Philosophical investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen. The German text, with a revised English translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. Edited and with a note by G. Anscombe and R. Rhees. 3rd revised ed. (English, German) Zbl 1028.03003

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. xi, 246 p. (2003).

This edition commemorates the 50th anniversary of L.Wittgenstein’s death in 1951. It gives the text of manuscripts of which the first part was completed in 1945, and the second written between 1947 and 1949, but never published by Wittgenstein himself. The first edition, already bilingual, appeared 1953, the second edition in 1958, with a large number of small changes in the English text.
The book contains thoughts being “the precipitate of philosophical investigations which have occupied me for the last sixteen years”, as Wittgenstein himself writes in the Preface (p.x). It represents his mature philosophical theory after the renunciation of the theory of the “Tractatus logico-philosophicus”. Focused on the use of language, it contains his theory of language games. Wittgenstein’s considerations on rule-following are of particular interest for mathematics.

Reviewer: Volker Peckhaus (Paderborn)

MSC:

03A05	Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations
03-02	Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations
01A75	Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics

Keywords:

language games; rule following