Derrida & Wittgenstein -- Again

Wittgenstein’s achievement in the history of philosophy consists in turning philosophy away from logical analysis toward contextual explication, and even more in undermining the dominance of epistemology that had characterized mainstream philosophy since Descartes.

Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, along with G. E. Moore, are the pillars of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy. Wittgenstein, however, came to disagree with the other three in fundamental ways, and the divergence resulted in (or perhaps consisted in) pushing epistemology into the back seat.

According to Wittgensteins logic could not be a science like any other, and hence hinted at his distinctive view, in opposition to both Frege and Russell, that the propositions of logic (and later of grammar) do not convey truth or information in the way that scientific propositions do. His later insistence that clarity is to be achieved by descriptions of use (hence contextually), rather than by analysis, constitutes a sharp radical break from all three of these early mentors.