Massimo Cacciari,

Krisis, Chapter Two: From Nietzsche to Wittgenstein. Logic and Philosophy around the
Tractatus
1. The Logic of Wille zur Macht
Schopenhauers response to the crisis of the transcendental is that of extreme pessimism, a
prescription that creates a typical ideological reversal. The misery of formal a priori schemas
capable of conciliating themselves to the phenomenon of rendering the phenomenon (as) given
compels the negation of the given. Because the real cant be anything but representation if
the real becomes noumenon and insofar as subjectivity lacks transcendental schemas or insofar
as they are not deducible the same representation ends up nullifying itself. The will-to-life,
which is based on its relation to representation, reveals itself to be illusory. The truth of the
subject-object relation lies in the nullification of the relation itself and the will that pretends to
act. The extraordinary logico-epistemological importance of Schopenhauer consists in this
deduction of pessimism. This makes it impossible to juxtapose his work to romantic philosophy,
as proposed by his decadent interpreters. The interpretation of The World as a kind of
Bildungsroman in the negative, according to the models of Lebensphilosophie, is a literary
interpretation, an interpretation by writers, one that weve already implicitly rejected in talking
about the relationship between Schopenhauers thought and the Machian crisis of the
fundamentals of physics. The entire development of The World bases itself on the logical
recovery of the Kantian analytic in its fundamental problem: to be the a priori philosophical
research determining the insights of natural science. The concept of the noumenon shatters, for
Schopenhauer, this possibility. It renders useless the tools of schematism. Not the transcendental
therefore: transcendental intuition but the formalism of reason. The actual reality
[effettualita] of such formalism cant consist, then, except in that nullification of the givens of
representation of representation itself. The Lukacsian reading of the aporias of Kantian
rationalism would be unthinkable without the screen of Schopenhauers pessimism. This
asceticism towards the perfect formalism of reason, an asceticism whose office comes to an end
at the bottom of Kants bankruptcy, is therefore the opposite of an equivocal irrationalism. It
opens onto the problem of a formal system of reason impossible to define in transcendental
terms. But, at this point, the collapse of the transcendental structure appears as the collapse of
any possible deduction of the actual reality of reason. Because formal, it nullifies. Its impotence
ideologically spills over into activity. Its misery, at the end, into full satisfaction. Its
asceticism, into the perfect utility of Nirvana.
This reversal is the center of the Nietzschean critique of Schopenhauers pessimism. With
absolute assurance, Nietzsche sees how it derives from not yet being able to conceive of an
actual reality other than that of the transcendental form. From the works on Aufklarung up to the
last fragments, Nietzsche intends precisely to overcome the aporias of this pessimism. The
problem concerns the entire scope of the logico-epistemological. A reductive epistemology one
which places as its goal the a priori definition of the universal, valid-necessary structure of
experience (a structure that would realize itself through schematic relations) is destined to
revert into its opposite. If truth consists in these a priori structures, the truth wont ever be
positively demonstrated. Truth will be only the nullification of the will to representation. But the
Nietzschean disenchantment regarding the history of Western rationalism, together with

Schopenhauers extreme pessimism, cant limit itself to the critique of its metaphysico-reductive
character. Reductive is also an immediately positive prescription of the epistemological
problem. Reductive is also an immediate synthesis of the observation-observed; reductive is, in
sum, anything that simply reflects the real, as it gives itself, in the subject. The critique of a priori
systems, the critique of the concept of substance in both the ontological and logical sense, the
tragic affirmation of the given all that could end in a nave doctrine of meaning only ignores
the central problem posed by Schopenhauer himself. The crisis of the transcendental implies the
formalization of reason. For Schopenhauer, this process nullifies. Is this deduction necessary?
The premise negates that the forms of reason are reducible to substances, to binding laws that
determine each empirical experience. Theyre not like forms. But the premise also negates that
its possible to give an immediate relation of reflection between the subject and the object. All
doctrine of the transcendental is born of the critical consciousness that this relation is
unthinkable, that a happy immediate reconciliation is utopia, an illusion. The effective problem,
then, beyond Schopenhauerian pessimism, can only be what is relative to the type of reality of
the formalism of reason of the type of efficacy it possesses if its power is conceivable
otherwise than solely as nullifying. The a priori is not determinant-effective; it is not given a
transcendental scheme: so what kind of relation subsists, then, between the logical form,
representation, and reality? How can this form exist? Is it possible to reply to the pessimistic
Entsagung [renunciation] without returning to a nave concept of the real as everything meant?
recognizing, namely, that experience has its own form of organization, that it cant give itself to
immediate observation and that, in sum, it was exactly this tragedy which was affirmed by Kant
as lying behind the obscure veil of the concept of noumenon. On this terrain, the more mature
elaboration of Nietzsches thought encroaches on the problems of the epistemological
foundations of science, undertaken, in the same years, by Avenarius and Mach, on the one hand,
and by new mathematical logic, on the other.
That there is no truth; that theres no absolute nature of things nor a thing-in-itself this too is
merely nihilism, even the most extreme nihilism. Therefore, a scientific construction, an
epistemological apparatus cannot have an essential ground cant correspond to a substance.
Behind phenomena, theres nothing. But the concept of substance founded every formaltranscendental category, every theoretical measure. Matter is substance to affirm a causal
nexuses between phenomena, describing them as laws to place the relation subject-object into a
relation between a nature thus defined (matter, causal nexus, laws) and a subject as an apparatus
of transcendental forms all of this means conserving a concept of truth as the comprehension of
the absolute nature of things. But nihilism categorically excludes every matter and every
mechanism. A true world doesnt exist. Here is the life tragically taken up by Nietzsche
already in Aufklarung [Enlightenment], and now subtracted by schopenhauerian asceticism, in
the schopenhauerian reincarnation, according to Nietzsche, of the Christian moral ideal (of the
refounding, in the context of asceticism, of the values of Western culture). But does this life
ground a Lebensphilosophie [philosophy of life]? A historical relativism? Is it called to this
function? Is nihilistic critique destined to dissolve itself in the immense, pathological
generalization: theres no meaning? Or does it simply re-instantiate the empiricist distinction
between the truth of reason and the truth of facts? Its clear that this second solution couldnt
represent the whole history of the problems that we intend to overcome. How should we, then,
understand this truth of reason? And the truth of facts? Doesnt it, from the start, deal with a
contradictory affirmation? And the reason of what and how is this reason? The nihilist critique

neither re-instantiates nor reformulates the problems. Its skepticism is radical: either theres no
meaning otherwise the forms of reason expose a new logic and a new relation to reality
forms and reality by now lacking substance. Or the nihilist situation is reversible only
ideologically, as in Schopenhauer otherwise it is founded precisely on that misery of the
formalism of reason, in which it seemed the Kantian crisis of the a priori came to an end it is
founded necessarily, to be exact, by this formalism, by this loss of the substantial relation, by this
definitive withdrawal of truth.
Within this general problematic, discovering for these very reasons and perspectives, Nietzsche
rewrites the bankruptcy of the mechanistic explanation of the world. The concept of causality,
first of all: the fact that something follows regularly and in a calculable manner, doesnt prove
that it follows necessarily. This necessity in things is not demonstrable. We can calculate a
sequence of facts. That it hides a necessity will never be calculable. This belief in necessity,
which entails the thought of authors of things scrupulously observant of the dictates of our
reason, is nothing but the hypostatization of the fact that we have formulated happenstance as a
sequence of necessary events. Necessity is not a fact but an interpretation. But necessity and
causality were based on the concept of substance, understood, that is, as the absolute constitution
of things. Every physical object would not emerge except to modify the eternity and
immutability of substance more precisely: every relative-functional concept would need to be
comprehensible only under the light of its own idea: hence the relation between pure forms of
intuition and the positive relativity of spatio-temporal determinations. But an absolute time, an
absolute space are not given. The physical objects will never be demonstrable as modes or
attributes of substantial entities.
But the concept of subjectivity as the referential center of the activity of observationrepresentation has meaning only in relation to the mechanistic conception that is defeated here.
The critique of the idea of the subject is the crucial point of Nietzschean negative thought.
The idea of the subject delimits a field of a priori forms effectually ordering physical objects.
The subject has a substantial vision of phenomenal relations. It can be ordering only to the extent
that it objectively observes-represents the laws that regulate nature. Its intuitions are, in this
sense, transcendental: the Kantian relation between schematism and the doctrine of I think
brings to an end the modern history of the concept of subjectivity: the transcendental forms can
apply only to the extent that they are comprehended in a thinking subjectivity. Only so is their
unity guaranteed, and therefore their homogeneity to the substantial laws of the physical world.
The subject overcomes the individual, as substance overcomes appearance. But if the concept of
substance collapses, so does, necessarily, its correlate: that of appearance, an a priori synthesis of
all the observations-representations in substance-which-is-the-subject loses any meaning.
Observation-representation is brought within a much more contradictory and complex game with
its contents.
In the first part of its critique of the mechanistic, Nietzsches discourse is perfectly analogous to
that of Mach. But already here, on the problem of subjectivity, Nietzsche pushes himself beyond
the Machian objective of the empirical-positive reinstatement of classical physics. In Mach, the
truth of the givenness of facts remains well-founded and to it corresponds subjective
observation. The subject reduces, according to precise models, sensible immediacy in such a way
as to define laws-predictions. In Mach, the relation subject-object remains substantially

