Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing'

Paul L. H o l m e r , The Divinity Sdiool, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words.

They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, § 6.522

Wittgenstein spoke äs though there were things which were ein-

expressible", matters which cannot be put into words, but which make
themselves manifest. These, he said, were what is mystical. Such remarks
make it sound äs though Wittgenstein had experienced something extra-
ordinary. Perhaps he had a mystical moment of compelling power in
which something had been seen in a flash. But there are no such moments
of mystical experience. There are, in fact, no special intuitions for Witt-
genstein, no relevation. Kierkegaard had also said something like this in
his literature. "With me", he said, "everything is dialectical." Wittgen-
stein might have said that with him everything, including the mystical,
was "logicaP. Thus the remarks he makes about the "mystical" have
force by virtue of logical disquisition, not by mystical apprehension.1
I say this because the distinction between "saying" and "showing"
is, for some people, to be read äs dependent upon something extra-
ordinary. But, for Wittgenstein, that distinction and its force and
validity depend upon something that is really quite ordinary. For this
reason, the distinction is not only to be read off of his pages, nor is it to
be drawn for you by the author. If that were so, then Wittgenstein
would become one more conventional philosophy teacher, perpetrating
theories, doing tricks, all of it supposedly philosophy, but vicariously
for his reader. Not even the Tractatus, despite its repute, permits that.
Rather, access to this distinction comes by something we (though one
cannot quite say "everybody") must do on what we already possess.
This is not an aristocratic privilege, nor in virtue of superior erudition,
nor even by the deployment of a rare talent. Instead, like so many of
Wittgenstein's distinctions, it is dependent upon a kind of tenaciousness
of mind and a certain kind of will. The distinction is emergent upon
continuous work. This is especially so with the distinction between
"saying" and "showing". What Wittgenstein has to say here is dependent
upon a dearly-bought clarity of mind. That is what authorizes his
philosophical remarks — not a ränge of esoteric facts, a set of special
intuitions or experiences, nor even superior skill with symbolism.
1
Being shown "by means of some kind of experience... I regard äs out of the
question", Wittgenstein said even in 1914. Notebooks, p. 3.

0028—3517/80/0223—0002$2.00
Copyright by Walter de Gruyter & Co.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing' 223

Now, Wittgenstein did interesting things with truth-tables, and he

did say new and exciting things about "truth functions" and about
"formal objects". He said, early in his career, if we can believe Russell,
many things that had not been said before, especially about tautology.
But, it is not particularly in virtue of such extraordinarily new logical
or meta-logical theorems that he comes to draw the distinction between
saying and showing. Nor is it by virtue of what could be called his
"front-line" distinctions or of his quarreling throughout thirty years
with the Principia Mathematica and with questions about the founda-
tions of mathematics and logic.
These things must be said because it is a mistake to praise Wittgen-
stein's genius in such a fashion äs to exempt one's own gross philo-
sophical incapacity. He thought that philosophy (hard thinking) could
lead to the growth of the same capacity in the reader if the reader
would attend to his life and remarks with great care. Therefore, the
distinctions he draws are not author-dependent in the usual way. They
are also reader-dependent. Unless we read him thus, we will miss much
of the thrust of his pages. This is a kind of moral requisite demanded of
the reader and I suspect this makes Wittgenstein's later philosophy quite
unpopulär today. Philosophical reflections becomes peculiarly personal.
It is not to be done by an assimilation of Wittgenstein's "results".
It is äs though you have to achieve the capacity to make a distinction
yourself or that distinction will not have any life at all.
This point can be put either affirmatively or negatively. The
affirmative way is to say, äs Wittgenstein does in the Tractatus, that
in logic process and result are equivalent. A vulgarization of this is to
say only that philosophy is an activity. It is better by far to say
that in logic (by and large what Wittgenstein means by "philosophy")
process and result are equivalent. To say this much is to remind the
reader that we cannot have the logical results without the process and
the procedure. Otherwise, there would be a kind of dieating. There-
fore, the proper mode of discussing even this distinction would engender
a capacity in the reader to draw the contrast for himself and thus
secure his independence of the writer. This is exceedingly important
for Wittgenstein.2
The negative way to put Wittgenstein's point is to say that äs a
piece of philosophy, even this distinction, once drawn and articulated,
seems to be something illegitimate. It looks äs though it is saying more
than can be said and hence is trespassing on the rules. I think Wittgen-
stein's later notion, that grammatical remarks are also in good Order,
might remove not so much the distinction äs the sting he feit in articulat-

