aspect (“a new beginning”), and that the individual
who is lost to the world has gained an attitude marked by “innocence and
forgetting”. These qualities are consequences of the recognisant gaze
turned on the world and the close relationship to it – “a sacred ‘Yes’”. Both
figure in the preface’s description of the convalescent’s progress from sick-
ness to health. With his recovery, the individual acquires “a more danger-
ous second innocence”. He becomes “more childlike”, and, Nietzsche adds
in the preface to The Gay Science: “oh, how we learn now to forget well”
(GS, Preface 4).
“Innocence” and “forgetfulness” also play a part later on in On the
Genealogy of Morals, which speaks of the “kind of second innocence”
(GM 2006, II, §20) that manifests itself with the unmasking of “the con-
sciousness of guilt” (GM II, §19) and “the maximum feeling of guilt” (GM
II, 20), which the individual had imposed on himself with the acceptance
of the Christian (creditor) God. Here, the “second innocence” is used to
denote the new state that follows as a consequence of transcending and
thus emancipating oneself from previously self-imposed misunderstand-
ings. The “second innocence” is in one sense a return to an earlier state,
and yet not so in another, insofar as it presupposes a course of sickness.
The “second innocence” is a consequence of what has been overcome.
That which is overcome is absorbed or assimilated into the new innocence
and the new attitude of innocence. The first innocence was the state one
experienced prior to developing and adopting the sense of guilt, while the
second innocence occurs as a result of “the great suspicion” (GS, Preface
3) and the great liberation, which returns the individual to the world. The
latter is therefore a new and more refined form of innocence. In short, the
condition of “the child” or the homecomer is not that of a return to na-
ivety, but “a more dangerous second innocence”, given that “a reversion,
a return in any sense or degree is simply not possible” (TI 1982, Skirmishes
of an untimely man, 43).
At the same time, “forgetting” is characterised as a marker of the condi-
tion’s form of “spontaneity” or “immediacy” (GM II, 1). Nietzsche re-
gards “forgetting” as a positive force that provides scope for something
new and an open-minded view of the self and the surrounding world. The
“active forgetfulness” constitutes a farewell to everything that has accu-
mulated to become a burden on the philosopher’s “craft”. The childlike
state is characterised by a dynamic of remembering and forgetting, as we
find explained in the introduction to the second essay in On the Genealogy
of Morals. Here the question under consideration is that of the transforma-
tion of man from animal to a being capable of promising. Initially, the
human being was naturally inclined to forgetfulness, meaning that he had
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 267

to struggle to acquire the ability to remember. This latter ability is a pre-

condition for being able to formulate and keep a promise, and hence also
a precondition for becoming “calculable, regular, necessary” (GM II, 1).
As an ability, memory is therefore a kind of counterpart to natural forget-
fulness, and “forgetfulness” is seen as a natural-historical fact that is weak-
ened by memory, and which has to be recovered – or recalled! Nietzsche
situates “to make promises” alongside the opposing human force of “for-
getfulness”. He points out that “[f]orgetfulness is not just a vis inertia, as
superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, posi-
tive in the strongest sense of the word” and a precondition for “a form of
robust health” (GM II, 1). The reason for this is that an overactive memory
impels us to cling on to the past and its thought forms, which then prevent
us from being open to ourselves and the physical world – to rudimentary
experience. “Forgetfulness” sharpens, focuses, and concentrates attention
on “all things closest to me”. Nietzsche points out that active forgetfulness
makes room for “a little peace, a little tabula rasa of consciousness […] for
something new, above all for the nobler functions and functionaries”. Fur-
ther: “there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy,
without forgetfulness” (GM II, 1). Here “forgetfulness” should not be re-
garded as a straightforward loss of or erasure of memory, as in the case of
the man who drowns “im Meere der Vergessenheit” (KSA 8, 11 [18], 204).
Rather, active forgetfulness entails the ability to let the past lie, to set it
aside. “Forgetfulness” is not a form of aphasia, unconscious instinct, or
unreflective behaviour, but rather an active and in the strictest sense posi-
tive faculty of repression: the ability to ignore and not let oneself be deter-
mined by the mindset of the past.5 It implies not the forgetting of past
mistakes, but an active capacity to step beyond mistakes and their conse-
quences in order to maintain immediacy. It is a setting aside that neverthe-
less amounts to retention. A qualified looking away from. A kind of
forgetting at the discretion of memory. The antithesis of the actively for-
getful person is “a dyspeptic” who lacks the ability to renounce or finish
anything: “The fly that can’t get through the glass” (KSA 9, 6 [430], 308).
In summary, Nietzsche’s autobiographically framed and typological de-
scription of the task and objective of philosophy leads us to an account of
the desirable state of clarity and peace that replaces bewilderment and agi-
tation. He describes a metamorphosis from weakness and sickness to
strength and recovery, from the emancipation of the fettered spirit to “the
mature freedom of spirit”, “the sign of great health”. The golden watch-
word for the attitude and orientation to which philosophy leads is “peace
all around me and goodwill to all things closest to me”. It is an attitude
that is further characterised by peace, a second innocence, forgetfulness,
and immediacy. The “child” is “the good neighbour of all things closest”;
the surroundings that it encounters are transparent, plastic, in the process
268 Peter K. Westergaard

of becoming, and possess an “immediacy”, a richness of nuance, Farben-

pracht, and a “depth”, all of which encourage new action and thought (“a
new beginning”) and allow the child to set to work with the insouciance of
a fly (KSB 2, 569) that has just been guided out of the fly-bottle.

