Philosophical Investigations
Published two years after his death, this is Ludwig Wittgenstein's second great work, and it overturns much of his own earlier thinking. Written as a series of short, numbered remarks rather than a continuous argument, it explores how language actually works. Wittgenstein introduces the idea of language games, the notion that words get their meaning from the activities and rules in which we use them, not from inner mental pictures or rigid definitions. It is dense and demanding, more a set of puzzles than a textbook. Reid Hoffman, who studied philosophy, has named it a book that can shift the way you think, and says it influenced how he thought about LinkedIn.
What you might want to know about Philosophical Investigations
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Wittgenstein's late masterwork on language, arguing that the meaning of a word lies in how it is used rather than in some fixed definition.
Yes. It is written as numbered remarks rather than a flowing argument and engages deep questions about language and meaning. Reid Hoffman calls it dense but worth the effort.
Language games is Wittgenstein's idea that words take their meaning from how they are used within particular activities and rules, rather than from fixed definitions or mental images.
Philosophical Investigations was written by Ludwig Wittgenstein, published in 1953 by Wiley-Blackwell.
Philosophical Investigations is 592 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Philosophical Investigations takes most readers 9 to 13 hours to finish.
Philosophical Investigations is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.