A genealogy of the world in Kant and Wittgenstein

Abstract

I connect the evolution of the world in the transition from the early to the late Wittgenstein to the controversies of the world Kant had with his contemporaries. I show how the metaphysics of the world sustains meaning. Early in his career Kant defines the world as a complete totality consisting in substances with a mind-independent causal integrity. This definition opposes the egoistic world of the Leibnizians, who reduce the world to an ideal unity of minds, with no inter-substantial causation. The early Wittgenstein defines the world as a substantial totality of facts situating objects in determinate relationships, reducible to atomic units. Language projects meaning insofar as it pictures these relationships. The later Wittgenstein dissolves this world into a relative and open series of contingent images relative to forms of life, without bottom in absolute simple. A realism about the grammar of the world shifts to an idealistic world of language. Meaning can have no fixed essence in a world of language without bottom in atomic simple in the world. An idealistic world of language generates a sophistic meaning that is endlessly flexible according to how one rearranges the system of propositions.