The dissertation operates at two levels: an account of a problematic of self in the early philosophy of Wittgenstein and Sartre - which simultaneously supports a comparative study that claims convergence is significant, detailed and extensive. The thesis thus disputes the traditional - 'Divide' - reading of Sartre and Wittgenstein. The problematic is defined by the view that the self desires an ethical absolute and that this can only be achieved when a metaphysics of aesthetics is assumed. It is a certain concept of language and self, based on a saying-showing distinction. that so constitutes the problematic. and which is the focus of inquiry. This results in the following structure: §l Defines and defends the thesis' Art-andthe- Ineffable' - and thus the generic principle of the present thesis. §2 Claims, firstly, (and perhaps for the first time), that Sartre has a philosophy of language that includes a formal principle of the ineffable and a - (Tractarian) saying-showing distinction: both of which are equally formative in his own (early) philosophy. Secondly. that the saying-showing distinction is identified with a concept of self. §3 Exposes the (previously neglected) early account of self in Sartre and Wittgenstein and, secondly, arh'1leS for four definitive points of convergence: that the self is bi-polar, non-substantive, eliminated, non-encounterable. ~..j. Presents modalities of the non-substantive self: as operational intentionality, as programmatic. and as a relation or attitude to the world (clinching the ethico-aesthetic structure). ~5 Claims convergence on some key aesthetic principles (including disinterestedness and sub specie aeternitatis), identifying them, in terms of Showing, with the self, and stating the proposed - dual - solution to the problematic: Aesthetic determination and Aesthetic deeds. The fonner is the self (a relational attitude) choosing it-self as an aesthetic relation to the world; the latter. represented here by Tractatus and Nausea, are limited wholes with a transcendental message that can only be shown: the self disclosing through a work of art the unsayable solution to the problematic.