Back to the everyday use

With Nietzsche’s account of the newborn who returns to all things closest
in mind, it seems reasonable to make a comparison with Wittgenstein’s
description of the condition and attitude of the philosopher once a philo-
sophical problem has dissolved, “like a lump of sugar in water” (BT,
421/310e). Here, the state of mind is one that brings the philosopher to
“peace” (PI §133), to that “particular peace of mind” (BT, 416/307e)
that occurs, when the philosopher feels able to return to his practical
concerns, to a condition in which he is no longer bewildered and disori-
ented and “is no longer tormented by questions” (PI §133). Through the
practice of grammatical “suspicion”, philosophy is brought to “the sub-
jects of our every-day thinking” (PI §106). The resolution of philosophi-
cal problems does not imply the cessation of thinking. For in the state of
peace, one can think in a manner that is receptive to impressions of gram-
matical facts (BT, 422/311e). In short, a manner of thinking driven by a
Wille zur Durchsichtigkeit – a will to “transparency” (BT, 421/310e).
Back home in practical life after the dissolution of the “wild conjectures
and explanations” (Z §447), one finds an ability “to go down deep” in
our “most immediate and familiar surroundings” (MS 131, 182). The
thinking we undertake in a state of peace is in contact with the material
world; it is attentive to “all things closest” and seeks to uphold “what is
present before all new discoveries and inventions” (BT, 419/309e). As for
Nietzsche, the attitude and relationship to the world imply a state of be-
coming: “[I]n everyday life we never have the feeling that the phenome-
non eludes us” (BT, 428/314e); here a will to transparency asserts itself
in the form of a “quiet weighing of linguistic facts” (TS 220, 93). It is a
peace that leads us to think more deeply about practical life and all that
is close: “This peace is like refreshing sleep” (GT, 54). Wittgenstein does
not advocate a dissolution of philosophy.
Let me now expand on this by juxtaposing Nietzsche’s description of
“he [who] loves to sit sadly still” and “to spin out patience, to lie in the
sun” with Wittgenstein’s remark about the philosopher who no longer
“exaggerates, screams, as it were, in his helplessness” (BT, 421/309e).
Like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein applies an autobiographical perspective in
his presentation of philosophy and the way to bring it to rest. This ap-
proach is evident when we consider his extended discussion of philosophy
in the Pre-War Investigations (TS 220, 66–93). Here, Wittgenstein asks
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 269

what the subject, task, methods, and goals of philosophy are. He reflects
on the early mistakes and “wild conjectures” of his Tractatus Logico-Phil-
osophicus. He asserts that in his early philosophical work and his remarks
on language, he was seduced by the field of study as such and by his own
use of language. In the endeavour to understand the essence, function, and
structure of language, he was seduced in particular by the analogy between
“proposition” and “picture” (TLP 4.01). And this seduction was amplified
by his inclination to seek a “general form” (TLP 4.5). Wittgenstein uses the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an autobiographical illustration of the
wrong turnings that language can tempt us to take. In TS 220 he writes:
“‘Every proposition states: This is how things stand.’ [TLP 4.5]. Here we
have a form of the kind that can seduce us. (That seduced me.)” (TS 220,
87).
Wittgenstein explores this interpretation of philosophical problems, as
the upshot of our being seduced in our cognitive work by “the forms of our
language” (TS 220, 77), in the Pre-War Investigations. He elaborates by
saying that this seduction is a consequence in part of certain ways of asking
questions and orienting oneself within the philosophical tradition – con-
sider the quest for essence and the “preconceived idea of crystalline purity”
(TS 220, 76) – and in part of certain “natural” cognitive inclinations, such
as “the tendency to generalize” (Z §444), certain “deep disquietudes” (TS
220, 77), and “queer” impressions (TS 220, 69) that arise in conjunction
with certain uses of language, forms of speculation and perceptions of real-
ity. The forms of language lead us to confuse its forms of representation
with the actual inherent form of the thing represented. And these forms,
together with the confusion, generate new questions and speculations. As a
result, we lose sight of the form of the objects and focus our gaze and our
minds instead on the forms of the representation as such and the questions
and answers that ensue. Wittgenstein famously compares this way of rep-
resenting things to wearing “a pair of glasses on our nose through which
we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off” (TS 220,
73). The gaze and “wild conjectures” of the form of representation cause a
kind of blindness and prevent us from recognising the diversity of language
and hence of the world and its Farbenpracht. As he writes in The Big Type-
script: “Indeed, when we hand over the reins to language and not to life,
that’s when philosophical problems arise” (BT, 521/365e). But in overcom-
ing this seduction or enchantment by means of philosophical questions
about the adequacy of these forms of representation and whether or not
language really uses words in such and such a way, the individual and his
understanding are brought back to their “Heimat” (TS 220, 89). “What
we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday us-
age” (TS 220, 89). And the restoration of words in this way simultaneously
implies the restoration of the individual to the horizon of everyday life.
270 Peter K. Westergaard

