Attempts to link Wittgenstein’s philosophy to a program of social criticism have long been greeted with trepidation. Given Wittgenstein’s reticence to approach social and political matters philosophically, this trepidation is understandable. In addition, Wittgenstein has been linked to conservative political thought. JC Nyíri has claimed that Wittgenstein’s later thought cannot be properly understood outside the historical and theoretical context of its links to neo-conservatism. 1 This view takes Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to have a strong affinity with the political philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, who famously calls attention to the failures of the Enlightenment to set up reason as the sole guide to political action. Oakeshott argues that intelligent political governance must be grounded in ‘practical knowledge’that is passed on through training in implicit traditional know-how and cannot be formulated into an explicit method that could be applied by reason alone. 2