2
An interesting reflection about this matter is found in Remarks on the Foundations
of Mathematics, Part I, §§ 82 ff.
224 Paul L. H 1 mer

ing it. For a grammatical distinction does not say what is unsayable,
but it points the reader to saying and to showing, while not doing either.
One might note too, that, for Wittgenstein, the subject stuff of
philosophy is, by and large, rather inaccessible. Unless philosophers are
only charlatans and masters of deceit, philosophy should not be easily
articulated, assimilated, or believed. "Don't be easily persuaded" is a
fundamental rule. Conversely, don't just remember and report distinc-
tions; force yourself to work, force yourself to distinguish. So, the
"distinction" Wittgenstein makes between saying and showing is, even
if grammatical, also an occasion for seeing something for yourself. It
is not a substitute for seeing what is manifest. Seeing is a capacity and
can only be done by people, not by sayings.

II.

In the light of these considerations, I want to say a few things

about and with this distinction. It occurs in the Tractatus, but else-
where, too, in remarks about logical form. Propositions cannot represent
logical form; it is mirrored in them, but finds its reflection or mani-
festation in language. Language cannot, äs it were, "say" the logical
form. Rather, propositions "show" the logical form, display it. What
can be shown in this way, cannot be said.
In the Tractatus, the distinction builds up something like this:
we can obviously say things in scientific sentences and other sentences
about the world. The emphasis is, of course, upon the sentences, and
not upon the scientists äs Speakers. These sentences "say" something
about the world. There is something about the way Wittgenstein views
language in the Tractatus that makes this observation telling. The
sentences "say", the propositions "say", the language "says" something.
The Speaker can be left out. This kind of notion was apparently forced
upon Wittgenstein by long preoccupation with Frege, Russell, and foun-
dational questions about arithmetic and logic. This was not just a custom
of philosophers he heard or read, but something forced on him by a
ränge of problems he faced. Now, in analyzing what it is that permits
sentences to "say", or what permits language to (äs he said) "picture
the world", he concluded that there must be some coherence between
the piece of language and the world, between the sentence and reality.
Once he started to brood about that, he arrived at the notion that
language has embedded within i t a "logical form". He thought he had
hit the nail on the head. It looked äs though the sign, the words, and
the thing signified were identical in respect to their total logical content.
This identity was fundamental and was the logical form.3
8
Notebooksf p. 5; Tractatus, § 2.17 and other places.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing' 225

