This chapter focuses on Ludwig Wittgenstein's “Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough,” which were written around 1931. Four main themes emerge from these notes. Reviewing them shows the complex interconnections between Wittgenstein's views on philosophy, anthropology, mythology, and science. At bottom, these themes are unified by a deep form of anti-scientism and by an underlying yet sustained criticism of key elements of Western culture. These elements are, first, the idea that science provides the uniquely correct method of explanation of all kinds of phenomena—physical as well as cultural. Second, the idea that just like science aims at identifying the causes of physical phenomena by subsuming them under theories, also philosophy and, relatedly, social “sciences” like anthropology should follow suit and build theories that, when correct, would explain the causes of the phenomena they scrutinize. Thirdly, that there is cultural progress to be measured by the degree of similarity between a given society and Western cultures, where science plays such a fundamental role.

After briefly presenting Frazer's The Golden Bough, I focus on Wittgenstein's criticism of that work, dwelling on his idea that magic and religious rituals do not stem from false beliefs, even when the latter are part of them. For Wittgenstein, they do not arise from a false science; rather, they stem from the distinctively human need of celebrating whatever is replete with value. I then closely examine Wittgenstein's preferred methodology in anthropology and philosophy: the application of a family resemblance method aimed at producing perspicuous representations of the phenomena under scrutiny. I connect it to the morphological method propounded by Goethe and Spengler, showing how Wittgenstein was inspired by yet critical of the way in which his predecessors had developed it. I then consider Wittgenstein's remarks on the notion of mythology that, for him, constitutes a vital element of language and of the way in which we organize experience in the process of acquiring justification and knowledge. Finally, I consider how, for Wittgenstein, Frazer is the epitome of the dangers inherent to scientism, which he sees as a characteristic feature of Western cultures and against which he developed the original philosophical methodology of his later work.