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Jul 31, 2010

Manny rated it:

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 More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2007

Rob rated it:

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 las More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 07, 2007

Scott rated it:

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 mistake More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 01, 2009

Anthony D rated it:

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 ans More...

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Mar 05, 2009

Erik rated it:

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 semio More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 26, 2011

Tim rated it:

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. Wh More...

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Jul 13, 2011

Austin rated it:

The cessation of hostilities in World War I seems to have had a salutary effect on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who began his philosophy career literally under fire as a soldier in the Great War. And that goes to show that in addition to blowing people’s limbs off, artillery fire also interferes with their ability to formulate coherent philosophies. I wouldn’t call Philosophical Investigations crystal clear (the Nazi bombardment of England interrupted Wittgenstein’s work yet again in More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2010

Jon rated it:

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 More...

12 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 14, 2010

Rowland rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2010

Naxa rated it:

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 th More...

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Dec 29, 2009

Steven rated it:

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 unde More...

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Jul 10, 2009

Rhonda rated it:

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 conclus More...

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Oct 24, 2009

Sarah rated it:

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 More...

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Aug 08, 2011

Bryan rated it:

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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Nov 28, 2008

Seth rated it:

i'll have to post my notes from this book someday. regardless, this book is both highly entertaining and essential at least to my own interests. i think it also bore out ray monk's characterization of what makes it difficult for some and engaging for others, which i will paraphrase as being an issue of a book that has no central argument, no narrative thread that will allow you to finish reading it with any better idea of what 'wittgenstein had to say.' in fact, wittgenstein asserts surprisingly More...

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Dec 27, 2008

Mari rated it:

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 general More...

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Aug 18, 2011

Andrew added it

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, More...

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Dec 10, 2011

Jason rated it:

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' More...

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Jan 21, 2012

Shane added it

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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Jan 08, 2012

Adam rated it:

There are a number of mysterious comments on GR about people ‘not understanding’ this book, and if not meant as ‘having the feeling of somehow not fully grasping the book’s genius (supposed or real),’ I imagine such lack of understanding has two major bases of origin: one is that most people who have reviewed the book have probably read the 3rd or maybe even an earlier edition, one in which Anscombe’s translation is intact. That translation is not entirely inept, but seriously muddles some of th More...

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Aug 30, 2007

Ian rated it:

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:

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 More...

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Jul 29, 2011

Kathleen rated it:

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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Mar 29, 2010

Gina rated it:

Someday I'll get around to adding all the philosophers I read, most while in college. Wittgenstein still inspires and abides on my bookshelves; reminding me what a miraculous thing it is that people can communicate at all. Every time I think too hard about the semantics, I need a dose of the Philosophical Investigations.

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Aug 09, 2007

Jenny rated it:

whoa nelly, he's not kidding around using a word like "investigations." there's lots of dialogue here centered around proving the intangible nature of meaning in language and the effect (although i imagine it as a kind of grip) said language has on our mental states. my favorite are the parts about, is there such a thing as a private language? i also like the general attitude that any philosophical problem bugs you because you're using the wrong words anyway and that's the root of it. More...

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Feb 02, 2011

Joseph added it

I read "the Blue & Brown Books" and "On Certainty" first, and in some ways those are better - more direction and clearer arguments. Though the whole second part of the P.I. is transcendent! The closest most Western philosophy comes to poetry.

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Mar 13, 2009

Puya added it

بيشتر خوانندگانش كتاباشو مي خونن و نمي فهمن ولي با همون نفهميدنشون هم حال مي كنن....زندگيش و فلسف ش مچ بود...باهاش حال مي كنم

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Dec 08, 2008

eesenor rated it:

Wittgenstein repudiates his earlier theory of language as representational, and replaces it with one of 'language games', the Pragmatist idea that language is a tool, the function of which shifts according to context

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Apr 11, 2009

Richard rated it:

If your mind has been warped by philosophy, this is a life-changing book. At least it's more likely to cure you than psychotherapy...and cheaper. Watch out for lions and beetles and duck-rabbits (oh my!).

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Jun 19, 2008

JB rated it:

Exceeding the gold standard he set in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein outreaches every expectation in Philosophical Investigations to produce what amounts to the second worst poem ever written. The first was the original manuscript of the same , which, I am told, contained two additional aphorisms.

If we were so fortunate that Wittgenstein was, in fact not real but a figment of Douglas Adams' imagination, he would have been the hero of the Vogon art scene.

This book is crap. I More...

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