Simone Nota

Most readers of the Tractatus take Wittgenstein's logic to be contentless, since tautologies do not picture reality. However, this fails to explain its transcendental status, especially given that Kant introduced transcendental logic through the notion of content. In this essay, I propose a transcendental interpretation of Wittgenstein’s logic, as "logic of depiction” endowed with a transcendental content: the formal rules governing the subject’s speech about objects. Tautologies turn out to be dispensable by-products of the transcendental (i.e., content-endowed) logic of depiction. The result is a reconception of Wittgenstein's logic, grounded in a systematic comparison with Kant.

In this thesis, I compare Kant's and Wittgenstein’s takes on Transcendental Idealism, as a doctrine meant to “prove” the possibility of Metaphysics. My Central Question is: Is the early Wittgenstein a transcendental idealist? In virtue of a distinction between Transcendentalism and Transcendental Idealism, I answer “No”, by arguing that the early Wittgenstein is a transcendental philosopher, but not a transcendental idealist of any kind. In particular, I distinguish two variants of Transcendental Idealism, namely an effable variant, which Kant endorsed, and an ineffable variant, often ascribed to Wittgenstein. And I argue that Wittgenstein cannot commit to either variant. This raises questions as to what kind of transcendental philosopher Wittgenstein is, if not an idealist one, and how his stance may bear on Metaphysics. I answer both questions by the end of the work.