Abstract
Abstract: Spatial metaphors have peculiar prominence in accounts of rationality,
such as in the phrase “space of reason” made prominent by Wilfrid Sellars and
John McDowell. This article attempts to understand the potential of such comparisons
of reason to space, taking Wittgenstein’s metaphor of “logical space”
as exemplary. As Hans Blumenberg observes in his reading of Wittgenstein and
in contrast to its stated aim, the account of “logical space” in the Tractatus does
not achieve a final delimitation of reason. Wittgenstein’s discussion of different
forms of rationality rather leads him to consider a plurality of spaces. Asking how
these different spaces or fields of meaning can be congruent at all, Wittgenstein
is led to consider the indeterminacy of space itself in contrast to the different
localizations it allows.