Ceci n'est pas une ontologie

Abstract

The opening remarks of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus seem to outline the bases of an atomistic ontological theory. For the resolute interpreters, such 
an ontology should be considered as mere part of the set of nonsensical 
propositions that make up the parody of a semantic theory. However, resolute 
readers share with the traditional views an essentialist reading of the 
ontological section, according to which Wittgenstein's remarks are intended to 
build up a real, though parodistic, atomistic ontology. 
 By contrast, textual evidence supports the idea that the basic notion of 
Wittgenstein’s ontology, i.e. the notion of object, should be considered as an 
intra-linguistic, rather than an ontological one. In this paper, we want to 
show how some of the main claims of the resolute readings could be fruitfully 
combined with the analyses of Tractarian objects that illustrate them as the 
semantic roles of names.