ABSTRACT

This chapter explores some of the conceptual background to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. It focuses on explicating its central concepts – that is ordinary language philosophy, language games, grammatical investigations, and forms of life – which can usefully be configured around a series of oppositions: abstract/concrete, general/particular, explanation/description, object/use, theory/practice, monism/pluralism, individual/social, and theory/therapy. The concrete, context-specific investigation and clarification of different kinds of words is what Wittgenstein calls a ‘grammatical investigation’. Wittgenstein introduces the concept of a ‘language game’ to emphasize this aspect of language, that language is inseparably tied to the practical activities of everyday speakers, that it is bound up with their non-linguistic practices and the natural world they inhabit. Wittgenstein then turns his attention to criticizing a mentalist conception of meaning and of a corresponding mentalist conception of ostensive definition as the inner, private act of pointing to a mental picture in the mind.