classical: and, namely, definite in function of an exhaustive synthesis. The subject is never,
certainly, transcendentally definite but remains, as a point of empirical observation, the
immediate referent of the perceptive flux, in an ambiguous position: on the one hand, according
to the general philosophy of Machism, it should not appear as a particular form of organizing
the physical world on the other hand, it still results as extraneous to the system of the
observed as a whole. Between the subject and the object subsists, that is, an immediate relation
of meaning. But such a relation is possible on the basis of at least four conditions: a) that the
subject and object continue, effectively, to be understood separately; b) that the object is defined
statically, that it is reduced to being-subsumed in the immediacy of the observation; c) that there
exists a perceptive immediacy, capable of making the image of this object pure; d) that there
are true propositions, in the sense of signifying or of being reducible of these givens. These
conditions are, implicitly or explicitly, submitted by Nietzsche to a radical critique and it is
here that he differs, just as radically, from Mach.
Admitting a nature, a world, reducible to linear representations, to a meaning, to elementary
propositions means reinstating the mechanical hypotheses of logical determination and
transparency as the criterion of truth. Nature gives itself in elementary logical propositions, in a
simple system of coordinates and equations. Clear and immediate perception is the first step in
the definition of a similar model. Simplex sigillum veri. Vita Cartesii est simplicissima. [The
simple seal of truth. The Cartesian life is simple.] Nietzsche sees in this a gross confusion.
How do you know that the true nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? What we
know is, to the contrary, the false and contradictory character of the world. In moral terms,
the world is false. In reality, the physical object is not definable in static terms, as pure beingthere, in relation to a faculty of perception just as immobile, simply observing from the outside.
But nature is not resolved in an ordo et connexio rerum [order and connection of things] not
even given another term in the equation: ordo et connexio idearum [order and connection of
ideas]. And, effectively, there can be ordo in nature only if we presuppose ideas that this order
enforces and, therefore, a Subject as the substantial ground of the categorical multiplicity of
judgements. The multiple-contradictory, the being-false, character of nature as given, excludes,
therefore, an immediate synthesis between subject and object the existence of a subject
however ordering that signifies the being of nature and thereby its synthesis to it constitutes a
single system. This entails that true propositions are not given in the sense of propositions able
to immediately express such synthesis, or of producing the reduction to physical, elementary,
atomic, data. Nature no longer as simply be-there the subject no longer as signification, through
simple models, of states of elementary-foundational fact: we could, in fact, represent the
movement-contradiction of nature if this character were not itself of the same conceptual
structure. Observation-interpretation is the property of the whole system, losing all speculative
character, exactly to the extent that this system loses every substantial rigidity. But this doesnt
imply any undifferentiated identity, on the contrary: it deals with rewriting each relation in
functional terms, instead of simple reflection. The dynamic-contradictory (false) character of
natural being-there cant be reduced, reconciled, and recaptured in a meaning. But if the
observation-interpretation, then, is constrained to constantly intervene in this dynamic if it is
unable to com-prehend it from outside if it cant reduce it to a few, simple, stable equations
then it becomes a crucial, intrinsic and determinant element of this new vision of the physical
world. But what then becomes of the character of scientific forms of analysis and of prediction?
It is no longer the ordo idearum that immediately reflects the substance of natural processes

but has also ceased to be able to found on a linear relation of subject-object, positive and given
observation, as far as this relation becomes purified of every essentialist contamination. We
have to do with the contradictory-dynamic being-there not with the being already reduced to
the measure of subjectivity and with a subject that participates inherently. The problem is: how
does it participate, why, to what ends? And the forms of this participation it has, collapsing
every substantialist illusion, as well as every simple elementary relation of signification
(meaning), disenchanted in relation to the object, what character does it assume? In what
measure and in what way are they still effective? Within what parameters will this effectuality be
measured now? Radical nihilism can finally arrive at this disenchantment but cant confront
nor resolve these questions. Nietzsche too intuited them and only put them: this constitutes the
fated conclusion of his work and forms the plot of the same Wittgensteinian tragedy.
The critical analysis there confirms that necessity is an interpretation that truth is not a
substance of things. But on this point the problem is not resolved, rather: it is reformulated: what
value should be assigned to logical judgment, to scientific research? The fundamental experience
is that the character of the world in becoming would not be formulable. The fictional world of
logic should intervene as a power that orders, simplifies, falsifies, artificially separates. We
call truth precisely the order that derives from such a process of falsification. We call truth the
process that rends a world finally formulable. Becoming as such and knowledge logically
founded on the presupposition of being are mutually exclusive. Authentic knowledge, then, starts
from the awareness of being something other than becoming. Knowledge is difference ab
origine. Precisely this difference determines (for us) value: making knowable for us, ordered in a
way so that we can see it. Truth transforms into something to be created and that names a
process, rather than a will of subjugation, which in itself has no end (goal): it introduces the
truth, as a processus in infinitum, a active determination, not a taking hold in consciousness of
something that is in itself set and determined. The subject, therefore, participates in beingthere as an Other, as him whose scope consists in rendering becoming formulable through a
process (and not an a priori intuition!) of organizing sensible materials, that is together with a
process of falsification. But this process, aimed at the constitution of an illusion of being, is not
finished does not deal with a finite chain of deductions. It is pure process. The otherness of
knowledge and becoming is not reconcilable. The tension between the two terms the force that
provokes this process of truth is in-finite. For this reason, the refoundation of classical
mechanics in the terms of a theory of signification is impossible. Nietzsche extraordinary insight
consists in putting the necessity of the cognitive process at the basis of a fundamental difference,
and in obtaining from it the infinite-conjectural character of scientific research the concept of
truth as the set observation-falsification. But why this process, and what value does it hold? How
to measure effectuality?
The dominion over matter couldnt arise otherwise. Truth is a form of organizing sensible matter
such as to allow use. We said that our active determination is coupled to the truth, when
becoming, if it is defined in a series of relations that here permit being seen, knows and predicts
movements. The truth is the function of this need of ours. We define points of view, parameters,
models that here allow the maximum extension of this process of reduction of becoming to a
form of being. Life would be unthinkable otherwise. The world is not logical. But the process
of making logical, rationalizing, systematizing gives us the world of our need, of our life.
Logic doesnt discover the logicality of the world but defines the tools and the ways of our

taking possession (appropriation) of the world. Never to the absolute. Never definitive
rationalization, of the kind promised by an a priori form. But the relative-functional
systematization-logicization of this need, of this life. Of this will to power. Here the Wille zu
Macht reveals the proper ground: its being-opposed to any and all decadence. The Nietzschean
Will zur Macht not only has nothing of vitalist irrationalism not only doesnt intend to
recuperate on the merely subjective level the crisis of scientific foundations but places itself
as the interpretation and resolution of this crisis. It is not understandable that on its basis it
shares radically problems and perspectives. It reveals the value of logico-scientific judgements.
About both its demystification and foundation. Demystification, to the extent that it isnt
deduced by any objective necessity-truth. Foundation, because it establishes necessity, while in
the interior of a context which is epistemologically radically transformed: as the vital necessity
of com-prehension, systematization, logicalization of the world, for power over it. True
systematization is that which permits the maximum extension of this dominion the maximum
extension, most comprehensive and most economic. But however extensive it is, it will never be
the synthesis of becoming it will always be false if considered from an in-finite
perspective. But it doesnt end up in any decadent nihilism; to the contrary: it entails the
foundation of the character of scientific research in its in-finite and conjectural aspect the
element of falsification as inherent to every proposition in its problematic, conflictual character
its irreducibility to the perspective of the observation-signification specular relation.
Conceiving logic as the revelation of the structure of true being is the gist of the metaphysical
illusion. But not because logic doesnt apprehend and doesnt comprehend or is ineffectual.
Logic coming at the head of its illusions concerning the Real, is the logic that furnishes criteria
and means to create the real, the concept of reality for us. The logical principle contains an
imperative toward the rationalization of the world. The problem and the process of
rationalization not the definition of a Ratio. But such an imperative (comprehending, or better
yet rendering for us formulable, calculable, according to a schema of being posited by us, the
real world) is determined by precise needs that are expressed in a determined will to power.
Theres no rationalization without this will. The world appears logical because we have first
logicized it.
The subject apparently finds itself in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, it rediscovers one
of its active, creative, functions, previously unthinkable on the other hand, however, it loses
any perspectival position, any gnoseological privilege. It places the system in its
contradictory dynamic but, simultaneously, doesnt make it at all more distinguishable/distinct.
The collapse of the faith in the constitution (nature) of things in themselves entails that things
would not give themselves without the interpretation of the subject. Conversely, there would be
no pure form of interpretation in some formulable world, if not by relation to the interpreted
thing whats more: if the thing doesnt give itself. Whence the function as process,
characteristic of Will zur Macht, of the rationalization of the world. The Wille zur Macht is
therefore the opposite of every subjectivism, of each exaltation of the late-romantic genial
creativity. This indicates the conflictual-processual relation between interpretation and the
state of things: just as interpretation, as such, transforms and doesnt simply reflect this state
so it entails the self-extension of interpretation as the property of the same analyzed system as
this entwine-ment results in, and on which it bases itself, the possibility of an effectual
logicization of the world. If logic, finally, were only the a priori form, it wouldnt be applicable

