Wittgenstein on Colour (Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society New Series, 21)

This volume is the first collection of articles dedicated to Ludwig Wittgenstein's thoughts on colour, focusing in particular on his so-called Remarks on Colour, a piece of writing that has received comparably little attention from Wittgenstein scholars. The book provides the reader with the state of the art in research on Wittgenstein's thoughts on colour and brings out some of the intricate relations between the Remarks on Colour and other works by Wittgenstein. The articles in the book discuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life, what significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general, as well as the upshot of his thoughts on colour. Contributors to the volume are Andrew Lugg, Joachim Schulte, Gabriele Mras, Richard Heinrich, Herbert Hrachovec, Barry Stroud, Martin Kusch, Frederik Gierlinger and Gary Kemp. As is well known, Wittgenstein had a life-long interest in the philosophy of colour, from the Tractatus all the way to the last notebooks that were posthumously published as two books, Remarks on Colour and On Certainty. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s various re­flections of the perception and classification of colours have already been analyzed by a number of in­fluential interpreters. These interpreters have often sought to illuminate Wittgenstein’s views by relating them to other, earlier treatments of phenomena of colour, for example those written by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917), or David Katz (1884-1953).1One aim of my paper is to add a new “foil” to this list: I want to make plausible that a number of Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour are responses to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British and American work on the psychology and anthropology of colour. I am not the first to put forward this idea – it is mentioned in a recent paper by the historian of science Simon Schaffer (2010: 279). But Schaffer’s comment is brief, and he provides only little evidence. So there remains plenty for me to do. I have a second aim, too. I want to argue that Wittgenstein’s comments are still of systematic interest today. The link between the historical thesis and the systematic concern is established by the fact that a very influential body of contemporary work in the anthropology of colour is strongly influenced by the early British work. Presumably, if Wittgenstein’s comments work as criticism of the latter, it will also weaken the appeal of the former. My paper falls into three parts. Section 2 gives an introduction to the relevant psychological and anthropological studies. Section 3 situates some of Wittgenstein’s comments vis-à-vis these investigations. Chapter 4 summarises my observations.

This volume is the first collection of articles dedicated to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thoughts on colour, focusing in particular onhis so-called Remarks on Colour, a piece of writing that has received comparably little attention from Wittgenstein scholars. The book provides the reader with the state of the art in research on Wittgenstein’s thoughts on colour and brings out some of the intricate relations between the Remarks on Colour and other works by Wittgenstein. The articles in the bookdiscuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life, what significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general, as well as the upshot of his thoughts on colour.

Contributors to the volume are Andrew Lugg, Joachim Schulte, Gabriele Mras, Richard Heinrich, Herbert Hrachovec, Barry Stroud, Martin Kusch, Frederik Gierlinger and Gary Kemp.

This volume is the first collection of articles dedicated to Wittgenstein's thoughts on colour, focusing in particular on his so-called Remarks on Colour, a piece of writing that has received comparably little attention from Wittgenstein scholars. The articles discuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life andwhat significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general Publications of the series include the official proceedings of the ALWS-conferences and of their special workshops. The series is open also for other high-quality publications, especially on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and its influence on contemporary analytic philosophy. 20th-Century Philosophy; Aesthetics; Studies on Colour