Foreword to the Edition of 1977 Foreword to the 1994 Edition Editorial Note Note by Translator Culture and Value A Poem Notes Appendix:List of Sources List of Sources, Arranged Alphanumerically Index of Beginnings of Remarks Subject Index Index of Names.

When in May 1930, the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, had to decide whether to renew Wittgenstein's research grant, it turned to Bertrand Russell for an assessment of the work Wittgenstein had been doing over the past year. His verdict: "The theories contained in this new work . . . are novel, very original and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should like to think that they are not, but from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since, when completed, they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy." "[Philosophical Remarks] contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and of mathematics. Principally, he here discusses the role of indispensable in language, criticizing Russell's The Analysis of Mind. He modifies the Tractatus's picture theory of meaning by stressing that the connection between the proposition and reality is not found in the picture itself. He analyzes generality in and out of mathematics, and the notions of proof and experiment. He formulates a pain/private-language argument and discusses both behaviorism and the verifiability principle. The work is difficult but important, and it belongs in every philosophy collection."—Robert Hoffman, Philosophy "Any serious student of Wittgenstein's work will want to study his Philosophical Remarks as a transitional book between his two great masterpieces. The Remarks is thus indispensible for anyone who seeks a complete understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy."—Leonard Linsky, American Philosophical Association

For Wittgenstein, philosophy was an on-going activity. Only in his dialog with the philosophical community and in his private moments does Wittgenstein's philosophical practice fully come to light. Visit our website for sample chapters!

After his intellectual biography, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Miles Hollingworth now turns his attention to one of Augustine's greatest modern admirers: The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's influence on post-war philosophical investigation has been pervasive, while his eccentric life has entered folklore. Yet his religious mysticism has remained elusive and undisturbed. In Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hollingworth continues to pioneer a new kind of biographical writing. It stands at the intersection of philosophy, theology and literary criticism, and is as much concerned with the secret agendas of life writing as it is with its Subjects. Here, Wittgenstein is allowed to become the ultimate test case. From first to last, his philosophy sought to demonstrate that intellectual certainty is a function of the method it employs, rather than a knowledge of the existence or non-existence of its objects--a devastating insight that appears to make the natural and the supernatural into equally useless examples of each other. This biography proceeds in the same way. Scattered in every direction by this challenge to meaning, it attempts to retrieve itself around the spirit of the man who could say such things. This act of recovery thus performs what could not otherwise be explained, which is something like Wittgenstein's private conversation with God.