General note on MSS 105–122 (Bände I to XVIII)

Between 1929 and 1940 Wittgenstein produced 18 large manuscript volumes. He himself numbered them as Bände I to XVIII and gave most of them general titles like “Philosophical Remarks” or “Philosophical Grammar”. This indicates that he himself perceived these volumes as belonging to a series. Some of them evidently contain new material spontaneously written down and not drafted in other notebooks. Parts of several of these volumes, however, are based on earlier remarks recorded in pocket notebooks, for example, while other parts contain revisions of earlier manuscript volumes or typescripts. The best–known case of this last kind are MSS 114ii and 115i (Bände X and XI), which contain a revision (erste Umarbeitung) of parts of TS 213 (The Big Typescript). The same typescript forms the basis of the first section of volume XII (MS 116), but the process of selecting remarks from the TS and transferring them into Band XII is such that most people would not feel inclined to speak of a process of revision. At any rate, there are clear breaks between the earlier portion of MS 114 and the subsequent revision of TS 213 contained in the same ledger as well as between the first half (winter 1933–34) of volume XI and its second half, which was written in the late summer and the autumn of 1936 (containing the German revision of the Brown Book, entitled “Philosophische Untersuchungen”).

General note on MSS 105–114 (Bände I to X)

There are good reasons for treating the series of volumes from I to X (or, more exactly, up to MS 114i) as forming a separate, or separable, part of Wittgenstein’s oeuvre. However, as has been pointed out above, even these volumes were not produced according to one uniform pattern. Some of the remarks were written spontaneously, as it were, that is to say, without a basis in earlier drafts. Other remarks contained in these volumes were copied or transferred in revised form from earlier writings. Most of these volumes are punctuated by personal remarks of a private or confessional nature as well as by reflections on music, literature, religion, and a few other kinds of topic. Sometimes, but by no means always, these reflections are separated from the more straightforwardly philosophical material by certain marks (e.g. “||…||”) or by being written in Wittgenstein’s usual code. But in spite of these and other qualifications that might come to mind it is helpful and surely not misleading to view volumes I to X as the central record of Wittgenstein’s strikingly original and continuous production between his return to Cambridge in January 1929 and a new stage in the process of articulating and arranging his ideas. But even if we are agreed that these ten manuscript volumes are to be regarded as the core record of his thought during the early middle period of his philosophical development, it will be useful to divide this material into three parts, corresponding to interruptions of the writing process motivated by an urge to have his handwritten remarks typed up. Once in possession of a typed version, Wittgenstein was prepared to think about the order of his individual remarks, about possible arrangements and re-arrangements. Moreover, he could now proceed to actually carrying out such arrangements and re-arrangements by way of cutting typescript or carbon copy into fragments that were subsequently put together in a new order and, in some cases, supplemented by handwritten changes or explanations or exemplifications giving the older material a new twist. — There are three interruptions of the kind alluded to in the previous paragraph:

• (1)    24 March 1930: Easter vacation, in Vienna Wittgenstein dictates selected remarks from vol.s I to IV. The result is TS 208, which is soon cut into fragments that are subsequently re-arranged so as to form TS 209 (Philosophical Remarks).
• (2)    The material written down in the remainder of volume IV (MS 108) between 25 April and 9 August 1930 is dictated and typed sometime in the summer of this year (TS 210).
• (3)    The contents of MSS 109–114i are sifted and dictated to a typist while on vacation in Austria. The resulting typescript (TS 211) comprises ca. 800 pages and may have been dictated in the course of two or more series of sessions. But most of the work of producing this typescript was surely done after 5 June 1932 (the last date to be found in MS 114i).

It is likely that TS 211 was completed in the summer or autumn of 1932. So we may assume that in the course of less than four years (1929–32) Wittgenstein managed to fill ca. 3000 pages of manuscript volumes and dictated almost 1100 pages of this material to a typist. The story of this material is continued in other parts of this account (see especially MSS 114–15, 140, TSS 208–13), but at this point, readers should allow the message to sink in: if we remember that much of this material was absolutely new and the result of reflections that stood in contrast, or were diametrically opposed, to the author’s earlier convictions, we find that we are dealing with a unique document witnessing to Wittgenstein’s stunning creative powers.

