This is Water

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophies heavily influenced Wallace’s writing and views. In his Slate article, James Ryerson notes: “As Wallace recollected in 1992 in a letter to the novelist Lance Olsen, he was ‘deeply taken’ in the seminar with Wittgenstein’s first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (Ryerson). Wittgenstein’s beliefs are split into an early period and late period, the former represented by the Tractatus (1921) and the latter by Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953). The Tractatus set rules for the limits of logic, thought, and language. It famously states, “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden, Project Gutenberg, 1921, pp. 23). This statement has many historical interpretations, but it mainly concerns meaning and words. What can be represented by the symbols in language? How is meaning constructed in someone’s head, communicated through expression, then engaged with by others? Wittgenstein intended to end all philosophical debates with the Tractatus’s strict rules; the work is indifferent and mathematical in its logic. In Investigations, however, Wittgenstein rejects many of his former claims, arguing that meaning in language is tied to how words are used.