In my first post (recall here) on the introduction of Schuringa’s (2025) A Social History of Analytic Philosophy (Verso; herafter: Social History), I was somewhat critical of Kieran Setiya’s review of it (here) in the LA Review of Books. But subsequently, I was alerted to a splendid post by
The therapy metaphor has never been universally accepted even among those who self-identify as Wittgensteinians. For instance, Rush Rhees, one of the three close friends and students of Wittgenstein's to whom he left his manuscripts to edit and publish, thought that perhaps by far the biggest weak point in Wittgenstein's entire conception of philosophy was the therapy metaphor, which Rhees would have preferred Wittgenstein not to have come up with at all.
And in 1949, towards the end of his life, even Wittgenstein himself said to his friend O. K. Bouwsma that while he had "himself talked about philosophy as in certain ways like psycho-analysis", he only meant this "in the same way in which he might say that it was like a hundred other things". (If only it had occurred to him that he also needed to make this equally clear in Philosophical Investigations §133 and/or §255!)
And the members of the contemporary Wittgensteinian minority too definitely disagree among themselves about the merits of the therapy metaphor. The last time I attended a conference paper on Wittgenstein by a leading specialist scholar, another equally leading specialist scholar attacked it from the audience as "this therapy bullshit".
They were in fact already published in 1986, but in a heavily edited form, which omitted the names of the several philosophers about whom Wittgenstein made extremely negative remarks (some of whom were still alive at that time). Among these was John Wisdom, whose writings were the most widely read examples of the therapy-centric version of analytic philosophy before Wittgenstein's own work became available after his death.
The therapy metaphor has never been universally accepted even among those who self-identify as Wittgensteinians. For instance, Rush Rhees, one of the three close friends and students of Wittgenstein's to whom he left his manuscripts to edit and publish, thought that perhaps by far the biggest weak point in Wittgenstein's entire conception of philosophy was the therapy metaphor, which Rhees would have preferred Wittgenstein not to have come up with at all.
And in 1949, towards the end of his life, even Wittgenstein himself said to his friend O. K. Bouwsma that while he had "himself talked about philosophy as in certain ways like psycho-analysis", he only meant this "in the same way in which he might say that it was like a hundred other things". (If only it had occurred to him that he also needed to make this equally clear in Philosophical Investigations §133 and/or §255!)
And the members of the contemporary Wittgensteinian minority too definitely disagree among themselves about the merits of the therapy metaphor. The last time I attended a conference paper on Wittgenstein by a leading specialist scholar, another equally leading specialist scholar attacked it from the audience as "this therapy bullshit".
Yes, I didn’t mean to suggest all the Wittgensteiners accept it. I didn’t know about thst Bouwsma comment
Thank you @odradek for these reflections
Bouwsma's diaries from the time he knew Wittgenstein were recently published, and are very interesting: https://openworks.wooster.edu/bouwsma/6/
They were in fact already published in 1986, but in a heavily edited form, which omitted the names of the several philosophers about whom Wittgenstein made extremely negative remarks (some of whom were still alive at that time). Among these was John Wisdom, whose writings were the most widely read examples of the therapy-centric version of analytic philosophy before Wittgenstein's own work became available after his death.