No direction home? Wittgensteinian therapy and the private language arguments

Coming to a correct interpretation of the private language arguments depends largely on settling what they aim to achieve. This paper counters the recent problematic tendency to radicalize the options: that Wittgenstein was either a dogmatist who sought conclusive answers to impersonal questions by presenting the associated grammar in surveyable form, or that he was a therapist who offered entirely flexible forms of treatment to subjects who could only hope to obtain temporary remission from personal anxieties. Gordon Baker’s later work tended strongly to the latter view, but his own approach administers the appropriate corrective. If our interpretation is suitably constrained by Wittgenstein’s own strictures on method and procedure, and particularly his insights into ‘giving philosophy peace’, we will appreciate that both tendencies need to make considerable concessive moves.