In the Pre-War Investigations, Wittgenstein also lays out the fundamen-

tal method that philosophy ought to apply: “a perspicuous representation”
(TS 220, 80). Philosophy amounts to a description of the uses of language
in the form of a linguistic phenomenology (BT, 437/320e; 442/322e),
meaning a grammatical study of how we use language, the purpose of
which is in part to remind ourselves of the correct and diverse uses of lan-
guage and in part to create an overview of these uses. As words are re-
stored to their correct use, we become aware of how the forms of language
are seducing us and the seduction ceases. “The work of the philosopher
consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose” (TS 220, 82).
And once this “particular purpose” has been achieved, there is no further
justification for philosophical thought. Philosophy is then dissolved. Such
is the claim!
Wittgenstein’s account of the steps towards a cessation of seduction
and hence towards the dissolution of philosophical problems is de-
picted, as in Nietzsche, as a movement from agitation to peace, from
disorientation to clarity, from a fettered state to one of redemption and
emancipation. “The philosopher strives to find the word that delivers
us” (TS 220, 83). The familiar metaphor he uses repeatedly in this con-
text is that of “sickness – health” / “sickness – recovery”. The cessation
of seduction is a cure for “philosophical disease” (PI §593). “The phi-
losopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness” (PI
§255). And with Nietzsche’s prefaces in mind, it is tempting to argue
that Wittgenstein’s talk of exposing “the ground of language” (TS 220,
90) includes a return “to the rough ground!” (TS 220, 76), i.e. a return
to everyday language and its “everyday usage” (TS 220, 89) – which
amounts in turn to a return to the diversity, nuance and Farbenpracht
of practical everyday life.
The progress that Wittgenstein describes from Unruhe (disquiet) to
Ruhe (peace) is also apparent in the concluding remarks about philosophy
of the Pre-War Investigations. Here he writes:

The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing
philosophy when I want to. – The one that gives philosophy peace, so
that it is no longer tormented by questions which brings itself in ques-
tion. – Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples, and the
series of examples can be broken off. – – Problems are solved (difficul-
ties eliminated), not a single problem.
Disquiet in philosophy might be said to arise from looking at phi-
losophy wrongly, seeing it wrong […].
(We want to replace wild conjectures and explanations by quiet
weighing of linguistic facts.)
(TS 220, 93, cf. PI §133, Z §447)
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 271

Given the perspective laid out above, what interests me in these remarks
is not so much the suggestion that the disquiet of philosophy arises pri-
marily from a misunderstanding of “the true nature of the philosophical
enterprise”, in other words of its proper means and task, a misunder-
standing that effectively puts philosophy in conflict with itself, leaving it
“constantly torment[ing] itself by questioning its own legitimacy”.6 In-
stead, the aspect I wish to stress is that philosophy ceases and is brought
to peace when philosophical problems are “solved” by means of a per-
spicuous representation. In brief, our philosophical problems, our rest-
less and “wild conjectures and explanations” are resolved by means of
“linguistic phenomenology”, by grammatical analysis, by a “quiet weigh-
ing of linguistic facts”, aimed at the ways language is used within the
problems. And if we follow the train of thought that Nietzsche traces in
his prefaces, the consequence is a return, a coming back to the tranquility
of the home. What is thereby exposed is the home ground of language
and with it the horizon and complexity of everyday life emerges with
grammatical depth. But what this return and peace entails is not passivity
or inertia so much as an active attitude towards everyday life that in-
volves an “everyday thinking”, “a new beginning”, made possible by an
ability to perceive and recognise the deeper grammar of everyday life.
The “everyday thinking” that follows the resolution of philosophical
problems is a quietly continuing weighing of linguistic facts that is now
focused on the diverse language uses of everyday life, the practical hori-
zon of which it seeks to maintain and deepen. Here the will to transpar-
ency is directed not at the solution of philosophical problems, but rather
at domestic landscapes. With the resolution of philosophical problems,
thinking does not cease, but is put to work instead in the ongoing pursuit
of grammatical clarity within everyday life and the maintenance of its
horizon. Henceforth, thinking is directed not at philosophical problems,
but at the many aspects and forms of action of everyday life. What we
begin to discern is “a complicated network of similarities overlapping
and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities
of detail” (TS 220, 51). The purpose of calm grammatical reflection is
not some revisionistic aim but rather to grasp and maintain diversity, nu-
ance, and the Farbenpracht of everyday life; in other words, its “depth”.
Philosophy “leaves everything as it is” (TS 220, 81). As a Wille zur
Durchsichtigkeit, philosophy stands in the service of everyday life.

Out of the fly-bottle

Having recovered from the philosophical diseases and achieved the
peace and the “new beginning” of thinking that follows from the dis-
solution of philosophical thinking – “Philosophy is a tool which is
272 Peter K. Westergaard

useful only against philosophies and against the philosopher in us” (TS
219, 11) – we occupy ourselves instead with “the subjects of our every-
day thinking” (PI §106). After moving beyond the problems of philoso-
phy, thinking focuses now on anything that belongs “in practical life”
(BT, 427/314e). Henceforth, thinking is oriented towards things as
“spatial and temporal phenomen[a] of language” and thus not as “some
non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm” (PI §108), meaning things in the
diversity of their everyday usage. In other words, whereas thinking was
formerly preoccupied with “wild conjectures”, the philosopher’s new
watchword is: “Peace all around me and goodwill to all things closest
to me”. Or, to put it another way: “Philosophy simply puts everything
before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since every-
thing lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden,
for example, is of no interest to us.” And Wittgenstein adds: “One
might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new
discoveries and inventions” (PI §126). – Philosophy transformed into
“philosophy”, in other words, thinking in quotation marks, a “philoso-
phy” that embraces the tasks and concerns of everyday life. What Witt-
genstein envisages is not the cessation of thinking but rather a
“philosophy” – a will to transparency – beyond the resolution of philo-
sophical problems. A “philosophy” suitable for a returning prodigal
son, for him who comes back to the familiarity of the homely neigh-
bourhood, to himself from “remote regions” (CV 1998, 76) where he
was exposed to enchantment, disorientation and “explanations”.
Wittgenstein’s description of the state of mind and the attitude asso-
ciated with this “peace” – viz. it “grows warmer around him, yellower,
as it were; feeling and feeling for others acquire depth”, and it “seems
to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand. He is
astonished and sits silent” (HH, I, Preface 5) – revolves largely around
the qualities of “presence” or “immediacy”, as was also the case with
Nietzsche. Wittgenstein emphasises the aspects of the ordinary and the
mundane in a state that is open and attentive to diversity, nuance and
depth – to the rough ground. It is a state that allows us to see the as-
pects of things that are most important to us yet otherwise “hidden
because of their simplicity and familiarity”. That which is close and
which we usually fail to notice “because it is always before one’s eye”.
Now one glimpses the “most striking and most powerful”, which one
otherwise would not notice (PI §129). Things for which one now has
understanding. And to gain understanding for that which is close means
to gain insight into its depth. “The sentence, when I understand it, ac-
quires depth for me” (MS 114, 34v). To put it another way, and with
Nietzsche’s somewhat different but concise formulation “Peace all
around me and goodwill to all things closest to me” in mind:
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 273

