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The Big Typescript: TS 213
In 1933, Wittgenstein set out to dictate a collection of his recent writings to a typist in the form of a book. Even as he was dictating he began revising the text extensively, so that the surviving typewritten manuscript contains numerous corrections, additions, deletions, alternative words and phrasings, suggestions for moves within the text, and marginal comments in both handwritten and typed form.Long awaited by the scholarly community, Wittgenstein 's so-called Big Typescript (von Wright Catalog no. TS 213) is presented here for the first time in an en-face German -English scholars ' edition, complete with clear indications to help the reader identify the various levels of Wittgenstein 's editing.This text provided a rich source of material for Wittgenstein 's subsequent writings, and therefore serves as a key to understanding much of his later philosophy.
- GenresPhilosophy
1056 pages, Hardcover
First published November 23, 2000
About the author
Ludwig Wittgenstein
313 books3,031 followersLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1929) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
Described by Bertrand Russell as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating", he helped inspire two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements: the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations". Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.
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May 15, 2026
I think you can treat this book in at least two ways.
One is as a scholarly resource. Wittgenstein dictated and revised the typescript during what we could call his middle period, 1933, the same year in which he produced his Blue Book. This is neither the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus (published 1921) nor the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations (published 1953). It’s a transitional period, in which he can reflect critically on his theory of language in the Tractatus and openly explore questions and insights that will become the core of his later writings.
Think of it as a sourcebook. It’s not a finished work, but it is a voluminous, intentionally assembled representation of his thoughts during that period. Just as it sits between his own earlier and later periods, it gives us perspectives on both as well — critical thoughts on the Tractatus and portents of the Investigations and other later work. The chapter and section titles provide a very useful guide to finding our way around in such a varied and extensive source.
The second is as a work for its own sake. It’s an unfinished work, but it’s a remarkable expression of exactly that — unfinished, unvarnished thinking and questioning.
Conventional academic philosophy tends to cover its tracks, its actual process. Philosophers rough out their insights and arguments, draft a paper, revise, maybe share it at an early stage with some trusted colleagues, re-revise many times, “polish” the paper so as to cover their tracks, anticipating objections like tracing a path through a minefield. In the end, a finished paper rarely reveals those initial thoughts and insights. They are polished smooth.
That’s exactly what’s not happening here. This is all rough thoughts that you can enter as a participant. Typically, passages are led by questions and quandaries, answers “we are tempted” to provide are analyzed and evaluated, insights noted, and, consistently with Wittgenstein’s style of thinking during this and later periods, theoretical conclusions are not reached.
Topics covered include theories of meaning, related issues in philosophy of mind, the relationship between propositions (and language in general) and reality, and a long section covering about a third of the book on topics in philosophy of mathematics (the nature of numbers, the relationship between math and word-language, and the conception of proof in logic and mathematics). That’s just a high flyover — regardless what facets of Wittgenstein’s thought you are most interested in, there are discussions here.
I’m just going to pick one theme that runs through almost all of the discussions in the book to talk about a little— Wittgenstein’s distinctive notion of “grammar”. By “grammar”, Wittgenstein means something like the rules or norms for the use of words (or other components of language). Grammatical rules govern such things as what words can be used in relationship with what other words (e.g., color words cannot be used, except metaphorically, with words for the days of the week), but also for far more subtle and even contentious things like the rules of conversation (e.g., when is a justification or an explanation appropriate and when not). To the extent that Wittgenstein offers a straightforward explanation of what he means by grammar, he sticks to the somewhat enigmatic — “Grammatical rules, as they currently exist, are rules for the use of words.”
Some things that Wittgenstein regards as “grammatical rules” look at least somewhat like logical or physical possibilities and impossibilities, e.g., that a patch of color can’t be both red and blue at the same time, or that we can’t speak of a color that is bluish yellow.
G.E Moore raised the question of what Wittgenstein meant by grammatical rules directly to him, saying that there are “rules of grammar” that we all understand, such as subject-verb agreement and the sort, but that Wittgenstein’s use of the term seemed different. Wittgenstein’s enigmatic response was that, yes, he used the term “rules of grammar” in that same familiar way. See the Appendix to Moore’s notes on Wittgenstein’s Lectures at Cambridge, 1930-1933, if you are interested in that discussion.
