Quotation
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“He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein · Analytic philosophy · Modern · 1921
What does it mean?
The propositions of the Tractatus are a ladder. Whoever understands him, he says, will see them as nonsensical and throw the ladder away after climbing. A rival reading takes this as a confession that the book is a joke, or as a postmodern shrug. He means that the limit of what can be said cannot be said as one more fact inside the limit. The climb was necessary. The throwing away is the point of the climb, not a reason never to have read. Another reading keeps the ladder and quotes proposition 1 as a worldview.
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Pears and McGuinness. The reader who understands the propositions sees them as nonsensical, and must throw away the ladder. Ogden's English differs in cadence. The image is in 6.54, just before the silence of proposition 7.
Where it comes from
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54, in the Pears and McGuinness translation
Approximate date: 1921.
How to use it
A reader in a book group in Norwich underlines 'the world is all that is the case' and never reaches 6.54. They have the first rung and call it the view. The ladder remark says the rungs were for climbing. Keeping a favourite proposition as a belief is how the book gets betrayed by its fans, including fans who have in fact read it.
A mindset reading
Throwing the ladder away is not throwing thinking away. It is a claim about the status of these sentences. The Investigations will later be suspicious of the picture the ladder served. That suspicion is a second book, not a footnote to 6.54.
Understand the philosophy
6.54 and 7 are the ending. Pears and McGuinness are the translation named for the Tractatus in this library. The image without the claim that the propositions are nonsensical is only a metaphor about learning, which is not the section.
- knowledge
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
The propositions of the Tractatus are a ladder. Whoever understands him, he says, will see them as nonsensical and throw the ladder away after climbing. A rival reading takes this as a confession that the book is a joke, or as a postmodern shrug. He means that the limit of what can be said cannot be said as one more fact inside the limit. The climb was necessary. The throwing away is the point of the climb, not a reason never to have read. Another reading keeps the ladder and quotes proposition 1 as a worldview.
Did Ludwig Wittgenstein really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Pears and McGuinness. The reader who understands the propositions sees them as nonsensical, and must throw away the ladder. Ogden's English differs in cadence. The image is in 6.54, just before the silence of proposition 7.
Which work is it in?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54, in the Pears and McGuinness translation Approximate date: 1921.