Modal Moments: Transpositions of the Tractatus in Wittgenstein's Later Work

The idea of "progress" in philosophy, embedded in the motto of Investigations, is both grammatical and autobiographical. Where did Wittgenstein think he had progressed in the years since the Tractatus? On what scores? What lessons may be drawn from his path? In answering this, we must rethink how the grammar of "progress" is to be weighed and measured in philosophy. We rely on Jacques Bouveresse 's 1991 essay, "'The Darkness of this Time': Wittgenstein and the Modern World" and Stanley Cavell's idea that Wittgenstein's philosophical practice in the Tractatus and Investigations relies everywhere on seeing possibilities through actualities, treating 'form" as the possibility of structure. This allows us to trace the fate of certain turns of thought already appearing in the Tractatus: variations on lines of thought that Wittgenstein would later revisit and reorchestrate in a new way.