More Worthless Philosophy Stuff

Since I'm on the topic I thought I'd just metion why so many Philosphy grads are jaded and cynical (because I'm sure you are dying to know). You see, things were progressing pretty smoothly in Western philosophy for well over 2000 years until in 1953 Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations) was published post-humously. Like a medieval sapper digging under a castle wall he effictively undermined (some say) the whole Western Philosophical Tradition. He did this through his theory of "language games." The just of his theory is that language, metaphorically speaking, is a game to which we all more or less know the rules. Philosophers, like Socrates, are being obtuse when they ask questions like, "what is justice?" or "what is ethical?" In other words they are deliberately obfusciating the normal conversation game by changing the rules. In essence, his arguement is that most philosophical problems are really just problems of language and don't make any sense other than in the context of philosophy. Or, to put it another way, the meaning of a word is equivalent to its use in language. This can be summed up in his famous phrase, "Those men aren't talking nonsense, they're just doing philosophy." So philosophy then, has no special insight into the nature of things, or ultimate truth, it is more humbly just a language game with special rules.
Another more contemporary philosopher named Richard Rorty has come under considerable criticism for expousing similar ideas, not to mention his cavalier attitute toward topics which have traditionally been the sagacious realm of scholarly debate for millenia. At heart, he's a pragmatist who finds that philosophy only has value as far as it can solve problems. That is to say, most of what has historically fallen under the lable philosophy has been little more than an intellectual 'muddying of the waters." I guess he's just saying that we've been debating the same topics for over 2000 years now, and nothing even approximating progress has been made by philosophy, so..... what's the point.
Of course, neither of these guys would call philosophy useless. In fact, the hallmark of philosophy is critical thinking which often seems to be in sort supply in our 'damn the consequences' society. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm any less jaded or cynical.