Fanciful Fates

Fanciful fates is a discussion of ideas put forward by D.Z. Phillips in his book Wittgenstein and Religion , Ch. 13 –‘Authorship and Authenticity: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein’. I begin by opposing the contention that Kierkegaard attacked Socrates (and that Josiah Thompson, one of Kierkegaard’s biographers, attacked Kierkegaard) because of a worry connected with the ‘the demise of foundationalism’. I then deal with Phillips's claim that a similarly motivated attack on Wittgenstein has been undertaken by me. I show that Phillips’s account of my treatment of two problematic remarks by Wittgenstein is radically misconceived and I argue that his own approach to the problem is unsatisfactory.