The first and most important and obvious thing about the Wittgensteinian movement in the fifteen years after the war was that it was revelational, charismatic, and absolutist. This is something people reading about it, or reading its product in cold blood, with hindsight, may fail to appreciate or may fail to appreciate adequately. The atmosphere may no longer be discernible between the lines, after such a passage of time. It may have, as it were, evaporated. But it was not so at the time. In the discussions of the time, it was simply known by the participants that all this was true, that although perhaps they might commit errors of detail in implementing the key ideas of the new revelation, those ideas themselves were beyond the reach of any possible doubt. And the new movement was not seen as simply a movement amongst others, having to stake its claims, and to defend them and wait for the verdict. It simply was not like that all. The movement, as it saw itself, simply replaced and displaced all past philosophy. Philosophy had come to an end, or was just about to do so when this movement had done its job, and a new era had begun. The root of all past philosophy had been laid bare by Wittgenstein and all that remained to be done was to implement and diffuse his insights.

Wittgenstein himself had always held his views in this brazen, dogmatic spirit: even if his views changed, the fact that they were incontrovertible and beyond challenge evidently did not.