Wittgenstein and reason: this is perhaps the most important topic of current Wittgenstein scholarship. Among the fundamental issues it is the most contested, and among the contested issues it is the most fundamental. There is no dearth of disagreement on, for example, the private language argument, the rule-following considerations or his philosophy of mathematics. Yet these topics are not as fundamental as Wittgenstein's attitude toward reason. For here we are dealing with the question of what kind of thinker Wittgenstein was. Was he a proponent of the claims of reason, of rational argument, justification and clarification? Or was he an enemy of such Enlightenment ideals? Was he even a philosopher in the traditional sense, or rather a sage, prophet, or guru?

Opinion on these matters divides roughly into two camps: rationalist and irrationalist interpretations. Originally, Wittgenstein's work was seen simply in the context of the logical and methodological debates arising from Frege, Russell, and the logical positivists. He was treated as a member of the analytic tradition, albeit a highly exotic and troublesome one. Since that tradition prides itself on its concern with argument and justification, and even defines itself by reference to this priority, it would seem that Wittgenstein was part of The Dialogue of Reason (Cohen 1986; see also Føllesdal 1997). Later, through the efforts of Stenius, Pears, Hacker, and Garver, it was recognized that there is a strong Kantian element to both the early and the later work. But this did not threaten Wittgenstein's image as either an analytic philosopher or a proponent of reason.