A Re-Evaluation of the Philosophical Investigations

Abstract

In The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock writes that the book ‘stems from the conviction that there is a third Wittgenstein, a Wittgenstein who went beyond what he had achieved in the Investigations’ (2004, p. 1). As stated in her introduction, the aim of the anthology is to ‘supersede the traditional bipartite division of Wittgenstein’s philosophy crowned by the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, and indicate not only a new phase in Wittgenstein’s thinking, but also that Wittgenstein was the author of three, not two, philosophical masterpieces’ (2004, p. 1). This alleged third philosophical masterpiece is On Certainty, something which, as Moyal-Sharrock stresses, was first recognized by Avrum Stroll.¹ But she goes further taking ‘the third Wittgenstein corpus as essentially consisting of all of his writings from approximately 1946’, and ‘[t]his includes On Certainty, Remarks on Colour, Zettel, and all the writings on philosophical psychology, including Part II of Philosophical Investigations’ (2004, p. 2).²