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Philosophical Investigations

by Ludwig Wittgenstein, G.E.M. Anscombe (Translator)

4.28 of 5 stars 4.28 · rating details · 4,394 ratings · 128 reviews

The "Philosophical Investigations" of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) present his own distillation of two decades of intense work on the philosophies of mind, language and meaning.

Hardcover, 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, 464 pages

Published January 15th 2001 by Blackwell Publishing, Inc. (first published 1953)

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Jun 07, 2012 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Wittgenstein fans

Recommended to Erik by: Bill Ellos

Shelves: philosophy

This book was assembled posthumously, Wittgenstein having published very little in his lifetime. Although usually coupled with the Tractatus, it is actually more representative of his thought and method.

The virtue of Wittgenstein may be that with him there is no hint of metaphysical conceit or self-deception, but rather a consistent treatment of reality as, in fact, various "language games" ("language" being understood broadly to include everything from the semiotic to the symbolic, the denotati...more

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Mar 03, 2013 John Carncross rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is about the concept of grammar. Can a single word be a meaningful, grammatical statement? I have a toddler, and so I know that it can. 'Milky' means the same thing as 'bring me the milky' in our language game. So, how can this be? What about grammar? Well, Wittgenstein argues that there must be a grammar for the imperative 'milky' to be understood. Where is this grammar?

There are rules and training that indicate what must be done when Seneca says "milky." For example, I go to the refr...more

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Jul 31, 2010 Manny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: linguistics-and-philosophy, transcendent-experiences

I couldn't possibly do Philosophical Investigations justice in a review. Even though I've read it several times, I don't understand more than a fraction of it. The unworthy thought does sometimes cross my mind that its author didn't understand it either, but you understand I'm just jealous because I'm not a Great Philosopher. I would so like to be one.

Assuming you aren't an aspiring Great Philosopher, my advice is not to take this book too seriously... it is very frustrating. Skim it quickly, th...more

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Aug 24, 2007 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-for-egghead-spacealiens

o my crap, what a tortured soul Ludwig Wittgenstein was. this guy stared into the impenetrable pitch blackness that was the tangled midnight jungle of his own inner existence, sharpened his machete, and plunged in, hacking and flailing and lunging wildly. he wrestles chiefly with the concepts of language, meaning, understanding, and states of consciousness.

part I consists of 693 short numbered sections (about 4 to a page). this was sent to the publisher but pulled back at the last second five y...more

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Jun 07, 2007 Scott rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Serendipitous Charlatans

To date the most overrated work of 20th century analytic thought (if one wishes to truly count the later Wittgenstein as an analytic). Written in a fragmentary styled not seen in the traditional philosophical corpus since Spinoza, Wittgenstein often leaves the reader guessing at what he could possibly be referencing. The work starts out quite strong as a critique of Russell and Moore, concerning their conceptions of language and its logic. But as the work progresses, many philosophers mistakenly...more

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Apr 01, 2009 Anthony D Buckley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

This is, of course, one of the great books of the 20th century, and it blew my head away when I first read it. However, I have since come to mistrust its conclusions. The central task of language is communication. The central question in linguistics is "How is it possible for one person to understand another?" It is actually possible for people from quite different societies to come to understand each other. How is this possible? I do not think Wittgenstein gives a satisfactory answer to this qu...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Alexander rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psy-ops

Exasperating, but worth it.

The syntax of the Investigations has a jaggedly Asperger’s feel to it. Too often Wittgenstein sounds like a malfunctioning android jabbering its core protocols to itself, pacing in frantic circles, waving its arms in a vexed “Philosophy is the sickness and I’m the cure” manner. The loathsome blend of pedantry and vagueness throughout Part 1 -- hectoring in tone, nebulous in definition -- can be maddening. (As a communicator, Wittgenstein often ranks with Kant or Heideg...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Tim McIntosh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Perhaps the most influential book of philosophy written in the 20th century. (It's only rival is likely Heidegger's Being and Time.) This is my third time reading this very technical book. Each time I read it two things happen: 1) The focus of the book seems more narrow. 2) The ramifications of the book seem more broad.

Wittgenstein asks: How does language operate? His answer: Not according to a logical superstructure but according to discrete "games", rules, and patterns. What does a word mean?...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Jon Stout rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: idealists and realists

Shelves: philosophy

This book is too complex to summarize, but here is a nutshell: If you want to know the meaning of a word, consider how the word is used. Words are used in a variety of “language games,” interactions among people, which display “family resemblances.” That is, there is no single model which shows the essence of how words are used, but rather there are many overlapping and differing language games, each of which is a different model.

