ABSTRACT
the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus appeared in 1921 ;the Philosophical Investigations, posthumously, in 1953. Wittgenstein will live through these two books. The contrast between them is striking. In the author’s view, and not in his alone, the second repudiates the first. As his epigones see it, his glory is the second. The first they consider, however tenderly and reverently, a relative failure. As I see it, Wittgenstein’s glory is the Tractatus; his misery, the Investigations. The disagreement could not be more complete. Yet I agree with the epigones that the connection between the two books is very close indeed. I see in the second the reaction, dictated by the council of despair, to the relative failure of the first.