to it (to the world). If, conversely, logic were only a utopian illusion, the Substance of
becoming, it wouldnt be attainable. Logic, truth is the process that we have placed as the
power over the world. But placing such process, the subject has lost every auratic autonomy, it
has become a part, appropriated/ a property. This is precisely the tragedy of the subject. To
effectively be able to, it doesnt just need to disenchant itself of its a priori forms, of the truth
and goodness of the world, of the schematism between forms and world, of its own capacity to
make the world a fully determined meaning but must also liquidate the extreme Value, that
which the most radical nihilism also had conserved, rather: of what it was most passionate about,
the autonomy of subjectivity, the Schopenhauerian inner life. Power is integrated in the system.
The Wille zur Macht is first of all the logical critique of Freiheit.
The untimeliness of these considerations is measurable if we relate it to the horseback debate if
the century between Machism and social-democracy. But even more evident is the Nietzchean
radicality when we try to respond to following question: what character assumes the subjective
forms of interpretation in this radically transformed epistemological context, one that is
explicative and allows effectuality? The dominion of logic is that of the functional relations
that it gives between subject and object within the process of rationalization. The forms in which
this dominion expresses itself dont correspond to any thing in itself that doesnt exist,
because it is not formulable. It has a strictly conventional value. This doesnt ever exclude actual
reality or objectivity. Rather, these conventions are necessary results for the ability of
formulating a world. And their objectivity and actual reality is therefore concretely calculable
on the basis of their usability, intended in the broadest sense. I know that its important that the
world which results is not at all the true-essential world, but will be the organization of our
representations that guarantees the maximum extension of power of logical forms. Its not a
matter of an exhaustion of the logical form, as though it would come to reduce by definition
the truth to a convention, to the useful. The discourse is exactly the reverse: the misery of
the pure logical is overcome by its act as process of in-finite logicization. The pure logical form
is misery because void, because not schematizable, not transcendentally deducible as the
ground of experience. This form, instead, conventional, useful, resolves itself in experience
places itself in dominion and without falling radically onto any nave speculation of simple
data/gives, of simplex sigillum veri. The trust in reason and its categories, in dialectics, that it is
the justice (judgment) of values of logic, only demonstrates their usefulness, proves in
experience, for life, not their truth. The measuring stick for evaluating these categories can
only be relative to the questions that are posed, to the extension reached by the process of
rationalization. But will nevertheless not be less objective. Not the degree of nearness to an
illusory substance, but the degree of integration with which the process of rationalization
operates decides the value and the power of logical form.
If the discourse on the process of rationalization promises the Carnapian logical structure, then
its conventional-functional character, and relativity, which distinguishes the tools of such a
process, will differ profoundly (from Carnap), and seemingly postpone that crisis of the theory of
meaning lived by Wittgenstein, by contrast to the developments of Weiner Kreis. With
Nietzsche, negative thought reaches for the first time at intending the field of its own power.
Nihilism comprehends the forms of representation as the only reality. Nietzsche began analyzing
the tragedy of this deduction. This signals the moment of passage from aesthetic tragedy to
tragic Aufklarung. But this vision constitutes only the basis of the problem: the radical difference

that nihilism places between representation and thing serves to define the inexistence of a world
of truth in itself, to conceive the conventionality of the logical form, to establish on such a
structure actual reality and judge it from a perspective of value: namely, calculate what its
worth: in general, each thing values whats paid for it. What radically differentiates this
formulation from Machian economicism? The fact that the utility and economy of the form are
not at all measurable on the basis of their determinist-finite coherence as sensible given. Its
utility and its economy depend on the capacity of the forms of being determinant in the process
of rationalization this if measured in an in-finite perspective. Therefore it has in itself, as an
inherent element, the possibility of falsification. Therefore, I must presuppose (make a
presupposition/conjecture). Therefore, I must act in probabilistic terms. To this structure it has
corresponds a vision completely different from reality: never in itself reducible to a fixed and
determined thing. The epistemological perspective therefore reflects on its inside a radical
difference between the forms that necessarily presuppose the conceptual work of subjectivity and
becoming, as life, as organism. In sum, the Nietzschean research excludes this possibility of
conciliation and of synthesis, and therefore of the positive re-founding of classical physics,
which constitutes Machs objective. But from this radical difference he makes the ground for a
new theory. In Nietzsche negative thought has traversed the entire space of nihilism and has
interpreted to the end the annunciation: the pure forms spill over into positive power, the
collapse of a priori is rationalization, asceticism is, ultimately, the definition of the logical
structure of the world over the radical difference and mere conventionality, the value of logical
form founds itself, the value which renders reality formulable. And in these cases: without any
conciliation. Harmonization-synthesis would be a fall into the absolute impotence of nihilism.
Power is not synthesis if it were synthesis, there would be no need for a power. Nor would the
form be more conventional: it would express reality, it would exhaust itself. There exists an infinite conflict as there is becoming: an eternal return. The process of logicization, as Wille
zur Macht, is in-finite precisely because the in-finite is such a conflict. If it yields a synthesis
there would be nothing more to logicize, to com-prehend, to dominate. And believing that the
process of rationalization necessarily tends towards Synthesis, is a return to Utopia a fishing
out Kantian theology. The logical form, yet again, is not a having-being, but a desiring-power.
The relationship between Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer has often been studied, but never
perhaps that between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Nevertheless, in the light of what has been
said, it seems that this latter is the more decisive. Theres a distinctive blend of Schopenhauerian
and Nietzschean perspectives already in the pages of the Tractatus. But these influences are
lauded step by step in their ideological aspects, so as to be presented, in the works after the crisis,
in terms much more strictly logico-formal. Here, the Nietzsche of the last fragments reappears
with aggression. Wittgenstein composes the fragments of the Observations on the Foundations
of Mathematics between 37 and 44, but the fundamental problematic nucleus of his thoughts
date from the end of the twenties, where in rediscovering the problem of the foundation of
mathematics, he has profound doubts as to the developments of the Tractatus, doubts raised by
Weiner Kreis. The Bemerkungen on mathematics were therefore inseparable from the
Philosophical Investigations where we find more explicit the exigency of a settling of accounts
with the Tractatus and the whole philosophical environment in which the determinant element of
this work was found.

2. Wittgenstein: Mathematical Thought and Game

Wittgenstein develops Freges ideal logical language in an anti-platonic direction already in
the Journals of 14-16, with the so-called pictographic theory of language, from the homology
between proposition and reality. For Frege, truth and non-truth had objective value, for
Wittgenstein they became, however, conditions of relation, characters of the interconnected
relation between the form of propositions and the structure of the real. The meaning of language
is not determinable on the basis of the logical form of the proposition, of the sense of the
combination of its logical constants: it doesnt say anything about reality. There is no objective
structure of thought, no original location of the sense of each language. An a priori logical form
of individual contents is not formulable. This nihilistic critique of Frege develops, in the
Tractatus, in the doctrine of meaning.
Here Wittgenstein didnt intend the formalism of logic in the Nietzschean sense: he doesnt
know to make emerge the fundamental misery of the pure logical form, the form
disenchanted by every illusion of transcendentality, the new forms of the power of judgement,
the new comprehension of the relation subject-object. Ontologically first, in the Tractatus, are
simple objects. Language [linguaggio] doesnt express an ideal language [lingua] behind it,
and which would constitute precisely the object of logical research the eternal stone on
which, for Frege, our thought edifies itself. Language only shows [mostra] the form of reality, its
propositions being true or false only insofar as they are images of reality. It can be affirmed that
in the discussions of around Weiner Kreis, especially around Schlick and Carnap, the reading of
the Tractatus crashed on the general form that the function of truth takes on, on the basis that
each proposition is the result of reiterating the application of a single logical operation to
elementary propositions (those which maintain the existence of an atomic fact). This function of
truth will tend to become, in the elaborations and re-elaborations of the Weiner Kreis, a true and
proper Weltanschauung, in which the problematic of the Tractatus both under the profile of the
relation between logical propositions and elementary propositions, and from a general
philosophico-cultural a point of view will be posited simply more violently in parentheses.
The crisis of formulation in the Tractatus (for many aspects implicit, as we can see, in the same
Tractatus) concerns the limits of the relation to meaning, and is made conventionally traced back
to the influence exercised by Brouwer on Wittgenstein. From Brouwers point of view (language
doesnt represent, but is the result of a purely mental operation) the reduction produced in the
Tractatus, the reduction of every language to a semantic relation, cant appear as the refounding
of Freges ideal logical language. Exactly like the a priori logical form of Freges language, the
universality of the Wittgensteinian semantic relation is not formulable. In fact, there exists
solely a plurality of languages, functionally grounded, irreducible to a unity both for logic as for
ontology. Therefore, the unity of mathematics is a myth. Moreover, it consists in a set of
operations, a set whose conventionality excludes the meta-physical existence of a common
essence (of the set?). The linguistic game, the Wittgenstein of Bemerkungen would say, not
only doesnt express essences (language doesnt say the proper logical form), but cant even be
show them (mostrarle). Neither is the multiplicity of propositions reducible, according to the
rules of the function of truth, to a purely semantic relation.

