Conditions, Necessity, and Transcendental Linguistic Idealism in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract The question whether Wittgenstein’s Tractatus endorses a transcendental form of linguistic idealism is a highly complex one. This is so, not just because the textual evidence from Wittgenstein’s first published book is notoriously ambiguous and lends itself to differing interpretations, but also because the versions of idealism most relevant to discussing Wittgenstein’s work are intricate and, therefore, potentially elusive and difficult to pinpoint. This chapter argues that Wittgenstein aims to dissolve, rather than endorse, transcendental linguistic idealism in the Tractatus. In order to show this, it examines two versions of this doctrine. According to the first, the world is the world as given to the transcendental willing subject (i.e., to me) in representation; according to the second, possible representation  determines the possibilities of the world. The chapter argues that Wittgenstein seeks to show that both of these forms of transcendental linguistic idealism, together with the notions of necessity and purpose associated with them, disintegrate upon closer inspection.