Philosophical Investigations

Introduction

The Philosophical Investigations (German: Philosophische Untersuchungen) is the canonical text of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein and one of the most influential single books of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Composed in the 1930s and 1940s and published posthumously in 1953, the book is organized in a deliberately non-systematic way — numbered short paragraphs (the standard text has 693 in Part I, plus the Part II) that proceed by example, analogy, philosophical dialogue, and constant return to particular cases rather than by the systematic argument of the Tractatus.

The central doctrines are sharply distinct from the early Wittgenstein. Meaning is not a function of correspondence between proposition and state of affairs (as the picture theory of the Tractatus had it) but a function of the role words play in our practices — the meaning of a word is its use in the language (PI §43). Language is organized into language-games with their own rules and conventions; the apparent essences philosophy seeks are illusions produced by abstracting words from their use; the proper work of philosophy is therapeutic, dispelling the bewitchments of intellect by means of language.

Composition and publication

Wittgenstein worked on the materials of the Investigations across the entire second period of his philosophical activity, from his return to Cambridge in 1929 until the late 1940s. The relationship between the various sets of manuscripts and the eventual published text is complex. The Brown Book and the Blue Book (dictated to students in 1933–35, published in 1958 as The Blue and Brown Books) are early statements of portions of the eventual doctrines; the Big Typescript (TS 213, composed in 1933) is an earlier attempt at the systematic organization that the Investigations modifies; the various manuscripts of the late 1930s and early 1940s constitute the working materials.

The book that Wittgenstein actually approved for publication was complete by 1945–46. He continued to make revisions through the late 1940s but never formally released it. After his death in 1951, the literary executors he had appointed (G. E. M. Anscombe, Rush Rhees, and Georg Henrik von Wright) prepared the Investigations for publication, with Anscombe producing the parallel English translation. The first edition (1953) presented the text as Part I and Part II; the parallel German-English layout has been the standard format since.

The Hacker-Schulte fourth edition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) revised the translation and reorganized the supplementary material; the second part of the original edition is now presented as Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment and treated as a distinct manuscript rather than as part of the main work. The new edition is the dominant English-language scholarly text.

Central doctrines

Meaning is use

The most-quoted Tractarian doctrine — the meaning of a word is its use in the language (§43) — is not the whole of Wittgenstein's later account of meaning but is the most compressed statement of the central methodological move. Instead of looking for the meaning of a word as some entity (mental, abstract, or referential) that the word stands for, look at how the word is actually used in the various contexts in which it occurs. The meaning is constituted by the use, not by a relation to something behind the use.

The doctrine is illustrated by sustained examples. The opening paragraphs return repeatedly to Augustine's account of language acquisition in the Confessions (§1); the famous discussion of games (§66–71) shows that the apparent essence of a game is not a single feature shared by all games but a series of family resemblances that overlap and crisscross without any single feature common to all; the discussion of understanding (§§148–55, 178–97) shows that to understand something is not a particular mental event but the capacity to use words and concepts in appropriate contexts.

Language-games

The concept of the language-game (Sprachspiel) is one of the most distinctive Tractarian innovations. A language-game is a practice in which the use of words is integrated with non-linguistic activities: ordering and obeying orders, describing the appearance of an object, reporting events, speculating about events, forming and testing hypotheses, presenting results in tables and graphs, making up a story, play-acting, singing catches, guessing riddles, telling jokes, asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. The list (§23) is meant to display the diversity of linguistic practices and the impossibility of subsuming them under a single uniform account of meaning.

The concept has several functions. Descriptively, it captures the actual diversity of linguistic practice. Methodologically, it shifts the focus from the abstract analysis of language to the careful examination of specific language-games. Philosophically, it challenges the assumption (common to the Tractatus and to much of the philosophical tradition) that the diverse uses of language can be unified by a single theory.

Rule-following

The discussion of rule-following (§§138–42, 185–242) develops the analysis of what it is to follow a rule — to apply a concept to new cases in accordance with the practice in which the concept has its place. The discussion proceeds by considering cases of arithmetical and other rule-application and shows that rule-following cannot be analyzed as a matter of internal mental processes (an inner picture, an act of interpretation) but must be analyzed as participation in a public practice.

The doctrine has been extended in the later literature. Saul Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) develops a skeptical paradox reading of the rule-following discussion that has been continuously contested. The community view of rule-following (defended by Norman Malcolm and others) treats community practice as essential to the very possibility of rule-following; the non-community readings (Crispin Wright, John McDowell) treat the appeal to community as not the central Wittgensteinian point.

The private language argument

The most famous and most contested portion of the book is the private language argument (§§243–315). The argument: a language whose words refer to private mental sensations that could in principle be known only to the speaker is impossible — there are no criteria by which the speaker could correctly use the words. The argument is presented through the beetle in the box example (§293), the discussion of pain (§§244–246, 253–256), and the discussion of the diary case (§§258–60).

The argument has consequences for the philosophy of mind. If it succeeds, it undermines the Cartesian conception of mental life as a private inner realm whose contents are knowable directly only to the subject. The behaviorist, functionalist, and externalist accounts of mind in twentieth-century analytic philosophy depend on something like the private language argument; the cognitive science engagement with consciousness returns to the question.

Therapeutic philosophy

The book's account of what philosophy is and should do is distinct from traditional conceptions. Philosophy does not produce theories; it dissolves the confusions that produce the apparent need for theories. The famous metaphor of the fly in the fly-bottle (§309) compresses this: What is your aim in philosophy? — To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. The philosophical work is not the construction of a system but the careful attention to particular cases of confusion and the dispelling of the bewitchments of intellect by means of language.

Reception

The immediate reception of the Investigations was and ongoing. The book shaped the ordinary language philosophy of Oxford in the 1950s (Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson) and the broader analytic engagement with the philosophy of mind and language. The reception through Norman Malcolm, John Wisdom, Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe, and many others established the Investigations as the canonical late-Wittgenstein text.

Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) reopened the engagement with the rule-following and private language sections. The Pittsburgh School (Robert Brandom, John McDowell) has developed the Investigations into the contemporary analytic engagement with normativity, conceptual content, and the philosophy of mind. The New Wittgensteinians (Cora Diamond, James Conant, Alice Crary) have developed the resolute reading across the early and late work.

The continental engagement through Stanley Cavell, Charles Taylor, Pierre Hadot, and others has shaped the broader twentieth-century reception. The contemporary cognitive science engagement, especially through the dialogue with Hubert Dreyfus and the embodied cognition tradition, continues to develop the implications of the late Wittgenstein for the philosophy of mind.

Place in the wiki

The Philosophical Investigations is the canonical text of the later Wittgenstein, the principal site of the doctrines of meaning as use, language-games, rule-following, the private language argument, and therapeutic philosophy, and one of the most influential single books of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.

Further reading

• Wittgenstein — the author
• Tractatus — the early work the Investigations criticizes
• Analytic Philosophy — the tradition the book shaped
• Belief Systems — the broader concept the late Wittgenstein's On Certainty helps articulate
• Logos — the rational principle whose linguistic transformation the Investigations continues

Wittgenstein's posthumous 1953 masterwork. The canonical text of the later Wittgenstein and one of the most influential single books of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.