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Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings – The Complete Tractatus, Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty

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Major Works is the finest single-volume anthology of influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's important writings. Featuring the complete texts of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for 'Philosophical Investigations,' and On Certainty, this new collection selects from the early, middle, and later career of this revolutionary thinker, widely recognized as one of the most profound minds of all time.

448 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

260 books2,949 followers
Ludwig 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.

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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
Profile Image for Pavelas.
176 reviews11 followers
November 5, 2023
Šioje knygoje surinkti Wittgensteino kūriniai iš įvairių jo gyvenimo laikotarpių. Ankstyvąjį reprezentuoja Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, vidurinįjį - Blue and Brown Books, o vėlyvąjį - On Certainty.

Garsiausias iš šių trijų yra Tractatus, bet man labiausiai patiko On Certainty (yra ir leidimas lietuvių kalba).

Kelios mintys iš On Certainty, kurias įsidėmėjau:

Ar pasaulis egzistuoja? Jeigu jis neegzistuoja, tai koks kitas egzistavimo kriterijus? Pasaulis yra egzistavimo kriterijus, mes neturime kito egzistavimo kriterijaus negu pasaulis. Kitaip tariant, mūsų naudojamas egzistavimo kalbos žaidimas susietas su pasauliu, ir nesant pasaulio tas kalbos žaidimas netenka prasmės.

Bet kuriuo atveju, teiginys, kad pasaulis neegzistuoja, praktikoje nieko mums neduoda. Visi mūsų faktai rodo, kad pasaulis nėra vien mūsų galvose, bet egzistuoja iš tiesų. Ir priešingai, šiuo metu nėra jokių faktų, kurie rodytų, kad pasaulio nėra. Tačiau kas, jeigu visa mūsų turima informacija klaidinga? Tai neatmestina, bet neturi jokios praktinės reikšmės mūsų gyvenimui.

“What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.”
117 reviews33 followers
December 15, 2014
(before my review, I will say that I was slightly disappointed in the typos throughout the HarperPerennial x ModernThought publications. Be that as it may, I will not count it against my rating.)

This truly is a masterpiece of modern thought. It is little that Wittgenstein has been picked up as a predecessor to both right wing (analytic) and left wing (continental) philosophers. He leaves so much room for thought and there are so many facets that one can explore that, as I just mentioned, can be taken in many directions; much as what happened with Hegel and the schisms that bled into Fascist and Communist ideologies alike.

Whether or not you consider yourself a person interested in philosophy, I highly encourage you to read this. It is not some supercilious attempt at telling the reader how things "really are." Rather, Wittgenstein lays out some valuable insights in plain language the basic tenents of formal logic and how important it is to keep these in mind when considering just how it is we communicate with each other.

The Tractatus may be difficult for those who have never studied formal or symbolic logic, but don't let that deter you. If you are really interested in that piece I am sure there are resources online that can break down the general rules. The blue and brown book though are basically a walk through of the Tractatus and how such understanding can clear up the muddled concepts of age-old philosophical problems - which is interesting enough as it is.

Even as someone who has studied philosophy for some time though I would say the most interesting of all is in his "on certainty." I will warn you though, it is important to read the preceding material to get a solid understanding of what he is getting at here. This section has great insight into everyday/inductive/empirical "knowledge" that I think all people should take into consideration (given that probably 90 percent of all knowledge people commonly talk about is just of this type). We far too often take language for granted and base the premisses of our convictions and ideals that, though not necessarily wrong per se, are muddled and lead to faulty conclusions. At the very least this section offers valuable tools to the average person (without taking an epistemology class) to take a look at what it means to "know" something and how to better scrutinize those who try to tell us that they do.

Wonderful book!
Profile Image for Jacob Aitken.
1,687 reviews421 followers
March 26, 2020
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Major Works. New York: Harper Perennial, [reprint] 2009.

This collection doesn’t have Phil. Investigations, but it does contain Tractatus, the Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty. In these works you can see evidence of the so-called "linguistic turn" in 20th century philosophy.

Even though LW later criticized Tractatus, it’s my favorite of his works. The way of analysis in it is near perfect and it is much easier to follow than Brown and Blue Books.

Tractatus

By correlating language and world, Wittgenstein is saying I can’t step outside my world. What is the world? It is the totality of existent atomic facts (2.04).

Metaphysics: objects from the substance of the world. Substance is form + content (7-8).

He advances the bold thesis that everything is decided by logic (81).

Language and Pictures: we see pictures of facts, where the picture is a model of reality (2.12; 4.01).

Representation: the picture is like a scale applied to reality (2.1512). The relation which makes it a picture also belongs to that picture. Yet, the picture cannot represent its form of representation. It can only show it.

States of affairs

Signs: a simple sign in a proposition is a “name” (3.202).

