Lofty Ladders, Rough Ground - Learning from Hacker vs. Diamond

Abstract

The Hacker-Diamond controversy over how to read the Tractatus is likely to stir much
debate. The issues involved call for rigorous scholarship (and therefore also a
length of exposition not allowed here). But why bother? - Stanly Cavell has recently
claimed that there is still work to do in receiving "the event of the Investigations
in Western philosophical culture" (2001, 92). The import of the Hacker-Diamond
controversy seems to me lie in how it contributes to the task Cavell defines: It
gives new life to the old idea that in order to see what is new and important in the
Investigations we must see to what extent conventional conceptions of philosophy are
challenged already in the Tractatus.