Wittgenstein is credited with the distinction of triggering not just one but two revolutions in philosophy, however it is important to note that they both led his followers into dead ends.
Peter Munz wrote a really good book on the superiority of Popper to Witt genstein and then later he wrote another that tried to marry them. My review of the second is a bit weak because I don’t like slamming books by friends, unlike George Orwell. He wrote a harsh review of something by Arthur Koestler and Arthur asked why he could not have gone a bit easier for a friend. Orwell replied that it never occurred to him!
Popper has a stunning critique of Wittgenstein Mark I, buried in a footnote of The Open Society and its Enemies.
Extract.
Thus we arrive at the result that it must be ‘meaningless’ or ‘senseless’ or ‘nonsensical’; and the same holds for most of Wittgenstein’s propositions. This consequence of his doctrine is recognized by Wittgenstein himself, for he writes (p. 189): ‘My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless. .’ The result is important. Wittgenstein’s own philosophy is senseless, and it is admitted to be so. ‘On the other hand’, as Wittgenstein says in his Preface, ‘the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definite. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved.’ This shows that we can communicate unassailably and definitely true thoughts by way of propositions which are admittedly nonsensical, and that we can solve problems ‘finally’ by propounding nonsense. (Cp. also note 8 (2, b) to chapter 24.)
Consider what this means. It means that all the metaphysical nonsense against which Bacon, Hume, Kant, and Russell have fought for centuries may now comfortably settle down, and even frankly admit that it is nonsense. (Heidegger does so; cp. note 87 to chapter 12.) For now we have a new kind of nonsense at our disposal, nonsense that communicates thoughts whose truth is unassailable and definitive; in other words, deeply significant nonsense.
I do not deny that Wittgenstein’s thoughts are unassailable and definitive.
For how could one assail them?”
On the back of my copy of The Open Society and its Enemies is a “blurb” from Gilbert Ryle saying (I paraphrase) “don’t miss the footnotes”.
Somewhere else I read the quote in context which was (I paraphrase again) “don’t miss the footnotes, there’s loads of juicy getting-at-Ludwig!”