Philosophy as a description and as a therapy. Wittgensteinian proposal

Abstract

The author continues a long philosophical discussion about the status and the function of philosophy treated as the element of culture. In the article she puts the following question: does philosophy play cultural role, in a sense that it plays a certain role in producing ideas and senses important for culture. To answer this question the author refers to some proposals which can be read from the late writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. She finds some promising answers there about doing philosophy and about its status among different domains of human cognitive activities. She presents the main Wittgensteinian theses about philosophy treated as a description and as a therapy, pointing out their theoretical background. She especially discusses basic aspects of Wittgensteinian anti-skepticism, anti-scientism and grammar understood as metaphysics. The author argues that we can use Wittgensteinian instructions regarding the way we think of philosophy in our contemporary views.