In the preface to a later work, the Philosophical Investigations, that grew out of The Blue and Brown Books, Wittgenstein said his method was to travel along interconnecting and criss-crossing paths through a region, describing it from different perspectives along the way. In that work the different perspectives were often marked off in discrete remarks but the same structure can be found in the apparently more continuous prose of The Blue Book. Each assignment will touch on ideas that reappear throughout the whole of the book with different emphasizes and from different perspectives. In the guides to the reading, I’ll indicate some subdivisions where different topics dominate the discussion but you should expect to find considerable variety of subject matter even within these.

The parts of The Blue Book in this assignment include some of the clearest expressions of Wittgenstein’s his most characteristic views about meaning.

Pp. 1-5 (-“... another sign.”): meaning and the explanation of meaning. One of the few slogans that can be attached with any justification to Wittgenstein’s late thought is “meaning is use”; you will run into this idea by the end of this selection. Notice the tie he makes at the beginning between the question of what meaning is and the question of how we explain meaning. And pay particular attention to his attacks on the idea that meaning is a mental image attached to a word (pp. 3-4). (Although the idea of meaning as use is far more prominent in Wittgenstein’s late though, there are hints of it in the talk of application in remarks 3.262 and 3.5 of the Tractatus.)

Pp. 11-15 (“Supposing I teach ...”-“... a certain result.”): teaching and rules. The first paragraph of this selection suggests its relation to the first one. Notice Wittgenstein’s particular interest in dissuading you from thinking of a reason as a “cause seen from the inside” (15)—how does his comparison of giving reasons with giving calculations suggest a different way of thinking of them? More generally, the topics of this section have an important place in Wittgenstein’s later thinking about language and will be the central topics of The Brown Book.

Pp. 16-20 (“If we say ...”-“...rest of arithmetic”): “our craving for generality.” This selection contains samples of a couple of key ideas from Wittgenstein’s later work. The first is the concept (or metaphor) of “language games.” This has connections to the idea of meaning as use (as in the example of the grocery list) but Wittgenstein here is mainly concerned to emphasize the priority of examples over a general concept of language. And that is the second key idea. Think of point (a), p. 17, as an attack on Socrates’ typical rejection of examples as an answer to “What is X?” But also note the reference to family resemblances; this idea is another important metaphor for Wittgenstein. Implicit in the discussion of systems of arithmetic (and other concepts of logical analysis) on pp. 19f is a criticism of a conception of mathematics as uncovering the consequences of grammatical rules. The final pages apply these ideas to criticize any suggestion (such as Socrates’) that a discussion of special cases is inadequate.

Pp. 24-25 (“Let us introduce ...”-“... to exact rules.”): criteria and symptoms. One way to see the significance of the distinction between criteria and symptoms is to ask yourself how another philosopher might describe it. For making a distinction like this is somewhat uncharacteristic for Wittgenstein since it is a standard sort of philosophical move. Although making it might blunt his challenge to ordinary philosophical activity, it does provide him a useful way into the thinking that lies behind other discussions of, for example, the difference between philosophical and scientific problems. But, although Wittgenstein applies the distinction in this way elsewhere, here his aim is to make a point about the distinction itself.

Pp. 25-29 (“This is very one-sided ...”-“... the South Pole.”): rules and philosophical puzzlement. Wittgenstein’s comments on strict rules in this section can be compared with the earlier discussion of our craving for generality. But the critique of philosophy is carried more deeply here—think about what Wittgenstein means when he describes philosophy as “a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.” And ask yourself what the role “ideal languages” might play in this fight.

Both Russell and Wittgenstein agreed with Frege that language could mislead us about the logical form of sentences and that some form of clarification in this regard could solve philosophical puzzles. Russell took the Tractatus to aim at the description of an ideal, “logically perfect,” language that would avoid misleading us. Wittgenstein’s later work is less likely to suggest such an aim, but he continues to describe artificial languages or language games—e.g., using a color chip to find a red flower—and one of his concerns in this section is to explain the significance of such descriptions.

Pp. 43-45 (“Let us sum up ...”-“... their final places.”): a summary, the metaphor of the library. This selection has a bit more about Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy. Think about his discussion of the library in connection earlier remarks about what philosophy should aim for.

Pp. 55-57 (“We use the phrase ...”-“... a great deal.)”): the metaphysician’s craving. Compare the craving described on p. 55 to the attitude towards maps described on p. 57. Regarding the intervening discussion, think what Carnap might say about the sentence “The colors green and blue can’t be in the same place simultaneously.”