The Argument of the “Tractatus:” Its Relevance to Contemporary Theories of Logic, Language, Mind, and Philosophical Trust by Richard M. McDonough (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 165 of the church regularly gives renewed expression to inspiration in constantly new existential contexts. There the Christian churches have sometimes done well, and sometimes less well, leading to disillusionment. We can regard all this as a generally accepted consensus among contemporary theologians, though the instruments of the church's teaching authority often have a tendency to dwell on ' the letter ' of earlier statements and to underestimate their historieal and hermeneutical dimensions" (208). Those in the Magisterium who dwell on 'the letter ' believe, erroneously in Schillebeeckx's judgment, that history can and does give rise to nonnative, enduring facts and forms. Theologians who attend to historical relativizing and hermeneutical theorizing, correctly in Schillebeeckx's judgment, know better. His book is clearly designed to demonstrate this point. There is one sense in which his hook docs not, and indeed cannot, fail, given how the facts which he presents for the reader's judgment arise out of the theory with which he begins and necessarily point to the conclusion which his theory already presupposes. This is a fail-safe method for getting to where one wants to go. Unfortunately, it gets there by way of an enormous detour around the facticity of the Catholic faith and practice, a facticity which, despite the efforts of some of our best known (if not finest) theologians over a two thousand year history, has consistently refused to submit to the hypothetical and the theoretical reason of rationalist theologians. Our faith is centered on the Christ, the incarnate, historical Logos of tradition and Scripture, not on the disincarnate, unhistorical logos of theoretical theology. Schillebeeckx is not the first, nor will he be the last, theologian intent upon reducing the Catholic faith to some hypothetical methodology. Happily, however, and perhaps even miraculously, the Church always manages to survive her theologians, a fact which cannot but offer solace to many of the readers of this book. University of St. Thomas Houston, Texas JOYCE A. Ll'J'TLE The .Argument of the "Tractatus :" Its Relevance to Contempora~·y Theories of Logic, Language. Mind, and Philosophical Trust. By RroHARD M. McDoNOUGH. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 311. This book attempts an analysis of the Tractatits Logico-Philosophicus based on taking Wittgenstein's professed "fundamental idea' as the hermeneutic key. Tractatus 4.0312 states, in part: "My fundamental idea is 166 BOOK REVIEWS that the 'log·ical constants' are not representatives." McDonough believes that previous interpreters of the Tractatus have either ignored or downplayed the importance of this statement, and he writes in the conviction that taking it seriously produc&s a reading of the Tractatits that is friendlier toward philosophical language and argumentation than " the strong nagativ& views ... which have been hastily claimed " as the import of the book (p. 11). In order to establish this "fundamental idea" as an interpretative device McDonough reminds the reader of links among three ideas. The first is the idea that the logical constants are not representatives. The second is the idea that the sole (real) logical constant is the general propositional form (T 5.47). The third is the fact that the status of the propositions of logic as tautologies exhibits the logic of their constituents, and hence, the logical properties of language and the world (T 6.12). By developing the relations among these ideas, and extending them to the interpretation of the Tractatiis as a whole, McDonough aims to show that Wittgenstein is committed to an explicit, only "technically nonsensical," philosophical doctrin& concerning the derivation of general metaphysical facts about ontology from general facts about the philosophy of logic. This doctrine he characterizes as "the argument of th& Tractatus." By attributing to the book an argmnent or doctrine (in the sense just mention &d) he contradicts those commentators who have understood Wittg·enstein to be earnestly requiring real silence about philosophy and to b& asserting seriously that the Tractatu,s is a self-refuting treatise, to be kicked aside. once its lessons are learned. J\1foDonoug·h begins with vVittgenstein's understanding of negation and th& problem wheth&r there are negative facts. McDonough discusses Russell 's attempt to sort this out, and claims that Wittgenstein diagnoses Russell's mistake in this remark; "For it is difficult...