In some instances, Wittgenstein notes that what appears to be an empirical statement or even an empirical discovery (e.g., that tables are not really solid, given that they are primarily made up of the empty space between elementary particles) are actually better understood as “grammatical” statements, statements about how we are to use words. The distinction is a critical one, separating claims of seeming “realism” from ones that are actually suggestions or recommendations about how to speak, disguised as empirical or metaphysical claims.
Revealing such disguised grammatical statements is key to what is often referred to as Wittgenstein’s “therapeutic” resolutions to philosophical problems. Once we perceive such statements and quandaries as appear in metaphysical or other philosophical discussions as grammatical, the significance of the statements, while not going away, changes. Their significance lies in how we speak, or in how we decide to speak, rather than in reality itself or in metaphysics.
In some of the discussions here, Wittgenstein goes an extra step, talking about the status of grammatical rules, where they come from and why they have force. He asks, for example, “Is grammar, as I use the word, nothing but the description of the actual use of a language? So that its propositions could really be understood like the propositions of a natural science?”
Could grammatical rules be both empirical, like those of a natural science, and normative? Grammatical rules can be summarized into a coherent system, but they don’t appear to originate in an intentionally designed system. They happen much more organically and historically.
Thinking of them in this way might capture other aspects of grammatical rules. Rules can change, and any particular rule arises only against a background of other rules. Once some rules have happened, they limit what new rules can be accepted (invented or otherwise). And the practice of those rules (again, empirically) limit what (normatively) counts as following the rules.
He even speaks of grammatical rules as “arbitrary.” I take him to mean in part that they could have been otherwise and, his point in the discussion, that they aren’t justified in terms of achieving some result or corresponding to reality. That they could have been otherwise doesn’t change their normative quality (now that we have them).
The sense in which they aren’t arbitrary is that, while speaking, that arbitrary quality is not just irrelevant, because to speak and be understood, we need to play by the rules we have. To consciously treat the rules as arbitrary while we are in the midst of playing by them may be undermining to the activity — as if, in chess, one player suddenly says that the rules for moving a piece are just arbitrary, as if you could change them midstream (for no good reason, not even to gain an advantage).
I can’t say that, having read Wittgenstein’s wide-ranging thoughts here on grammar, I know exactly what he means by “grammar.” I’m not surprised or disappointed.
Maybe the biggest prize in reading the book is the experience of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method. Maybe “manner” is a better word than “method” there, because it doesn’t come down to a method per se. He has strategies — ask a question or call up a tendency in how we speak. Where does it come from? What is its significance? Is there a misconception concealed in it?
It’s not philosophy as theory, it’s philosophy as disclosure and even deflation. As he says here, “And this is what the solution of all philosophical difficulties looks like. Our answers, if they are correct, must be ordinary and trivial.” Or even, “Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.”
One is as a scholarly resource. Wittgenstein dictated and revised the typescript during what we could call his middle period, 1933, the same year in which he produced his Blue Book. This is neither the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus (published 1921) nor the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations (published 1953). It’s a transitional period, in which he can reflect critically on his theory of language in the Tractatus and openly explore questions and insights that will become the core of his later writings.
Think of it as a sourcebook. It’s not a finished work, but it is a voluminous, intentionally assembled representation of his thoughts during that period. Just as it sits between his own earlier and later periods, it gives us perspectives on both as well — critical thoughts on the Tractatus and portents of the Investigations and other later work. The chapter and section titles provide a very useful guide to finding our way around in such a varied and extensive source.
The second is as a work for its own sake. It’s an unfinished work, but it’s a remarkable expression of exactly that — unfinished, unvarnished thinking and questioning.
Conventional academic philosophy tends to cover its tracks, its actual process. Philosophers rough out their insights and arguments, draft a paper, revise, maybe share it at an early stage with some trusted colleagues, re-revise many times, “polish” the paper so as to cover their tracks, anticipating objections like tracing a path through a minefield. In the end, a finished paper rarely reveals those initial thoughts and insights. They are polished smooth.
That’s exactly what’s not happening here. This is all rough thoughts that you can enter as a participant. Typically, passages are led by questions and quandaries, answers “we are tempted” to provide are analyzed and evaluated, insights noted, and, consistently with Wittgenstein’s style of thinking during this and later periods, theoretical conclusions are not reached.
