The Road to the Philosophical Investigations (Blue Book, Brown Book, German Brown Book, and MS 142)

Abstract

After the PG, Wittgenstein changes the meaning of the word ‘grammar.’ The new meaning will be introduced in this chapter by means of the elucidation of the new context in which it appears from the BB onwards. ‘Grammar’ is to be seen as the description of the use of words broadly understood, i.e., the description of practices related to words and their surroundings (and not as the discipline that tabulates the rules of language and presents the “limits of sense”). Such a description is at the service of the genetic method. Even though the genetic method was used with the presupposition of the old ‘grammar’ in the BT, from the BB onwards this is not the case anymore. The application of the genetic method and the use of an anthropological view dispense with any relevant role for the old views on ‘grammar.’