Quote of the Week

Dear Ogden,

I am very sorry indeed I cannot send you the supplements. There can be no thought of printing them. What they contain is this: When I had finished the book roughly there remained certain propositions — about a hundred — about which I was doubtful whether I should take them in or not. These propositions were — partly — different versions of those now contained in the book; for it had often happened that I had written down a proposition in many different forms, when the same thought had occurred to me in different ways during the long time I worked at that business. Another part of the supplements are merely sketches of propositions which I thought I might some day take up again if their thoughts should ever revive in me. That means: the supplements are exactly what must not be printed. Besides THEY REALLY CONTAIN NO ELUCIDATIONS AT ALL, but are still less clear than the rest of my propositions. As to the shortness of the book I am awfully sorry for it; but what can I do?! If you were to squeeze me out like a lemon you would get nothing more out of me. To let you print the Ergänzungen would be no remedy. It would be just as if you had gone to a joiner and ordered a table and he had made the table too short and now would sell you the shavings and sawdust and other rubbish along with the table to make up for its shortness. (Rather than print the Ergänzungen to make the book fatter leave a dozen white sheets for the reader to swear into when he has purchased the book and can't understand it.) (May 5, 1922; Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein to C. K. Ogden, p. 46)

I can't resist a little commentary: (1) When I first read this, the last sentence made me laugh out loud.

(2) I first read this in Conant's "Method of the Tractatus." After quoting from the letter, Conant writes,

These supplementary passages [Ergänzungen] "are exactly what must not be printed," for they contain no elucidations. What is wrong with adding passages that contain no elucidations? Here is a preview of the answer to this question, which this essay will defend: to add passages to the work that do not subserve its elucidatory aim would be to compromise its fundamental conception. (p. 379)

I think it's pretty obvious that Conant bends the letter to fit his interpretation. First, Wittgenstein does not say that the supplements must not be printed because they contain no elucidations. He says they must not be printed because they're either redundant or incomplete. He then says, "Besides, they really contain no elucidations at all." Second, even if Conant is right about Erläuterung (elucidation) in the Tractatus (see the last section of MT), Wittgenstein doesn't mean that here. Ogden had requested that the supplements be added to the book to make it clearer. Wittgenstein responds that the supplements are even less clear than the rest, so there's no point in adding them. (Of course, even if Conant's interpretation of the letter is wrong, his interpretation of the Tractatus is unaffected. "The Method of the Tractatus" is a very long and very complicated article to which the letter is mere window dressing.)