Enough summarizing. Now to what I am interested in, what I called,...more This book is too complex to summarize, but here is a nutshell: If you want to know the meaning of a word, consider how the word is used. Words are used in a variety of “language games,” interactions among people, which display “family resemblances.” That is, there is no single model which shows the essence of how words are used, but rather there are many overlapping and differing language games, each of which is a different model.

Enough summarizing. Now to what I am interested in, what I called, once before, “Wittgenstein’s behaviorism,” which I didn’t like. After reading the Philosophical Investigations, I have come to the conclusion that Wittgenstein is not nearly as behavioristic as I had thought. In fact, he is the most introspective behaviorist that I could imagine, but he still ends up being more of a behaviorist than I like.

What do I mean by “behaviorism”? Wittgenstein is a skeptic with regard to meaning, in the sense that he does not think that meaning is something we can look inside of ourselves (introspect) to discover. As I summarized above, Wittgenstein believes that meaning is revealed by the use of a word in social interactions, in other words through language games, the behavior of the people using the word.

Consider words for what we usually think of as mental phenomena: thinking, believing, remembering, knowing, and the like. How can you tell if someone “knows” that Paris is in France? If you ask him, he gives you the right answer. If he looks inside of his mind, must there be the “knowledge” that Paris is in France? Not necessarily, He might not even be thinking of that, and even if he were subvocalizing “Paris is in France,” is there a mental quality that distinguishes that as knowing? Thus Wittgenstein gives a formidable argument that knowing consists not in any mental phenomenon, but in the behavior of giving the right answer.

In making this argument, Wittgenstein has not avoided introspection as a technique. On the contrary he has used it extensively. Even when he asks us to imagine a certain language game, we are imagining a behavior, but we are using introspection to do it. Wittgenstein is a master of asking the rhetorical question which reveals how we use a particular word in social interactions, but each rhetorical question requires a looking into ourselves and our experiences.

Wittgenstein is not ultimately hostile to our looking into ourselves, in fact I think he would regard it as a fruitful part of life. But his basic point is that only when our introspected observations can be validated by being part of our interactions with other people (our language games), only then can the words have consistent and usable meanings.

My quibble with this is that introspection sometimes yields more results than Wittgenstein is prepared to recognize. As just one example, Wittgenstein asks, how do we judge time? He says that we might sit for a while, and say “About five minutes have passed.” and we may be right. He says that there is no introspectable experience of time passing or of measuring time. But I am not sure if that is right.

Paul Churchland talks about a pulsing of neuronic signals from the center of the brain to the perimeter and back again. This means that our sensory processing echoes and reverberates with these pulses and gives us a sense of time passing. If we attend to the experience of this, we may be able to discriminate what makes us sensitive to the passage of time, and we may be able to do this in a way which can be validated by other people. If we are able to make these discriminations through introspection before the science is available to explain it, is it still meaningless? That is my rhetorical question.
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Jun 14, 2010 Rowland Bismark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After the publication of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein felt he had nothing more to contribute to philosophy. He spent the 1920s in a variety of jobs. He was a schoolteacher in a small Austrian village, a gardener, and an amateur architect. During this time, he still had some connection with the philosophical world, notably in his conversations with Frank Ramsey on the Tractatus that gradually led him to recognize that this work was flawed in a number of respects. In the late twenties, he also came...more

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Feb 25, 2010 Aurochz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, philosophy, linguistics, wittgenstein, analytical-philosophy

I have read this twice and it continues to be both my favorite philosophy book of all time and my favorite book of all time. There are very few books in philosophy that have this much argumentation and philosophical advancements packed into one book.

Before I go into what is great about this book, let me outline some of the not so great things. One, this book was a forerunner for behaviorist psychology. Which is one of the stupidest ideas of all time. It also seems incomplete near the end, in th...more

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Dec 29, 2009 Steven Peterson rated it 4 of 5 stars

One aspect of this book that makes it important for simply that contribution is the notion of "language games." If language produces reality, different languages produce different realities. In this book, German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein developed the related notion of "language games," islands of language, unique each to itself, not wholly translatable one into another. Each of us inhabits a particular language game, he claims, which channels how we see things and understand the world and...more One aspect of this book that makes it important for simply that contribution is the notion of "language games." If language produces reality, different languages produce different realities. In this book, German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein developed the related notion of "language games," islands of language, unique each to itself, not wholly translatable one into another. Each of us inhabits a particular language game, he claims, which channels how we see things and understand the world and our places within it. Again, language shapes meaning and understanding and interpretation. The world is disclosed to us through our specific language game. If we live in different language games, we see different worlds. This concept entails, as philosopher Chantal Mouffe says, ". . . a critique of the rationalist conception of the subject [i.e., the knowing, reasoning human mind:] that indicates that the latter cannot be the source of linguistic meanings since it is through participation in different language games that the world is disclosed to us."