It is important to note that Wittgenstein's preoccupation with logic

had led him to dissociate words and sentences altogether from the
idiosyncracies of Speakers, of situations, of mouths, of people. This,
too, must be an instance of being misled by a picture. But the picture
is common enough. For when we formalize syllogisms and arguments
we very quidkly forget altogether that people are saying something
with the words and in the arguments. It looks äs if words like "and",
"but", "then", "therefore" and many more have values altogether in-
dependently of what they connect and relate. In these cases, the mouths
that speak them seem altogether irrelevant. But Wittgenstein is going
mudi further in the Tractatus, for the notion of "logical form" is like
an impersonal and radically independent factor in virtue of which lan-
guage "per se", in any mouth but also in no mouth at all, gets its hold
on the world. And it seems to be language that gets that hold, not the
Speaker or thinker.
If one had been brooding about questions concerning logic and
reality, then to have arrived at the conclusion that language contained
a "logical form" would indeed seem like the capstone of a long tradi-
tion of philosophy. Wittgenstein thought so. Logical form was also
"in the world". It was not "my" language or "your" language, but
language itself which was like that. If it had been merely "my" lan-
guage this "logical form" could be an accident and contingent; if it
had been "your" language, it might have been fortuitous. But it was
language qua language which must have logical form if it is to say
anything at all. Therefore, the way language works also demands that
logic be "transcendental". Wittgenstein is not referring to your speech
or to mine, but to language without a mouth and what he later calls
language without a language-game.
Now, if language is like this, Wittgenstein contends that so to
speak (and thus so to think) is to have been shown something. We have
seen something about "logical form"; it sounds äs though this is a
recognition on our part. This is odd, to have recognized something this
way. It is äs though the way a piece of language works is such that you
also see that language is formed to the world, and the world is formed
to language. What kind of knowing is that? The name for the mediation
between the two (if there is anything isomorphic, it is very slender)
is "logical form". This surely sounds äs though Wittgenstein were saying
something very deep and something metaphysical. But the purpose of
philosophy, especially in the Tractatus, is to avoid saying what is un-
sayable; instead, he is trying to evoke that set of conditions in which
activity of thinking can occur. But his is a peculiar kind of thought,
at least äs it occurs in the propositions of the Tractatus. This is a kind
of matter he wishes to call "mystical". This is not, apparently, quite
like the "thought" he ordinarily describes — what he means in the
226 Paul L. H 1 mer

Tractatus itself by "thought", namely, having a picture of a state of

affairs. This is why this meeting with the unsayable is "mystical".
It is like a thought, but it is not like a thought in the sense of having
a proposition to go with it. What does go with it is the recognition of
something. One has been shown something. It is like "seeing" in com-
parison to having a thought about something, or like "displaying" in
comparison to "having" an idea. But, again, it is language itself that,
while it says something lese, also evinces a structure, which is shown and
recognized.
It is important to say that this way of drawing the contrast be-
tween saying and showing arises in the Tractatus. But a contrast like
this also crops up in the later work, the Philosophical Investigations
and elsewhere. One of the important and populär things to observe
about Wittgenstein, for some years now, is the shift in view and kind of
philosophizing which occurs after the Tractatus. But many of the major
distinctions are in fact carried through into the later writings, and
surely, a crucial one is the distinction between saying and showing.
Some of the interests and convictions which surround this distinction
become quite different however.
But the usefulness of the distinction between "saying" and "show-
ing" is not vitiated by the altered context and the new way of philo-
sophizing that we find in Wittgenstein's later work. This can be put
more sharply by saying that not everything is made unrecognizable
by the notions of "language-games" and "forms-of-life". Instead, it
seems to me that what Wittgenstein had noted earlier about the fact
that not everything meant by words is said by the words, something is
shown, really lacks a rieh supporting ränge of considerations in the
Tractatus. It is äs if that distinction is close to being fundamental, äs
if those remarks about whatever is transcendental, even "logical form",
were forced upon, were shown him, very early. Preferably, one might
say that Wittgenstein thought so hard that he really had out-thought
the limits which he articulated in the Tractatus. The later writings,
notions like "game", "form of life" and the new picture of language in
use, gave a far better and more supportive context for that logical and
grammatical distinction.
For that is how it is. The distinction between "saying" and "show-
ing", which is almost embarrassing in the Tractatus, which seems to
move beyond the limits of propriety and be nonsensical, does not have
to be discarded in the later work. In fact, it looks to me äs though it
is what Wittgenstein could call a grammatical remark. It is, indeed,
a piece of philosophy. It teils us about something, about why "mean-
ing" is not totally "said", about the essence of a ränge of expressions.
If one asks, "What is the competence one needs in order to affirm that
distinction?", the ans wer is not that one has had a look, perhaps a
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing' 227

philosophical look at that, at the realm of the transcendental. For

there is still nothing which Wittgenstein can say about grasping trans-
cendentals by special philosophical means. But there is a competence
of a kind involved. It is a kind of general logic, a reasoned perspicuity
about the ränge of familiär features of our language. It is a perspicuity
about language in a familiär order of circumstances. Of course, this
does not make philosophy easier, if anything, it makes it harder. But,
now, to turn to the Investigations.

