Marco Brusotti, Lecce

“What belongs to a language game is a

whole culture.”
On two related concepts in Wittgenstein’s philosophy

Abstract: Wittgenstein remarks that “What belongs to a language game is a

whole culture”, and that describing the language games in which the “words
we call expressions of aesthetic judgement” are used implies describing “the cul-
ture of a period” (LA 1966: 8). Without aiming at a full reconstruction, the paper
addresses the gradual emergence of the close conceptual connection between
“language game” and “culture” in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts. The apparently
obvious idea that “language game” and “form of life” (or “culture”) belong to-
gether or even coincide was originally missing. The paper picks out few episodes
from Wittgenstein’s philosophical development. The first chapter shows that the
topic of cultural diversity emerges in Wittgenstein’s reception of Oswald Spen-
gler’s The Decline of the West, but still plays only a limited role in his first criti-
cism of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. The second chapter discusses the
emergence of the term “language game” and establishes that Wittgenstein’s
first language games do not yet imply something like an “anthropological
view”. Real and imaginary “peoples” and “tribes” make their first appearance
in remarks that ascribe a “primitive” arithmetic to them (chapter 3). Finally,
with an eye to the possible influence of Sraffa and Malinowski, the fourth section
shows how the Brown Book conceives translation as holistic cultural compari-
son.

“What belongs to a language game is a whole culture” (LA 1966: 8). “An entirely
different game is played in different ages”; hence, describing the language
games in which the “words we call expressions of aesthetic judgement” are
used implies describing “the culture of a period” (LA 1966: 8). Wittgenstein’s lec-
tures on aesthetics (1938) marshal examples from various epochs and cultures in
order to show relevant “aesthetic” differences, which escape those philosophers
who focus only on terms such as “beautiful”. In these students’ notes, the con-
ceptual connection between “language game” and “culture” is very close. In
Wittgenstein’s own manuscripts, however, this connection tends to be less ex-
plicit: there does not seem to be any single passage explicitly relating the two
terms.

https://doi.org/10.1515/witt-2018-0005

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52 Marco Brusotti

The Brown Book, though, identifies “a use of language” and “a culture”, and
again, “a language” and “a culture”. This explicit identification of “language”
and “culture” may be occasional, but the Brown Book does really take into ac-
count the cultural embedding of language and the role sentences play in the ac-
tivities of everyday life.
The genesis of this approach is very complicated. A few connections which
seem straightforward to us late readers of the Philosophical Investigations were
absent in the early thirties. One of these originally missing conceptions is the ap-
parently obvious idea that “language game” and “form of life” (or “culture”) be-
long together or even coincide.
A full reconstruction of the long emergence of this idea and of its further de-
velopments goes well beyond the scope of a single paper. Rather than showing
Wittgenstein’s gradual progress in detail, the present article selects few episodes,
leaping from the one to the other. I will be dealing mostly with texts in which the
connection between language and culture does not yet appear fully developed.
The first section shows that the topic of cultural diversity emerges in Wittgen-
stein’s reception of Spengler, but still plays a limited role in his first criticism
of The Golden Bough. The first example of a language game appears in July
1931, shortly after Wittgenstein’s last remark on Frazer – and the term “language
game” more than half a year later; the second section deals with these first lan-
guage games and establishes, among other things, that they do not yet imply
something like an “anthropological view”. Real and imaginary “peoples” and
“tribes” make their first appearance in remarks that ascribe a “primitive” arith-
metic to them; chapter three discusses the function of these examples. The
fourth and final section comes back to The Brown Book. With an eye to the pos-
sible influence of Piero Sraffa and Bronislaw Malinowski, it shows how The
Brown Book conceives translation as holistic cultural comparison, and leaves
it for another contribution to reconstruct how Wittgenstein further develops
these ideas in later years.

1 Wittgenstein on culture. In dialogue with Spengler and

Frazer¹
In the Tractatus, cultural differences are, so to speak, below the threshold of
philosophical awareness. “Logical syntax” is a deep structure common to all lan-

 This first section summarises results of my book Wittgenstein, Frazer und die “ethnologische

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 53

guages as such and to the world. The “mystical” (ethical, aesthetical, religious)
does not present any philosophically relevant cultural differences either; no
statements about it are possible, hence none which could articulate cultural par-
ticularities. Both universal “logical syntax” and the “mystical” are in the end in-
dependent from culture.
The Tractatus states clearly that every language shares the same “logical
syntax”, but Wittgenstein does not claim anything about the “mystical”. That
the “mystical” is essentially everywhere the same is never argued explicitly. In
contrast, one fragment from 1925 affirms outright the transcultural nature of
the “spirit” (cf. LUS 2004). This interesting text, one of the rare written traces
of the so-called “lost decade” between the completion of the Tractatus and
the return to Cambridge, is a first (even if limited) attempt to recognize cultural
differences. In Wittgenstein’s parable, cultures are like color screens, and in each
of them the same light – the same transcultural religious ideal – appears in a
different cultural coloring. Western culture, for instance, is like a red glass bell
jar, and all manifestations of this culture have a specific red coloring common
only to them. None of the glass bell jars allows the pure white light to pass
through without filtering it.
In the summer of 1931, Wittgenstein will spare no criticism of Spengler’s es-
sentialistic view; however, it was in reading The Decline of the West that he had
become attentive to problems of intercultural understanding. In diary notes from
May 1930 (MS 183; DB 1997), Spengler’s influence is even stronger than in the
earlier fragment on the glass bell jars. The metaphysical conceptuality of these
notes is due not only to The Decline of the West. Rather, they translate Spengler’s
conception of the “Symbolic” into a dualistic world view, giving an historical di-
mension to the core distinction of Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics (1929). His ear-
lier distinction between ethics in a relative and in an absolute sense becomes a
difference between the “practical” and the “symbolic” meaning of a way of act-
ing: in different epochs, different actions have symbolic meaning (cf. MS 183:
23 ff.). Here, Wittgenstein is more attentive to cultural differences than before;
but these metaphysical reflections mark only antitheses: between practical
and symbolic meaning, between “fact” and “spirit”, between being surprised
at an exceptional fact and being “impressed” by a symbol.
At the end of 1931, Wittgenstein draws up a list of thinkers who had “influ-
enced” him, claiming that he had “never invented a movement of thought” him-
self; it had always been provided for him by someone else, and he had “taken it

Betrachtungsweise”. On Frazer cf. Brusotti 2014 passim, on Spengler cf. Brusotti 2014: 24 ff.,
264 ff.; Brusotti 2000.