This is a serious attack on the Modern conception of the human as a reasoning being who can affect change in desired directions through the exercise of that reason. Thus, reason does NOT allow us to see the world as it is and to change it as we wish in a manner leading to progress. The concept of language games is key for many postmodern thinkers.

If we think through language and the use of language is thought itself, what is perceived is indistinct from language use. The two cannot be separated, since language governs interpretation and perception and thought. To revisit the phrase from Wittgenstein, different people play and live in different "language games," that is, their languages lead them to see the world differently, to conceptualize things differently from those in different language games. So what for the person interested in politics?

In the final analysis, this means that whenever we try to understand the world, it is through language, through interpretation, since we cannot directly perceive reality outside of our language. This begins to suggest the likelihood that one's own culture or society or polity does not have universally "true" answers to key questions of human existence; our culture develops answers within its language game that make sense at that particular time for that culture. All is interpretation of uncertain texts within different language games.

Certainly, this is a strong argument. Many disagree that language per se shapes our views of reality. And that argument needs to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, the argument about "language games," although only a small part of this book, is a provocative concept, well worth thinking about.
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Jul 10, 2009 Rhonda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, psychology

While this book has no doubt been vastly influential in twentieth century philosophy, I am far less enamored with it today than I was studying the Philosophy of Language and Science twenty years ago in graduate school. Thus while I am extremely grateful to this treatise in carefully extrapolating Logical Positivism, at least his own version, the conclusions just didn't stand up to scrutiny all that long. However, I don’t mean to diminish this books import by suggesting that many of its conclusio...more

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Oct 24, 2009 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: difficult, philosophy, theology

I read this for the second time two weeks ago, and I have been marinating in it since. Wittgenstein is one of those thinkers that you must chew very very slowly.

I fell in love with Wittgenstein in passing - it was purely accidental. He was mentioned as a mere footnote in a theology course, in a conversation about semiotics, Augustine, doctrine and Lindbeck. I wanted nothing to do with Lindbeck that particular day, so I decided to check out this Wittgenstein character.
Having motive and opportuni...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Bryan Kibbe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Philosophical Investigations is a landmark book in the history of philosophy. I felt like I could not quite call myself a philosopher until I had worked through this one, and I am glad I did. Wittgenstein's style of writing, short bursts of sometimes cryptic thought, is something to be experienced first hand. In a world where 140 character statements via twitter reign, it is interesting to read Wittgenstein. Some of Wittgenstein's statements do come in at under 140 characters, but what makes...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Mari rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Wittgenstein students and fans

Recommended to Mari by: Martinich and Mel

Shelves: philosophy, wittgenstein

When I read this years ago, I struggled with it. Tractatus had been so beautifully efficient and lucid (wrong, but beautiful nonetheless.) Then I dove into PI and floundered. On second reading I've had a lot more peripheral material to help me grasp the ideas. What I really wish I'd had was this:

Commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations by Lois Shawver

This site not only lists the complete text, but also side-by-side commentary from Shawver. I don't generally like to read books li...more

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Sep 30, 2012 Luisacs added it

Philosophical Investigations - if you want to understand Wittgenstein, begin with the Blue and Brown Books. They prepared Philosophical Investigations. You may think that Wittgenstein is always repeating himself. As a matter of fact, Wittgenstein himself, confessed that he needed to repeat, to copy his own wrintings again. But this shows his way of thinking, turning arround a problem, a concept or any philosophical idea. He wanted to see through the language, the deep grammar. This is where he u...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Karl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Philosophers, Serious Students, The Inquisitive

Recommended to Karl by: David Stern

Shelves: philosophy

I should qualify that I have only read Part I; and of that I feel that I have barely scratched the surface. Herr Wittgenstein was a brilliant man whose recantation of the Tractatus and subsequent explorations in the Investigations has puzzled me. I have principly focused on the rule following section, adapting them to normative ethics. Perhaps I'm doing "Fosterstein" but the ability of Wittgenstein to open new avenues of thought is astounding.

