MS 114
X. Philosophische Grammatik (= MS 114i, fol. 1-31 [= pp. 1-60])
Umarbeitung (=MS 114ii, pp. 1-228)
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”).
Notes on MS 114 (Band X)
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).