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54 Marco Brusotti

up passionately for [his] work of clarification” (MS 154: 16r). The first version of
the list contains only four names: Frege and Russell for the Tractatus, Spengler
and Sraffa for the later years up to the end of 1931 (cf. Rothhaupt 1996: 182; Janik
2006: 11 ff.; McGuinness 2008: 147).
Some months before, from 19 June to 6 July 1931, Wittgenstein had written
down the first draft of his Frazer remarks.² At that time, he had already
“taken up” Spengler’s “movement of thought”, whereas Sraffa’s line of thinking
was still foreign to him.
But even if Wittgenstein was already deeply influenced by The Decline of the
West, the idea of a plurality of cultures still played a limited role in this first criti-
cism of Frazer. “Culture”, Spengler’s central concept, is absent in The Golden
Bough: “Frazer lacks any idea of culture as the matrix of social intellectual,
and behavioral facts, relationships, and institutions […]” (Ackerman 1987: 99);
hence, in the Golden Bough, there is no hint of cultural variability and of a plu-
rality of “cultures”. Frazer’s blindness to culture is one reason, even if not the
only one, why cultural differences do not play a large part in Wittgenstein’s crit-
ical remarks.
However, Wittgenstein criticizes the ethnocentrism of The Golden Bough:
Frazer cannot “conceive of a life different from that of the England of his
time”: the reason is the narrowness of his “spiritual life”. As “a twentieth-centu-
ry Englishman”, Frazer (actually a Scotsman) is “far removed from the under-
standing of a spiritual matter” (MS 110: 205; TS 211: 321) and “cannot imagine
a priest who is not basically a present-day English parson with the same stupid-
ity and dullness.” (MS 110: 184; TS 211: 317) For this reason, Frazer does not un-
derstand the central figure of the Golden Bough, the priest of the Diana Temple in
Nemi, “the priest who slew the slayer, and shall himself be slain”.
Wittgenstein casts doubt on Frazer’s sweeping contraposition of “moderns”
and “savages”, but substitutes for it a dichotomy that is no less problematic. The

 By the end of October 1931, the Frazer remarks from MS 110 had been dictated to a typist. Be-
sides some adjustments – remarks were not dictated or shifted into new positions – the new ver-
sion in typescript TS 211 presents only slight alterations in comparison with the first draft in MS
110. These revisions do not amount to a change of theoretical position, even if Wittgenstein had
made some substantial progress in the months between June and October 1931. With “Frazer re-
marks” and similar expressions, I refer to the first draft in MS 110 and not to Rush Rhees’ edi-
tions (e. g. GB 1979); I generally adopt the English translation in GB 1993. – For a thorough bib-
liography on Wittgenstein and Frazer (and on Wittgenstein and Spengler) cf. Brusotti 2014. Here
it suffices to refer to 4 monographs (Cioffi 1998; Clack 1999; Bouveresse 2000; Lara 2005) and to
the following papers: Rudich/Stassen 1971; Rhees 1976; Needham 1985; Hacker 1992; Margalit
1992; Phillips 1993; Brusotti 2000, 2007a, 2007b, 2013, 2015; Lara 2003; Rothhaupt 2011; Majet-
schak 2012.

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 55

only peculiarity of the West he highlights is that contemporary western “civiliza-

tion” cannot understand genuinely religious actions – and the standard western
scientist cannot understand Wittgenstein himself.
Wittgenstein formulates something like a Spenglerian criticism of the Golden
Bough. Spengler’s cultures are utterly incapable of understanding each other.³ In
his essentialistic view, they are closed systems: as “organisms” “living” approx-
imately one thousand years, they present deep structural analogies, each of them
going through comparable stages and having, for instance, its own “civilisation”,
its late phase of metropolitan decay and final decline. In 1930, Wittgenstein fo-
cuses more on the alleged epochal divide between (earlier) culture and (present)
civilization than on the gaps between different cultures. This focus is even more
pronounced a year later, in his criticism of Frazer’s ethnology: as a standard rep-
resentative of the present declining civilization, Frazer is not able to understand
religion, which belongs rather to the flourishing of a culture.
On the other hand, in June-July 1931, Wittgenstein himself neglects the huge
cultural differences among the peoples from all over the globe who were lumped
together under the label “savages” or “primitives” by evolutionary anthropolo-
gists like Frazer. Even Spengler, who had been a sharp critic of this method,
does not address – or rather denies – the multifariousness of so-called “primitive
cultures” (cf. Brusotti 2014: 70 f.).
Frazer explains practices, customs and rituals as due to beliefs which he es-
sentially conceives as mistaken products of the “primitive philosopher’s” indi-
vidual reasoning. Hence, Frazer’s approach has been dubbed as intellectualistic,
cognitivistic, and individualistic: practices are put down to beliefs (intellectual-
ism), and these superstitious beliefs are like mistaken scientific theories (cogni-
tivism) contrived by single individuals (individualism).
The main line of thought in Wittgenstein’s Frazer remarks is that radical dis-
agreements on fundamental issues are only apparent: when there seems to be
such a disagreement, it is only because we attribute to some group beliefs
they actually do not have. People can obviously be wrong or confused on single
matters, for instance on medical issues, but Wittgenstein denies that they can be
fundamentally wrong. In his view, there is a range of claims that all peoples
would hold for utterly unbelievable: to this extent, and only to this extent, com-
mon sense is everywhere the same.
In order to highlight the difference between world-pictures, the typical strat-
egy would be just the opposite: showing that one group believes something that
for the other is absurd. In 1931, however, Wittgenstein’s basic aim is rather to

 A point well seen by Neurath in his criticism of Spengler. Cf. Brusotti 2011.