To plumb the depths, you do not need to travel far; you can do it in your
own back garden. //; Indeed, [to do so] you don’t even need to leave
your immediate and familiar surroundings.
(MS 131, 182)

The physical world, die Welt, one’s surroundings are now anything but
“quite simple”, anything but “broad and flat”, trivial, and without “depth”
(Z §456). Instead, reality, die Wirklichkeit now manifests what Nietzsche
characterised as “an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish
play and change of forms” (TI, Morality as Anti-Nature, 6).
This “particular peace of mind” encompasses “a change in the way
things are perceived” (CV 1998, 70). This state of peace brings with it a
clarity of vision, a sober-mindedness and genuine engagement, which come
as a relief after “one has wandered along tortuous or zigzagging paths”,
after striding “straight through the thicket of questions out into the open”
(CV 1998, 91).
Wittgenstein’s accounts of the end of disquiet differ and assume various
forms that echo the characteristics of the condition that Nietzsche de-
scribes in his prefaces. Peace presupposes emancipation from the fetters of
“ultraphysical” meanings (BT, 429/315e), constituting a release to a state
of everyday life free from the “traps” of language and the “network of well
kept wrong turnings” (CV 1998, 25). A celebrated analogy for this situa-
tion is the fly, not the “wriggling fly” to which we might ascribe sensations
(PI §284), but the restless fly that is released into the open to its familiar
surroundings from the captivity, seduction, and enchantment of the fly-
bottle. With Nietzsche in mind, the decisive point of the fable is not that it
illustrates how we “unsuspectingly” (PI §308) stray into the fly-bottle or
how philosophical problems and language in general keep animal symboli-
cum captivated.7 And perhaps what Wittgenstein was aiming at here was
something more than the merely therapeutic possibilities available for the
fly. For he asks: “What is your aim in philosophy?” To which he replies:
“To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (PI §309). In other words,
to show the way out in order to bring the fly out into the open, into the
environment from which it came. The fly only finds peace once it has been
guided out of the hole in the bottom of the bottle and has returned to its
familiar surroundings. “(The solipsist flutters and flutters in the flyglass,
strikes against the walls, flutters further. How can he be brought to rest?)”
(MS 149, 34r). Wittgenstein answers: “(The particular peace of mind that
occurs when we can place other similar cases next to one we thought was
unique, occurs again and again in our investigations when we show that a
word doesn’t have just one meaning (or just two), but is used with five or
six different meanings.)” (BT, 416/307e). Having escaped from the bottle
via the indicated route and found peace, the former captive takes “a wider
274 Peter K. Westergaard

look round” (RFM, 127) with a gaze attuned to diversity and difference.
The fly has come home, newborn, healed: “A philosopher is a man who
has to cure many diseases of the understanding in himself, before he can
arrive at the notions of common sense” (CV 1998, 50). The healing in-
volves the overcoming of enchantment – a coming to reason. And in this
situation, the philosopher perceives things and his surroundings “in day-
light”, meaning as they are and within the nexus to which they belong:
“Compare the solution of philosophical problems with the fairy tale gift
that seems magical in the enchanted castle and if it is looked at in daylight
is nothing but an ordinary bit of iron (or something of the sort)” (CV
1998, 13).
But what about the “second innocence” that constitutes one aspect of the
homecomer’s state of peace? Here it is worth recalling one of Wittgenstein’s
well-known remarks from The Big Typescript. He writes: “The problems are
solved in the literal sense of the word – dissolved like a lump of sugar in
water” (BT, 421/310e). The philosophical problems – perturbations, para-
doxes, contradictions, our mental knots and linguistic confusions – are dis-
solved by grammatical descriptions and perspicuous representations, “like a
substance / a lump of sugar / in water” (MS 110, 99). Once the lump has
dissolved, the philosopher seems to find himself back where he was before
becoming aware of the lump. The philosophical problem has dissolved in
water; in other words by means of the philosopher’s application of linguistic
phenomenology. But we should not forget that once the lump has dissolved,
the composition of the water is no longer the same. It has lost its natural
state, its “first innocence”. The sugar crystals are now dispersed in the water,
which looks as it did before, but is different nonetheless. Since the water now
holds the dissolved sugar, the philosopher can no longer return to the first
innocence that prevailed before the discovery of the lump. At first glance, the
water looks the same, but in reality it has a new composition and taste. In
short, the water, i.e. the philosopher, “returns newborn”, with a “more dan-
gerous second innocence”, and “a hundred times more subtle” than he was
before (GS, Preface 4).
And what about the “active forgetting” and the “spontaneity” or “im-
mediacy” that was mentioned as an aspect of peace? Wittgenstein’s injunc-
tion is: “don’t think, but look!” (PI §66). In other words, leave your
expectations and the errors and philosophical prejudices handed down
from the past lying where you find them. See for yourself! Wittgenstein as-
serts further that our conceptual work on philosophical problems is the
occasion to present grammatical Betrachtungen (PI §90) and Bemerkun-
gen (PI §574) and “lists of rules” (BT, 426/313e) that can be set up like
“signposts” to show us a path through the labyrinth of language (PI §203).
“Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of well
kept wrong turnings”. He continues: “What I have to do then is to erect
 A Remark on “the Particular Peace” in Philosophy 275

signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so to help
people past the danger points” (CV 1998, 25). These grammatical road
signs are erected to indicate the direction and as reminders of the danger-
ous mistakes and forms of thought that have tempted people in the past to
go astray.
Finding one’s orientation and the right direction within the labyrinth of
language would thus seem to require a clear memory or heightened aware-
ness for these signposts and their meanings. But usually we fail to stop at
the signs or to consider their instructions. We do not always recall why a
sign is placed exactly where it is. That’s not how we act. Following a sign-
post in language presupposes an active forgetfulness. How does it accom-
modate this kind of “active forgetting”? Because we don’t give the road
signs any thought at all! We do not follow them by means of analysis or
interpretation (PI §201). “We are trained to do so; we react in a particular
way” (PI §206). We act spontaneously. “A rule stands there like a sign-
post” (PI §85). “When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule
blindly” (PI §219).8 I act immediately and am present in the traffic of ev-
eryday life – through the city’s “maze of little streets and squares, of old
and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods” (PI
§18). – Let me conclude.
Drury never stopped thinking. Some two decades after Wittgenstein’s
injunction, Drury published the collection of essays, The Danger of Words
(1973), which is perhaps “in its tone and concerns, the most truly Wittgen-
steinian work”.9 Drury points out that the danger in using or understand-
ing words and statements in a simplified sense, is that we reduce the scope
and ignore the versatility, plasticity, and Farbenpracht not just of those
words and statements, but also of people, things, and everyday life. Drury
wants to highlight and maintain the depth in our “most immediate and
familiar surroundings” – “a goodwill to all things closest”. Several years
before the publication of The Danger of Words, Drury concluded a lecture
on the method of philosophy with the following: “Perhaps some of you
feel that to put an end to this way of metaphysical speculation and to limit
human speech to the truths of everyday life […] is to empty life of all seri-
ous meaning and significance. I can only say that I have not found this to
be the case. On the contrary what is valuable in life shines all the clearer
when freed from the metaphysical entanglements we put upon it.”10

Notes
1 Clack 1999, 23.
2 Drury 1984, 170.
3 Let me just add that, in the following, I presuppose that Wittgenstein’s discus-
sions of philosophy from the early 30s to the mid-40s – in TS 213, 405–435;
276 Peter K. Westergaard

TS 220, 66–93; PI §§89–133 – are determined by a basic aim, namely the ob-
jective which in the following is described as “a desire to guide the reader
[philosopher] back to himself and his world”, a “return” which comprise “a
renewed ability ‘to go down deep’ into our ‘most immediate and familiar sur-
roundings’”. For discussions of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method see Kenny
1984, 38–60, Baker and Hacker 1988, 259–293, Hilmy 1989, and Wester-
gaard 2000, 203–272.
4 Lampert 2017, 2. See also e.g., Westergaard 2018 and Fortier 2020.
5 Here I follow Lawrence J. Hatab (2008, 69–75).
6 See Baker and Hacker 1988, 247.
7 See Hallett 1977, 382–383 and Hacker 1990, 263–264.
8 For an analysis and discussion of the concept of ‘following a rule’ see Malcolm
1986, 154–181.
9 Monk 1990, 264.
10 Drury 2019, 171–177.

References
Baker, Gordon P. and Hacker, Peter. (1988). Essays on the Philosophical Investiga-
tions. Wittgenstein. Meaning and Understanding, Vol. 1. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Backer, Gordon P. and Hacker, Peter M.S. (1988). An Analytical Commentary on
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 1. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Clack, Brian R. (1999). An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Drury, Maurice O’C. (1984). “Conversations with Wittgenstein”. In Recollections
of Wittgenstein. Ed. Rush Rhees, 97–171. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. (2019). “The Method of Philosophy”. In The Selected Writings of Maurice
O’Connor Drury. On Wittgenstein, Philosophy, Religion and Psychiatry. Ed.
John Hayes, 171–177. London: Bloomsbury.
Fortier, Jeremy. (2020). The Challenge of Nietzsche. How to Approach His
Thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Hacker, Peter M.S. (1990). Wittgenstein. Meaning and Mind. An Analytical Com-
mentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Vol. 3. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hallett, Garth. (1977). A Companion to Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investiga-
tions”. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hatab, Lawrence J. (2008). Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. An Intro-
duction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hilmy, S. Stephen. (1989). The Later Wittgenstein. The Emergence of a New Phil-
osophical Method. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Kenny, Anthony. (1984). “Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy”. In The Leg-
acy of Wittgenstein. Anthony Kenny, 38–60. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Lampert, Laurence. (2017). What a Philosopher Is. Becoming Nietzsche. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Malcolm, Norman. (1986). Wittgenstein. Nothing is Hidden. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
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Monk, Ray. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius. London: Jonathan
Cape.
Westergaard, Peter K. (2000). Ludwig Wittgenstein. Hele billedligheden i vor ud-
tryksmåde [Ludwig Wittgenstein. All our pictorial modes of expression]. Aar-
hus: Slagmark.
———. (2018). Nietzsche. “… hvis man altid går til grunden …” En afslutning
[Nietzsche. “… if one always faces ruin …” A conclusion]. Aalborg: Aalborg
Universitetsforlag.
Index

Pages followed by “n” refer to notes.

