Sunday, December 8, 2013

Fact, Action, State-of-Affairs

The Tractatus begins with the statement, "The world is everything that is the case", and follows with the elaboration that in each instance, what 'is the case' is a Fact.  Now, the word 'fact' is rooted in the Latin for 'to do'.  Thus, at least at the outset, there is the potential in that project for a study of a 'world' constituted by Actions, from which the Language-Game of the Investigations can be derived, i. e. the initial definition of it, at #7, includes the term "actions".  However, it emerges in the course of the Tractatus that by 'fact' he means 'state-of-affairs', which is, in contrast with 'action', both impersonal and literally static.  So, the Tractatus is informed by a prejudice that is extra-linguistic, a concept of 'world', and, hence, by one that can be classified as 'Metaphysical'.

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