Philosophical Investigations

(Preface)

“Until recently I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. All the same, it was revived from time to time, mainly because I could not help noticing that the results of my work (which I had conveyed in lectures, typescripts and discussions), were in |x| circulation, frequently misunderstood and more or less watered down or mangled. This stung my vanity, and I had difficulty in quieting it. Four years ago, however, I had occasion to reread my first book (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas. Then it suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old ideas and the new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my older way of thinking.”

“For since I began to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I could not but recognize grave mistakes in what I set out in that first book. I was helped to realize these mistakes -- to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate - by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. - Even more than to this a always powerful and assured - criticism, I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts. It is to this stimulus that I owe the most fruitful ideas of this book.” (…) “I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.” Cambridge, January 1945. 7. (…) We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games “language-games” and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game. (…) I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, a language-game”.

31. (…) He too might be given the explanation “This is the king” a if, for instance, he were being shown chess pieces of a shape unfamiliar to him. This explanation again informs him of the use of the piece only because, as we might say, the place for it was already prepared. In other words, we’ll say that it informs him of the use only if the place is already prepared. And in that case it is so, not because the person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but because, in another sense, he has already mastered a game.

32. Our language-game (48) has various possibilities.

33. (…) And this is true. -- Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all -but there are many different kinds of affinity between them. And on account of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them all “languages”. I’ll try to explain this.

34. Consider, for example, the activities that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, athletic games, and so on. What is common to them all? (…) For if you look at them, you won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! (…) And the upshot of these considerations is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large and in the small.

35. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family - build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth - overlap and criss-cross in the same way. - And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.

36. (…) What is essential now is to see that the same thing may be in our minds when we hear the word and yet the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we would deny that.

37. Is what we call “following a rule” something that it would be possible for only one person, only once in a lifetime, to do? (…) It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which only one person followed a rule. It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which a report was made, an order given or understood, and so on. - To follow a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (usages, institutions). To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to have mastered a technique.

38. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it.

39. Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order. One is trained to do so, and one reacts to an order in a particular way. (…) Shared human behaviour is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

40. Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life? - In use it lives. Is it there that it has living breath within it? - Or is the use its breath?

41. Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes, and in no way explains, the use of signs.