Sean asked:

Why is Wittgenstein important?

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There are two questions here: Why is Wittgenstein important in the history of philosophy? and why is
he important today?

The effect of Wittgenstein on the history of twentieth century philosophy has been incalculable.
Without the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1921) — inspired by the philosophical logic of Gottlob
Frege, and published at a time when English speaking philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic were
still largely in the grip of the idealism of F.H. Bradley and Josiah Royce — there would have been no
Vienna Circle, no logical positivism, no Carnap, no Ayer, arguably no Russell (it is sometimes
forgotten that Russell was an idealist in his younger days, though he ascribes his first emancipation
from the grip of idealism to fellow Cambridge student G.E. Moore). Certainly, Russell's philosophy
would have taken a very different shape in the absence of the influence of his most famous student. It
is six of one, half a dozen of the other whether you credit the birth of analytical philosophy,still the
dominant philosophy of the English speaking world, to Frege or to Wittgenstein. Without Wittgenstein,
Frege's pioneering work might have gone largely unnoticed.

Wittgenstein's later and radically different philosophy of the Philosophical Investigations(1953) came
to dominate a large sector of English-speaking philosophy, though its influence was not so universal
as his earlier work. (The elderly Russell never understood Wittgenstein's later work and complained
bitterly that Wittgenstein had given up on serious thinking.)

These are interesting and controversial issues. In my view, however, the main question is why
Wittgenstein is important today.

I have just done a fast search of the Pathways and Philosophical Society web sites, and found a
staggering 511 items matching the search words, Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein's, Wittgensteinian.
Reviewing the entries gives pretty conclusive evidence that the philosophy of Wittgenstein is
continuing importance to myself and the other contributors, and not just his historical influence. How
can I justify this?

In both his early and late philosophy, Wittgenstein perceived the central importance of language,not
merely as a fruitful subject for philosophical study, but as the vehicle in which our philosophical
perplexities are expressed. We misunderstand our own language, its logic, and because of that we
talk nonsense when we think we are talking perfect sense. We ask 'questions' which cannot be
answered because the question itself does not mean what we thought it meant, or perhaps it means
nothing at all. There isa real question, a philosophical question, about what it is that prompts us to
say the things we say when in a state of seemingly philosophical perplexity, but it is buried under a
rubble of useless verbiage.

This is not the place to go into the details of Wittgenstein's lasting contribution to philosophy, his
ground-breaking inquiries into the nature of subjectivity and self-knowledge, the importance of
community, practice, the idea of language games. It is the broad picture that I am interested in now.
Wittgenstein made us aware of language in a way that no philosopher has done since Socrates. We
can no longer pose questions and answer them with the naive confidence that takes our knowledge
of our own meaningfor granted.

Geoffrey Klempner