Transvaluation and Rectification. Wittgenstein reads Nietzsche and Lichtenberg on Values, Poetry, and Language

Wittgenstein largely overlooks Nietzsche’s philosophy of language. It was mainly other aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy that attracted his attention. However, he surprisingly identifies himself with him as a poet-philosopher. This self-identification involves a peculiar conception of his own philosophy, which he sees as a form not only of poetry but also of transvaluation. In the Nachlass of the 1930s, the “transvaluation of all values” becomes a formula first for the whole epoch and then for Wittgenstein’s own new “movement of thought”. However, he fills both the formulas with a content that has only a distant affinity with the philosopher’s views. Like other models he chooses for his new movement of thought, they are different ways of emphasising the radical turn that he wants to give to philosophy. The second part of the chapter deals with Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s assessment of the proposal to switch from “I think”' to “it thinks” – perhaps the best-known example of the way in which Lichtenberg conceives of philosophy as a “rectification of the use of language”. With what looks like Lichtenberg’s alternative to Kant’s pure apperception, neither Nietzsche nor Wittgenstein was really satisfied, but for different reasons and with different conclusions.