A Note on the Late Wittgenstein"s Use of the Picture Concept

In the following I wish to draw your attention to two related
ideas that occur in Wittgenstein"s later writings. In making
this emphasis I am at the same time claiming a certain
continuity in Wittgenstein"s thought – a continuity of a quite
particular kind. The argument that I shall present in the
following can be summarised under three points: 1. in both
his early and his late writings, Wittgenstein makes a
natural-historical claim that, as humans, we are picturecreating
and picture-using creatures; 2. the crucial analogy
between the picture and the sentence that appears in the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is retained in Wittgenstein"s
later descriptions of language; and 3. the use of this
analogy serves two diametrically opposed purposes when
considered in relation to religious language, whereby the
earlier use determines the propositions of natural science
and delimits these from religious propositions, and the later
use of the analogy provides the impetus for a grammatical
investigation of religious language and religious beliefs.