It is characteristic of Wittgenstein's work that the picture-concept and the philosophical problems associated with it appear as if they have sprung up from nowhere. What I mean is that Wittgenstein's analyses can give the impression of dealing with issues that are secure in their status as internal to philosophy, as having no obvious relation to the wider historical milieu in which we work on them. Connected to this is the sense that Wittgenstein's therapeutic approach to philosophy is relevant only to philosophers, only to the kinds of people who, whether because of temperament, intellectual propensity, economic capacity or whatever, have a tendency to embark on philosophical inquiries (such that the philosophical questions he tries to deflate have no real bearing on everyday or ‘non-philosophical’ life). For instance when Wittgenstein writes in the Investigations that he will have succeeded as a thinker if and when he finds himself ‘capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to’, one might be forgiven for thinking that his therapeutic methods are aimed at a relatively small subset of the human population: those, like himself, who can't stop doing philosophy. It is worth clarifying the relation between these two issues - the apparent absence of any historical element to Wittgenstein's work, and the fact that Wittgenstein's therapeutic method seems relevant only to those involved in philosophical practice - which stem from attributing to him a reified conception of philosophy as an autonomous sphere of inquiry.