A proposition cannot say anything about itself, for the propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (3.332). I think what he means by this is in his next line: “a function cannot be its own argument.” I think Wittgenstein sees propositions as similar to functions. If the function F(fx) could be its own argument, then there would be the proposition F(F(fx)), and so on.

Blue Book

Key argument: the sign gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs (90). As he says later on, “Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words” (105).

Thoughts on intention: he denies that intention is a particular mental process (125). Well, true if by it we mean that intentionality isn’t located in the mind. It is a movement of the mind to the object.

Conclusion: it is the particular use of a word that gives it its meaning (171).

Questions:

1) What is the difference between a sign and the meaning of a sign (127)?

The Brown Book

Augustine learned to speak by learning the names of things (179). LW then introduces his famous “brick” illustration. A guy points and says “brick.” What he means is throw him the next brick. We know this because the “language-game” background is construction.

As James K. A. Smith helpfully notes, “Community precedes correspondence” (Smith, Who’s Afraid of Relativism? 53). In other words, meaning isn’t just “the object for which the word stands.”

A language game is a system of communication. They are “complete in themselves, as complete systems of information” (185). From that we can say that a sentence is a sign within a language game.

LW resists the idea of universals. Let’s take his example. You have an array of red objects. What is common to each of them? You would naturally say “red.” We would call that the universal “redness.” So far, so good. He suggests it doesn’t work like that. “Let’s take a language (and that means again a culture) in which there existed no common expression for light blue and dark blue, in which the former, say, was called Cambridge, the latter Oxford. If you asked a man of this tribe what Cambridge and Oxford have in common, he would be inclined to say “Nothing”” (252).

Hmm. Okay. I suppose that works on colors. I don’t think his rebuttal works on other types of universals. The phrase "north of" is also a universal of relation, yet it isn't clear how it is dependent on language-games.

That’s the essence of the book and I think it is fairly on point. Wittgenstein’s genius is in very clear illustrations. I do feel this book could have been 100 pages shorter.

On Certainty

Take the question “How do you know?” The answer to that question presupposes “This can be known in that way.” The original question was GE Moore’s “How can I know this is my hand?” The answer is to show it (sec. 40).

Wittgenstein wants to remove “this transcendent certainty, which is connected with your concept of spirit” (sec. 47). How do you know mathematical rules? You know them by doing them. Full stop. He is pushing back against the idea of a relation between term A and term B.

LW does allow for a correspondence “between rule and meaning” (sec. 62).

Summary of argument: when language games change, there is a change in concepts, and with concepts the meaning of words change (65).

Moving on, if everything is now a language-game, then logic becomes a description of a language-game. If something’s being correct depends upon its place in a language game, and logic is usually one of the ways we can tell that, then logic, too, must be within a language-game.

This means that “all testing, all confirmation….takes place already within a system” (sec. 105). A system isn’t a point of departure. It is the field in which our arguments have life. When we first believe something, we believe the whole system of propositions (141).

This totality of judgment is a “world-picture.” It is the “substratum of all my enquiring and asserting” (162).

Nota bene: my judgments characterize the way I judge. A proposition doesn’t always have to be “fixed” to be reliable. They are like an axis. The axis is always moving but the moving body revolves around it (152).

LW has some excellent suggestions about the nature of doubt (115). Doubting always presupposes certainty. Doubt is parasitic upon certainty. In fact, I can doubt many things that are important, but that is irrelevant. I can doubt its absolute truth but if it is working fine within my language game, then I don’t worry too much about the doubting. I think this is the clearest statement of pragmatism in LW.

Conclusion: a language-game is only possible if one trusts something (509). Truth is doxastic.
Profile Image for Mary Rust.
4 reviews
December 18, 2025
loved this a lot despite the logical proofs taking me having to reread them to actually understand them. the applications of the book are compelling especially for science and law.
7 reviews23 followers
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August 17, 2025
I am not rating this book. In fact, I don’t even know how to rate it. As Wittgenstein said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Why? Because whatever I say will inevitably miss the mark. Even admitting failure here feels like a mistake.


His logic doesn’t impress me in the usual sense, because it is unlike anything that came before. And yet, paradoxically, it never fails to impress me either. The author is not solving problems, nor is he analyzing them in the conventional way. Instead, he dissolves them, disarming the reader’s habits of thought, almost like a process of deprogramming.

The result is something utterly singular. This book doesn’t just present ideas—it shifts the ground beneath them. It is, in every sense, one of a kind.
Profile Image for Naomi Ruth.
1,637 reviews50 followers
February 4, 2015
I love Wittgenstein so much. I was so hooked and didn't want to stop reading.

I had read On Certainty before, but found the translation difficult to follow. I liked this translation much better (though I don't know German, so I can't speak to whether it's a better translation or not). I found it easier to follow.

