Introduction

Wittgenstein once said that he would prefer a change in the way people live to a continuation of his philosophical work by others, a change that would render superfluous all the issues and questions of his philosophizing: “You must change the way you live and … what is problematic will disappear” (CV 27/31, cf. 61/70). He suggested that, like “the sickness of a time,” it was possible for “the sickness of philosophical problems to get cured only through a changed mode of thought and of life.” On another occasion he asked, “What is the good of philosophy if it does not make me a better human being?”

As these statements indicate, Wittgenstein was by no means concerned with only the logic of philosophical perplexity and illusion. Indeed, in his later work, he often seems less interested in assessing specific philosophical theories than in diagnosing an entire attitude or mode of living that he saw as accompanying the philosophizing stance in general. This attitude or mode of living, I will argue, involves a predilection for detached contemplation, abstraction, and reifying introspection – for a sense of separation from body, self, community, and world. It is one with which Wittgenstein, like many members of modern Western society, especially intellectuals, was personally all too familiar.

In previous work, I adopted a Wittgensteinian perspective to offer a critique of some of the central concepts of psychiatry (especially delusion) and to develop a more adequate understanding of the subtleties of certain kinds of mental disorder. Here I wish to take Wittgenstein and his thought as the object of analysis.