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56 Marco Brusotti

show that people do not commit themselves to a “magical conception” – espe-

cially not in the way they would commit themselves to a (mistaken) scientific
theory – and similarly that ritual action is very unlike (barren) technique. But
he is tempted to go beyond this sound criticism of Frazer’s misleading analogy
between ritual and science/technique and to deny that “magical conceptions”
imply cognitive claims of any sort.
This problematic anti-cognitivism is just a temptation, but only when Witt-
genstein leaves it behind do the differences between the worldviews of different
cultures become relevant for him. In his last manuscripts, he will continually
compare “us” to peoples who believe in rainmakers and poison oracles or
dream of journeys to the moon. But in 1931, on the contrary, he refrains from
claiming that “they” may believe something that for “us” is utterly unbelievable.
In these earlier remarks, Wittgenstein, although a sharp critic of the cognitiv-
istic and intellectualistic view, distances himself less firmly from Frazer’s indi-
vidualistic standpoint. Wittgenstein focuses more on instinctive expression
than on reasoning, but even remarks that do not consider only individual expres-
sion stress less the social dimension than the “ecological” aspect of ritual. In the
remarks on The Golden Bough, the word “Lebensgemeinschaft” does not stand
for communal life in a society (as the term “form of life” often will later); rather
than a socio-cultural community of human beings, it denotes a symbiosis (like
that of flea and dog) or the ecological integration of animals into their environ-
ment, for instance the biotic community of man and oak tree characteristic for
certain “human races” (MS 110: 298).
In his criticism of the Golden Bough, Wittgenstein occasionally comes close
to the “ritualists” who, influenced by the sociologic approach of William Robert-
son Smith, claimed the primacy of the cult over the myth against intellectualistic
approaches à la Tylor and Frazer. According to Wittgenstein, the “Anschauung”
(the view) is at best part and not cause of the rite; the views belong to the rite
and do not explain it. In a similar fashion, a few years later, Wittgenstein sees
“consideration” [Überlegung] as a “part of the language game” (MS 137: 55b);
a view, consideration, reflection belongs to the language game and does not ex-
plain it. Thus, the relationship between rite and myth becomes the paradigm for
the relationship between language game and consideration i. e., for the relation-
ship between ways of acting and ways of thinking in general.
But the Frazer remarks in MS 110 are still very far from Wittgenstein’s late
standpoint: among other things, he still lacks concepts such as “language
game” and “family resemblance”. Generally, the critical literature on his criti-
cism of The Golden Bough has not sufficiently taken into account that these re-
marks belong to such an early stage of his philosophical development. This is
rather surprising, since for their editor, Rush Rhees, the main interest of the

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 57

Frazer remarks lies in their being a preliminary stage leading to the emergence of
the concept of “language game”:

If we are looking for the origin of the use of “language games” as a philosophical method,
then I think that one source or one influence was this reflection on the analogy of metaphy-
sics and magic, and on Frazer’s misunderstanding of the magic about which he was writ-
ing.⁴

Developing earlier ethical remarks (cf. Brusotti 2014: 37 ff.), the Frazer remarks in
MS 110 really do reach new results. However, it takes years before Wittgenstein
incorporates his insights into magic and religious customs into his mature con-
ception of “language games”.

2 The first language games

In his remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (19 June – 6 July 1931), Wittgenstein had
not yet introduced the term and concept “language game”. It was only on 15 July
1931, shortly after the last of these remarks, that he drafted the well-known ex-
ample of the builders; and on 1 March 1932, he uses the term “language
game” for the first time. Here, Wittgenstein asks if this new method could be
somehow related to the historical situation after the first world war, when the
Austro-Hungarian empire disintegrated and minorities struggling for recognition
gave birth to smaller national states (cf. MS 113: 46r; TS 211: 595).⁵ In a similar
fashion, Wittgenstein’s new method does not aim at a systematic theory about
language as such (the great state), but takes into due consideration single lan-
guage games (a recognition of minorities).
Wittgenstein introduces these fictitious simple “language games” merely as
surveyable “objects of comparison”. Comparing real language with them is like
juxtaposing a complicated picture and a much simpler one, which is similar to,
but not identical with it. The comparison aims at solving particular problems,
relieving the related concerns.

 Rush Rhees in a letter to Henrik von Wright, 25 September 1962, quoted in Westergaard 2015:
337 f.
 There is no English edition of these manuscripts. In the case of remarks that were transcribed
in the Big Typescript, I essentially adopt the translation in the Scholar’s edition of the Big Type-
script (BT 2013), adapting it whenever the first draft differs from the transcription in the Big
Typescript. Reference is made to the page number of the English translation of the correspond-
ing remark in the Big Typescript.

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58 Marco Brusotti

When I describe certain simple games, I don’t do this so I can use them to construct grad-
ually the real processes of language – or of thinking –, for this only results in injustices. –
Rather, I present the games as games and allow them to shine their illuminating effects on
particular problems. (MS 113: 45v; cf. TS 213: 202; BT 2013: 156e)⁶

The Philosophical Investigations introduce, besides these “language games” in

the plural, the “language game” in the singular: the first are “primitive” lan-
guages which can be used as objects of comparison for our actual linguistic
usage; the singular “language game” stands for “the whole, consisting of lan-
guage and the activities into which it is woven” (PI 2009: § 7), i. e. for the real
connection between them.
In the early thirties, this distinction between “language games” in the plural
and the “language game” in the singular is not yet in place. Even if Wittgen-
stein’s first language games, describing a very simple context of action, already
imply the importance of non-verbal activities, the concept of a “language game”
does not yet stand for the primacy of the activities over the rules.⁷
On 15 July 1931, Wittgenstein wrote a first draft of the remarks which would
open the Philosophical Investigations (cf. PI 2009: §§ 1– 4). Without yet quoting
from the Confessions, he comments on “Augustine about the learning of lan-
guage” (MS 111: 15); and after some critical remarks on this scenario of learning,
he jots down a first version of the “builders”.

