Coda

Abstract

In the preface to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes about his ‘several unsuccessful attempts’ to bring all his ideas in a book with ‘natural order and without breaks’ (1958: ix). He alludes to the difficulty to impose an overall system or structure to the ‘movements of his thoughts’. This difficulty is a defining element of his philosophy, which revolves around a resistance against theorisation and systematisation. Thus, one might be tempted to say, paradoxically, his philosophy aims at putting an end to philosophy the way it is traditionally pursued — with its imitation of the methods of science, its oversimplifications, its theorisation of the phenomena that escape systematisation. He targets a certain way of doing philosophy and tries to introduce a new method of doing philosophy. He writes,

The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. - The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question. - Instead we now demonstrate a method, by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off. - Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. (ibid.: § 133)