Philosophical Investigations First Edition - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Bauman Rare Books

Philosophical Investigations

Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN

Item#: 77993 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Philosophical Investigations

FIRST EDITION OF WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Wittgenstein’s principal work, with parallel German-English text.

This posthumous publication, structured in two parts, the first written from 1936-1945 and the second from 1947-1949, summarizes Wittgenstein’s later career and his philosophy of language, rejecting many of the conclusions of his earlier Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). “In the Investigations Wittgenstein no longer tries to reduce language to a perfect logical model, but rather points to the variety, open-endedness and subtlety of everyday language and explores the actual communicative and social functions of different modes of speech or ‘language games” (Magnusson, 1574). “Wittgenstein believed that the Investigations could be better understood if one saw it against the background of the Tractatus. A considerable part of the Investigations is an attack, either explicit or implicit, on the earlier work. This development is probably unique in the history of philosophy— a thinker producing, at different periods of his life, two highly original systems of thought… each greatly influencing contemporary philosophy, and the second being a criticism and rejection of the first” (Encyclopedia of Philosophy VIII:334). Without scarce errata slip. Contemporary gift inscription.

Interior fine; light rubbing to extremities of original cloth. Some wear to extremities of price-clipped dust jacket with toning to spine and a one-inch closed tear at spine tail. A near-fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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Wood-Engraving Engraving made with the graver or burin on the cross-section of a piece of boxwood; the harder wood and finer tools allow for more delicate, finely detailed images, while the block can still be set in the page alongside text and printed on the same stock as the text. While much older, wood engravings enjoyed an important renaissance in the late eighteenth century through Thomas Bewick and continued in popularity thorugh the nineteenth century.
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