The Significance of a Negation: Wittgenstein, Mauthner, and the Kraus Circle

The Significance of a Negation: Wittgenstein, Mauthner, and the Kraus Circle

Mauro Engelmann

I intend to revisit the role that Janik and Toulmin attributed to Mauthner’s views in the philosophy of the Tractatus. I argue for a rather significant change of perspective in elucidating the reference to Mauthner in the book. The question to be asked is not “What is the similarity between the projects of Mauthner and the Tractatus?” but “Why did Wittgenstein take the trouble to deny that his Sprachkritik could be somehow related to Mauthner’s?” I argue that the significance of the negation does not lie, as Janik and Toulmin think, in the strategies of Mauthner and Wittgenstein concerning facts and value, but in its possible role in the context of the “Kraus Circle”, in which Mauthner was seen as a representative of European moral superficiality and decline in the early 20th century.