Background

Abstract

Regrettably, Wittgenstein did not consider the possibility that his early effort was both significant and a failure. So he replaced its content with its approach: the concern of philosophy is (not with thought but) with language, questioning whether a sentence has truth-value before questioning whether it is true. To view Wittgenstein’s work as philosophy of life is to admit defeat. The paradox of analysis is satisfactorily answerable, providing scope to the techniques of Wittgenstein and of his followers. The most ambitious example of this is logical atomism. It failed. Mature Wittgenstein offered examples of techniques for analysing sentences; it is questionable.