But just as his theories began to transform twentieth-century philosophy, Wittgenstein himself became convinced that they were mistaken in demanding an excessive precision from human expressions. The work eventually published in the Philosophical Investigations (1953) pursued an different path. In ordinary language, he now supposed, the meaning of words is more loosely aligned with their use in a variety of particular "language games." Direct reference is only one of many ways in which our linguistic activity may function, and the picturing of reality is often incidental to its success. Belief that language can perfectly capture reality is a kind of bewitchment, Wittgenstein now proposed. Thus, philosophy is properly a therapeutic activity, employed to relieve the puzzlement generated by (philosophical) misuses of ordinary language.

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