This critique doesnt concern specific forms of foundation but the concept of foundation in
itself. Mathematics doesnt presuppose a system of logic: this would lead us to believe that
the edifice of such a science elevates itself on some set of absolute and eternal truth, when in fact
arithmetic is simply a calculation which exclusively comes from several conventions, and like
the solar system is neither suspended nor founded on anything. This critique of the concept of
foundation will be resumed by Wittgenstein in the Bemerkungen and generalized, afterwards,
philosophisch, in the Observations on the foundation of mathematics. But this had to represent to
Wittgenstein, under a quite general light, the radical thesis surrounding the crisis of foundations
that the Tractatus had removed from the ontological character of the semantic relation. Felix
Klein, bringing to a head the debate on the intuition which founded classical axiomatics, had
already demonstrated the illusiveness of the affirmations on the truth of a spatial-temporal
system before anyone else. The criterion of the clear and distinct, the appear to inner intuition,
the essential foundation of mathematical logic, left the field, henceforth, to a science of pure
relations, whose meaning resides in the systematic relations of its elements on the basis of
conventional rules.
Neither could the Nietzschean critique of simplex sigillum be included in another culturalscientific context. It is clear that, according to these concessions, a certain geometry cant be,
in principle, except a definite system of order and relation, whose character is determined by the
rules of the operations, and not by the absolute nature of the forms on which these rules are
executed. Already this formulation goes beyond the direct critique of the specific foundations of
classical axiomatics. The crisis of intuition is here the crisi of the a priori, of the
transcendentality of the forms operating in scientific language. The epistemological problem
transforms itself from the problem of foundations to the problem of the inner coherence of the
definition of game, of its rules, of its functionality and its use.
And yet, as weve already said concerning Nietzsches purpose, this outcome excludes any
nominalistic arbitrariness. Here its a matter of rational propositions, whose formalism holds
measurable values, connected to a real needs-uses. The process of the logicization of the world is
the opposite of a loss of interest for things, and is rather the expression of a maximal
interest: Wille zur Macht. This is the fundamental ideological perspective that substantiates the
thesis on the conventionality of logical forms. When Poincare affirms that the geometrical
axioms are neither a priori synthetic judgements, nor experimental facts, but rather conventions,
in addition to nullifying the concept of truth as substance, however understood, in addition to
demonstrating the informulability of the Kantian apriorism, it positively places the
epistemological problem of internal coherence as functional to the logical construction of a demetaphysicized world, made of a plurality of relations, connections, languages, uses, but not
thereby less binding and objective, less, Nietzsche would say, consigned.
There are no universal syntheses in relation to Sprachliches. There is no Ideen-Model of
Sprachliches. The logical form is a Sign. But this Sign orders, structures, places the rules, makes
formulablity possible. This Sign places into action demonstrable dimensions it rationalizes.
Complete formalization occurs only when the pure Form disenchants itself. This turnover of
the negative into the process of rationalization, into the positivity of convention, was initiated
by Nietzsche. But it is an intuition that appears in the entire contemporary philosophy of the
mathematical game. It is a matter of the progressive subtraction of signs from every intuitive

meaning, and, in parallel, of the distinction between the demonstration of their internal
coherence, and the description of their contents. Logical study addresses itself solely to a
certain system of objects (which will be the symbols used) that we submit to certain rules. The
property that attributes itself to these signs, in this context, have nothing of the intuitive in them
they dont require any meaning. The demonstration that: we operate with these signs in order
to establish the coherence of certain of their connections and relations, is not a description of
content. Hilberts theory demonstrates that classical mathematics too involves a process
concluded in itself that operates in conformity to fixed rules known by all mathematicians and
that substantially consists in the gradual construction of certain combinations of primitive
symbols that are considered precise or proved. In other words, we must consider classical
mathematics as a combinatory game played with primitive symbols and we must determine, in a
finished-combinatory world, to which combinations of primitive symbols are brought the
methods of construction, namely: the demonstrations. This is the sound, ultimately, of the
program of a complete formalization of mathematical logic. For Hilbert this is essentially the
problem of a combinatory-finished demonstration of non-contradiction. Non-contradiction in the
formal sense, as warned by Godel: conceived as a purely combinatory property of certain
systems of signs and the rules of the game that apply to them.
Hilbert therefore puts forth the problem of a complete formalization of mathematical logic
through a combinatory-finitist demonstration of non-contradictoriness. The Hilbertian clarity of
the formal character of the demonstration and of the truth that it constructs, as well as its
definitive attack on the intuistic appeal to the comprehension of non-contradictoriness in rules
and the combinations that they give life to, doesnt apply, however, to formalism itself. Real
disenchantment of the relations form-intuition, sign-meaning [signo-significato],
demonstration-truth, is not given if without the critique of the limits of formalism itself, if, that
is, formalism doesnt recognize itself as process and its demonstrations dont abandon the
illusion of an absolute completion. From this point of view, the Hilberian program is still full of
having-being. Only its theological office puts forth undecidable problems. If a formal system is
said to be complete when each expressible proposition, along with its symbols, is formally
decidable from its axioms, when it has a finite deductive chain, that develops itself according
to the rules of logical calculation, which begins with certain axioms and ends with proposition A
or with proposition non-A, what will be demonstrated by Godel is that there is no system with
a finite number of axioms that is simultaneously complete, even if only regarding arithmetic
propositions. From this incompleteness, or better yet: incompletability of the theory of natural
numbers (the impossibility of constructing a set of axioms for the theory of numbers that enjoys
the completion required by Hilbert), Godel demonstrates that all formal systems of mathematics
contain undecidable arithmetic propositions, and that the affirmation of non-contradiction
belongs only to the undecidable propositions of one of these systems. A demonstration of noncontradiction cant be included in a finitist demonstration, like that searched after by Hilbertian
formalisms, but can come conducted only through inferences, themselves in turn non
formulizable within the rules of the game that define such a system. A system is not capable of
formalizing its means, allowing for the demonstration of its own non-contradiction. The
dogmatism of the Hilbertian formalist program has evaded the enormous infinite task to which
the intuition is exposed at the moment of wanting to justify classical mathematics. Certainly, this
doesnt mean that this program doesnt make sense, only that it doesnt critique its own limits,
and thus equivocates between one justification of classical mathematics and the precise concept

of justification as demonstration of the formal impossibility of contradiction within a system.

The demonstration is a process, one that cannot put ahead of itself the necessary affirmations of
non-contradiction. Its truth is not of an in-tuitive, finitist character. This is implicit in the
syntactical rules that permit, in particular, to distinguish, starting only from the exterior form of
the expressions, among the expressions themselves those which are propositions. These rules
are formal, that is, they refer exclusively to the exterior forms of the proposition to which they
apply.
The problem consists precisely in verifying the relation between the set of demonstrable
propositions and that of true propositions: if, namely, the formal demonstration is effectively an
adequate process for acquisitioning the truth if the Hilbertian program is thus achievable.
Godels theory on the incompleteness of arithmetic responds precisely negatively to this
problem: there are some propositions formulated truthfully in the language of arithmetic which
cannot be demonstrated starting from axioms and the rules of inference accepted in arithmetic.
The concepts of formal demonstration can be explained in terms of simple relations. There exists
the possibility of a precise translation of the general definition of demonstration in the operations
of the language-object of arithmetic. But an analogous translation is not possible for the
definitions of truth. The belief that formal demonstration can constitute an adequate tool for
establishing the truth of all the mathematical enunciations has proven to be unfounded. But it is
a conclusion now consciously opposed to the previous, nihilistic one. Precisely the difference
posited here theoretically between demonstration and truth expresses the maximal development
of the process of formalization: to the point where it is understood within its own limits. On the
other hand, the process of formalization, as the critique of aprioristic formulation (which is
nothing, at the bottom, if not a first attempt at verifying the coincidence between demonstrable
propositions and true propositions), completely disenchants the concept of truth. Not that it,
because of this, ceases to have a precise meaning. Losing every ontological dimension and every
pretense of translatability, the true proposition functions as the ideal limit that can no longer be
reached but that tries to gradually approximate through successive enlargements of the sets of
demonstrable propositions. Its absurd to see in this a sort of Kantian nostalgia. This proposition
intends to say that precisely the indemonstability, starting from axioms and those rules of
inference accepted in arithmetic, of true propositions make of the demonstration a process, an
operation of progressive extension of theory, an enrichment of the formal rules. The
demonstration is, in sum, positively, the rationalization-logicization of the world. And this
conclusion would be impossible without the negative solution of the essential content of the
formalistic having-being: the want to deduce from certain axioms and on the basis of formal
rules the non formal truth, the non-contradiction of the system. What remains is the
demonstration, its process, its formal rules: its being-convention. But this, exactly for this reason,
functions: extends a dominion, rends formulable any relation a world. Without radical
formalization (and by radical is meant: a formalization of the limits of formalism) there is no
power only being-having. Without radical formalization, theres no rationalization (which can
only ground itself on the differences that we have analyzed), only illusory conciliations, a priori
and indemonstrable, ineffectual syntheses the enchantment of meaning. It is precisely this
context in which one must also locate Wittgensteins work on mathematics. Its exceptionality is
above all of a historical character: it concentrates in itself the interpretative directions that we
have been treading. The Observations on the foundations of mathematics readdress not only the
whole formulation of the Tractatus (and the consequences that neo-positivism didnt treat), but

