In: Christoph Jäger, Winfried Löffler (eds.), Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement. Papers of the 34th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel/Lower Austria (2011) pp. 201-203. 1 From the Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgement to the World as the Totality of Facts. Wittgenstein and the Context Principle Daniele Mezzadri Abstract As is well known, in 1913 Russell abandoned his multiple-relation theory of judgement in consequence of Wittgenstein’s criticism. In recent years a number of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s objection to Russell have been advanced; although many of them point in the right direction, they all somehow overlook, or underestimate, the importance that the context principle played in it. In this paper I propose a context principle-based reading of the development of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, from his criticism of Russell’s – via Wittgenstein’s 1913-1914 account of propositional unity – to the mature theory of the proposition presented in the Tractatus; I finally connect it to the conception of the world as the totality of facts presented in the Tractatus. 1 An overview of Russell’s multiple-relation theory The multiple-relation theory of judgement Russell developed in the years 1910-1913 is a theory which, instead of conceiving of a judgement as a binary relation between a mind and a mind- independent proposition (which is supposed to exist both if it is true and if it is false), conceives of a judgement as a multigrade relation between a mind and the constituents of the judgement in question. The judgement that Paris is north of London, for example, presupposes that the judging mind is related (by a relation of acquaintance) to the constituents of what is judged, namely ‘Paris’, ‘London’ and ‘being north of’. Of these relata, three are (roughly speaking) particulars and one is a relation (a universal). An important feature of this theory is that what Russell calls the ‘subordinate-relation’ in the judgement complex (the relation ‘being north of’ in our example) does not figure in the complex as relating the particulars, but – Russell says – as a relation in-itself, as a brick of the complex (and not as the cement of it) (Russell 1912, 74). It is necessary for him to rule out the possibility that the subordinate relation actually relates; if this were so, then, in the example above, Paris and London (in that order) would be related by the relation ‘being north of” and thus would form a (false) objective complex; Russell would thus have trouble accounting for false judgements. On this theory, then, judgemental constituents are not unified with one another independently of the unity provided by the multiple relation of judgement itself. Thus there is no subordinate-complex in a