Wittgenstein: "the nearest of death will bring light into life".

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius

Wittgenstein's philosophy of language -words always get lost in translation.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein thought that all words get their meaning by standing for objects; or words get their meaning by being associated with ideas in the head (Plato or the empiricists).

In Philosophical investigations, the later Wittgenstein is anti-essentialist. “Don't ask for the meaning of the words but ask for the use in their context” (language-games).

John Searle criticizes Wittgenstein's anti-theoretical vein/aversion to theory.

Wittgenstein thought we cannot have a general theory of language, Searle disagrees.

Wittgenstein criticized Descartes’ dualism (mind-body). For him, the use of language constitutes it means. Language is a form of life, it develops in a social context, meaning is not private but social.

Language is a human activity, “doing not saying”. Words are actions, speaking is a human activity, words acts.

Wittgenstein attack on Descartes is not anti-cartesian (he does not reject mind) but analyses how psychological concepts such as believe, fear, hope, expecting are grounded in social context.

Searle considers Wittgenstein's last book, On Certainty, his best.

There Wittgenstein criticizes Plato and the Western intellectual tradition or the idea that any meaningful human behavior must be the expression of an (implicit) theory. Searle says that there is some truth on that, but Wittgenstein thought that our way of responding is socially and biologically primitive. For example, squirrels store nuts for winter not because they think they have resolved Hume problems of induction, and that we know now that the future resembles the past. They just do it. It is a way of responding/acting.

Another example. We refuse to put our hands on the fire not because one has inductive evidence. We do it because it is a human response, we are biological and cultural conditioned. We just act.

Wittgenstein on religion. We should not dismiss religious discourses as if they were empty or meaningless. We should exam which words are use in religious language-games. The work of philosophers then is to describe the activity not to try to control it.

Wittgenstein asked himself what role religion and religious utterances plays in life? He disliked the over-intellectualization of the atheists and philosophers. God exist? is an unnecessary discussion. It is a question of the heart not of the head (reason). It is counterproductive to try to judge religious discourses as if they were scientific ones.