Does philosophy make progress?
On the axis: The point of philosophy · the discipline itself
After centuries, philosophy has no settled results like the sciences and the same questions keep returning: a failure to dissolve pseudo-problems, or the mark of questions not meant to be settled once and for all?
Justification
Against the idea that philosophy would discover truths or build theories, Wittgenstein holds it, early and late, to be an activity: not a doctrine but an activity of clarification. Philosophical problems are not solved but dissolved, as one is cured of a bad spell of language, by showing the fly the way out of the bottle. It leaves everything as it is: it changes nothing in the world or in ordinary usage, only our understanding.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 109
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.111-4.112, 6.53-6.54 · Philosophical Investigations, §§109, 116, 124-133, 255, 309
Anchors: Kant · Wittgenstein · Jaspers