The Blue and Brown Books [antikvár]

PREFACE 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. 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 dont 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, 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 iaction—about page 154 in