WITTGENSTEIN, IDEALISM AND PHILOSOPHY
MATTHEW J. DENSLEYABSTRACT. For the early Wittgenstein, the limits of what makes sense make manifest the unspeakable truth of idealism: that the limits of language are the limits of the world. An influential interpretation also finds an implicit commitment to idealism in his mature thought. I argue that his views on philosophy, while based on some major assumptions about the nature of language and philosophical method, are neither unjustified, nor incoherent. On the contrary, not only does his conception of language support his anti-theoretical views, they also rule out both conceptual idealism, and conceptual realism. This conception of language leads him to a radical conceptual relativism, without thereby being committed to either a pre-conceptualised reality or supra-conceptualised view from nowhere.