III.

Here the distinction between saying and showing is not so explicit

äs in the Tractatus. But, in another sense, it is everywhere. Yet, I
suppose, we could make it more explicit äs follows: amid the diversity
of kinds of sayings, among issues of all sorts, "not everything can be
said" pertains to questions of general metaphysics, to the nature of the
"I", to ethics and aesthetics and religion. But also something about the
metaphysics of language itself is beyond the reach of language. But
now, in the Investigations, it looks äs if the bars are down and these
artificial limits upon speech are removed. The populär way to say this
is: "Wittgenstein has discovered that logic and meaning are not so
restrictive." Now there is a "logic" of 'this' and of 'that'. This allows
you to jabber about anything you want. The philosophical "veto" seems
to be taken away from the use of language to speak about something
other than scientific and factual matters. But this is not quite right.
He is not simply letting the bars down.
Rather, it is something like this. The distinction between what can
be said and what can be shown is now drawn in a new way — in fact,
far more uncomfortably than in the Tractatus (making clear philosophi-
cal thought more difficult). Now, what can be said is no longer depen-
dent upon the general features of language — upon the "logical form"
of propositions in general. In the Tractatus, the limit upon our capacity
to say something about the world was a function of logical form, and
was engendered thereby. But in the Investigations, the limit upon the
capacity to say things is dependent upon the ränge of extra-linguistic
capacities of Speakers. By "extra-linguistic" capacities, I do not refer
merely to "gestures", but to the whole of what comes under purview
in the Investigations. This is a different "whole" than in the Tractatus.
There it was "language", "the world", "states of affairs", "formal ob-
jects", and "logical structure". But now in the Investigations, the
"whole" contains the Speaker, his Situation, the kind of thing referred
to, those to whom he speaks, the pattern of utterance, and äs well äs
established language.
N. Zeitschrift f. syst. Theologie 22 16
228 Paul L. H 1 mer

In the Tractatus, "logical form" is something used by men, but

essentially it is not achieved by them. It belongs to the very structure
of language itself and it gives the power to language almost in indepen-
dence of personality qualifications. Of course, there is still something
that an individual must do, but that is principally to make his own
speech, his own words, sufficiently straight so that they will conform
to the general form of propositions. Therein, in logical space, lies the
possibility of picturing actual states of affairs. It is the logical form
that gives language its picturing capacity. Wittgenstein is so confident of
that that he can say that the totality of such true propositions would be
the picture of the whole world.
Again, though, it is äs if the Tractatus is describing a language
which is without a voice and without a mouth. The form of language
and of world is almost completely involuntary. But in the Philosophical
Investigations, Wittgenstein is no longer content to abstract language
like that from Speakers, situations and actual use. Then it begins to
become clear that there is still something called a "logical form", but
logical form is something that accrues and is really built up by human
practice. Our speaking, words with mouths and for occasions, gives us
also the rules after a while; and these become formal and, if not quite
transcendental, at least they are not "ad hoc" and circumstantial. They
are not whimsical and arbitrary in any invidious sense. But the point
to be noted here is that they do depend upon how people behave, how
they speak and for what purposes. They depend upon the games we
become involved in and the forms of life we are realizing. These, again,
are part of what was meant above by extra-linguistic capacities and
activities of people.
Though Wittgenstein did, of course, mention "logical form" in the
Tractatus, he could admit no "logical form" for the formation of true
propositions about that, namely, the "logical form". Neither was there
a logical form for matters like God, "the Good", "the Beautiful" and
so on. But with the Investigations, the orientation has changed. The
language of Speakers, qualified in a rieh variety of ways, becomes a
matter for logical inquiry. Any Speaker who knows how to use words
to say things is subject to logical description, that is, there is a logic
of language in use. What was previously a transcendental factor — the
"logical form" — now becomes more like a structured repetition of
behaviour, a congruence in the continual use. The meaning of language
now demands character in the Speaker, good habits, responsible be-
haviour, linguistic and otherwise. The meaningfulness of what is said
is no long a matter of conformity to a transcendental form of proposi-
tions. Now the possibility, the logical space, is made by Speakers of the
language, in their social habits, and in the forms of activity and inten-
tion in which they participate.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying* and 'Showing' 229