also the philosophy that appeared therein: the trajectory of negative thought from
Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, the Ubergang, decisive for all the developments that the
contemporary crisis of foundations, between the nihilistic collapse of the a priori and the new
value that its abandonment expressed between the misery of the empty form and the process
of demonstration-rationalization between the bad in-finity of the imperative and the power of
the Sign, in which the in-finite is the progressive and demonstrable generalization of its own
dominion, progressive and, like Wittgenstein says, inexorable.
In what consists, then, the peculiar inexorability of mathematics? This cant be derived from
the fact that its demonstrations are exhaustive insights into the truth. It is not the truth that
grounds the inexorability and necessity of the calculation, of combinations, of mathematical
deductions. The entire event of the crisis of foundations has demonstrated the impossibility or
indecidability of similar solutions. Nevertheless, mathematical logic is inexorable it is not a
complex of psychologically limited affirmations, nor a field of merely relative propositions.
Rather, nothing appears as inexorable as the law which derives from the complex of the
foundations of the logico-mathematical game, a game which doesnt deduce any truth,
neither ontological, nor regarding abstract laws of thought. The image that Wittgenstein adopts is
that of inexorable judgment. But the inexorability of the law (the law always reaches the culprit)
is here taken to the extreme, to paradox. It is implicit, in fact, in the juridical concept of law that
the law transgresses. Moreover, this same requirement of the juridical concept of law renders
necessary the discovering of another transgression: that the law makes a provision for the
possibility of grace, being tolerant in certain cases. Logico-mathematical inexorability is of a
different type: as it were, it represents a law in which there are no conceivable cases of
transgression or of tolerance. The dictum the law always reached the culprit is here in full
effect. The paradoxical, the disconcerting, rests in the fact that the maximal inexorability is held
by a signic complex, which doesnt refer to any law of nature or law of thought, nor
promises any adequatio mentis et rei. Inexorable is a judge whose authority seems to consist in a
pure system of cominations-relations. Who hasnt read the 118 observation of the first part of
the Wittgensteinian Foundations cant make heads or tails of Kafka and vice versa.
-But, then, can this peculiar inexorability be deduced in merely pragmatic terms? Does truth
consist simply in being-used or being-useful? No, I mean to say only that from the natural
succession of numbers as well as from our language one cant say what is true, but only what
is useful, and, first of all, what is used. The truth is that the count in a certain way, the
combination according to certain rules, etc., yields good results. The truth consists in the
liquidation of the sui generis problem of truth. And it is precisely this liquidation-to-makeinexorable that counts, that combines: in sum, these rules. They no longer appeal to external
justification. It is their internal coherence that grounds them. Their truth means their having
been employed and having yielded good results. The problem becomes those conditions by
which these results are obtainable. Utility is possible thanks to precise technics. Logicmathematics is a set of technics that can be employed daily, in various operations. These are
the conditions of operation. No other rationalization is thinkable. Mathematics doesnt reduce
(things) to spectral essences but renders (them) formulable, thanks to precise technics of
calculation and combination. These technics, which can be applied, have dynamics as the
process that determines and by which they are determined, in short: they participate in the

dynamics of the system in which they are an integral part. With infinite exercise, with ruthless
accuracy we formulate these technics and achieve this use: which is necessary for operation.
Operation grounds itself on the inexorable, ruthless logicization of the world.
The inexorable accuracy with which we have to operate through logico-mathematical technics
doesnt only exclude every psychological reduction, but also every pragmatic interpretation. We
are inexorable in the application of these laws, because they furnish the measure of our inter-est.
Technology and the use it implies is not achieved privately but only in the process of
rationalization, in the common operation. Through these laws we measure: and part of
measuring is that everything has the same criterion of measure. This applies at least to univocal
rules, which dont admit alternatives and without which any possibility of inter-est would fall
apart. But the measure, the yardstick, to whose rules, we know, no absolute truth corresponds,
are profoundly conventional. It is nonsensical to interrogate them as to their ground, as to the
origin of their authority: it is an error. Rules, technics, use: all of them conventional. But,
precisely because conventional: ruthless and inexorable. Where we still speak of essences and
imagine in still too metaphysical terms the foundations of mathematical logic, we have to learn
to see conventions. But it would be the height of error to believe that we have thus abandoned
the profundity of essence. Almost quoting Nietzsche, Wittgenstein affirms: to the profundity of
essence corresponds the profound need of convention. Who speaks of essence does nothing but
ascertain a convention. Ascertain, namely: because part of the essence of convention is that
everything plays by determined rules, that everything plays the same game. Therefore,
convention is a fact, a determined inter-est: the rules, the technics, the uses that render
formulable a world and ground its process of rationalization. Over the desperate discovery of the
formalism of convention, from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, the logical structure of the world
raises itself, a system of perfect integration.
This direction of Wittgensteins research is even more explicit in the last parts of The
Foundations, dating back to the period 41-44. Mathematics appears as writing there. Its logic is
unthinkable outside a philosophy of the game. Its inexorability is exactly the inexorability of
the rules of the game not derived through an external judgment, not deductively dependent
on any essence. Its demonstrations dont have a semantic value. Its truth isnt demonstrated
by appealing to the meaning of its signs, or to an extra-mathematical application. We must
heal from the need to search after meanings outside the rules of combination and the relation
of signs. Positively put: these rules order and render comprehensible-communicable these rules
are used and give good results these rules determine a common game. This would not be
possible if their validity depended on the meaning that each (person) would attribute to them or
on essential foundations that each (person) believes is theirs. The surface of the sign is here the
maximal profundity because this permits the conventionality of the rules of the game and
therefore their power. This conventionality is certainly not absolute, determined a priori, like the
foundations that it wants to liquidate. Convention is a yardstick that outlasts the results that it
obtains and, therefore, the type of questions that the process of rationalization raises for it as
well. Even 500 years ago there could have been a philosophy of mathematics; a philosophy of
what mathematics was at that point in time.
--

This philosophy of the game is the problem on which The Foundations and the Philosophical
Investigations converge. In The Foundations a game was examined, which possessed the
characters we have examined. What still remains vague is the problem of the essence of the
game in general. It can seem that this essence was really nameable in contrast to the entire
logical formulation from which the same concept of game derives. Begun in 41, together with
the final part of The Foundations, the Philosophical Investigations immediately warn that the
interrogating the essence of games would lead to irresolvable contradictions. If the games had a
common Idea, they could not longer be called games: this would be a new reduction to
essence, it would represent the deductions-demonstrations of the absolute truth. The correct
operation is here simply to see the traits common to various games. Its discovered, then, that
games form a family: you see only similarities, kinships, affinities. This fundamental
discovery will be applied to different levels.
Above all, with regard to the problem of meaning. The meaning of a word cant be the object
that it designates. The function of the word is as diverse as the functions of the objects that
should be designated. Already the first part of The Foundations comes to explicitly abandon
the positivist metaphysics of the Tractatus. The rules of the logical game are not true due to
their correspondences to reality. A word doesnt mean (signify) because it designates this. When
we have said that each word designates something we havent said anything at all. The logical
inexorability is grounded on the fact of having been employed-played by everything and of
having yielded good results. Sure, the meaning of a world is not the object that it would
designate, but it is its use in language. Quoting Frege: only in the context of the proposition
does a word have meaning. No meaning has a name if not in the linguistic game. And just as
the ruthless rules of logic are functional to an operation that develops into a inter-est, so the
word linguistic game is destined to make evident the fact that speaking a language is part of an
activity, or of a form of life. It is as internal to this process that the different games are not
reducible to a common essence, definiable a priori. The idea that the meaning of the word is the
this that it designates, renders instead necessary the positing of an essence of the linguistic game,
grounded on the correspondence word-meaning-state of facts, and hence on a universal synthesis
of the linguistic form, a general Form for any proposition. The quest for this correspondence is
replaced by the analysis of linguistic games in their positive kinship. Perfectly coherent with this
formulation is the fact that the word has families of meaning.
The disenchantment, the resulting Entseelung of the Logic, is total. The Logic appeared
sublime as an investigation on the essence of things. However, says Nietzsche, it sublimated,
and thereby rendered impotent its own form. But the determination of a logical form that has the
weight of law (namely, that positively legislates, and doesnt pretend to gather Laws in the given)
is an unthinkable process without this phase of asceticism. It is in this that the logical form
constructs its own formalism and applied it to its own limits. The desperation over the fact that it
is not designated, that it doesnt have aprioristically determinable meanings, spills over into
its being-game, into its conventionality, into the technics that express it and apply it. It is no
longer a matter of discovering what stands behind, of an aletheia, nor of deluding oneself with
a correspondence between essence of the proposition and state of fact; but, rather, of the
analysis of our multiple forms of expression, of the family of our languages. This work of
demonstration, of Aufklarung, is truly in-finite in the sense that Tarski almost spoke of the true
proposition commented by Godel.

Thought is wrapped by an areola. This aura is precisely what must be destroyed. The
simplicity, the perfection, the authority of this order must be criticized. We delude
ourselves that what is peculiar, profound, essential for us, in our investigation, resides in the fact
that it tends to affirm the incomparable essence of language. Hence we constantly believe in
superior orders between superior concepts. But, actually, if the words order, language,
world, etc., have a meaning, it must be included in a linguistic game, and the game is such
because it applies, it has an employment, it serves to make formulable. Instead of striving to
reach an idea, we must determine the multiplicity of the games and of languages, their respective
rules, and their affinity and play them. Instead of moving within the sublime of essential
propositions, we must learn to walk on foot. The exclamation of aphorism 107 seems lifted
straight from Zarathustra (which it probably was): We want to walk on foot; therefore we need
friction. Lets return to a rough terrain!
The concept of game indicates here, paradoxically, just such a terrain. It frees us from the
blunder of the ideal: that the ideal should find itself in reality. It clearly indicates that language
is not the formal unity that we believed it to be, that it is not deducible on the basis of universal
synthesis or general forms that would express the truth in relation to the world but it just as
clearly says its validity, its being grounded on rules, technics, and common measures.
Philosophy is the progressive Aufklarung of the forms of the enchantment of language; this
is called to constantly enlarge the demonstrations that language is a family of constructs more or
less related to one another (and, namely, resolved or eliminated). Profundity is a
misunderstanding. What is hidden is not of interest. This is the meaning of the return to the
everyday, certainly not any relativistic fall out, but once again, on the contrary, the definition
of the operative space of games in their inexorable actual reality. The everyday is the rough
terrain on which the power of the logical form exercises itself as the process of rationalization,
the terrain on which it walks.
We thus describe the actual reality [effectualita] of these diverse games. We put everything in
front we neither explain nor deduce anything we dont posses, that is, either the a priori
forms of interpretation, or the axioms by which to deduce true propositions. But this work of
clarification multiple in its forms as are its games of illumination, its languages of healing
has a precise function, is characterized by technics satisfying determinate uses. In general, we
want to place order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order for a determinate goal; one
of many possible orders; not the order. Even the analysis on the conventionality of
mathematical logic is not concluded differently: it orders, and an order that is justified on the
basis of its results. Even that logic was an Order. But this conclusion can be interpreted in the
relativistic sense only by he who still holds as a yardstick the a priori forms of experience,
instead of calculating this experience. Actually, the clarity that reaches through this ordering
is certainly complete. We know, finally, which are the problems, where to find them. The
problem of an absolute certainty or clarity no longer exists, it has disappeared: and this is
precisely complete clarity. The therapy of following in this operation of Aufklarung what
develops on different levels, in different games, responds to the needs of coherence, clarity,
internal functionality to needs of use and practicality and of communication. Philosophy is
but the different therapies aimed at this purpose. The conventionality of the game serves to order
neither by deducing nor explaining but by describing. This conventionality, precisely because

