Wittgenstein was a metaphysician

Metaphysics as an antidote to unclear thinking

Wittgenstein is known as a philosopher who sought to cure philosophy from unclear thinking. For him, philosophy’s attempts to answer traditional metaphysical questions like “Is there a God?”, “What is the nature of reality”, “Do we have free will?” end up in confusion and nonsense. But in his attempt to avoid the pitfalls of traditional metaphysics, Wittgenstein ends up asking questions about the way we make sense of things, that are metaphysical, argues A.W. Moore.

 This is the sixthinstalment in our series The Return of Metaphysics, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation. Read the series' previous articles The Return of Metaphysics: Hegel vs Kant, The Return of Idealism: Hegel vs Russell,  Derrida and the trouble with metaphysics,The Return of Metaphysics: Russell and Realism, and After Metaphysics: Rorty and American Pragmatism.

 

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Charles Justice 15 September 2022

The author's definition of metaphysics: which I paraphrase as: "the most general way of making sense of things" is essentially merging metaphysics with epistemology. They need to be kept separate in my opinion.