13 - On the Difficulty of Seeing Aspects and the “Therapeutic” Reading of Wittgenstein

Summary

The distinctive character of Wittgenstein's manner of writing, early and late, must play an important role in accounting for the diverse ways in which it has been approached and engaged. Indeed, there is arguably no other philosopher about whom the question of how to approach his texts – how to understand their aims, methods, modes of criticism, compositional structure, and the like – is as widely regarded as decisively important to a correct appreciation of what they say, and as perennially a matter of dispute. In recent years, however, something approaching an orthodoxy concerning this matter has begun to emerge among interpreters of Wittgenstein. Informed by his remark that “there is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies” (PI §133), this approach to his work has been designated “therapeutic.”

A useful account of this “therapeutic” reading is offered by Alice Crary in her Introduction to The New Wittgenstein – a volume of essays the editors regard as exemplifying this approach. For my purposes at this point, the following three contrasts with what Crary calls “standard” approaches to reading Wittgenstein provide a sufficiently accurate, if general, sense of its nature. First, “standard” readings of Wittgenstein understand him to be addressing meaningful philosophical claims and to be showing them to be false, misleading, incomplete, or in some other way unsatisfactory.