%0 Journal Article %A Wallage, Martijn %T Hoe de auteur verdween uit Wittgensteins Tractatus %D 2023 %J Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, %V 115 %N 2 %P 153-165 %@ 2352-1244 %R https://doi.org/10.5117/ANTW2023.2.004.WALL %K Wittgenstein %K solipsism %K writing. %K Tractatus %I Amsterdam University Press, %X Abstract How the Author Disappeared from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus In this essay, I investigate the status of the written word in the (early, mostly) work of Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein tends to imagine language as written rather than spoken. This focus on writing goes together with a sense that the author is absent from the text. I argue that the problem is not with writing in general but specifically with books, and more specifically with the fantasy of a book of everything, the importance of which to Wittgenstein’s early work was brought out by Eli Friedlander. On my account, such a book, by pretending to contain the whole world, leaves no place for an author. Since the early Wittgenstein imagines subjectivity in the form of a book of everything, he is unable to place subjectivity – subjects: you and I – in the world. I end by briefly suggesting that in his later work, Wittgenstein gives up on the fantasy of a book of everything and is in a better position to address the problem of finding subjectivity in the world. %U https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/ANTW2023.2.004.WALL