On Why Part II of the Investigations is Re-Named in the Fourth Edition
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 10:36PM
Sean Wilson in Hacker and Schulte, PI: "Part II", PI: New Translation, Philosophical Investigations

According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein made the following remark (to Malcolm) in the late summer of 1949 regarding what has become known as Philosophical Investigations:

"... if he had the money, he thought he would have his book (TS 227, the typescript of the Investigations) mimeographed and distributed among his friends. He said that it was not in a completely finished state, but that he did not think that he could give the final polish to it in his lifetime. The plan would have the merit that he could put in parenthesis after a remark, expressions of dissatisfaction, like 'This is not quite right' or 'This is fishy'. He would like to put his book into the hands of his friends, but to take it to a publisher right now was out of the question."

After quoting that passage, Hacker and Schulte in the new (4th) edition go on to say:

"Whatever Wittgenstein's final intentions were, the fact is that the closest he ever came to completing the Philosophical Investigations is the current text consisting of ss 1-693. It is, we believe, this text that should be known as Witgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. What has hitherto been called 'Philosophical Investigations, Part II' was a re-arranged set of remarks written between 1946 and 1949 dealing chiefly with questions in what Wittgenstein called 'philosophy of psychology'. We have named it 'Philosophy of Psychology -- A Fragment.' This is, in effect, a reconstruction of ... typescript 234, based on MS 144 and the printed version in the previous editions of the Investigations."

Sources. Hacker and Schulte, p. xxii-xxiii (revised 4th edition of PI), and Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein -- A Memoir, 2nd Ed., p. 75.   Regards. 

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.

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