Abstract

In Wittgenstein’s Thought in Transition Dale Jacquette offers a unified account of the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations, linked by a close reading of the 1929 paper “Some Remarks on Logical Form,” which Wittgenstein withdrew from publication and in which he tried to resolve a difficulty for the Tractatus’ account of incompatibility involving propositions about colors. Jacquette sees this paper as the key to understanding Wittgenstein’s rejection of the main theses of the Tractatus and the emergence of his later views. His accounts of Wittgenstein’s early and later views—particularly the former—are of some interest, emphasizing aspects of them often glossed over by other commentators. He indicates at the outset that to facilitate laying out his own reading of the two major texts, he will give little attention to the secondary literature on Wittgenstein. Given the extent of that literature this is a defensible strategy; but in some areas it leads to questions about Jacquette’s own views which discussion of other treatments of the topic at hand would have helped resolve.