Grazer Philosophische Studien

Volume 42, 1992

Criss-crossing a Philosophical Landscape

Wittgenstein's Concept of Showing

Starting from an analysis of Wittgenstein's reasons for placing all true-seeming sentences about the relation between language and the world in the class of utterances that lack a truth-value and can only communicate in the privileged way, the doctrine of showing is investigated in Wittgenstein's later writings. In contrast to the view that the concept of showing simply disappeared with the abandonment of the picture theory of the sentence it is argued that much of his erarly doctrine of showing survives in Wittgenstein's later philosophy.