Negation and Reality in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract

In this paper, an interpretation of the Tractatus will be proposed according to which the form that a proposition must have in common with reality in order to depict it is something like A ∨ ~A. In this way, propositions, by showing their logical form, would show, on the one hand, the contingent nature of facts and, on the other, their own bipolarity. Once what I take to be the Tractarian conception of negative facts is introduced, I will argue in favor of this interpretation in terms of its potential to explain the doctrine known as the logical unity of the contradictory pair, the nature of the proposition as a picture of reality, and, finally, the relationship between bipolarity and the sense of a proposition.