Abstract

In this essay I discuss some aspects of the interpretation that has been given to Wittgenstein’s philosophy by scholars such as Cora Diamond and James Conant. After outlining very briefly the historical- philosophical background in which this new interpretation has appeared, I dwell on the significance of these interpreters’ insistence on the exclusively therapeutic character of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, both with regard to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and to the Philosophical Investigations, and on the sense and implications of their refusal to attribute any theoretical purpose to Wittgenstein. Finally, I wonder whether the task of clarification that Wittgenstein assigns to philosophy can be completely identified, as Diamond and Conant seem to believe, with its therapeutic action