Transcendentalism in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus holds (to put the point in Kantian terms) that logic uses no categories and hence requires no transcendental deduction. However, this does not free logic wholly from transcendentalism. Logic depends on language, and the Tractatus contains a transcendental argument that the possibility of the expression of complete thoughts presupposes a language of simple names. This latter transcendental argument Wittgenstein abandoned in his middle period, leaving him exposed in his later work to a renewed threat of transcendental idealism.