Philosophical Investigations

Summary

«Philosophical Investigations» is one of the principal works of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, in which he develops ideas from his earlier works and presents a new perspective on language, its meaning, and use. Unlike his previous work, where Wittgenstein viewed language as a system of logical relations derived from atomic facts of reality, in «Philosophical Investigations» he approaches language as a variety of 'language games' through which people interact and express thoughts. The book critiques previous notions of the essence of language, logic, and thought, as proposed in his own work «Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus», and introduces the concept that the meaning of words is determined not by their intrinsic essence or correspondence to reality, but by their use in specific life situations. Wittgenstein argues that to understand the meaning of statements, one must examine how language use is embedded in people's everyday actions and build a philosophy of language based on this analysis.