it functions, is binding. Philosophy (capital P) falls outside of this. Conventionality is order an

order it makes clear it determines a comprehensibility it makes comprehensible a language,
a game healed, with this, of the evocations of the idea, of profundity. A moment of
suspension is necessary here: to listen once more to Webern. Consider the proposition as a tool,
and its sense as its employment!
The Entseelung of the Logic already initiated with the Tractatus is apparently concluded here. In
the Tractatus the critique of the logical form of Frege was defined, but on the basis of a theory
of the proposition as a description of facts. By contrast, the linguistic game destroys the idea of a
general form of the proposition, but does so in characteristic way: opposed to any relativism. In
this sense, it is essential to relate what Wittgenstein traces between the linguistic game and the
formal-mathematical game. He defines the game as inexorable conventionality. And precisely
here arise new, decisive problems. Precisely in the formalism of the game, as Wittgenstein
defines it, appears the profound continuity with the formulation of the Tractatus. Abandoning the
pretense of a new ground in the absolute of language and of the utopia of the Form of every
linguistic game, the structure of the relation between the philosophical analysis of these games
and their effective yield remains for Wittgenstein profoundly problematic. This structure still
reflects the formulation of the Tractatus. Here the propositions appear as specular images of the
world, showing the form of reality. They didnt create or deduce anything. The essential Form of
each linguistic game, a notion still present in the Tractatus, consists precisely in such a relation
of speculation, expressed in the doctrine of meaning. The critique that Wittgenstein submits
this doctrine to does not affect the fundamental structure of the relation that sustains it. Critical
analysis continues to reflect speculatively: no longer the state of facts, but, precisely, the given
linguistic games. This trait presents itself in a throbbing way throughout the Investigations. The
appearance that it wants to reform language is absolutely false. It is not language that should
be reformed, but we who must learn to use it. The confusions we are dealing with arise, in a
sense, when language turns in a vacuum, not when it operates. You have to put the language to
work (make it operate) free from the undecidable issues of philosophy. The everyday
employment of language should not be cured; this is precisely what heals from the philosophical
utopia. And until today, philosophy has believed that everyday language was the
appearance to be excised. Instead, we take words, from their metaphysical employment, back
to their everyday employment. This game is employed as fundamental, irreducible. In this
sense, our task will not be to attempt to produce new experiences, but to attest what is given in
our time as known. The disenchantment of our reason, and thus of our language, means putting
back to work these linguistic forms, freeing them from each misunderstanding, recognizing the
correct location of the words in the game which gives them sense. And also: philosophy cant in
any way damage the effective use of language; it can, ultimately, only describe it. This last
affirmation is absolutely complementary with the structure of the relation logic-reality of the
Tractatus. But such a structure, coherent with the general principles of the Tractatus, is no longer
at this point. If we have abandoned the hypothesis of a logical Order of the proposition and taken
on as the task of analyzing the various useful therapies in different games, and the practical
functionality of such games our perspective becomes necessarily dynamic-processive, and the
concept of game is insertable only in a transformational structure. No game in itself can subsist,
a game to whom the analysis would need to reduce each of its misunderstandings. The analysis
can clarify the function of this game but implicit in its concept (or else it would express merely
a second order substance) is its dynamics and its transformative potentiality.

Ordering is for Wittgenstein returning to the everyday employment of language. But dont we
thus return to a specular relation between analysis-subject and form-object? The analysis returns
to a state of fact and to a simple relation to it. To order is already, rather, necessarily, to
transform. Even the mere adaptation to effective games entails transforming the overall structure
of use given by linguistic forms. Because in this structure it is necessary to comprehend even the
misunderstandings of the game. Even ideological misrepresentation (travesty) is part of the
game, insofar as its concept is not abstractly definable, like a game in itself, but only in relation
to the players. Even not yet knowing how to play it, then, is part of the game. And, therefore,
teaching how to play is still transforming the game, in its actual reality [effectualita].
But, better than most, the same transformation of the rules is part of the game. Its
conventionality, its functionality is not a priori but lives in the process of he who plays. If
ordering is already necessarily transforming, and if its really a matter of an order, one out of
many possible, then all the consequences of the system must be revolutionized: the game after
the operation of order cant be identical to the idea of starting the game its structure becomes
in transformation its rules, at this point, that we have can only express the structure and laws
of this dynamic, of this transformation.
Wittgensteins logico-formalist formulation doesnt allow for the drawing of such consequences
from the crisis of the doctrine of meaning. But it is indubitable that only this crisis makes them
thinkable. We can historically define the location of the Wittgenstein of The Foundations and of
the Philosophical Investigations by invoking the terms of the passage to quantum physics. In the
concept of linguistic game the presence of the subject is no yet determinate. The game appears
as an order, binding and objective relations-rapports-laws. But no system can be definite if it
doesnt theoretically serve the fact that the subjective action, that same simple observation,
transforms it. Concretely, in his analysis, Wittgenstein intends this result. Effectively, the
correctly played game, namely, the effective linguistic or mathematical game, is not effectually
given, if it hasnt put forth an order that we have ordered it liquidating the multiplicity of the
correct uses and the misrepresentations that mystify it. This game cant, therefore, in effect, be
understood except as the system subject-object perfectly integrated. But the inevitable
consequence of this formulation was the dynamization of the entire system: the impossibility of
defining a single correct game. The problem would have to move from the punctual analysis of
given games to the determination of their structure and laws of transformation. Structure and
laws that, given the presence of the subject as their intrinsic property, would have been only
statistically-probalistically determinable.
This subjectivity, as we know, has nothing of the transcendental structure of the Ego it is in no
way the Latin translation of substance. Its lack entails in Wittgenstein the necessity of
conserving a paradigmatic definition of game. Certainly, this is no more resolvable in a simple
confrontation with nature it is no longer decomposable in designated elementary propositions.
But it still doesnt appear intrinsically dynamic-transformable. Because the game is still allresponsive to the crisis. And the crisis can be understood solely as mystificationmisrepresentation of the game, which effectively corrects it. The crisis is therefore always
curable, when it is reduced to a simple conjectural element. There is a precise therapy for always
bringing back the normality of the game. It is explicitly said that it is not a matter of determining

new experiences. And yet, already ordering is a new experience. But its radical meaning is
immediately blocked namely, it doesnt come from operating here all the necessary deductions.
Ordering appears as a simple re-establishment. The response to the crisis is exactly the opposite
of the determination of new paradigms, of breaking the game normally played until then. The
classical neo-positivist nexus is, certainly, finite but, in its place, tries to establish a static
image, perfectly normal, of the linguistic game and the logico-mathematical game. But this
image is by now profoundly contradictory. If the game expresses precisely the complete
disenchantment of the Logic which searches after the essential, how is it possible that this is
normalized in an absolutely stable structure? How is it possible to intend its different use, its
crisis in determining contexts, simply as ideological mystification? And to respond while
reforming the original rules? The formalism of meaning passes into the concept of the game. But
this continuity of Wittgensteins thought is apparent. The continuity is also a break, the
insurgency of new problems that can no longer be included in the coherence of the
Wittgensteinian formalism of game. Here the crisis is a rupture, a leap. And insofar as his
thought shows, Wittgenstein remains incommensurable regarding the normal philosophy of
the Weiner Kreis.
The Schlickian Program of 29 is emblematic of this difference. The wissenschafliche
Weltauffassung spills over the rigorous limits of Wittgenstenian discourse in a new vision of
the world: the reduction to givens assumes the value of a new totality, of a new Philosophia
Perennis, opposed to the ethical sense of the Tractatus. Here philosophy was the clarification
of the sense of language and not the meta-language of scientific theories. Each of its
idealizations of Weltanschauung is thus radically negated. The Tractatus, the Wittgensteinian
spirit, becomes the style of the Wiener Kreis Program. Whoever had climbed the ladder of the
Tractatus couldnt conclude except by underscoring the bragging of the 29 propositions: the
refusal of metaphysics! As though this would be something new!
The reduction to immediately sensible-observable contents as the deduction of t he new
wissenschafliche Weltauffassung and the tool for the elimination of metaphysical problems
and assertions, constituted a repetitive program in regard to the Machian critique of classical
epistemology. Nothing, in such a program, contradicts the Machian finality of a positive refoundation, of a reform, of classical physics and nothing presents itself, on the contrary, as
organically coordinated to the most recent problematic over the crisis of foundations of the entire
structure of classical physics. Within this program, Einstein could live only with his face turned
toward Mach. Even Russell was employed in concordance with the fundamental Machian thesis
just like, at the bottom, that same Tractatus: it was not by happenstance that the profound
difference between Russells Introduction and Wittgensteins text didnt constitute a specific
object of discussion (neither did Wittgenstein, perhaps, raise the issue, being far from being able
to communicate their problems in the complex of the Weiner Kreis).
Enormous influential on the Machian character of the Program of 29 was without doubt Der
Logische Aufbau der Welt, published by Carnap in 28. Russellian and Wittgensteinian
influences are founded within the same model of Machian anti-metaphysical derivations, still
profoundly rooted in a utopian 19th century terrain of progressive and totalizing illuminations
of language. The same theory of constitution, which represents the safety pin of the work, is