But this game does occur in reality. – Let’s assume for instance that I wanted to build a
house out of building blocks that someone else is to pass to me; we might first create a con-
vention by my pointing to one block and saying “That’s a pillar” and to another saying
“That’s called a cube”, “That’s called a slab”, and so on. And now the application
would consist in calling out the words “pillar”, “slab”, etc. in the order in which I need
the building blocks. […] (MS 111: 16; cf. TS 213: 25 f.; BT 2013: 23e)⁸

 Only later, in the Big Typescript, does Wittgenstein explicitly identify the philosophers who try
“to construct gradually the processes of a fully developed language – or of thinking”: “When I
describe certain simple language-games, I don’t do this so I can use them to construct gradually
the processes of a fully developed language – or of thinking – (Nicod, Russell), for this only re-
sults in injustices. – Rather, I present the games as games and allow them to shine their illumi-
nating effects on particular problems.” (BT 2013: 156e)
 According to Hintikka/Hintikka 1986, the concept of a “language game” stands for the primacy
of the activities over the rules, and this is the essential distinction between a game and a calcu-
lus. The following pages will show that at the beginning there is no conflict yet between a “cal-
culus model” and a “language game model”. But this is true only for the early texts I will be
discussing, not in general (as Hilmy thinks; cf. Hilmy 1987).
 On the genesis of the first four remarks of the Philosophical Investigations cf. Pichler 2004:
231 ff.

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 59

Here, Wittgenstein does not speak of a “language game” yet, but simply of a
“game”. He has just criticized Augustine and Plato who “just describe the
game as simpler than it is” (MS 111: 16). Language is the “game” that is more
complicated than in Augustine’s and Plato’s descriptions. But Wittgenstein swift-
ly adds that even the simpler game they describe “does occur in reality” (MS 111:
16). Hence, on the one hand, “game” is a metaphor for “language” in general,
whilst on the other hand, the “game” is the particular one the child Augustine
and the adults teaching him played together: the pointing at and naming of
things in Augustine’s childhood recollection.
What the builders do – here one of them is Wittgenstein himself – is intro-
duced as an example, showing that the game described by Augustine “does
occur in reality”: to Augustine’s fantasy corresponds something that actually
happens (or at least: can happen) in everyday life. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein
does not say directly that the builders play a “game”, and he does not think
of their interaction as a “game” yet.
Rather, Wittgenstein sticks to the term “calculus”: his basic idea is that “Au-
gustine really does describe a calculus; it’s just that not everything that we call
language is this calculus” (MS 111: 17; cf. TS 213: 26; BT 2013: 23e).⁹ What Augus-
tine describes is a game and a calculus, although his description unintentionally
oversimplifies reality. Here, the distinction between a calculus and a language
game is more nominal than conceptual: chess, a board game with a closed list
of strict rules, is itself a calculus. Wittgenstein already acknowledges that not
all games are board games and that there are not only games which are calculi
or come close to calculi. But there is no conflict yet between a “calculus model”
and a “language game model”.
Why does Augustine’s pseudomnesia deserve attention? Not because his
Confessions are a classic of philosophy. Wittgenstein gives another explanation:
“And what Augustine says is important for us because it is the conception of a
man who thinks in a natural and clear way, who is very far from us in time,
and who surely doesn’t belong to our particular sphere of thoughts.” (MS 111:
15 f.; TS 211: 10; crossed out in TS 212: 93 f.) Augustine, an insightful representa-
tive of a different epoch, is not too close to us. But why should it be relevant that
he does not belong to our culture? The reason Wittgenstein gives is not that Au-
gustine confronts us with cultural “otherness” and thus with a foreign, unusual
perspective, but, on the contrary, that Augustine’s childhood recollection reveals
the transcultural generality of the underlying “primitive” picture.

 According to the final version in the Philosophical Investigations, what Augustine describes is,
“we might say”, “a system of communication [System der Verständigung]” (PI 2009: § 3).

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60 Marco Brusotti

For some time, Wittgenstein had been wondering how he could begin the
book he intended to write; but there is no hint that he already considered the
Augustine remarks as a solution to this problem in 1931 (or even at the time of
the Big Typescript or of the Blue Book), though he would in the end open the
Philosophical Investigations with them. In MS 110, introducing the remarks on
Frazer’s Golden Bough, he had written: “I now believe that it would be right to
begin my book with remarks about metaphysics as a kind of magic” (MS 110:
177). He claimed that metaphysics and magic go back to the same primitive pic-
tures, deposed in the forms of language. Augustine’s description of language
learning betrays such a primitive picture, allowing us to uncover the source of
our philosophical conception of meaning: “The way Augustine describes the
learning of language can show us how primitive the picture is from which this
conception of meaning is really derived” (MS 111: 18; cf. TS 213: 26; BT 2013:
24e). The title of the corresponding chapter of the Big Typescript will be: “The
Concept of Meaning Originates in a Primitive Philosophical Conception of Lan-
guage.” (TS 213: 25; Title of § 7; BT 2013: 23e) Is “meaning” really a “conception”
derived from a primitive “picture” or rather a “concept” which has its roots in a
“conception” (of language)? At different stages, Wittgenstein speaks of a “pic-
ture” from which a “conception” is derived and again of a “conception”, or
even a “worldview”, from which a “concept” stems. In any case, from the picture
(or conception) of adults pointing at and naming objects there originates the
conception (or concept) that these objects are the meanings of the words.
In Augustine’s simplistic view, naming is the core of language, and the ex-
ample of the builders stands for a language to which Augustine’s conception
would be adequate. This is all Wittgenstein seems to aim for when he introduces
this example; he does not do much with the “builders” yet. Later, the Brown
Book will use this language game in order to relativize the distinction between
word and proposition. But Wittgenstein does not yet do this in MS 111.
He points out this distinction only some months later, on the first of March
1932, when the term “language game” appears for the first time.

