ABSTRACT
Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. In her Introduction to The New Wittgenstein, Alice Crary affirms that Wittgenstein's primary aim in philosophy is a therapeutic one - that is, he advocates philosophy as a form of therapy whose goal is to help us work ourselves out of confusions we become entangled in when philosophizing. Wittgenstein's view of philosophy as conceptual or grammatical elucidation is rooted in the realization that what we, in our scientistic attitudes, have traditionally taken to be metaphysical problems are nothing but linguistic confusions. Wittgenstein's explanations are as removed from scientific, scientistic or metaphysical speculation as can be but look across his desk, he did. Neither Therapeutism nor linguistic reductivism can be pinned on Wittgenstein.