founded on the Machist reduction of the concept to the characteristics of it that are given
immediately, das Gegebene. In Carnap this appears as the generalization of the Russellian
method of reducing all mathematical concepts to fundamental logical concepts. The validity of a
similar generalization its conditions is not absolutely addressed by Carnap. To this
proposition, he reworks the Wittgensteinian concept of the function of truth, splitting it from
the problematic complex of the Tractatus: the system, lead to the end, would show that and how
all the propositions regarding objects, which form the material of the various sciences, can be
transformed into propositions regarding immediate experiences having the same values of truth.
In other words, it would show that all the propositions could be verified or falsified by means of
immediate experience.
A similar formulation must inevitably, then, develop itself in the sense of the Hilbertian refoundation (in The Logical Syntax of Language), and not encounter the Godelian critique. It is
the general ideology of the Program of 29 to not abandon even the successive developments of
neo-positivism. Philosophy as synthesis of all the scientific languages itself informs the
Encyclopedia of Unified Science: the unification doesnt occur in problematico-functional terms,
but to the extent that it is based on the neo-positivist philosophia perennis, composed of the
formal theory of signs and of their combination and by criteria of verifiability discussed in Der
Logische Aufbau der Welt. But on this same terrain will also explode the crisis of the neopositivist formulation: the crisis already completely implicit in Poppers logic der Forschung,
but whose substantial origin is in the insurmountable difference between the develops of the
discourse of the Weiner Kreis and those over the crisis of the foundations and over new quantum
physics. This same interlacement demonstrates how it is physics (or mathematics) that is the
source of logical problems how such problems can be enunciated only after their validitysubsistence was placed physically and mathematically, and not as a priori forms of deduction of
scientific languages, nor of their unity.
But neither the central Carnapian thesis of 28 it is by principle possible to trace all concepts
back to the immediate given nor its successive development are traceable back to the
Wittgensteinian problematic of the Bemerkungen or of the Remarks on the foundations. The need
of factuality, as the original character of the difference scientific disciplines, the reference to
experience and the given, as the measure of the sense of each proposition, the seriousness of
neo-positivist Philosophy: it being not only Anschauung but the Auffasuun of the world all of
these are foreign to the concept of the game. In Carnap, each assertion can be verified solely by
calculating the convenience with empirical reality. The field of scientific research is rigidly
defined by this objective of objective-factual coherence. Already Neurath had thoroughly
criticized this formulation, placing as the sole criterion of verifiability that of the internal logical
coherence of the proposition. But the Neurathian program as well, the program on the
foundations of the logical character common to the scientific disciplines, and thus on their
translatability on the physicalist elementary language that it would characterize essentially
its reduction to the physic-psychic unity according to reasoning still absolutely Machian such a
program as well contrasts radically to the Wittgensteinian critique of meaning, and, above all, of
the universal synthesis of linguistic games. Neurath continues to operate that copula between
the logical course and the positivism of Machian derivation, a copula that Scholz takes to be the
fundamental logico-philosophical weakness of the Weiner Kreis. We find this same critique in
Weinbergs Introduction: the theory, according to which the meaning of all concepts would

derive from the empirical world, remains unproved if the existence of elementary propositions
cant be demonstrated, namely of the propositions in which its sense is univocally and
immediately determined from atomic facts. Because its elimination of metaphysic is grounded
on this unproved dogma nor provable logical positivism is not capable of entirely
eliminating metaphysics as one of its own methods.
But such a critique cant apply, in any way, to the Wittgenstein that we have analyzed. The
Wittgensteinian search originates precisely from the definitive crisis of the neo-positivist relation
of logic-reality. If logical verifiability is a fact of internal coherence, any decision in its
confrontations and in its dominion is empty. If the proposition designates something, then it
should demonstrates an original coherence between imagae and reality, demonstrating that
things are to one another in the same relation as the elements of the image (Tractatus, 2.151).
But the name does not mean (signify) the object; the object is not its meaning. The meaning of
the name has become its functional position in the language game. This formulation is no longer
critiquable in the terms in which it (internal coherence?) appears critiquable in the Tractatus: it
goes beyond the dilemma between merely formal coherence or the undecidability of the doctrine
of meaning. Nevertheless, in the concept of the game the paradigmatic formalism of the doctrine
of meaning is dialectically conserved it lingers as the sole criterion of verifiability, the
adequatio to a state of fact, which is now designated by the normal notion of the linguistic game.
But precisely the contradictions that now this conclusion make explode pose a successive, radical
problem. Why here is the game expressed as a static paradigm? Who is its agent? In what context
must the concept of the game appear as normal science, and its laws as laws of
conservation? Why this claimed impotence of the game to innovate itself?
The limit of the game, the static-ness of the concept of game, is the limit of the subject that in the
Investigations practices it. This subject cant make of it an innovative process, cant do
anything but contemplate it. The fact that the normal game, the game-given-de facto, is not
appear transformable, is in Wittgenstein strictly relative to the structure of the analysis that
understands it and achieves it. This structure cant but reflect it. And this structure appears in
Wittgenstein quite super-structural in respect to the actual reality [effettualita] of the linguistic
game. In short: the in-transformability of the game is, in Wittgenstein, totally relative to the
impotence of philosophy. Here indeed, finally, the Wittgensteinian discourse reveals its entire
desecrating charge. It is philosophy which doesnt damage the game it is philosophy that
can not produce new experiences it is philosophy, again, that cant explain anything. This
serves to place an order which cant be anything except the order of the normal game,
according to the norms with which it is now played, according to its everyday employment.
Philosophy limits itself to showing. The problem of the change of the norms of the game is not
formalizable in philosophy: this is all that can be said. This can only be related to language
now in the work. If it exceeds these limits, it betrays itself: it would become the search after
essence or utopia. In its limits, it serves only to make clear this order. It is this philosophical
point of view to render the concept of the game in-transformable or render undecidable its
dynamic potentiality. The entire development of the accomplished discourse of the Investigations
indicates that there subsist other problems and that it opens other dimensions. But none of these
dimensions is philosophically moveable. The same plurality of the game and of the consequent
therapies put in question philosophy also as a simple image of game-given-de-facto. And an

idea of universal translatability of the singular discipline, of the common logical substance of
every science, is already for Wittgenstein none other than a nostalgia for the old logic of essence.
But how can you have philosophy if not as the discourse around this translatability, around this
substance? It is still philosophy when it must resolve problems (eliminate difficulty), not a
problem? We can continue to call philosophy the putting of an order in a game carrying the
use of the correct norm and nothing else. It is this discovery that renders me capable of
ceasing to philosophize when I want to. The Wittgensteinian impotence to grasp the problem of
the new relation of the integration subject-system, therefore reflects the demonstrated impotence
of this particular work. The problem of the transformation-crisis is not attacked or rejected, it is
simply completely outside of its scope. We can still repeat the desperation of the Tractatus: what
counts here is not the sayable result what has value here is other, is the Other. But there is no
doubt that this conclusion throws a different light also on our entire preceding critique of the
Wittgensteinian discourse: to the total disenchantment of Logic corresponds the total
disenchantment of Philosophy not only traditionally understood, as the discipline of the
Ubergang between a priori forms, the unitary foundation of the sciences, and reality; but also as
a, so to say, procedural operation, since, thus defined, this would abandon each criterion of
verifiability of its own propositions. The research on philosophy leads to this extreme point:
extreme Philosophy. Behind, lies the development that we have traced. In front: Marxs Theses,
that Wittgenstein here re-reads in their full negativity: the philosophers have interpreted the
world in different ways (can describe it correctly in its various games, the conclusion doesnt
change), it is a matter, however, of changing it. Changing the world not philosophy. The
transformation of the world possible from or in philosophy is that which Witggenstein
unleashes in the same sacred laughter of Zarathustra.
It is precisely the presence of this problematic that makes Wittgenstein untranslatable in the
language of the developments of neo-positivism. Nevertheless, just as the formalism of the
concept of game was already in some way traceable in the philosophy of the Tractatus, so now
these conclusions are knotted to the complex problematic of that first work or, at least, make
possible, as well, a very complex reading of this neo-positivist canon.
Typical, in this proposal, is the attitude of distance immediately employed by the members of the
Weiner Kreis in confronting the problem of the mystical, and the reduction of the Tractatus to
the negation of metaphysics. In a letter by which to present his work to Ficker, Wittgenstein
indicated a key to a very different reading. My works consists of two parts: that which I wrote
here, plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important
one. Wittgenstein counseled to read only the Preface and the Conclusion, because these are
what lead the sense of the book to its most direct expression. This development of the book
leads to understanding the doctrine of meaning and the analysis of the structure of logic as limits
on the expression of thoughts. The program posed in the Preface realizes itself only at the end, in
its result, tracing in language a definitive, absolute limit on the expression of thoughts. The part
not written is, precisely, the part which is not writeable. But understanding this is essential to the
meaning of the book. The book deals with a limit: until, therefore, this is not described with
absolute certainty until, therefore, everything on which we must keep quiet is not established
the sense of the work remains equivocal. The conclusive part is therefore essential to the
Tractatus: it is what defines it explicitly as the operation of elucidation. Its systematic-concluded

