Books

First edition, first impression, of the author's second philosophical masterpiece, published two years after his death. "The revolutionary conception of future philosophy sketched in the Tractatus has an even more radical counterpart in the Investigations. Philosophy, Wittgenstein continued to argue, is not a cognitive discipline. There are no philosophical propositions, and there is no philosophical knowledge. If there were theses in philosophy, everybody would agree with them, for they would be mere grammatical truisms (for example, that we know that someone is in pain by observing what he says and does). The 'therapeutic' task of philosophy is to clear away conceptual confusions that stand in the way of accepting these rule-governed articulations in our language. Philosophical problems stem from entanglement in linguistic rules" (ODNB). Raymond Monk praised Anscombe for her "most skilful and sensitive translation. It is cause for rejoicing that she will translate the material for subsequent volumes of Wittgenstein's works" (cited in Fann, p. 213). Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Parallel German-English text. Errata slip tipped in. With loosely inserted contemporary Blackwell's catalogue. Very light bumping, minor foxing to edges and content margins; light chipping, toning, and foxing to unclipped jacket: a very good copy in like jacket. K. T. Fann, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy, 2020.

Philosophical Investigations is one of the most important works of 20th-century philosophy. By Ludwig Wittgenstein, it presents his later philosophy.