aesthetic/-s 20, 25, 51, 53–54, 106, 127, 274; BT 79–85, 87, 90, 92n12,
144n50, 180, 187, 190–191, 194 92n15, 238, 243, 258, 268–270,
analytic 8, 10, 12, 47–49, 62, 70, 184n1 272–274
Andreas-Salomé, Lou 59–60 The Blue and Brown Books: BBB 68,
The Antichrist 6, 17, 38n30, 39n33, 114, 120, 192–193, 196, 202, 209,
39n34, 40n56, 78, 89, 129, 141, 212–213, 216–217, 220–222,
232n38, 232n41; A 78, 232n40, 227n3, 228n11, 229n12, 229n16,
232n41, 233n42, 233n46, 234n52 230n26, 230n27, 234n51, 240,
architecture 61, 79, 90 248; The Blue Book 114, 187–188,
Aristotle/Aristotelian 184n1, 225–226, 192, 205n26, 212, 219, 240–241,
230n20, 234n57 248; The Brown Book 13n17,
ascetic 83–84 120n69, 125, 188, 227, 230n27
Augustine 212, 216, 224, 228n11, Birth of Tragedy 4, 13n12, 102, 131,
233n46 172, 258, 260; BoT 4, 118n34,
131, 172
Beethoven, Ludwig van 4, 61, 77, Boltzmann, Ludwig 5, 128, 142n21
98–99, 117n15
Bergson, Henri 73n70, 244 Carnap, Rudolf 228n5
Beyond Good and Evil 6, 11, 36n2, The Case of Wagner 6, 17, 39n33,
111, 124, 129–132, 141n1, 210, 39n34, 78, 129, 263
228n6; BGE 3, 5, 8, 86, 118n35, Cavell, Stanley 12, 195, 238–254,
118n36, 118n37, 118n38, 118n39, 254n4, 254n5, 255n17
121n81, 122n85, 122n86, 122n87, certainty 11, 57, 112, 144n57, 174,
124, 129–137, 141n3, 143n37, 194–195, 206n30, 211, 245
143n38, 143n39, 143n40, 143n44, Christianity 17–18, 22, 39n34, 48, 57,
144n51, 144n53, 148–150, 78, 89, 125, 129, 138, 223–224,
162–163, 165n4, 170, 177, 188, 232n35, 232n41, 233n43, 233n49,
190, 192, 197, 199, 203n18, 234n52, 234n54, 262
204n22, 210–212, 214–216, 218, Christian/-s 11, 63, 65–66, 107–108,
221, 224, 227n1, 228n5, 228n10, 124, 131–132, 141n3, 141n8,
229n15, 230n21, 230n26, 231n29, 143n39, 165, 197, 210, 222,
231n31, 231n33, 233n46 225, 227, 232n36, 232n37,
The Big Typescript 6, 10, 78–85, 232n40, 233n42, 233n44,
87–90, 92n12, 92n14, 92n15, 233n45, 266
110–111, 125, 203n18, 269, cogito 111–112, 121n78
 Index 279

continental 8, 48, 70 189–190, 194–199, 202, 203n18,

Copernicus/Copernican 105, 116, 204n22, 205n24, 205n25, 211,
119n52, 216 215–216, 218, 221, 231n33,
233n46, 233n47, 259–266, 274
Darwin, Charles/Darwinian/Darwinism genealogical/-ly/genealogy/genealogies
66, 88, 216 11, 56–57, 66, 93n39, 139, 147,
Daybreak 258, 260; D 57, 171, 157, 162–164, 189, 192, 247,
231n28, 261 249–250, 252
Deleuze, Gilles 234n54, 254n1 The Genealogy of Morals/Morality 6,
Descartes/Cartesian 111–112, 216, 218, 36n2, 113, 132, 143n39, 147, 150,
228n8, 229n15, 230n27, 231n29 161–162, 166n10, 183–189, 259,
Dewey, John 205n27 266; GM 86, 121n83, 122n84, 124,
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 222, 232n36 129, 133, 141n3, 141n8, 144n54,
Drury, Maurice 119n60, 232n36, 148, 150–151, 166, 183, 189, 192,
257–258, 260, 275 197–198, 203n18, 204n22, 211,
266–267
Ecce Homo 238; EH 118n27, 118n31, God/god/-s 21–22, 38n20, 39n34, 55,
150, 178, 238–239, 243 115, 211, 215, 219, 223, 233n42,
Einstein, Albert 105, 116, 119n52, 238, 246, 252, 266
142n21, 142n26 Goethe 4–5, 77, 89, 98–99, 108–109,
Emerson, R.W./Emersonian 12, 78, 89, 117n15, 117n16
102, 239–242, 244–245, 247, 253 grammar/-s 12, 49, 79–80, 82, 106–
empiricism/empiricist/-s 25, 225; 107, 114–115, 119n56, 149, 155,
Logical Empiricism 49, 69 181, 190, 202n1, 203n18, 210–211,
Engelmann, Paul 5, 79, 88, 90 213–218, 221, 224, 226, 229n13,
Epicurean 65 229n19, 230n26, 233n42, 239,
Ernst, Paul 9–10, 78–79, 84, 86–90, 247–249, 252–254, 258–259, 271
92n17, 92n19, 92n27, 92n30,
203n18 Hänsel, Ludwig 5, 13n12, 96, 116n4
eternal recurrence 7, 67–70, 109, Hegel, G.W.F. 4, 13n9, 170–171, 175,
120n69, 209, 227n3 184n4
Heidegger, Martin 2, 143n39
family resemblance/-s 143, 192, 212 Heraclitus 184n1
Fichte, J.G. 4, 13n9 herd 10, 85–86, 89, 131, 143n35, 188,
fly-bottle 126, 174, 268, 271, 273 194, 196–198, 201, 203, 203n18,
form of life 12, 188, 194–195, 197–200, 205n25
203n15, 206n30, 238, 246, 249 Hertz, Heinrich 5, 142
Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth 47, 92n26 history 5, 10, 56, 58, 62, 64–65,
Foucault, Michel 240 86–88, 101, 128, 136, 147, 151,
free spirit/-s 66, 102, 131, 175, 239, 156, 162–164, 189–190, 196–197,
261–264 200, 216, 227n2, 244, 246–247,
Frege, Gottlob/Fregean 12, 14, 30, 32, 249, 253, 260, 263; of philosophy
49, 77–78, 87, 90n2, 213, 240 1, 3, 169, 184n1, 214, 224–226,
Freud, Sigmund 121n79, 122n85, 128, 234n56, 234n57
141n5, 142n18, 223, 228n5 Human, All Too Human 26, 33, 59,
future philosopher/-s/philosophy 124, 129, 190, 258, 260; HH 7, 189–
133, 147–151, 162, 209 191, 194, 202, 205n25, 239, 243,
260–265, 272
The Gay Science 102, 118n31, 190, Hume, David 216
194, 204n22, 258, 260, 266; GS 1,
3, 118n30, 118n32, 118n33, 138, idealism 27, 229n16; transcendental 25
280 Index

