COMO ENTENDER UM CONTRASSENSO E RECONHECER SUA CORREÇÃO

The paper is an attempt to come to terms with the last paragraphs of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein says that no single sentence of that book makes any sense at all. The reader is invited to accept this as a consequence of an understanding of the author himself, and this is clearly paradoxical. I try to show that this is only apparently paradoxical, and that we must recognize a vague and unarticulated notion of “language game” as a kind of background to the whole Tractatus. Language games do not need to make Tractarian sense to be played, and they have effects of many different kinds. One of them, for instance, could perfectly be to remain silent about what cannot be said, and analyze language along certain general lines of conduct.