ABSTRACT
By a genetic account of Wittgenstein’s thought in this area I mean one that looks at the origin of his ideas, their causes, occasions, and progress. I can offer here only part of such an account. But even were it, which is almost impossible, complete, such an account would of course not be decisive as to the validity or value of those ideas – to think so would indeed be to commit the genetic fallacy. It should, however, enable us to identify those ideas better, to see what Wittgenstein was about when he expressed them, what he, at first at any rate, thought they signified. It will involve also looking at the context, the cultural and family surroundings, in which Wittgenstein came to them. This is not to be viewed as reductive in its tendency. The aim is to identify the thrust of Wittgenstein’s thinking, after which it can be judged how well he conducted it and whether, perhaps, it throws up conclusions and insights other than those that he first expected, other even than those that he ever saw. In passing I hope we shall learn something about the intellectual enterprise that he was engaged on in later life also.1 This, whatever it was, was an essential part of the hold he had on people, or some people. Like a character in an early Iris Murdoch novel he gave people the impression that they were seeing everything in a new and clearer light, and that for intellectual as well as for moral reasons.
