Abstract

Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are dead. Wittgenstein announces their passing in Philosophische Untersuchungen and he of all people should know when the brainchildren of his youth were no more. But it is surprising that he does not accord them more generous obsequies than a fragmented, offhand obituary. Their existence was a logical necessity in his erstwhile scheme of things, not a dispensable phenomenon of the contingent world: Even if the world is infinitely complex, so that every fact consists of infinitely many Sachverhalte and every Sachverhalt is composed of infinitely many Gegenstände , even then there would have to be Gegenstände and Sachverhalte