Are We All Trapped in Nonsense?

Abstract

In his paper “Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy”¹, Anthony Kenny discusses Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach to philosophy. He points out that Wittgenstein often compares philosophy to some kind of healing, occasionally in a straightforward medical sense, but more often in a psychotherapeutic sense. Kenny writes: “It is especially to psychoanalysis — and to psychotherapy in general — that Wittgenstein compares his philosophy” (Kenny, 2). There are many questions that one might ask about the therapeutic side of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It is certainly true that Wittgenstein compared philosophy to therapy. In the Philosophical Investigations, for example, he says: “There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.”² In a later passage in that work, he also writes: “The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness” (PI § 255). One of the questions that arise when discussing Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach to philosophy is what kind of illness, or illnesses, philosophy treats. Another question that arises is what kind of a treatment philosophy is.