'Philosophy', wrote Wittgenstein, 'simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.' The author of this book takes seriously Wittgenstein's description of what he was doing, and bring out the importance of his philosophy to long-standing problems about language, knowledge, the mind, and philosophy itself. Common misunderstandings of Wittgenstein are exposed and there is a detailed examination of the celebrated 'private language' argument.