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 116–122 (Bände XIII to XVIII)

Chronologically speaking, the first two (of four) parts of 116 (= 116i and 116ii), the first part of MS 117 (= 117i), the whole of MS 118, and most of MSS 119 and 120 are very closely connected, even interrelated; at some points one might speak of overlap. Many entries bear a date or are easy to date.

The connections between the relevant parts of MSS 117–120 can, very roughly speaking, be described as follows: MSS 117i–120i are Wittgenstein’s notebooks from the time he spent in Norway after his return there in August 1937. The earliest entries can be found in MS 118 (continuously dated from 13.8. to 24.9.37). Similar observations apply to MS 119, which is the immediate continuation of MS 118 (beginning on 24.9., running on to 19.11.), and virtually all of MS 120i (beginning on 19.10. and running on to 10.12. — the day before Wittgenstein’s departure from Skjolden).

MSS 118 and 119 resemble each other in several respects: both of them are used by Wittgenstein as notebooks from which he picks certain remarks which are then transferred and revised in MS 117; both of them contain a fair number of diary remarks chronicling the history of Wittgenstein’s contemporary writings as well as of his moods, impressions, and feelings. MS 117i, on the other hand, is basically a reservoir of more or less polished remarks selected from MS 118 and, to a small extent, from MS 119, and in contrast to these latter two does not contain a journal.

Owing to the existence of this journal, we are informed about an interruption in Wittgenstein’s work, which can be dated as having occurred more or less exactly on 23 October 1937. The interruption is due to his having taken out his “old typescript” (as he calls it now), that is to say, a copy of the Big Typescript (= TS 213). From this point onwards, he re-reads large parts from the first half of this typescript and works on it in the following sense: he selects remarks that arouse his interest and copies them in more or less revised form into a very large and so far unused manuscript book. This is MS 116i, which, as it were, contains the result of Wittgenstein’s temporary loss of interest in the work he was doing in MSS 117–119.

One of the most striking features of volumes XIV to XVI is the journal Wittgenstein keeps in these manuscript volumes. Many, but by no means all, of the remarks forming this journal were written in code. This habit of regular journal-writing was interrupted around the time Wittgenstein spent in Dublin in February and March 1938. This was the time of the Anschluss and increased worries about the safety of his relatives. These worries and the difficulty, or impossibility, of concentrating on his own problems and writings may have been a crucial factor contributing to Wittgenstein’s giving up on his journal.

Of course, this is not the only difference between volumes XIII to XVI, on the one hand, and the last two (XVII and XVIII), on the other, but it is a convenient way of marking a break. At the same time, we must remember that volume XIII (= MS 117) itself forms a composite structure made up of heterogeneous parts: its first part is closely connected with MSS 118 and sections of 119, but other parts of MS 117 are in no way connected with this conglomerate, while its last part (= MS 117v) even brings up the rear inasmuch as it constitutes the continuation and terminus of the train of remarks making up MS 122. This latter manuscript volume is the last one of those Bände Wittgenstein marked as belonging to a special series by assigning Roman numbers to them. Perhaps there is a certain irony in the fact that the tail end of the series is not to be found in the as it were “officially” last volume but was tucked away in an earlier one.

MS 122 XVIII. Philosophische Bemerkungen

There is an interval of more than ten months between the last entry in MS 121 (5.1.39) and the first entry in MS 122, which bears the date 16.10.39. The entries in this manuscript volume are continuously dated, and there is hardly a day during this period without a remark or several remarks. The last remark was written on 2 February 1940. The last words are “Fortgesetzt in Band XIII” (“Continued in Volume XIII”), and indeed MS 117v forms the immediate continuation of the material in Volume XVIII (see our notes on 117v).

The pagination, even though not everywhere continuous, is Wittgenstein’s.

The vast majority of remarks to be found in this volume belong to the philosophy of mathematics. Selections from this material were published in Part III of RFM (see §§1–58). Among the topics discussed are our concept of a proof and the idea of a proof picture or figure, the grammar of words like “proof” or “construction”, the (im)possibility of drawing a clear boundary line between empirical and logical statements, our notions of a rule of inference in particular and of a rule in general. Wittgenstein goes on to discuss his slogan that a proof can create concepts, and he keeps worrying about the danger of falling into dogmatism. Another question he raises is that of the relevance of grasping possible and actual applications of a calculation to understanding the calculation itself.

This volume contains a few journal entries and a handful of remarks of the general type collected in Culture and Value.