Wittgensteins „erlösende Worte”

Abstract Wittgenstein’s ‘redemptive words’ Wittgenstein uses expressions such as ‚Erlösung” or ‚erlösende Worte‘ (‘redemption’ or ‘redemptive words’) in various places. Yet, there are not too many such passages, and those that do exist hardly refer to each other; they also belong to different creative periods and concern different subjects. – What one might call ‘the unity in the various relevant statements’ is therefore not obvious. It can be of quite different kinds in different creative periods, and in the end must consist in nothing more than the fact that they are Wittgenstein's utterances. Here, they are ordered around the ideas of the Abhandlung being highly systematic, and the later philosophical remarks being connected via the concept of family resemblance. In both cases, Wittgenstein’s philosophy might be called ‘Philosophie der Erlösung’, though in each case in a different, yet related sense.