ABSTRACT
The later Wittgenstein may be described as a ‘humanist’ writer in a literal sense of the word. He displays what is distinctively human about language, about art and about human beings themselves – and also, of course, about philosophy itself. What is distinctively human, in this sense, may be contrasted with the realm of scientific research and theory. In this realm Hume’s dictum is (with some reservations) appropriate: ‘To consider the matter a priori, anything may produce anything.’1 Scientific studies are largely concerned with what is ‘hidden’: there is room in them for theories in which unobservable entities or processes are posited, and also for surprising discoveries. But this is not to be so in the case of Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation. ‘What is hidden,’ he wrote, ‘is of no interest to us.’
