Quote #41

What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities.

More from Ludwig Wittgenstein

  1. The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know. (p. 45)
  2. A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the oppos…
  3. But ordinary language is all right. (p. 28)
  4. The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word - like a lump of sugar in water. (p.183)
  5. What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms? (p. 26)
  6. The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway. (p.187)
  7. For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. (…
  8. Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult '…

All Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes