Uma nova forma de ver as coisas

One of the most radical characteristics of "later" Wittgenstein is his view of the task of philosophy. The "conventional" view of philosophy, accepted by almost every Western philosopher since Plato, is that the philosopher's task was to solve a number of seemingly intractable problems using logical analysis (for example, the problem of "free will", the relationship between "mind" and "matter", what is "the good" or "the beautiful" and so on). However, Wittgenstein argued in PI that these "problems" were in fact pseudo-problems that arose from philosopher's misuse of language. Wittgenstein's new philosophical methodology was to continually remind the philosopher of the facts of linguistic usage that they had forgotten in their search for abstract "truths". It would then become obvious that the great questions posed by philosophers had arisen because they presupposed a mistaken view of language and its relation to reality. Philosophers in the Western tradition were not "wiser" than anyone else, as had been assumed — they were simply ordinary men and women more likely to entrap themselves in linguistic confusion. The task of the true philosopher (i.e. Wittgenstein) was to "show the fly out of the fly bottle": to show that the problems with which philosophers tormented themselves were in fact not really problems at all, but rather were examples of "language gone on holiday," as he put it. So the true philosopher becomes more like a therapist removing distress and confusion than someone who creates or discusses philosophical theories or positions.