Yet, some things still cannot be said. To take one kind of example:
physicists can say and do things about the world. The expression "there
is a world" ("there is an x, such that...") seems to assert the existence
of the world. But this expression is not what one would call a remark
in physics. "There is a world" has some analogies with "there is a
table", "there is a chair". Thus, it may appear that, in addition to what
physicists say about the world, they also assert that the world exists.
When we look at what physicists do (their activities in the laboratory,
their reasoning, their writing), it does, indeed, look äs if they all believe
there is a world. The problem lies in attempting to put this into words,
into a proposition. It is not quite a part of physics; it is not a part of
an experiment.4 But here Wittgenstein could well re-introduce the
distinction between saying and showing.
The physicists alleged "certainty" about the existence of the world
becomes a philosophical problem only when one attempts to state it
äs a proposition. It looks quasi-empirical; it appears in the same form
äs propositions in physics. But Wittgenstein thinks it better if one does
not try to state this certainty: for it, too, is shown. It is better to see it
from what the physicists' life and complex activity shows. Perhaps this
sounds too much like a "moraP aspect of doing physics; if so, then say
it is better to see what the activity of doing physics shows us about
certain things, the underlying certainties. The activity of physicists, äs
a ground, gives placement to convictions about there being a world.
What they do shows us that there is a world. This kind of showing is
not on paper and vicariously. It is not stateable, it is a showing that can
be achieved in a certain way. It is not done for you. That is why things
go wrong when you attempt to pull that kind of certainty out äs propo-
sition, and then ask, "Well, how do you get certain of that?" It may
even seem, from what has been said, that we become certain by having
physicists show us. But they do not show us in that way. Rather, that
there is a world is shown by the activities and language of physics and
physicists. But also, by learning to live with tables and chairs, and with
a ränge of familiär activities and things, we all become certain of there
being a world. There is no special learning about "world" and its
existence. But philosophers can make the grammatical remark, which
will remind us that some things can be said, othere things only shown.
Philosophy still does not assert anything transcendental, but there are
grammatical remarks to be made. Howcver, the grammatical remark,
if it teils you anything, is more like a reminder of where to look.

4
Moore's attempt to "say" matters which are foundational to knowing things about
the world took the form of asserting "propositions" which looked like "there is an
such that.. .", "I have a hand with five fingers ..."

16*
230 Paul L. H 1 mer

There is another kind of example, too. A ränge of problems has

been discussed since F. H. Bradley's time under the rubric "critical
history"! Once more a question arises äs to how it is that we become
certain that there was and is a Europe, that the world has been around
for a long time, that Napoleon actually lived. Wittgenstein was never
so obtuse and one-sided that he failed to recognized how sticky and
odd such issues were. Questions like that seem philosophical, if for no
other reason, than that they are issues that are not strictly resolved by
ordinary historical writing and research. Yet, that Napoleon lived seems
antecedent to, somehow, and that upon which historical research about
Napoleon depends. Furthermore, we are certain of his existence without
addressing the issue äs if evidence was what mattered or äs if Napo-
leon's existing were a subject for an hypothesis.
If oral reports from Cambridge can be trusted, this kind of issue
was discussed in early years by Keynes, F. P. Ramsey, Wittgenstein
and others. In any case, it has some similarities to the previous and even
to G. E. Moore's queries about whether and how one can be certain
one has a hand and whether there is an external world.5 Wittgenstein
finally does not want to credit either the question or the assertion
respecting these things. On the other hand, he does not say that one is,
therefore, uncertain. No, one is very certain. The question is, how
does that happen?
Instead of saying, äs he had in the Tractatus, that the language
showed us something that could not be said within the language, he
nowsays:
My life shows that I know or am certain that there is a diair over
there, or a door and so on. — I teil a friend, e. g., "Take that
chair over there", "Shut the door", etc., etc.6
And that is the point about games and forms of life, too. For language
gets bound up with a game one is playing and with the very form and
character that one's whole life acquires. Then that totality shows some-
thing that a single sentence cannot say.
Of course, certainties like "the world has been around for a long,
long time" and "there was a Napoleon" look like empirical propositions.
But they cannot be treated äs such, for their very meaning and certitude
is of another kind altogether. However, the mistake is to have made
them enumerable assertions at all, for then it looks äs if they are be-
lieved, äs if they are entertained, perhaps doubted and then somehow
proved. Wittgenstein's point is that they are not really sayable — that
asserting them at all is a kind of queer and unwarrantable procedure.
To do so makes them odd and nonsensical. Instead, a kind of certainty