MS 114 X. Philosophische Grammatik (= MS 114i, fol. 1–31 [= pp. 1–60])

Umarbeitung (= MS 114ii, pp. 1–228)

Like the previous volume (no. IX), this manuscript book bears the title “Philosophical Grammar”. For obvious reasons, however, this title only applies to the first 60 pages of this volume. The foliation (beginning on the title page) was added later (but not by Wittgenstein himself).

On the flyleaf Wittgenstein wrote a note (mostly in code) to the effect that, if he died before completing his work, this material should be published as a fragment under the title “Philosophical Remarks”, and the publication should be dedicated to Francis Skinner, who was to be notified of this fact:

Im Falle meines Todes vor der Fertigstellung oder Veröffentlichung dieses Buches sollen meine Aufzeichnungen fragmentarisch veröffentlicht werden unter dem Titel:
“Philosophische Bemerkungen”
und mit der Widmung:
“FRANCIS SKINNER zugeeignet”
Er ist, wenn diese Bemerkung nach meinem Tode gelesen wird, von meiner Absicht in Kenntnis zu setzen, an die Adresse: Trinity College Cambridge.

The first 60 pages of volume X (often referred to as MS 114i, i.e. the first section of MS 114) constitute the last part of the manuscript material Wittgenstein used to compose TS 211, which in its turn served as the basis of the collection of remarks TS 212 and the subsequent dictation of TS 213, the so-called “Big Typescript”. A fair number of remarks in MS 114i are revised versions of earlier remarks, chiefly taken from MSS 107 and 108 via TS 208. The last couple of pages or so were used to form the beginning of TS 219 (possibly, these last pages were written a little later than the first 58 pages).

These first 60 pages of the manuscript volume bear frequent dates, beginning from 27.5.32 (p.1), 30.[5.] (p. 12), 1.6. (p. 22), 3.[6.] (p. 32), 4.[6.] (p.41), 5.[6.] (p. 44)

On p. 40 there are three remarks (chiefly on probability) cut from TS 208 and glued in at this point of vol. X.

The second and much larger section of MS 114 (= 114ii) was paginated by Wittgenstein himself (228 pages). Its title is Umarbeitung (Revision), and, as a kind of second title, Wittgenstein added the words Zweite Umarbeitung im großen Format (Second revision in Large-Size manuscript). This refers to the first 39 pages of MS 140 (p. 40 contains an early draft of what we know as the beginning of Philosophical Investigations). The title Umarbeitung as well as the explanation concerning the second revision were obviously added at a later stage: they were squeezed into the space above the first proper line of the first remark of this (first) revision.

This revision is mainly one of TS 213, the Big Typescript, which, immediately after its completion in the summer of 1933, was supplemented and corrected in Wittgenstein’s own handwriting. At a certain point, the space afforded by the pages of the typescript must have seemed insufficient to allow the author to annotate and reorganize his material. So he used the free pages of his last large manuscript volume (114) to copy the revised versions of those remarks from TS 213 that he intended to keep. When, at some later stage, he decided to change the order and part of the content of the material assembled in MS 114ii, he used the loose leaves of MS 140 (Großes Format) to do so. Thus, the reader who wishes to follow Wittgenstein’s instructions about how to read, or “construct”, this second revision will have to switch back and forth between the manuscript volume (MS 114ii) and the loose leaves constituting the Großes Format (MS 140). Of course, keeping a copy of the Big Typescript handy will also contribute to understanding the piecemeal composition of the text.

Moreover, in the later stages of rewriting the remarks based on the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein drew not only on the typescript itself as well as his revisions in the margins and on the versos of its pages but also on a smaller manuscript book (MS 145, aka “C1”). On the last page (228) he inserted a remark from MS 146 (“C2”), which is continued on the first page of MS 115 (see there). As the first page of MS 115 bears the date “14.12.33”, we can infer that the material contained in MS 114ii was written in the weeks or months between his first attempts at revising TS 213 and the middle of December 1933.

The contents of MS 114ii (plus MS 140) are known to readers of the first half of the book Philosophical Grammar (ed. by Rush Rhees).