Here, for example, is a simple language-game: Turning on the electric light in a room, you
say “light” to a child (but it can also be an adult), then turning it off you say “dark”; and
you might do that several times, emphasizing your words and doing it for varying lengths of
time. Then you might go into the adjoining room, from there turn on and off the light in the
first room and get the child to tell you “light” or “dark”.
“So should I call ‘light’ and ‘dark’ ‘sentences’?” Well, as I like. – And what about their
“agreement with reality”? (MS 113: 45r-45v; cf. TS 213: 201; BT 2013: 156e)¹⁰

 On this language game cf. Sedmak 1994: 137 f.

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 61

Wittgenstein describes two stages, learning and playing; introducing the “build-
ers”, he had distinguished two similar moments: the creation of a “convention”
(Übereinkommen) and its “application”. The analogy between the two simple
games is that neither is a dialogue: in both only one partner speaks, whereas
the other merely acts. But there are important differences. In “light” and
“dark” the pupil learns to speak; in the stage of learning the teacher speaks
and acts accordingly, but in the game itself he only acts, turning the light on
and off, and the child utters “light” or “dark”. In the language game of the build-
ers, on the contrary, the same person, the teacher, speaks in both stages, and the
pupil merely learns to understand and execute commands.
“Light” and “dark” is really a game we could play with a child or an adult. As
possibly involving a child, it is closer to Augustine’s reminiscence than to the ex-
ample of the builders. But in another respect, it is far from both. The example of
the “builders” preserved the core of Augustine’s description: a “convention”,
consisting essentially in the “naming” of everyday physical objects, and the “ap-
plication” of this convention in a simple game. Unlike the builders’ “pillar”,
“slab”, or “cube”, “light” and “dark” do not stand for physical objects. Insofar,
the simple language game with “light” and “dark” implies a criticism of the cen-
trality of naming; this language game goes beyond Augustine’s conception and
shows the limits of his model.
Furthermore: with this example, the first explicitly designated a “language
game”, Wittgenstein wants to show that the distinction between word and prop-
osition/sentence (Satz) is not as clear as he had thought in the Tractatus. Now,
he questions the great divide between them, acknowledging that they are open
concepts. “‘So should I call ‘light’ and ‘dark’ ‘sentences’?’ Well, as I like.” (MS
113: 45r-45v) There is no clear answer to the question whether “light” here is a
word or a proposition. According to the Tractatus, this utterance must be a prop-
osition: if “light” were a word, it would be meaningless, since a word has its
meaning only in the context of a proposition. Hence, “light” must be a proposi-
tion, although an elliptical one. In the early thirties, Wittgenstein gives up this
view: there is no independent way to assess whether “light” is a proposition.
Then the phrase “elliptical proposition” has no sense independently from the
rules of the game. (And the rules of this specific game do not say anything
about this issue.)
The real question to which there is a real answer is whether “light” is a move
of the game. It is. But it could be otherwise. We can imagine examples in which
“uttering the word ‘light’ is, as it were, not yet a (complete) move in the game we
assume the other person is playing” (MS 113: 45r-45v; cf. TS 213: 202; BT 2013:
156e). In the language game Wittgenstein describes, however, this is not the
case: here, the utterance of “light” definitely is a move. And we can call

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62 Marco Brusotti

“light” a proposition if we want to call a move of the game a proposition. Yet we

are not obliged to do this.
May “light” be an “elliptic proposition” or not? How does it stand with its
“agreement with reality”? According to the picture conception, “agreement
with reality” or “correspondence between language and reality” are “metalogical
expressions” which can be applied from the outside to every possible proposi-
tion of every possible language. A proposition, even an “elliptical proposition”,
agrees with reality if it states a fact with which it is isomorphic, sharing the same
logical syntax. In 1931, Wittgenstein claims that there are no such “metalogical
expressions” which can be applied to every possible “language game” from an
external, “metalogical” standpoint. If at all, expressions like “agreement with re-
ality” or “correspondence between language and reality” can be employed only
“as part of a calculus, part of normal language” (MS 113: 49v; cf. BT 2013: 158e, n.
40), or, according to a revised version, “as a part of normal, practical language”
(TS 213: 204v; BT 2013: 158e). But in the simple language game Wittgenstein de-
scribes, “the expression ‘agreement with reality’ doesn’t appear” (MS 113: 50r; cf.
TS 213: 204v; BT 2013: 159e).
Wittgenstein employs the term “language game” in some other remarks of
manuscript MS 113, introducing further language games and recalling that he
owes the method of beginning a grammatical investigation with a list of exam-
ples to a former school teacher of his.¹¹ However, the term “language game” does
not prevail immediately: after having employed it in these remarks, Wittgenstein
for a while uses it only sporadically.
Later, in the Big Typescript, he collects the texts about “light” and “shadow”
in chapter 46, whose title tells us what he intends to do with this example: “The
Functioning of a Proposition Elucidated with a Language-Game” (TS 213: 201; BT

 Wittgenstein largely comments on the builders and “light” and “dark”: they are the most im-
portant language games in these manuscripts, but not the only ones. Some pages later in MS 113
(50v-51r), he introduces two further language games in order to mark the difference between two
sorts of “false sentences/propositions”: some (e. g. false weather forecasts) are legitimate moves
in a certain game, the others are “false” in the sense that they trespass the rules of the game (in
Wittgenstein’s example: giving a false name to the colors of traffic lights). Wittgenstein lists four
other different language games in order to deal with the question of whether the verification is
part of the language game or not; he does not go on to discuss the question, but recalls that he
owes this method of beginning a grammatical investigation to Heinrich Groag. Besides this, the
Big Typescript implicitly subsumes under “language game” examples Wittgenstein had formu-
lated before he had introduced this new concept: he opens chapter 46 with an earlier remark
about “toothache” and the concept “elliptical sentence”. – About these language games cf. Sed-
mak 1994: 137 f., about induction Sedmak 1994: 138 f.