5
Cf., On Certainty t first pages.
• Ibid., § 7.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing* 231

is evinced by an historian in the way he proceeds, in the whole of his

practice, research and writing. To practice history is an orderly and
responsible way and the royal road to that certainty, too; but, not
because evidence keeps mounting up in the passage of time. After a
while, the doubt disappears altogether and with the doubt goes the
possibility of even asserting anything to doubt, or for that matter,
to believe. The certainty is shown by historical practice.
So, there are certainties. It is not that they are intuited either.
They are not queer cognitive immediacies. For this reason, it was a
mistake to isolate them äs G. E. Moore did and to frame them äs a
special group of propositions whidi were indubitable. After all, it is
not their indubitability which is at stake — it is rather that they were
said or stated at all. Wittgenstein would have it that when a life shows
it, when a practice shows it, then it cannot be statedy except at the
expense of looking queer and making philosophers out to be truly
obtuse and rather dense individuals.
IV.
Wittgenstein said some things about meaning also that are relevant
to the "saying" and "showing" distinction. It is clear enough that he did
not want to write out a theory of meaning — and that aspect of his
work has been discussed by others. More subtle is the fact that the
meaning of a sentence is not something that can be said, that can be
written out, in another sentence. So, if I say something, it is not the
case that I, then, subsequently can say the meaning of the first sentence
in a second sentence. However, because of a long practice, it has looked
äs though theologians stated with their theological concepts the meaning
of language that might be figurative, parabolic, or even plainer in the
first instance; or that philosophers, with their special logical concepts,
could translate ordinary diction into something more meaningful; or
that literary critics could teil you the meaning of a bit of poetry in
another piece of prose.
For Wittgenstein, meaning is not something sayable in that way
at all. If one understands how a word fits into the discourse then, by
and large, one already has the meaning of the word. Of course, qualifi-
cations have to be added. For to know that words rhyme is also to fit
them in, but that is not enough to say that one understands their mean-
ing. Here the issue is whether one knows the place for a word in a
language-game. This knowing is not usually something one can state.
It is not another assertion. It is rather like a capacity to play the game.
So, to be able to place the word, where it makes an appropriate differ-
ence and does a Job, is to show by your behaviour that a word has
meaning. Our talk gets its meaning, Wittgenstein suggests, "from the
rest of our proceedings".
232 Paul L. H 1 mer

