Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born in Austria and studied at Cambridge under Bertrand Russell. He volunteered to serve in the Austrian army at the outbreak of World War I, and in 1918 was captured and sent to a prison camp in Italy, where he finished his masterpiece, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one of the most important philosophical works of all time. After the war Wittgenstein eventually returned to Cambridge to teach.
"Wittgenstein's later work, so long the privilege and possession of a few, is at last before the public at large. The so-called Blue and Brown Books, originally dictated to his students in Cambridge in the thirties, and circulated, not without precaution and secrecy, now follow the Investigations and the Remarks on Mathematics, and with this the openingup process is complete. The event is welcome: it is certain that we need more free discussion, rather than obscure reference to Wittgenstein's doctrines .... the Blue Book already announces all the main themes of the later Wittgenstein--so rich yet so intimately interlocked. Use and meaning and the fallacious 'name' theory; understanding and the mastery of a technique; rules, language-games and 'forms of life'; these doctrines, and the denial of 'private languages, ' fit together like the parts of a puzzle. This book, for the sake of its compactness, and something of a special zest that has been admired, may make it a good introduction to the later Wittgenstein .... it is only here [The Brown Book] that language-games and the problems of rules come into full prominence. And the importance of the latter cannot be over-emphasized; later philosophers have used the notion but rarely explored it as Wittgenstein did." -- David Pole, Philosophy "There could be no better introduction to Wittgenstein's thought than the Blue Book, whose simplicity and forthrightness must make aninstant appeal. The progressive complications of the Brown Book makea natural bridge to the still more subtle, but often confusing, exposition of the Investigations. Every serious student of philosophy will want to own this volume."-- Max Black"These studies have exercisedconsiderable influence on the development of contemporary English philosophy." -- "The Heythrop Journal (Oxford)
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