The paper is concerned with Wittgenstein’s attitudes towards various forms of naturalism.
On the one hand, Wittgenstein’s anti-naturalism is based on the idea that there is a deep
divide between science and philosophy. The paper argues that such a methodological claim
cannot be criticized by resorting to Quine’s attack to analyticity, for the Wittgensteinian
notion of a grammatical rule is different from the Carnapian notion of an analytical
proposition. Though, at the same time, the paper underlines that Wittgenstein’s conception
of grammar is the core of the so-called “linguistic doctrine of necessity”, which has been
strongly criticized by Kripke. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s naturalism is based on
notions such as “form of life” and “general facts of nature”. The paper shows that such a
view is motivated by anti-foundationalist and non intellectualistic biases, and is mainly
characterized by a peculiar attention to the normative dimension of human behaviour and
activities.