Love, love, love that I own this book. I want to read it again.
Profile Image for Kirby Gann.
Author 6 books33 followers
October 16, 2012
Prepare your mind for serious bending.
Profile Image for William Schram.
2,404 reviews99 followers
June 1, 2019
Ludwig Wittgenstein was a hugely important philosopher of the 20th Century. I have only heard of him before, so I didn’t really know what to expect when reading this book of his Major Works. The book includes Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for ‘Philosophical Investigations,’ and On Certainty. I don’t know what they cut out or included or anything, but the book states that it is a selection of his works. I’m going to describe the books by TLP and TBBB and OC if that is alright with everyone.

Anyway, TLP starts out by establishing simple ideas and then building on them step by step. In that sense it is similar to Ethics by Spinoza. The first page of the TLP talks about how the statements are organized. This is really important to me since I tend to lose track of what the man is saying. Thinking about thoughts is a sort of thing I don’t usually consider in a formal sense with logic. However, that is what Wittgenstein has done in this book. Once again, we start out with a statement, and then the following statements are numbered to elaborate on the main statement. There are only seven main statements in the TLP, but most of the book is made up of the supporting statements. It discusses Symbolic Logic and how to avoid Russell’s Paradox among other things.

TBBB is made up of paragraphs and is somewhat different from TLP. It begins with the idea of what we mean by meaning. What is the meaning of a word? Wittgenstein goes on to discuss the limitations in our thoughts by what we can describe in our language. Really good stuff. The same basic idea applies to both of the books in that set.

Finally, OC discusses our limitations of language in reference to what we can be certain of.

I really liked this one, so perhaps I can find other things similar to it.
13 reviews
Currently reading
September 21, 2025
Fantastic brain and his ideas regarding language and perception/experiencing are very much worth thinking about (if you’re interested in linguistics/philosophy).

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: in the format of a math proof, well laid out enough but tough to read. I don’t agree with how extremely logical the take here is, that language === understanding but also neither does LW later in his life so while the gist is cool to read given how influential it is/was, I also see it as a work you don’t necessarily need to read yourself but instead find a good summary somewhere.

The Blue Book: I feel like the crux of it is in the last 20 pages and that’s all you *need* to read. Reads as somewhat meandering and non-linear but because he’s trying to consider everything and cover all the bases. But I’m glad I read the whole thing and will probably reread it in the future.
60 reviews
November 26, 2020
Fairly interesting read if you're interested at all in logic and language. The Blue and Brown Books are the highlights of the collection in my opinion, being the most interesting reads of the four. On Certainty is also quite interesting, though a bit bloated and repetitious at times. Tractatus is certainly not the strongest, but it was the fastest read, being that it is really just a series of two line thoughts. Anyways, I would seriously recommend this to anyone into philosophy, or any philosophy students, who have yet to read Wittgenstein.
Profile Image for Jesus.
51 reviews2 followers
March 7, 2020
I am extremely bias for this philosopher, seeing that he is my most favorite logician and philosopher. So it is coming from a place of cheer and utter devotion for what I think is the best minds and was the best mind of the 19th and 20th century. So I will try to do this unbiased. This book shows the true power of honest language and dialogue and how human linguistically evolved to distort it. But lucky for you, this book will make so much sense.
Profile Image for Bailey Fernandez.
5 reviews1 follower
January 14, 2019
I liked Tractatus the most, but I thought that many of the refutations in the Blue/Brown books were interesting. Thought most of the reflections in "On Certainty" were pretty self-evident, and that might have made me lower the rating--but the overall effect this had on my thinking was strong enough that the five stars makes sense.
75 reviews
July 14, 2020
Examples were a bit repetitive. Perhaps this was a function of early-t0-mid 20th century communication coupled with expressions lost in translation. This would be ironic, though, given the content of the work (Does not a sentence in one language translated perfectly into a sentence in another language mean two different things?)
Profile Image for Celicia Cordes.
55 reviews
March 8, 2025
While I felt like a good chunk of the book would be better enjoyed by someone more knowledgeable and well-read than myself, the parts in which I did understand stood out as surprisingly thought provoking. Wittgenstein enjoyably lays out his insights on language the basic tenants of formal logic and the importance of keeping both in mind while communicating with others.
Profile Image for Xavier Bonilla.
20 reviews11 followers
January 17, 2021
I enjoyed this on 2nd re-reading. The tractatus is genius albeit too analytic for me. He talks about language in interesting ways. It’s not full deconstructionism but has traces of that. Either way, tremendous influence.
Profile Image for stig.
27 reviews3 followers
June 19, 2012
I found it well-done but a little redundant (to me, not to itself).
Profile Image for Bobby.
2 reviews2 followers
March 10, 2013
What an incredible mind! Wittgenstein is not for the faint of philosophical heart. This work is much more relevant than we have even begun to realize.
31 reviews
October 10, 2016
Wittgenstein is very clear in his meanings of things and goes into great detail.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews

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