ABSTRACT
The initial impact of Wittgenstein’s philosophy was tremendous. His first work, coming in the wake of Russell, Frege, and Husserl’s work on logic, attracted considerable attention in Cambridge and Vienna. With the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, it seemed that an entire research programme in philosophical logic had reached a terminus. His later work, though not published until after his death, also had a
remarkable impact. For a time, after his death, it seemed as if philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American academic tradition had everywhere been affected by Wittgenstein’s work. It has been called an epochal change.1 An entire generation of philosophers, some of whom learned at his knee, went forth to use Wittgenstein’s philosophical method.2 Philosophy, it seemed, might never be the same. How things have changed, if the doomsayers are to be believed. A recent
series of speakers at the Wittgenstein archive in Bergen decried the present place of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.3 Not only are mainstream academic philosophers not interested, but students are discouraged from advertising their interest in Wittgenstein if they are to progress.4 Wittgenstein, it might seem, was a flash in the pan, his impact more to do with personality than philosophical substance.5