James, William 205n27 naturalism/naturalistic/naturalist/-s 8,

50, 53, 59, 66, 68, 71, 115, 216,
Kant, Immanuel/Kantian 4, 13, 47, 218, 231n32
57–58, 63, 66, 88, 96, 104–105, Nazis/-m 47–49, 62, 66, 70, 125
110–113, 116, 119n52, 122n89, Neurath, Otto 62
128, 130–131, 134–135, 142n24, nihilism/nihilist 98, 199, 238, 262–263
142n26, 144n52, 163, 172, 217, nonsense 8, 30, 32–33, 41n70, 57,
225–226, 231n33 124, 133–135, 137, 139–140, 200,
Keynes, J.M. 29, 42n80 220
Kierkegaard, Søren/Kierkegaardian 22,
222–223, 232n36 On Certainty 188, 192, 194–195,
Kraus, Karl 182 203n7, 206n30, 229n16; OC
119n54, 193–195, 199, 202,
language-game/-s 11, 80, 82–83, 109, 203n15, 222, 230n27
139, 143n42, 156–160, 193, ordinary language 10–12, 58, 81, 181,
195–196, 198–199, 201–202 202, 229n18, 234n51, 250
Lichtenberg, G.C. 4, 9–10, 95–96, overhuman 51–53, 60; see also
108–116, 120n71, 120n72, 120n73, Superman; Übermensch/übermensc-
120n74, 121n76, 121n78, 121n80, hliche
121n83, 122n85, 122n89, 203n18,
228n5 Peirce, C.S. 205n27
logic/logical/logically 2–4, 19–20, perspectivism 3, 150, 176, 184, 198,
31–33, 35, 37n12, 41n74, 204n21, 205n25
44n104, 67, 69, 72, 77, 87–88, pessimism 53, 62, 262
91n3, 103, 106–107, 124, 130, phenomenology 270–271, 274
132, 134–137, 144n51, 151–152, Philosophical Investigations 2, 79, 81,
154, 159, 161, 180, 213, 221, 88, 92n15, 103–105, 109–110,
252–253, 255n17 119n49, 125–126, 139–140, 158,
160, 165n5, 166n8, 179, 182–183,
Mauthner, Fritz 91n10, 115–116, 187–188, 212, 224, 230n27, 241,
203n18, 228n5 251, 255n19, 257, 259; PI 11,
metaphor/-s/metaphorical/-ly/ 82–84, 91n11, 92n13, 92n14,
metaphoricity 108–109, 126, 136, 92n15, 126, 129, 134, 140, 141n8,
174, 181–182, 191, 193, 202n4, 141n12, 142n14, 143n36, 144n55,
203n7, 203n18, 261, 270 150, 152–153, 155–159, 161–162,
Moore, G.E. 6, 13n13, 33, 71n8, 165n4, 166n9, 174, 178, 180,
142n13, 227n3, 229n13, 229n16, 192–193, 195, 197, 202, 202n1,
230n27 211–214, 216–217, 222, 228n11,
morality 4, 10, 57, 64–67, 89, 229n12, 229n13, 230n22, 232n40,
107–108, 124–125, 128, 130–133, 233n46, 238, 240–241, 244, 251,
137–140, 142n32, 143n39, 147, 255n16, 255n19, 257–259, 261,
162–164, 197, 210, 222–225, 227, 263, 268, 270, 272–275, 275n3
231n28, 233n44, 233n49, 234n52, Pinsent, D.H. 42n82
261; slave 67, 89, 162 Plato/Platonist 13n3, 31, 149, 169–
movement/-s of thought 7, 95, 171, 175, 212, 216, 225, 262
99–100, 106–107, 109, 116, poet/poetry/poetic 4, 6–8, 10–11, 78,
118n29, 119n54, 126–129, 87, 95, 99–105, 107, 109, 115,
139–140, 142n14, 142n19, 126–127, 131, 136, 139, 143n34,
142n24, 147, 152 147, 152, 154, 158, 161, 163–164,
music/musical/musicians 4–5, 98–99, 165n5, 169–170, 172–174,
109, 173, 176, 179, 233n47, 248, 253 176–178, 181–182, 184
 Index 281