Topics covered include theories of meaning, related issues in philosophy of mind, the relationship between propositions (and language in general) and reality, and a long section covering about a third of the book on topics in philosophy of mathematics (the nature of numbers, the relationship between math and word-language, and the conception of proof in logic and mathematics). That’s just a high flyover — regardless what facets of Wittgenstein’s thought you are most interested in, there are discussions here.
I’m just going to pick one theme that runs through almost all of the discussions in the book to talk about a little— Wittgenstein’s distinctive notion of “grammar”. By “grammar”, Wittgenstein means something like the rules or norms for the use of words (or other components of language). Grammatical rules govern such things as what words can be used in relationship with what other words (e.g., color words cannot be used, except metaphorically, with words for the days of the week), but also for far more subtle and even contentious things like the rules of conversation (e.g., when is a justification or an explanation appropriate and when not). To the extent that Wittgenstein offers a straightforward explanation of what he means by grammar, he sticks to the somewhat enigmatic — “Grammatical rules, as they currently exist, are rules for the use of words.”
Some things that Wittgenstein regards as “grammatical rules” look at least somewhat like logical or physical possibilities and impossibilities, e.g., that a patch of color can’t be both red and blue at the same time, or that we can’t speak of a color that is bluish yellow.
G.E Moore raised the question of what Wittgenstein meant by grammatical rules directly to him, saying that there are “rules of grammar” that we all understand, such as subject-verb agreement and the sort, but that Wittgenstein’s use of the term seemed different. Wittgenstein’s enigmatic response was that, yes, he used the term “rules of grammar” in that same familiar way. See the Appendix to Moore’s notes on Wittgenstein’s Lectures at Cambridge, 1930-1933, if you are interested in that discussion.
In some instances, Wittgenstein notes that what appears to be an empirical statement or even an empirical discovery (e.g., that tables are not really solid, given that they are primarily made up of the empty space between elementary particles) are actually better understood as “grammatical” statements, statements about how we are to use words. The distinction is a critical one, separating claims of seeming “realism” from ones that are actually suggestions or recommendations about how to speak, disguised as empirical or metaphysical claims.
Revealing such disguised grammatical statements is key to what is often referred to as Wittgenstein’s “therapeutic” resolutions to philosophical problems. Once we perceive such statements and quandaries as appear in metaphysical or other philosophical discussions as grammatical, the significance of the statements, while not going away, changes. Their significance lies in how we speak, or in how we decide to speak, rather than in reality itself or in metaphysics.
In some of the discussions here, Wittgenstein goes an extra step, talking about the status of grammatical rules, where they come from and why they have force. He asks, for example, “Is grammar, as I use the word, nothing but the description of the actual use of a language? So that its propositions could really be understood like the propositions of a natural science?”
Could grammatical rules be both empirical, like those of a natural science, and normative? Grammatical rules can be summarized into a coherent system, but they don’t appear to originate in an intentionally designed system. They happen much more organically and historically.
Thinking of them in this way might capture other aspects of grammatical rules. Rules can change, and any particular rule arises only against a background of other rules. Once some rules have happened, they limit what new rules can be accepted (invented or otherwise). And the practice of those rules (again, empirically) limit what (normatively) counts as following the rules.
He even speaks of grammatical rules as “arbitrary.” I take him to mean in part that they could have been otherwise and, his point in the discussion, that they aren’t justified in terms of achieving some result or corresponding to reality. That they could have been otherwise doesn’t change their normative quality (now that we have them).
The sense in which they aren’t arbitrary is that, while speaking, that arbitrary quality is not just irrelevant, because to speak and be understood, we need to play by the rules we have. To consciously treat the rules as arbitrary while we are in the midst of playing by them may be undermining to the activity — as if, in chess, one player suddenly says that the rules for moving a piece are just arbitrary, as if you could change them midstream (for no good reason, not even to gain an advantage).
I can’t say that, having read Wittgenstein’s wide-ranging thoughts here on grammar, I know exactly what he means by “grammar.” I’m not surprised or disappointed.
Maybe the biggest prize in reading the book is the experience of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method. Maybe “manner” is a better word than “method” there, because it doesn’t come down to a method per se. He has strategies — ask a question or call up a tendency in how we speak. Where does it come from? What is its significance? Is there a misconception concealed in it?
It’s not philosophy as theory, it’s philosophy as disclosure and even deflation. As he says here, “And this is what the solution of all philosophical difficulties looks like. Our answers, if they are correct, must be ordinary and trivial.” Or even, “Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.”
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