The Blue and Brown Books

Abstract

This chapter explains comment on the views on language, mind and reality set forth in the two very important transitional works called respectively, from the colour of the wrappers in which they were informally circulated, The Blue Book and The Brown Book . These two books are really sets of notes which Wittgenstein used for his classes in the early 1930s, after his return to Cambridge from Austria, and which he distributed in the form of stencilled hand-outs. The Blue Book further contains treatments of solipsism and the problem of other minds which show how deeply Wittgenstein continued to experience philosophical puzzlement in that quarter, and also a view of philosophy as a quest for new fundamental notations which will bring out affinities. The Brown Book likewise contains a much fuller account of language-games than the Investigations, and a more revealing account of the ways in which Wittgenstein conceived that his language-games were taught.