The central claim of this book is that, early and late, Wittgenstein modelled his approach to existential meaning on his account of linguistic meaning. A reading of Nietzsche s The Birth of Tragedy sets up Bearn s reading of the existential point of Wittgenstein s Tractatus. Bearn argues that both books try to resolve our anxiety about the meaning of life by appeal to the deep, unutterable essence of the world.
Bearn argues that as Wittgenstein s and Nietzsche s thought matured, they both separately came to believe that the answer to our existential anxiety does not lie beneath the surfaces of our lives, but in our acceptance Nietzsche s Yes of the groundless details of those surfaces themselves: the wonder of the ordinary"