Ashoka Tarai

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) turns hundred years of its publication in the year 2021. The book has received several interpretations during this period of hundred years. However, in the last three decades, the interpretations of TLP have taken a very tenacious position with regard to the debates among scholars concerning whether there is any metaphysical significance in the text. The debates primarily offshoot in the rise of anti-metaphysical or often known as resolute reading that challenges the standard or metaphysical reading. The present paper, however, goes beyond this debate between the resolute and standard reading of TLP. The paper aims at addressing various types of metaphysical reading(s) that has not been perhaps the centre of discussion because the resolute reading takes on only standard reading. Thus, the present paper attempts to show the variety of metaphysical interpretations of the text in some of the recent literatures.

This paper discusses certain anti-metaphysical readings of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The metaphysical and anti-metaphysical readings can be divided on the interpretations of textual fidelity. The anti-metaphysical readings can be differentiated in taking into account two different understandings with regard to Wittgenstein’s pronouncement of nonsense in Tractatus. One is the logical positivists’ understanding of nonsense and the other is the resolute reading of the text that emerged as an opposite to the orthodox or standard reading. The aim of discussing these anti-metaphysical readings is to highlight whether a metaphysical reading is possible.