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 63

2013: 156e).¹² After the Big Typescript, Wittgenstein gives up the language game
with “light” and “shadow”. In order to relativize the distinction between word
and proposition, he then uses the example of the “builders”. In the Big Type-
script, even after having introduced the term “language game”, Wittgenstein
still does not use it for the builders;¹³ and the remarks on these are in a separate
chapter (§ 7) with the aforementioned title “The Concept of Meaning Originates
in a Primitive Philosophical Conception of Language.” (TS 213: 25; BT 2013:
23e). Wittgenstein is still just beginning to explore the connection between lan-
guage and the activities into which it is woven.

3 “Tribes”: their arithmetics and their languages

“We could imagine that the language of § 2 [= ‘the builders’; MB] was the whole
language of A and B, even the whole language of a tribe. The children are
brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to
react in this way to the words of others.” So begins § 6 of the Philosophical Inves-
tigations. But in July 1931, when Wittgenstein drafted the first version of the
“builders”, he did not claim yet that their language could be “even the whole
language of a tribe” (PI 2009: § 6). Like the remarks about “light” and “dark”,
this first draft was not yet concerned with what has often been dubbed “imagi-
nary ethnology”. These first language games are simple forms of interaction be-
tween two people, e. g. between an adult and a child, and are not ascribed to a
collective like a society, a people or a tribe.
Only later does Wittgenstein take this direction: even if both The Brown book
and the Philosophical Investigations still open with simple interactions of this
sort, Philosophical Investigations § 6 gives an “ethnological” interpretation of
the language game of the builders. For its part, The Brown book early on intro-
duces language games explicitly involving a broader community; and in order to
make plausible his new method of viewing a simple language game as “the en-
tire system of communication of a tribe in a primitive state of society”, Wittgen-
stein reminds his readers of the “primitive arithmetics of such tribes” as though
these arithmetics were empirically attested:

We are not, however, regarding the language-games which we describe as incomplete parts
of a language, but as languages complete in themselves, as complete systems of human

 In the Big Typescript, § 46 is not the only one in which the term “language game” occurs.
 In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein does call the example of the “builders” a
“language game”, but only in a later remark (cf. PI 2009: § 7), not immediately.

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64 Marco Brusotti

communication. To keep this point of view in mind, it very often is useful to imagine such a
simple language to be the entire system of communication of a tribe in a primitive state of
society. Think of primitive arithmetics of such tribes. (D 310: 7 f.)

In the remarks about the first draft of the “builders” and about “light” and
“dark” such simple “games” are already considered as closed systems “com-
plete” in themselves and in this sense as “wholes”, but they are not ascribed
to primitive “tribes”. The reminder in The Brown book – concerning the “primi-
tive arithmetics of such tribes” (D 310: 8) – is a hint as to the roots of this idea in
Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics. Here he had begun to speak of
“tribes” and “peoples”, referring at first to real existing tribes, not to imaginary
ones. He develops these reflections into an imaginary ethnology only gradually.
Already in TS 212, the comparison with a primitive arithmetic allowed Witt-
genstein to insist on the completeness even of simple languages:

We can also imagine a language that consists only of commands. Such a language relates to
ours as a primitive arithmetic does to ours. And just as that arithmetic is not essentially
incomplete, neither is the more primitive form of language. (TS 212: 630; TS 213: 209r; BT
2013: 162e; cf. D 302: 28)

According to the Decline of the West, cultures are closed systems, and to the plu-
rality of cultures corresponds a plurality of profoundly different mathematical
systems. In May 1930, Wittgenstein considers himself in agreement with Spengler
when he establishes the “possibility of a plurality of closed systems, which […]
seem to be the one the prosecution of the other” (MS 183: 17; my translation;
cf. Brusotti 2000: 32 ff.). The systems, even if closed, seem to build up a series,
but this “prosecution” of one system by the other is a mere appearance, and
Wittgenstein insists that the systems are actually mutually independent.
Out of this idea of a plurality of formal calculi (in logic, arithmetic and ge-
ometry), he will later develop, even if only very gradually, the conception of a
plurality of language games. But from the beginning, he denies the existence
of a platonic standard in comparison to which systems can be judged as incom-
plete. There is no calculus of all calculi to which one arithmetic comes closer
than another; and no calculus is part of another. They are all complete and
closed. For this reason, Wittgenstein switches from Spengler’s comparison be-
tween the mathematics of different so-called “higher cultures” to a comparison
between “us” and so-called “savage peoples”. Arithmetics we call primitive are
actually no less complete than our own.

If savage peoples have a number system where 5 is followed by an expression analogous to

our “many”, and, giving a number, they point at first at the finger of one hand and then at

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 65

their hair, then these peoples have a number system as complete as ours. (MS 108: 152 (my
translation); TS 210: 12; cf. e. g. MS 112: 44r)

Here Wittgenstein does not refer to The Golden Bough and is probably not under
Frazer’s influence; he simply mentions current conceptions about “savage peo-
ples” and their arithmetic. Wittgenstein’s remarks about number systems like
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, many” could easily be compared with Cassirer’s elaborations on
primitive mathematics in the second volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms (cf. Cassirer 2009, vol. 2 [1st ed.: 1925], 166 ff.). Today, what Wittgenstein
claims to have “heard” about “the savages” may sound rather strange; and we
might ask whether, notwithstanding his sharp criticism of the Golden Bough,
he does not cleave to common prejudices of his times. This may well be the
case; but does he understand this example as a remark about the real mathemat-
ics of real peoples? He speaks about existing “savage peoples” (MS 108: 152), but
without committing himself to the view that they really have such a number sys-
tem. He only says that if they have one, i. e., even if they do not dispose of a more
complex one, then they still have a complete system.
Wittgenstein does not think of language games here and even less of imag-
inary ones. These ethnological reflections in the conditional are no imaginary
ethnology. However, he does very soon transform them into an overtly fictional
anthropology; then, from what “might actually be the primitive geometry of a
tribe” (my emphasis), it is only a short step to imagining the geometry of a ficti-
tious people. And this fiction, he suggests, is “a good trick” (MS 113: 115r) for the
analysis of our own language. Wittgenstein imagines a “calculus” that “knows”
only one construction, “the one used to bisect a line-segment”, using a compass
whose “opening […] can’t be changed”:

(That might actually be the primitive geometry of a tribe, for instance. And what I said ear-
lier about the number series “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, many” having equal rights with the series of car-
dinal numbers would be valid for this geometry too. In general it is a good trick in our in-
vestigations to imagine the arithmetic or geometry of a primitive people.) (TS 213: 654; BT
2013: 438e; cf. MS 113: 115r)¹⁴

Wittgenstein had already mentioned primitive mathematics before his first dis-
cussion of The Golden Bough in June/July 1931, but the two strands we have

 The system “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, many” and the arithmetic of a people without number words, but
counting and calculating exclusively with an abacus, are interesting for similar reasons. In the
system “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, many” there is nothing like the difference between 6 and 7, and the arith-
metic of the people without number words would lack something like the difference between 20
and 21.

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66 Marco Brusotti

been dealing with in this section converge only later. They are: 1) the interaction
between two people in the first “language games” like the “builders” or “light
and shadow” and 2) the (at first “real” and then imaginary) primitive mathemat-
ics of so-called “savage” tribes. These two strands come together in Wittgen-
stein’s later conception of a “language game”. At the beginning, however,
when the concept emerges, “language game” does not yet stand for a culture;
and a “language game” is not essentially different from a calculus. Language
rules still have a primacy over the activities with which speaking is connected.
Later, the Philosophical Investigations give a well-known terminological elucida-
tion: “The word ‘language game’ is used here to emphasize the fact that the
speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.” (PI 2009, § 24)
The early language games of 1931– 1932 were already used “to emphasize the
fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity”, but not yet to show
that it is “part of […] a form of life” (PI 2009, § 24) in a broader sense.

4 Translation as culture description

“Imagine a use of language (a culture) in which there was a common name for
green and red on the one hand, and yellow and blue on the other.” (D 310: 89)¹⁵
“We could also easily imagine a language (and that means again a culture) in
which there existed no common expression for light blue and dark blue, in
which the former, say, was called ‘Cambridge’, the latter ‘Oxford’.” (D 310: 89)
Here, “a use of language” (Sprachgebrauch) and “a culture”, and again, “a lan-
guage” and “a culture” are synonyms. The unfinished German revision, the Ver-
such einer Umarbeitung (MS 115), keeps the first occurrence of “culture” and sub-
stitutes the second with “form of life” (“Form des Lebens”, not (yet)
“Lebensform”): “Umgekehrt könnte ich mir auch eine Sprache (und das heißt
wieder eine Form des Lebens) denken, die zwischen Dunkelrot und Hellrot
eine Kluft befestigt etc.” (MS 115: 239; EPB 1958: 202). For the difference between
“Cambridge” and “Oxford”, Wittgenstein substitutes: “a chasm” (“eine Kluft”);
and he sticks to the phrase “and that means again” (“und das heißt wieder”),
implying that the two identities, (1) of “a use of language” and “a culture”
and (2) of “a language” and “a form of life” mean very much the same.

 The German version of this sentence is simply a fairly close translation of the English orig-
inal: “Stellen wir uns einen Sprachgebrauch |vor| (eine Kultur), in welcher es einen gemeinsa-
men Namen für grün und rot, und einen für blau und gelb gäbe |gibt|.” (MS 115: 237; EPB
1958: 202)

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 67

In neither passage does Wittgenstein use the term “language game”. This
may have partly stylistic reasons; shortly before, in the English original, he
had used the word “game”: “Imagine a game: […] Imagine a use of language
(a culture)” (D 310: 89). Moreover: an imaginary “use of language” (or “lan-
guage”) is a fictitious “language game” – like those which the Brown Book con-
tinually ascribes to various imaginary tribes and considers an integral part of
their form of life. Thus, one could argue that here “language game” and “cul-
ture” are closely related, if not identical concepts. The Philosophical Investiga-
tions stick to the idea that “to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life”
(PI 2009: § 19),¹⁶ and this comes close to the advice that in order to describe
the use of (aesthetic) words “you have to describe a culture” (LA 1966: 8).
Wittgenstein had already used the ethnological situation as a metaphor for
his philosophical task at the beginning of 1931. Probably in dialogue with Sraffa,
he had compared the philosopher who wants to give a perspicuous representa-
tion of grammar with an ethnologist who tabulates the rules of the games of a
foreign people or with a field linguist recording the rules of their language.

Savages have games (that’s what we call them, anyway) for which they have no written
rules, no inventory of rules. Now let’s imagine the activity of an explorer travelling through-
out the countries of these peoples and setting up lists of rules for their games. This is com-
pletely analogous to what the philosopher does. (TS 213: 426; BT 2013: 313e; cf. MS 112: 99r;
TS 211: 496)¹⁷

Wittgenstein’s analogy leaves a central point unclear: is the perspicuous repre-

sentation of grammar the philosopher needs an empirical description? Are gram-
mar rules empirical propositions about observable regularities in linguistic be-
havior? In the margin of a new version of the remark about the philosopher as
a field linguist, Wittgenstein adds in handwriting the name “[Sraffa]” (TS 212:
1108). Then, in their discussions, the Italian economist had defended the view
that “the rules of language can be constructed only by observation”: “This iden-

 The term “form of life” recurs rather seldom in the Philosophical Investigations. However, it
appears in (few) “strategic” sentences which, like the one quoted in the text (from PI 2009: § 19),
look almost like definitions. (Another example is the identity of “language game” and “form of
life” in PI 2009, § 24.) This explains the broad discussion about this concept in the critical liter-
ature, which usually tends to overrate “form of life” in comparison, for example, to “technique”,
“activity” (Tätigkeit), “way of acting” (Handlungsweise) and the like.
 In Typescript TS 212 (not yet in TS 211), Wittgenstein jots down in handwriting the following
commentary that he then transcribes in TS 213: “((But why don’t I say: ‚Savages have languages
(that’s what we…) … have no written grammar…‘?))” (TS 213: 426; BT 2013: 313e; TS 212: 1188). Cf.
MS 110: 109 f. and Brusotti 2014: 69 f., n. 24. There is no reason to assume that this analogy be-
tween the philosopher and the field linguist is suggested by Frazer’s Golden Bough.

