Ludwig Wittgenstein - The Blue and Brown Books

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Ludwig Wittgenstein from Blackwell Publishers

The Wittgenstein Reader

Edited by Anthony Kenny

Zettel

Second Edition

Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright

Remarks on Colour

Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics

Third Edition

Edited by G.H. von Wright, Rush Rhees and G.E.M. Anscombe

Philosophical Remarks

Edited by Rush Rhees

Philosophical Grammar

Edited by Rush Rhees

On Certainty

Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright

Lectures and Conversations

Edited by Cyril Barrett

Culture and Value

Edited by G.H. von Wright

The Blue and Brown Books

Preliminary Studies for the Philosophical Investigations

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I

Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II

Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and Heikki Nyman

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I

Edited by G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman

Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II

Edited by G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman

Philosophical Investigations (German-English edition)

Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe

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Titlepage

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PRELIMINARY STUDIES FOR THE "PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS"

Generally known as

THE BLUE AND BROWN BOOKS

By

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

BLACKWELL

Oxford UK & Cambridge USA

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Copyright page

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Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1958

Second Edition 1969

Reprinted 1972, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998

Blackwell Publishers Ltd

108 Cowley Road

Oxford OX4 1JF, UK

ISBN 0-631-14660-1

Note on the Second Impression

There are a few alterations, taken from the text of the Blue Book in the possession of Mr. P. Sraffa. With the exception of changes on pp. 1 and 17 they make no difference to the sense, being mostly improvements in punctuation or grammar.

We rejected such changes as were no improvement.

The text of the Second Edition remains unaltered, but an index has been added.

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Athenum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear This book is printed on acid-free paper

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WITTGENSTEIN dictated the "Blue Book" (though he did not call it that) to his class in Cambridge during the session 1933-34, and he had stencilled copies made. He dictated the "Brown Book" to two of his pupils (Francis Skinner and Alice Ambrose) during 1934-35. He had only three typed copies made of this, and he showed them only to very close friends and pupils. But people who borrowed them made their own copies, and there was a trade in them. If Wittgenstein had named these dictations, he might have called them "Philosophical Remarks" or

"Philosophical Investigations". But the first lot was bound in blue wrappers and the second in brown, and they were always spoken of that way.

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He sent a copy of the Blue Book to Lord Russell later on, with a covering note.

DEAR RUSSELL,

Two years ago, or so, I promised to send you a manuscript of mine. Now the one I am sending you to-day isn't that manuscript. I'm still pottering about with it, and God knows whether I will ever publish it, or any of it. But two years ago I held some lectures in Cambridge and dictated some notes to my pupils so that they might have something to carry home with them, in their hands if not in their brains. And I had these notes duplicated. I have just been correcting misprints and other mistakes in some of the copies and the idea came into my mind whether you might not like to have a copy. So I'm sending you one. I don't wish to suggest that you should read the lectures; but if you should have nothing better to do and if you should get some mild enjoyment out of them I should be very pleased indeed. (I think it's very difficult to understand them, as so many points are just hinted at. They are meant only for the people who heard the lectures.) As I say, if you don't read them it doesn't matter at all.

Yours ever,

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN.

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That was all the Blue Book was, though: a set of notes. The Brown Book was rather different, and for a time he thought of it as a draft of something he might publish. He started more than once to make revisions of a German version of it. The last was in August, 1936. He brought this, with some minor changes and insertions, to the beginning of the discussion of voluntary action-about page 154 in

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our text. Then he wrote, in heavy strokes, "Dieser ganze 'Versuch einer Umarbeitung' vom (Anfang) bis hierher ist nichts wert". ("This whole attempt at a revision, from the start right up to this point, is worthless.") That was when he began what we now have (with minor revisions) as the first part of the Philosophical Investigations.

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I doubt if he would have published the Brown Book in English, whatever happened. And anyone who can read his German will see why. His English style is often clumsy and full of Germanisms. But we have left it that way, except in a very few cases where it marred the sense and the correction was obvious. What we are printing here are notes he gave to his pupils, and a draft for his own use; that is all.

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Philosophy was a method of investigation, for Wittgenstein, but his conception of the method was changing.

We can see this in the way he uses the notion of "language games", for instance. He used to introduce them in order to shake off the idea of a necessary form of language. At least that was one use he made of them, and one of the earliest. It is often useful to imagine different language games. At first he would sometimes write "different forms of language"--as though that were the same thing; though he corrected it in later versions, sometimes. In the Blue Book he speaks sometimes of imagining different language games, and sometimes of imagining different notations--as though that were what it amounted to. And it looks as though he had not distinguished clearly between being able to speak and understanding a notation.

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He speaks of coming to understand what people mean by having someone explain the meanings of the words, for instance. As though "understanding" and "explaining" were somehow correlative. But in the Brown Book he emphasizes that learning a language game is something prior to that. And what is needed is not explanation but training--comparable with the training you would give an animal. This goes with the point he emphasizes in the