Philosophical Investigations

Augustine describes the process by which he learned language from his elders: they would point to an object and name it, and he would come to associate that name with the object. On one level, this is a perfectly straightforward and unobjectionable description. The process that Augustine desribes is called ostensive definition. On the other hand, we could read this process as propounding a certain philosophy of language, according to which words are names for things. Such a philosophy of language takes the word-thing connection to be primary, and does not acknowledge how much is presupposed in such a theory. Wittgenstein takes the quotation from Augustine as evidence for that particular philosophy of language, and sets about showing how its basic assumptions infect a great deal of our thinking, and that they are mistaken. At the same time, the fact that a simpler, more unproblematic reading of the same passage is open to us suggests that the way into philosophical temptation comes through an effort to over-theorize straightforward statements in our ordinary language.

Wittgenstein does not leave us with any philosophical theories or conclusions. In fact, he makes it quite clear that he feels that all so-called "theories" in philosophy arise from confusion. Any genuine philosophical thesis would not even be debatable, according to section 128. It is thus quite natural believe that Wittgenstein is proclaiming an end to philosophy. He seems to say that all philosophical theorizing is void, and there is nothing left to do in philosophy once we have recognized this. But it might be more accurate to say that Wittgenstein is proclaiming the end to a certain kind of philosophical thinking. He does not pretend that anyone who reads the Investigations will be immediately and permanently cured of the temptations toward metaphysical speculation. His concept of philosophy is as a kind of therapy for treating these temptations that inevitably arise as a matter of course in abstract thinking. Wittgensteinian philosophy thus spells an end to systematic philosophy, the kind of philosophy one finds in books that give us the big answers to the big questions. His philosophy will thrive more through persistent and acute dialogue than through a monologic proclamation of "the answers."

Though we can identify errors in philosophical theories, Wittgenstein feels the fundamental error is committed long before a philosophical theory arrives at a neatly articulated position. These errors lie in basic assumptions or temptations in our thinking that occur at a very basic stage. His interest, then, is in uncovering and removing these basic assumptions and temptations. To do so, he must target unsophisticated ideas where these assumptions and temptations are most evident. In complex theories, these assumptions are disguised and not so blatant; hence ¤464: "My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense." The critique Wittgenstein makes of these embryonic stages of philosophical thinking applies equally to more sophisticated theories, because these sophisticated theories cannot get off the ground without presupposing a great deal of the basic ideas that Wittgenstein criticizes.