What Remains of the Notion of “World”: from the Tractatus to the Later Texts

This paper analyses the concept of world (Welt) in the Tractatus and the transformations of this concept in Wittgenstein’s later writings. As for the Tractatus, the semantic link between world and totality (the world als begrenztes Ganzes) and the necessary (logical, transcendental) giving of form are considered. As for the transformation of this notion in the Thirties, and in the Big Typescript, the essentialist theme of logical form is abandoned and reformulated from the pluralist perspective of the ensemble of grammatical rules. In Philosophical Investigations the notion of world, like other notions called super-concepts (for example language, proposition), undergoes a de-sublimation and a lowering, and it is traced back to the normal use in language. In this way the pluralistic sense of world as form of life is gaining ground, and in On Certainty will lead to the concept of Weltbild, image of the world.