Ismail, I was referring to Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, or Kripkenstein as it's colloquially (and somewhat more accurately) known --- by the time it was written, Kripke had basically gone off the deep end himself. I don't deny for a moment that Wittgenstein has stimulated a fair amount of fruitful philosophical work (TLP much more than PI), but if you were to examine the development of analytic philosophy over the 20th century to the present, Wittgensteinian thought, either Tractarian or Investigative, would look like a narrow branch off the main road. There's plenty that's interesting there, but it's far from the mainstream; to suggest, as anonymous did, that most analytic philosophy is done under Wittgenstein's influence (baleful or not), is simply to confess not having a clue about the history and content of analytic philosophy. You'd agree with that, right? By the way, none of this is meant to endorse anonymous@12:09's philistine Wittgenstein bashing in any way. I'm no Wittgenstein expert myself, but when I find time, reading more of and about Ludwig will be a high priority.

(And indeed, bringing up the Tractarian influence on the positivists underscores my point; positivism is a dead project. I happen to think a qualified rehabilitation of Carnap and some of the others (not Ayer) would be worthwhile, since there's a lot to them that's separable from verificationism and related excesses, but the reputation of positivism is so poor that my position of mild sympathy for some of the people associated with it is a distinctly minority position.)

Glad we see eye to eye on Wieseltier; his prominence in intellectual circles is a symptom of profound cultural rot in this country.