After a biographical sketch, this paper addresses general features of Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy. It is common fare to speak about the two philosophies which Wittgenstein (1889-1951) developed, a first one in which the ideal of logical analysis is predominant, and a later one which is often considered as a contribution to the movement of ordinary language philosophy. In fact there is no sharp dividing line between Wittgenstein's early and his later philosophy, but a process of continuous rethinking of earlier points of view turning gradually into a form of radical self-criticism. Wittgenstein's philosophy in general can be characterized as the view that language is misleading as we do philosophy. In his early period he thought – inspired by Frege and Russell – that language hides the true logical form of thought and thus contributes to the production of pseudoproblems as a result of logical confusion. In his later philosophy it is not so much surface grammar which misleads by concealing the true logical form, but that we tend to misunderstand the plurality of uses we make of language. Wrong ideas about the manner in which language becomes meaningful mislead our philosophical thought. Therefore one of the continuities in Wittgenstein's thought is his therapeutic vision of philosophy. There is not something like a philosophical doctrine articulated in propositions, but philosophy is an attempt to clarify problems by reflection on language use. In this process of clarification, Wittgenstein hopes, the philosophical problems will disappear like an illness when correctly treated. During the war Wittgenstein finished his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, now famous as the Tractatus and the only philosophical book he published during his lifetime. Although normally most attempts at understanding the Tractatus focus on the so-called picture theory on meaning, these views form only a small part of the book, and from Wittgenstein's own point of view surely not the most important. Wittgenstein's Tractatus is foremost an attempt to win a clear insight into the nature of logic. As the most important aspect of his Tractatus Wittgenstein himself considered his distinction between saying and showing, which is intimately connected with the famous last proposition of the Tractatus: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”. As to Wittgenstein's later philosophy, The Philosophical Investigations contain the view that language does not have an essence and that there is a multitude of language-games. Wittgenstein proposes that we should rather look at how language is used instead of asking what the meaning of a word consists in. In Wittgenstein's later work there are also long and painstakingly difficult discussions of what it means for a practice (among which linguistic practices) to be guided by rules. These discussions of rules are related to problems of philosophical psychology. It is beyond any doubt that Wittgenstein's influence on analytic philosophy is incomparable, as it played an important role in most of its different strands like logical analysis, linguistic philosophy, conceptual analysis or ordinary language philosophy. The name of Wittgenstein is regularly mentioned in linguistic studies and this cannot be surprising considering his fundamental interest in language. But Wittgenstein's interest in language is not directly comparable to the linguist's and one should not even consider him as a typical philosopher of language. His aim in philosophy is not so much to gain insight into language, but to correct philosophical misunderstandings which are, from his point of view the result of misunderstanding language, for example as a result of false analogies caused by superficial similarities. It is this therapeutic use of the analysis of language in discussing philosophical problems which makes it difficult to find some direct influence from Wittgenstein in linguistic theory. Nevertheless, his views are often mentioned in this field without being worked out in a theoretically profound and systematic manner, or they are discussed in a context which is foreign to Wittgenstein's aims. Neverteheless, his discussion inspired linguistics, not because they wanted to correct a general philosophical view about language which eventually misled philosophers, but because they saw that they could use some of his ideas (as e.g. of family resemblance in the field of semantics). Thus Wittgenstein is not a philosopher of language in the sense that language would be the primary object of his investigations. He is interested in language as a means of articulation of philosophical thought, being convinced with most analytic philosophers that reflection on language is the key to doing philosophy in the right way. But of course, in using the analysis of language as a method in philosophy, Wittgenstein has to develop ideas about what language is and how it functions, and for those ideas linguists have often shown critical interest. It is not so much his idea about the question why language matters to philosophy, than his ideas about the nature of language which change considerably during the development of Wittgenstein's thought.