An Anatomy of Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory

Abstract

The idea of deconstruction is just fine, but it has been given a bad name by the soi-disant deconstructionists. There are plenty of Humpty-Dumpty ideas in philosophy and its history, that is, ideas which not only have several distinguishable ingredients but which are such that they cannot be put together any longer once the difference between the different factors is discovered and recognized. There is an abundance of such concepts and conceptions ripe to be deconstructed which are incomparably more important philosophically than the notions with which Derrida and his ilk have occupied themselves. What I shall do in this paper is to present a case study in the kind of deconstructive method I just indicated.