It is interesting that Wittgenstein had earlier said that the meaning

of the world was indeed problematic, but that the meaning and sense
of our world was outside the world.7 To say that it was "outside",
rather than "in" the world, was also to make "meaning" something
that had to be shown, and not said. For meaning here did not lie with
the facts, but outside them; and such matters are again "mystical" in
Wittgenstein's special sense. The later writings do not invoke the con-
cept "mystical".
It is, nonetheless, moot that even the meaning of a word, let alone
the meaning of life, is also such that men cannot say in what it consists.
For it does not consist in anything that is part of the tissue of facts, in
anything that is sayable. This is a strong theme in the Tractatus
(§ 6.521), in his letters, and in the Notebooks (June, July, August, 1916)
to the effect that even those men to whom long doubt had finally
yielded a clear sense and meaning of life, could not say what made up
that sense. This was not due to their vocabulary deficiency. I think
there is a deep but somewhat difficult and obscure connection between
Wittgenstein's earlier reflections and the fact that sense and meaning
are still not sayable, even for our working language, in his later pages.
For both early and late, it is a mistake to say that meaning consists in
something, äs if it lay within the facts (Tractatus) or were an activity
whidi, in whole or in part, consisted in saying, in utterances, of mean-
ings.8
Even more interesting perhaps and often less fulsomely treated
by Wittgenstein are the puzzles we have about a wide spectrum of
psydiological verbs. Here is another occasion for noting a limit of lan-
guage and for citing a grammatical difference between "saying" and
"showing". So Wittgenstein has asked: "What is the proof that I
'know' something? Most certainly not by saying I know it."9 Thus
even the verb ato know" is not always represented by what one say s,
but that you really know something is otherwise evinced. Other psydio-
logical verbs are perhaps more clearly paradigmatic for the point we
need right here. Some of these verbs, like "wishing", "wanting", "under-
standing", "hoping", "intending", are so widely used and so integral to
our common life that it does seem a little absurd that we cannot say
more about exactly what the activities and processes that make them
up actually are. But there is the mistake. Wittgenstein saw that they
were not activities and/or internal processes at all. Neither is it the
case that they are so deeply inward and so refined that our everyday
language is too gross to limit their features. A new notational system
is not what we need.
7
Notebooks, 11.6.16; Tractatus, § 6.41.
8
Zettel, SS 16 and 19.
9
On Certainty, $ 487.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying' and 'Showing' 233

Take "wanting" äs an example. If wanting were an internal ac-

tivity, something going on in the "psyche", then it, at least, could be
described. Words could then say, at least, what wants actually are. Or
better still, words could be the "expressions" of wants, their externaliza-
tion and objectivization, but only if wants first were subjective and
inward activities. However, wanting is not something going on inside of
you. Even at best, for the person who is clearest about himself, who
knows what he wants, it is not be case that you can simply ask him in
order to find out. There is another kind of limit here other than his
refusing to teil you. It is not that a want is too different from words to
be verbalized. Rather it is that a want is not so constituted that it is
discernible and describable and stateable. Having a want is more like
having an orientation. It is a way that a person disponses himself
towards people, events, his future, his abilities, his expectations. It is
not, therefore, quite singular. Even wanting money, fame, and power
could not be a plausible conclusion to draw if all you had to go on was
another person's Statement that these were what he wanted. Rather, it
would take a considerable account, maybe lengthy descriptions like
those found in Thakeray's Henry Esmond, before one would see that this
is so. A considerable span of life would be needed. And so it is needed
by most men even to know what they themselves want.
For persons do not know what they want. There is no inquiry by
which to find out, certainly no techniques of introspecting; for a want
is not there to be introspected. It has to be formed, usually rather slowly
and with effort.
Our lives are also spent in learning to want, to want significantly
and steadily. Not having learned to want, we are quite at a loss to say
what we want. Thus "saying" our want here is dependent upon the rest
of our life acquiring sufficient transparency and shape, so that it can
even be said to have any form at all. A want, a life-long want, does,
of course, form a life. It is off of a life well-formed, and only off of
such a life, even our own, that a want can be read at all. This is again,
an instance of something non-linguistic showing us what it means to
want. Unless we were superficial or hasty, we would not credit a
saying about what a man really wants unless the form of his life bore
him out. These remarks, then, are also part of the grammar of wanting,
but are such that they bring us to that distinction again between "say-
ing" and "showing".
For a man "saying" what he wants is not altogether logically
proper either. In certain cases, yes — "I want that pair of shoes" — and
that may be alright. But having gotten them and never wearing them
begins to show us something eise, namely, that wanting is not a simple
matter of epistemological and linguistic clarity. Not wearing them
234 Paul L. H 1 mer

