Making Wittgenstein an Expressivist: A Contemporary Interpretation of Later Wittgenstein and Some of Its Consequences

The paper argues in favour of a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations by making its consequences explicit. The aforementioned novel interpretation offers us a new way of understanding Wittgenstein as an expressivist, and as claiming that a particular form of rationality is central to philosophy. The expressivist interpretation of later Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations provides us with tools to, in a way, unite all of the most plausible parts of the strongest disparate contemporary interpretations of the said primary text: the newest and, it seems, the currently most fashionable resolute reading and the realism/antirealism debate stemming from Kripke’s famous Kripkenstein reading. The expressivist reading, thus, offers a way of explaining the therapeutic aspect of Wittgeinstein, maintaining the continuity between earlier and later Wittgeinstein, while also explaining what was so wrong about the project of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.