“A picture holds us captive”

This chapter demonstrates how increasingly central the notion of “picture” is to Ludwig Wittgenstein. The truly revolutionary aspect of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thinking is that he did not want to offer an alternative or another metaphysical system to replace Cartesian worldview. His aim was to liberate human beings from the metaphysical picture that held us captive, a captivity based on pictures, that views modern philosophy as having firm foundations and essences where knowledge is based on accurate representations of the world. As D. Naugle argues, Wittgenstein wants to replace the Cartesian worldview with the non-Cartesian worldview that rests on unverifiable forms of life that recognises non-representational functions of language. Wittgenstein indicates that changing a worldview is not like changing one’s mind and it doesn’t happen easily because it is not an entirely rational process. Worldview core beliefs are held on to even in the face of evidence.