shows that the want was not äs it was said.10 Many other things are
involved. So one does not have a first-hand access in quite the way we
are inclined to believe. More encompassing wants are even more diffi-
cult to "say". Thus, what one has wanted is the sort of thing that
cannot be stated since one's life will show that instead. It will show
iself. Learning what one ought and can want is a good part of what
makes a life human and also manifest. Not to have had any great want
is not to have lived äs a man.
But there is another troublesome matter that Wittgenstein did link
with the "saying" and "showing" issue in the Tractatus and in the
Notebooks. His remarks about happiness are at once cryptic and enig-
matical, but also exceedingly attractive. However, the Tractatus seems
to put this issue, too, among the things that cannot be put into words.
How, then, does happiness make itself manifest, if it cannot be said?
Apparently in a rieh variety of ways. Living fearlessly, even in the face
of death, could be one of these, living in the present, not being tortured
by the past or the prospects of the future, could be another. But even
more poignantly and graphically, a happy man would be one who is
"fulfilling the purpose of existence", but — and this is crucial — with-
out having to articulate and to acknowledge a purpose. In Wittgen-
stein's words, he "no longer needs to have any purpose except to live,
that is to say, who is content."11
Of course, Wittgenstein knew that in a very peculiar way good
and bad acts of the will do alter the world. Again the question was
how? In a way that could be factually described? He is explicit about
this, that such an alteration cannot be expressed by means of language.
But, their effect is such that an altogether different world comes to
exist. Once more there is a link to the issue of happiness, for it is in this
very context that Wittgenstein teils us how happiness is manifested,
namely, by the entire world being a different one for the happy man
than for the unhappy one. Is this a factually different world — in
which new happenings occur, new pleasures arise, new events abound?
On the contrary. The difference in world is of these kinds — the happy
man stops trying to bend the world to his will; he sees himself in a
world where independence, rather than dependence obtains, where the
world and life in it are no longer always problematic, where an agree-
ment with the world is now in order.
When the world and men thus are not in enmity, when content-
ment and peace are exemplified, when those dogged and terrifying pro-
blems about the existence of God, about the good, about the meaning
of life are, not answered, but vanquished altogether, then happiness
10
"But how do I know that this movement was voluntary? — I don't know this,
I manifest it." Zettel, § 600.
11
Notebooks, for the several above, entries on pp. 72—75.
 Wittgenstein: 'Saying* and 'Showing* 235

shines through. Of course, one must be careful. There are those for
whom such questions do not arise at all, who are naive, who are super-
ficial, maybe thoughtless. Or there might be those who suffer from the
loss of problems, when the world is broad and flat and no deep pro-
blems exist for them.12 Wittgenstein's remarks about philosophy being
successful when one can cease doing philosophy, supposes that one has
been first stung and hurt by relentless and hard questions. Both early
and late, the resolution is not in finding answers and talking the answer,
but in not any longer suffering. Happiness is like that too — a cessation
that is deserved, that is "in" consequence and "of" consequence — that
is not fortuitious and "iffy". It clearly has to be exemp'lified, not talked.
One can, obviously enough, obliterate the differences between the
Tractatus and the later writings. We have Wittgenstein's repeated warn-
ings of the danger of so doing, of lumping differences in superficial
similarities that will make for later misunderstandings. So, let me then
say, that, of course, there are differences between what can be said and
what must be shown in his early and later pages. However, what makes
those differences so difficult is that they are often within a ränge that is
small. The ränge of topics does not change that drastically in Wittgen-
stein's lifetime. What makes his pages so wonderful is that he could
make small differences count for so much. Any fool can change his
fiedl and move äs promiscuously in the second äs in the first. Wittgen-
stein did not do that.
This is why the concept "form of life" makes such a difference and
is so powerful. For what "logical form" did for Wittgenstein earlier,
namely summarize and almost dramatize the limit for what was sayable
and what had to be shown, the notion of "form of life" does later. It
makes you aware that even how words are understood is not told by
words alone — some things have to be left to the game one is playing
and to the very form one's life has acquired. Some of those grammatical
remarks in the Tractatus are indeed corrected in the Investigations. But
we can only say that because some of them in both books are addressed
to a comparable ränge of issues.

12
Zettel, § 456.