The Concept of Family Resemblances in Philosophy

Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblances is a sort of displacement of or a critique of the traditional way in which in philosophy there's been a kind of very widespread assumption that can be traced back to Socrates and Plato. Wittgenstein famously argues, look, does the word game have an essence of that kind? Can it be meaningfully defined in terms of something like necessary and sufficient conditions? And he suggests that it can't. The consequences therefore, if many of the most important terms to us in philosophy are actually roughly speaking family resemblance concepts rather than concepts that have an essence, well then that does have quite significant consequences.