The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies for the 'Philosophical Investigations'. Generally known as The Blue and Brown Books.

THE GERM OF HIS SECOND PHILOSOPHICAL MASTERPIECE

First edition. 8vo. xiv, [2], 185, [1] pp. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, dust jacket (neat contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper, otherwise internally clean and unmarked; just a hint of trivial shelf wear to extremities of jacket, a very fine, notably clean copy). Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

The first publication of the two famous manuscripts that formed the basis of the ideas that would would receive their final expression in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, his second great philosophical masterpiece, published posthumously in 1953.

Wittgenstein dictated the 'Blue Book' (though he did not call it that) to his class in Cambridge during the session of 1933-4, and had stencilled copies made; these came to be known as the 'Blue Book', taken from the colour of the wrappers. The 'Brown Book' was dictated to two of his pupils (Alice Ambrose and Francis Skinner) between 1934 and 1935, and three typed copies bound in brown wrappers were produced.

Stock Code: 251519