Following the suggestion of Naomi Scheman in her essay, “Forms of Life: Mapping the Rough Ground” in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, I undertake to expand on her idea that Wittgenstein’s project can be fruitfully compared to Dorothy’s task in the classic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy, after dreaming of finding a trouble-free place over the rainbow, that is, above the troubles she faced in Kansas, embodied in Miss Gulch, and after having been uprooted from her home and (...) getting just what she wished for, realizes that she wants to return home. Following the yellow brick road, she seeks Oz who can show her the way back to Kansas. I read Wittgenstein’s project as eerily similar. After having left his home in the ordinary, that is, after seeking a way to speak outside of ordinary language games, that is, after his project in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein takes his task to be a return, a return of words from their metaphysical to their everyday use. (shrink)

Mostly in blank verse, I consider the question "What value can a student receive from a single course in philosophy?" More specifically, in line with my own teaching duties, I focus on the value to students of a single course in, say, epistemology, metaphysics, or philosophy of science or mind. I consider and reject answers based on the examples of introductory instruction in science or in art, finally concluding that even just a bit of this sort of philosophy can communicate (...) some of the delight philosophers enjoy in finding a world of questions in apparently obvious facts of everyday life. (shrink)