ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the later Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, his conception of explanation, his style of writing, and the form of Philosophical Investigations, have their origin in German literature and philosophy written in the three decades following 1790. It focuses on noting some striking similarities between the Christian confessional tradition and the style of the Investigations. The chapter shows how these elements of the confessional tradition were altered, adapted and secularized by German Romantic philosophers. It demonstrates that the Investigations are an heir to this refracted inheritance rather than a direct continuation of the Christian tradition itself. The chapter examines Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and demonstrates its affinities with the form and preoccupations of the Investigations. For German Romantics in the 30 years after 1790, the central philosophical problem was how to heal the division between the world of nature and the experience of the subject.