character is paradoxical. It is a matter, actually, of the opposite of the spirit of the system. Its
truth is tautological, not deductive, not synthetic. This system doesnt construct itself, but
shows the general form of the proposition, its conditions of sense. This is forced between the
world of the propositions 1-1.21 and the logic of proposition 5.61: here is discovered that the
limits of the world are also the limits of logic. Here the problem of limits is posed universally.
But this is exactly the same as the problem of the mystical. The mystical is not the
experience of the transcendent but the opposite. Neither is the mystical the question of how
the world is. The mystical is precisely the experience of the world as limited whole, as wholly
limited. The mystical has its origin in the fact that the world is. The conclusion of the
Tractatus constitutes, then, truly the singular logical conclusion. We have finally traced a limit:
in front is the totality of the facts which are the world the sense of a proposition consist in its
description of a fact the confrontation with reality decides the truth of the proposition. The
sense of the proposition is its concordance or discordance with the possibility of subsistence or
non-subsistence of the facts of things (4.2); if the elementary proposition is true, the state of
things subsists; if the elementary proposition is false, the state of things doesnt subsist (4.25).
This explains why: there is no true a priori image (2.225): truth is an image of the world: the
image agrees with reality or it doesnt; it is correct or incorrect, true or false (2.21). Logical
syntax doesnt speak of meaning: this is useful to the extent that it establishes definitecombinatory rules that the equivocations of metaphysical-philosophical language avoids, that
heal language, that achieve formalization. Here also, it is not a matter of new rules, but of the
understanding of our logic of language. Therefore the limits of the world are still its limits; logic
presupposes the sense of the proposition; it doesnt establish in any way the truth; it doesnt
confirm or negate at all if our world is really so or not (6.1233). The propositions of logic are
purely analytical, and thus always without content (6.1; 6.11; 6.111). Nevertheless, their relation
with the world is given: it shows the formal property of language, of the world (6.12(. Lgoci
doesnt explain (synthetic judgment), nor affirm something. Logic formalizes the limits of the
proposition, showing the necessary and constant form of the propositions with sense.
It is the overall experience of the limits thus traced that gives origin to the mystical. If logic
would put a reality, would have a space of its own, and, therefore, there were also an I not
resulting from the facts, transcendentally definable there would be no problem of the
mystical. There where it transcends the limit, theres no mystical. It is, instead, when the
enigma disappears, when the scientific problem of the form of the proposition and of logic is
completely resolved, that the mystical is born. When there are no more enigmas nor questions.
On one side remains, therefore, nothing; on the other, alone, the world: therefore, the
mystical is necessary. The mystical is the radical mundane experience. This means that in
the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it happens; theres no value in it
(6.41). The mystical concludes the radical Entwertung, whose project appears finished from
the first page: this translates them as follows: the simplest proposition doesnt assert anything
but a state of things.
What this conclusion still wants to express in Humean-Machian terms (cit. 6.371 and 6.36331)
can not deceive. At its roots, there is the complete formalization of the Schopenhauerian theory
of representation formalization, that, as we know, was still the project of Nietzsches last
works. The relation world-representation is no longer transcendable in the world there cannot

be, therefore, any more propositions of value. The critique of the subject is an integral part of this
formulation, as in Nietzsche: this contracts in an unextended point and the reality remains
coordinated to it (5.54). This reality, thus defined, is formalizable. But this process of
formalization is the same as the mystical. It proceeds only in these limits: hearing them is the
mystical. Not only, then, the consciousness of limits of formalism but also the consciousness
of formalism as limit characterizes the mystical conclusion of the Tractatus.
This limit implies the entire history of philosophy. All that can be said is the world as the
totality of facts; the truth of a proposition is its agreement with the fact; its agreement is made
possible by the coherence of its logical form (that, per se, is devoid of sense). The set of the
propositions that have a sense is not therefore but the set of the proposition of natural science
(6.53). The mystical shows that which no longer has anything to do with philosophy. The
mystical is the limitation of propositions of sense to those of natural science. And,
simultaneously, knowledge itself as limit. The knowledge that all this doesnt touch our vital
problems. In the end, you know what you know. The new is only negative: it has ceased to
speak about the ineffable. The eternal return of the limit, the return of the conclusion to the
beginning, after which each of its transcendences was inexorably negated and each absolute
problem was put in place with silence, describes the circle of the Tractatus.
The successive auto-critique doesnt detract from the perfection. The abandonment of the
theory of the Elementarsatze, and the consequent development of the concept of games, doesnt
apply to the radicality of this critique of philosophical discourse. Philosophy becomes puttingorder in a Raum (in a room in the space of the world): putting an order in the notions that we
use in playing a game. In the Tractatus: showing that to certain signs of the propositions doesnt
correspond meanings, and, thus, healing language, showing the limits of the expression of
thoughts. Its sense is, however, in the relation image-model that it establishes. Philosophy
becomes capacity, a question of the ability of ordering. It is a matter, in effect, of a new
discipline. But the various games of the Investigations are all totally analogous to the
propositions of natural science, insofar as this can be said of the end of the Tractatus. The new
discipline explains, in effect, the formal-logical constitution of other disciplines. At this point, it
is inevitable to throw the ladder after it has been climbed. To see the world correctly, these
propositions need to be overcome.
But throwing away the ladder overcoming these propositions and, therefore, saying nothing
about that which cannot be said; therefore, the propositions of natural science (6.53) this
would be the only correct method of philosophy and representing, in effect, the Vernichtung, is
not thinkable except on the basis of the mystical. The radically formalistic tendency of the
Tractatus would not be thinkable if it remains in the values of the world. It would be images
unaffected by psychologism, having-being, ineffable sentiments. But that there is no value in
the world this precisely is the mystical. And, therefore, the world is everything (in the sense
of everything of everything that can be said). The limit that the mystical traces is precisely the
condition of the formalism of the Tractatus that thus directly reconnects to the successive
developments of Wittgensteins thought.
But the mystical has another function, complementary and opposite. Also to exclude from the
linguistic expression each return to an ineffable and found, therefore, the possibility of

propositions which have sense thus also showing the ineffable. It shows it knowing that it
cannot say it. This aspect is of a fundamental importance. Without the mystical, formalism
would always tend to become everything, to present itself as the truth, to eliminate all limits.
And, therefore, to betray its own foundations. If not reemployed from the point of view of the
mystical, the logical relation would always tend to extend itself onto the laws of nature. It is
the mystical that recognizes in logic the propositions which are only tautological, the rules of
signs and therefore traces the limits, and these coincides now with those of the world, as they
are given in the proposition equipped with sense. It is the mystical, now, which is the first step
towards the point of view of the game.
To recognize what you have to keep quiet about is therefore essential for defining the limits
within which it is possible to describe. To exorcise the mystical is to believe that there is
nothing that should be silenced. It is not to understand the function: the correct foundation of the
dominion of formalism. In order to operate it, you must reduce all the series of values to
show it simply and we must keep absolutely silent. To exorcise the mystical is to annul the
limit that the book traces in the language of the expression of thoughts. If it does not arise, if its
problem doesnt subsist, then logical formalism is verified immediately in the given, its structure
expresses the fundamental sciences of reality. It thus re-founds a philosophical system: exactly
like the analysis of the fundamental unitary structure of each science. The conclusion of the
Tractatus appears radically different. Logic never appears therein as the meta-language of each
scientific research nor as its justification. Logic is a semantic calculation-operation; it doesnt
enunciate anything. It doesnt found the truth or any proposition: the meaning of the proposition
doesnt concern it. Therefore, posing the problem of science, in such a way, comes to an end, it
leads it to a close. We have only established how to reach it and the general character of the
proposition. But no schema is the state philosophisch traced between logical formalism and the
scientific proposition, and the truth of science. The conclusive-radical state of the Tractatus
derives precisely from this: that here a method of research passes the word to another forever.
The Wittgensteinian mystical is this nothing-conservation, against the neo-positivist refoundation (the precise analogon of the Machian one). Here, despite everything, the fixed
structure of the word and of the doctrine of meaning takes on the role of the theatre of a radical
act of negation, which is the transformation of every relation. The mystical makes even an
apologia of the relation between logic, proposition, and world impossible. It signals and shows
the misery which science can never overcome rather, it doesnt have to, to really be so (and
doesnt act as the false unity).
The moment of maximal crisi (and, namely, of the liquidation of the transcendental perspective,
of the foundation in the Logic of the concept of truth, of the function, in general, of
philosophical research as such) expresses itself here classically. Systematic perfection is not
formally necessary to express this crisis. It is functional to its own content. This crisis affirms
precisely the field of that which can be said and where something is sayable, the question
subsists only there is still a response. Everything is a response. But the limits of this everything
were explicitly traced in our language. To give a response (and not search for a sort of extreme
nihilism) it is therefore necessary to know how little has been achieved when these problems
are resolved. The intuition of the world sub specie aeternitatis founded the consciousness of the
misery of this totality. And only then does it become formalizable-formulabile-workable. It
becomes the space of scientific propositions and of the truth of games.