Abstract

In what follows, I will concentrate on the type of temporality which structures Wittgenstein's method of a perspicuous representation, or of a synoptic overview (übersichtliche Darstellung). I will argue that the temporal order which applies to (giving) a perspicuous representation is best to be described as retroactivity, deferred action or afterwardness (Nachträglichkeit), a concept which calls into question the ordinary conception of time as a linear and irreversible process as well as of a clear break between present and past. First, I will turn to Sigmund Freud and the way he developed the concept of Nachträglichkeit or retroactivity in some of his case-studies. The basic idea here is that the meaning or content of a past experience is constituted by repeating it in a different or disguised way. I will then argue that the relation between a perspicuous representation and what is made perspicuous is best interpreted as a relation of Nachträglichkeit. This interpretation also accounts for the involvement of the subject in the object made perspicuous—as it is stressed by Wittgenstein and illustrated by his discursive method.