Blue and Brown Books

View other editions of Blue and Brown Books.
View books by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Docherty.

Show, don't tell ... - Rated
Familiar advice to the novice writer, but very much in keeping with philosophy as practiced by Wittgenstein, not only in the Tractatus, but in the Investigations, too. Whether 'values', in the most general sense, are to be sought in the ineffable or in language games/forms of life, 'ordinary language' is a tricky, unruly medium (read what Eliot has to say in Four Quartets), and so some sort of effort is inevitable on the part of the reader: it is nonsense -- Unsinn -- to try to 'state in plain terms' what is not 'stateable' at all.

Nice idea shame about the exposition - Rated
The blue and brown books mark a change in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Many people believe that his later philosophy is totally incompatible with his earlier ideas. In many cases this division is borne out of a gross misunderstanding of his work.

The problem with Wittgenstein is that he is very difficult to understand. For someone who believed philosophy should only elucidate facts and never create new problems, surely he, above all other philosophers', is the one most guilty of this charge!

He originally set out to end philosophy. Unless Wittgenstein aimed to miss, he failed his task miserably.
His legacy is the antithesis of his objective, he fuelled philosophy by raising new questions not just about what is truth? what is good? But also what is he talking about?