pragmatism/pragmatist 11, 52, 188, Spinoza, Baruch 13n3, 66, 130, 137,
199–201, 205n27, 206n28, 206n35 170–171, 175
private language 166n9, 214, 229n15 Sraffa, Piero 128
Stoic/-s/Stoicism 26, 65, 165n4
Ramsey, F.P. 37n11, 135, 143n45 Strauss, David 171, 233n43
realism/realist 25, 27, 191, 205n25, style/-s 1, 8, 10–11, 50, 70, 91n11, 95,
215–216, 219–221, 224, 227, 110, 115–116, 118n28, 127, 139,
229n16, 230n27 142n14, 165n6, 169–185
Redpath, Theodor 104, 119n47 Superman 93n39; see also overhuman;
ressentiment 234n52 Übermensch/übermenschliche
revaluation 6, 11, 91n7, 116n2, synthetic a priori 128
124–125, 127, 141n5, 147–148,
152, 162, 165n5, 170, 189, 198; Thus Spoke Zarathustra 6–7, 13n16,
see also transvaluation; 48, 50, 53, 71n8, 101, 103–105,
Umwerthung/Umwertung 108–110, 118n27, 118n46,
Rhees, Rush 7, 103, 105, 107–109, 119n63, 120n65, 129, 131, 151,
119n60, 119n61, 223 180, 227n3, 232n38, 234n50, 259,
Romanticism 4 265; TSZ 7, 13n16, 71n17,
rule-following 214 118n43, 118n45, 118n46, 119n63,
Russell, Bertrand 12, 18, 26–27, 29–34, 120n64, 120n65, 120n66, 120n67,
37n12, 40n53, 41n61, 41n77, 120n68, 131, 240, 250, 265
42n80, 42n82, 42n84, 42n85, Tolstoy, Leo/Tolstoyan 78, 89,
42n86, 43n90, 43n96, 43n98, 222–223, 225, 232n37, 232n38,
44n107, 47–48, 68, 70, 73n70, 233n43, 233n49, 234n51
77–78, 87, 90n2, 104, 213, 223 Tractatus 2, 4, 6, 8–9, 11–12,
18–34, 36, 37n9, 37n11, 37n12,
Schelling, F.W.J. 4, 13n9 38n20, 38n25, 39n44, 40n54,
Schlick, Friedrich Albert Moritz 5, 10, 40n55, 41n74, 43n102, 44n103,
13n16, 13n17, 48–70, 71n13, 71n14, 44n104, 44n114, 63, 77–78, 83,
71n20, 71n26, 71n33, 71n35, 87–88, 90n2, 91n3, 92n29,
72n38, 72n42, 72n45, 72n47, 103–104, 106, 110, 124,
72n59, 72n60, 72n61, 72n64, 73n68 127–130, 133–137, 139–140,
Schopenhauer/Schopenhauerian/ 142n19, 143n39, 143n42,
Schopenhauerianism 4–5, 13n3, 165n4, 184n5, 227n2, 269; TLP
25–26, 40n55, 48, 50, 53, 59–60, 8, 37n9, 37n11, 38n18, 38n21,
64–66, 71n13, 72n45, 72n47, 133, 38n23, 38n28, 38n30, 39n44,
137–138, 140, 143n45, 144n47, 39n45, 39n46, 39n47, 39n49,
172, 232n36, 233n49, 262 41n71, 41n72, 41n73, 43n98,
Schumann, Robert Alexander 4–5 43n102, 44n104, 44n108,
skepticism/scepticism 10, 27–28, 31, 44n109, 44n116, 44n117, 63,
33–35, 40n55, 111, 229n16, 238, 77, 79, 87–88, 91, 133, 135–138,
244–245, 263 143n41, 144n51, 144n53, 269
solipsism 6, 8–10, 17–22, 24–29, 35, transcendental 19–22, 25, 27, 38n19,
37n12, 40n54, 41n61, 42n82, 135, 137, 144n47
42n84, 144n51, 213, 230n23 transvaluation 48, 51, 58–61, 71n24,
Soul, soul 7–8, 18, 24, 33, 85, 89, 95–100, 103, 105, 107, 116,
144n53, 149, 172–173, 229n15, 116n2, 117n14, 119n52, 125–127,
231n29, 231n33, 238, 262 131, 137, 140; see also revaluation;
Spengler, Oswald Arnold Gottfried 5–6, Umwerthung/Umwertung
59, 61–62, 70, 72n55, 96–99, 101, Twilight of the Idols 6, 17, 39n33,
116, 116n4, 117n5, 117n15, 125 39n34, 40n56, 78, 84, 89, 91n7,
282 Index

129, 141, 171, 189, 251–252, 144n46, 147–148, 150–152,

255n20; TI 84–85, 89, 91n7, 160, 162–163, 165n1, 182,
122n91, 151, 170–171, 181, 187–194, 196–201, 204, 206n35,
188–189, 191, 203n18, 211, 215, 221–225, 227, 231–234,
218, 223, 227n1, 228n7, 251–252, 261–264
266, 273 Vienna Circle 6, 8–10, 12, 13n16,
13n20, 49, 59–61, 72n55, 73n70,
Übermensch/übermenschliche 51, 143n33, 230n22
73n68; see also overhuman;
Superman Wagner, Wilhelm Richard 13n3, 262
Umwerthung/Umwertung 7, 10, 48, Waismann, Friedrich 5, 10, 48–50,
99, 116n2, 117n8, 117n9, 118n21, 59, 63–70, 71n18, 72n45,
124–127, 129–130, 132, 139–140, 72n64, 73n68, 143n33, 228n5,
141n2; see also revaluation; 228n9
transvaluation Weininger, Otto 5, 122n85
Untimely Meditations 263; UM 171 The Will to Power 6, 78; WP 143n38,
238
value/-s 6–7, 10–12, 35, 38n20, 48, will to power 22, 50, 54–56, 67, 70,
51, 53–54, 56–61, 63–67, 69, 102, 130, 132–133, 137, 143n38,
72n40, 72n59, 88, 91n7, 92n30, 230n25
95–100, 103, 105, 107, 116, Wittgenstein, Hermine 5–6, 26, 33,
117n14, 124–127, 130–141, 37n9, 117n5, 129