what can and cannot be said in preexisting language.^21 Wittgenstein had his
own blind spot. He did not prevent subsequent philosophers from investigating
the new meta-levels he had opened; by pointing to them, he opened the
possibility of creating new language for this terrain. Wittgenstein did not see
this because he was involved in a polemic, launched already by Russell in the
campaign against Idealism. The distinction between the sayable and the un-
sayable/showable not only indicates the hierarchy of statements but legislates
what is legitimate and illegitimate at each level.^22 The sayable/unsayable dis-
tinction carries on the polemical utility of the theory of types. And indeed the
latter did not fade away; even if he regarded it as overly complicated for the
fundamentals of mathematics, Carnap found it a powerful weapon to wield
against metaphysics, which could now be eliminated as resting on category
mistakes.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein supplemented his Russellian heritage with
reflections in a very different tone on the meaning of life and the paramount
importance of religious mysticism, coupled into his system via the doctrine of
unsayables. This portion was added during the stress of combat in World War
I, when Wittgenstein underwent a religious conversion to Tolstoyan Christian-
ity (Monk, 1990: 115–123, 134–146). This segment was not generated by the
core philosophical network; not surprisingly, it had little influence and received
virtually no recognition when Wittgenstein later gravitated back into the
philosophical network, especially in the Vienna Circle, which was interested
only in the Russellian logicist line. Rereading the Tractatus in a religious-mys-
tical light came only after Wittgenstein’s death, after he had become the star
of the ordinary language movement, above all during the post-positivism of
the 1970s.
The Vienna Circle as a Nexus of Struggles
The period between 1910 and 1940 witnesses a massive realignment. The
entire lineup of the preceding generations fades out: Idealists, Neo-Kantians,
Brentano’s act psychology (so-called Austrian realism), as well as vitalists,
evolutionists, Utilitarians, and materialists. Representatives of some of these
schools continue to publish, but they are in their last gasps, regarded as
outdated and receiving declining attention. In their place come new schools:
logical positivists, ordinary language philosophers, and phenomenologist-exis-
tentialists. These constitute new lines of antagonism, rising to new heights of
militancy.
Not that there is a break in the intergenerational networks: many of the
old lineages continue, but the latest pupils move in new directions (see Figure
13.3). In England, the old Idealist and Utilitarian networks give rise to Russell
The Post-revolutionary Condition^ •^717