In other words, though the book's principle focus is...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Philip Cartwright rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, philosophy

If you approach this book as a standard philosophical work, where the author tells you his theory about how things are, you will get very little from it. In fact, you'll probably be baffled as to why it's written in the way it is. Instead, consider it as an exercise book. Wittgenstein guides you, but he also questions you, nags at you, undermines many of your basic assumptions and (above all) challenges you to think things through for yourself. It's only when you do this that you really start to...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Paula rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having learned in college that no philosopher remotely ranked so high as Wittgenstein, I could not until later read his works free of that conditioning. When I could, I realized that yes, few philosophers have had the sharpness and honesty of Wittgenstein, his readiness to look into philosophical issues without too much fear of getting lost there--thus his fresh view of them. This book is a work of genuis and should be read, with preferably also the Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, by a...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Andrew added it

Shelves: philosophy, analytic-philosophy

As a philosopher, Wittgenstein isn't terribly systematic-- rather shocking for an "analytic" thinker. I would argue that he's an original, using analytic (thought experiments), continental (literary examples), pragmatic (everyday life as a litmus test), and Nietzschean (aphoristic style, attitude problem) elements. Hell, I'm almost loathe to call it philosophy at all. It's more like a gorgeous, dense, glittering puzzle box. I guarantee that when I read it again somewhere down the line, I'll get...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

Interesting in that it tears apart logical positivism from within the camp. After finding the "latter day Kantian" logical positivists as presenting an obviously constricted and untenable position, Wittgenstein breaks out with a series of puzzles that, like boulders slung from a rogue catapult, smash against the reductionistic worldview of modern philosophy. These notes, gathered from his classes, offer food for thought applicable to many disciplines beyond philosophy and Wittgenstein's passion...more

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Jan 25, 2013 Randal Samstag rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

Wittgenstein: Apostle, soldier, school teacher, hermit, mathematician, architect, inheritor of the Chair of the Moral Sciences Club from Moore at Cambridge, cousin of F. von Hayek, scion of the wealthiest (Jewish according to the Nuremberg laws) industrialist family in Austria who renounced his fortune. W was one of the most intimidating characters in the English philosophy scene. Take a look at Wittgenstein's Poker to get just how impossible a character he was.

W has influenced every significant...more

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Jan 18, 2012 Shane added it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

As the title suggests this book is an investigation rather than a complete theory or system. It seems to dance around a something, poking at it but not quite uncovering it. I’m not sure that I understood any of this book but what I picked from it is essentially that the nature of grammar allows us to say something that appears to have a logical or sensible form - and so must itself be a representation of the truth/reality or something like that - but which is really nonsense because it ignores t...more

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Aug 30, 2007 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Embodies a philosophical strategy for approaching our cognitive capacities and the world they bring us with humility and gratitude--but with a constant awareness that we cannot step outside of those capacities and the normative patterns of living which structure them. We have no authoritative perspective on ourselves or on language. The work of reason, and indeed, the work of ethics, is to renounce the metaphysical lures which we find in our language, to live “without fear and without hope,” but...more

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Aug 01, 2007 W. C. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wittgenstein is one of those odd ducks that somehow waddled through the usual categories. Although thoroughly ensconced in the analytical realm (Russell had pegged him as his heir apparent, though things did not turn out as such), with the philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein somehow managed to write a text that analytical philosophers found, at the least, interesting, and continental philosophers found to be captivating. This text is thus not only one of the most important philosophical w...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Tylor Lovins rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

One of the most useful books I have ever read. Summarized: Meaning is a function of use (or the technique of use) in a language game (or way of life). Wittgenstein's philosophy is more of a technique (or activity) that one is involved in, rather than that one reflects. It is an activity in sympathy: that one is to see the role that concepts play in one's life in order to understand their meaning is much more interesting and useful than assuming that concepts have a meta-logic whereby if a concep...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Christopher Mcmaster rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The only truly great work of philosophy. This is not a mere book, it is an instruction manual for how to make sense. If one's philosophical reasoning is not guided by the ideas contained within this book, one is simply poking around in the dark. Wittgenstein's ideas are at the core of any philosophy that's worth its salt, and thus this book is perhaps the most important piece of intellectual work in human history.

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Jul 29, 2011 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: academic, contemporary-political-theory, political-theory, poststructuralism

this is a pretty challenging book to get through. reading the tractatus, or a good summary of the general argument, before reading this book is immensely helpful. after reading the summary of the tractatus in wittgenstein: a very short introduction, this book made a lot more sense to me. the first time i read this book i had a difficult time with it. but the second time was a lot better, thanks to A.C. Grayling's summary.

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Nov 18, 2012 Jacob Stubbs rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, senior-thesis-reading

So, this book was an unbelievably hard book to undertake to read for my senior thesis. That being said, it's quite rewarding.

In a nutshell, Wittgenstein was concerned with the effects of language on the philosophy of the mind, meaning, perception, rule-following, etc. As he does this, W takes a very anti-metaphysical view of philosophy that stresses and emphasizes the particular. Overall, this emphasis on the particular is tied in with his critique of the "Vienna Circle" logical positivists and...more

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About Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire t...more

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