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The most striking feature of the metaphysics of the Tractatus is a kind of dualism. The world is one irreducible reality and its substance is another sort of thing altogether. The world is the totality of facts, not of things, and serves as the metaphysical grounding for truth. The substance of the world is composed of objects, not facts, and serves as the metaphysical grounding for meaning. The metaphysical dichotomy has a direct consequence with respect to human expression, or what we can picture to ourselves: Facts can be explicitly expressed or stated, and therefore the world can be described. Objects, on the other hand, cannot be expressed or said but can only be shown, and therefore the substance of the world cannot be described. The "correct method in philosophy" (6.53) therefore also reflects the dualism: It consists not only of the very famous silence with respect to the substance and limits of the world (7), but also of saying what can be said, namely factual propositions which describe the world. There is also a direct consequence with respect to ethics: Happiness consists in being in harmony with the world, which is a difficult challenge for each of us because of the stubbornness of facts. Happiness could not possibly consist of simply being in harmony with the substance of the world, however; since the substance of this world is the same as the substance of any possible world, the substance of the world conforms as well to our wishes and fantasies as it does to facts, and there is no more ethical challenge to conforming to the substance of the world than there is to being satisfied with fantasies.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-30086-2_7

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