From the “Tractatus” to the “Philosophical remarks”: reflections on the nature of philosophy

Abstract

In this article, I analyze Wittgenstein’s conception of the nature and function of philosophy, discussing his deflationary method used for the treatment of philosophical problems. I show the reasons by which Wittgenstein would have understood philosophy as an elucidative activity, whose main purpose would be to dissolve philosophical problems through the logical (and/or phenomenological) analysis. In order to do so, I divide the article into three sections, in which I discuss Wittgenstein's thinking from the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921), from Some Remarks on Logical Form (1929) and from the Philosophical Remarks (1929-1930), respectively. Initially, I present Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of interpreting philosophy as a discipline that, as with science, can offer a theoretical representation of some domain of objects or facts. Subsequently, I list some changes in his description of the philosophical activity, showing that until the beginning of his middle-period philosophy, Wittgenstein maintains the perspective that the function of philosophy would be to distinguish between real (solvable) theoretical problems and philosophical pseudo-problems.