Introduction

Themes of entrapment and escape are pervasive in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Indeed, the philosopher or theorist's apparent preference for being chained to a given picture of reality is the target of Wittgenstein's therapeutic skepticism and his corresponding call for a return from metaphysical language to ordinary language use. This call should be understood as more than a break from one picture and a step into another. For Wittgenstein, ordinary language lacks any pretense to epistemological or perceptual privilege and affords a great range of horizontal motion that, if recognized, will challenge any future forms of entrapment. The pictures or zones of regularity in ordinary language run into one another and invite horizontal travel. Entrapment, then, is really a matter of intellectual laziness. Returning to ordinary philosophy involves a transformation of at least one large and influential philosophical tradition. That is, Wittgenstein's call entails a reversal of Plato's cave parable: the return to the cave from the sunlit outer world is to be considered now as an escape from enslavement to static philosophical abstraction.

Ordinary language, by contrast, is dynamic and defies both simplification and claims to mastery by language-users. There is room for selfcriticism that arises when travel across language reveals the errors and limitations that arise when you mistake the part (a language-game) for the whole.