In this essay, I take up James Conant and Cora Diamond’s suggestion that “to take the difference between saying and showing deeply enough is not to give up on showing but to give up on picturing it as a ‘what’ ”. I try to establish that the Tractatus’s talk of “showing” is more coherent than is usually appreciated, that it is indeed a key to the internal unity of the book, and that it positively helps us to work our way (...) into the practice of philosophy, which its author understood as a practice of logical clarification. Thus, it is not a stretch of latent nonsense whose sole function is to conjure up an illusion of sense for the sake of displaying its disintegration. While Wittgenstein’s concept of showing is not meant to “make up for” the impossibility of saying certain things, neither does it stand in need of being “redeemed.” Whether or not it is to prove ultimately coherent, the Tractatus’s talk of “showing,” I shall argue, is certainly not to be “thrown away” in the name of the Tractarian conception of logic, for the simple reason that it essentially belongs with it. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the question whether there is anything left of the Tractatus criticisms of Frege and Russell, if the principles on which those criticisms are apparently based are “thrown away.” I consider two examples of Tractarian arguments that criticize Russell, both of which may appear to rest on the context principle. I discuss only briefly Wittgenstein’s argument against Russell on the theory of types, but I look in detail at his criticism of Russell on generality. I show (...) how that criticism can be understood independently of any supposed Tractarian principles. I also consider the importance of ideas in Russell’s Principles of Mathematics for the development of Wittgenstein’s thought, including the distinction between saying and showing. (shrink)