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68 Marco Brusotti

tifies the cause and the meaning of a word. […]” (WC 2008: 196, N. 144; January-
February 1932). According to Sraffa, the role propositions play in the real life of
human beings is a set of regularities which can be established through empirical
observation. Wittgenstein was never really attracted by this empirical conception
of the task of philosophy and swiftly left it behind. Yet he initially kept conceiv-
ing of the philosopher as a field linguist who had only to write up the “inventory
of rules” (Regelverzeichnis) of a language. He considered essential only the role
that propositions play in the calculus of language, denying any philosophical
relevance to the role they play in the broader context of human life. In February
1932, Sraffa had urged Wittgenstein to take into account this role. However, Witt-
genstein had turned down this suggestion: it looked too much like Russell’s or
Ogden’s and Richards’ causal theory of meaning (cf. Engelmann 2013a: 160 ff.,
2013b; Brusotti 2014: 343 ff.; Brusotti 2016: 50 ff.).
By 1934/1935, Wittgenstein had changed his mind. This might well be due to
Sraffa’s persistent criticism, but only in part. What strikes one is that the Brown
Book applies the translation method advocated by Bronislaw Malinowski in The
Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages. Friedrich Waismann seems to have
been aware of this. In Logik, Sprache und Philosophie, the German version of
his Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, he refers to “Malinowski’s investigations
into the sense of words in an indigenous language in his Supplement to Ogden’s
and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning” (WLP 1976: 273; my translation).¹⁸ Wais-
mann writes this just after having advanced the following suggestion:

When we have to translate into our language a word from the language of a foreign culture,
it often happens that our language does not have a word with the corresponding meaning.

 On Waismann’s hint at Malinowski cf. Brusotti 2007: 102 f.; Brusotti 2014: 349 f. – Malinowski
was widely known beyond disciplinary boundaries, and Waismann was no exception among his
contemporaries. Wolfe Mays, who attended Wittgenstein’s lectures, outlines the following con-
nection between the philosopher and the ethnologist: “Wittgensteinˈs discussion of meaning
[…]. His comparison of words to tools having different uses, i. e., meanings, in different contexts,
reminded me strongly of the views of Malinowski. Malinowski noted that a cultural object such
as a fish hook could have different functions according to its context of use. It could, for exam-
ple, be used in one context for fishing and in another for ritual purposes. As far as I know, Witt-
genstein did not actually regard words as cultural objects, but talked much more of the use of
words in a fairly abstract way.” (Mays 1978: 83) Even Raymond Firth (1901– 2002), Malinowski’s
successor in the chair of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, sees affinities.
He refers to Malinowski’s Supplement to The Meaning of Meaning (Firth 1995) and mentions Sraf-
fa, but does not deem it likely that the Italian economist liaised between Wittgenstein and Ma-
linowski (Firth 1995; cf. Firth 1957: 94, 96). Cf. the comparison between Wittgenstein and Mali-
nowski in Gellner 1998: 151 ff. For further evidence on Wittgenstein and Malinowski cf. Brusotti
2007: 102 ff.; Brusotti 2014: 346 ff.; Rothhaupt 2011: 143 ff.

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 69

If one wanted to describe the meaning of such a word, the safest way to do it would be to
describe the whole life of the community and to explain exactly which role the word plays
in this life. (WLP 1976: 273; my translation)¹⁹

This proposal of conceiving the translation from a remote language as an holistic

description of this culture and its way of life not only comes close to Malinow-
ski’s conception of ethnological translation, but recalls a passage from Wittgen-
stein’s Brown Book:

Now, what characterizes an order as such or a description as such or a question as such,

etc., is – as we have said – the rôle which the utterance of these signs plays in the whole
practice of the language. That is to say, whether a word of the language of our tribe is rightly
translated in a word of the English language depends upon the rôle this word plays in the
whole life of the tribe; the occasions on which it is used, the expressions of emotions by
which it is generally accompanied, the ideas which it generally awakens or which prompt
its saying, etc. etc. (D 310: 40)²⁰

Wittgenstein, a fierce critic of The Meaning of Meaning, probably read Malinow-

ski’s early paper The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages. ²¹ Here, the eth-
nologist explicitly identifies his conception with the one expressed in The Mean-
ing of Meaning. The “Ethnographic view of language” leads to a ‘principle of
symbolic relativity’: “words must be treated only as symbols and […] a psychol-
ogy of symbolic reference must serve as the basis for all science of language”
(Malinowski 1994: 454). Wittgenstein must have considered this psychological
version of the “principle” as misleading or at best philosophically irrelevant
like Ogden’s and Richards’ causal theory of meaning.
However, Malinowski soon gives his “principle” a more sociological formu-
lation:

 “Wenn man ein Wort aus einer Sprache eines uns fremden Kulturkreises in die unsrige über-
setzen soll, so kommt es oft vor, daß unsere Sprache kein Wort von entsprechender Bedeutung
hat. Wer die Bedeutung eines solchen Wortes beschreiben wollte, der würde am sichersten
gehen, wenn er das ganze Leben der Gemeinschaft beschriebe und genau erklärte, welche
Rolle das Wort in diesem Leben spielt.” (WLP 1976: 273)
 Cf. the German version in MS 115: 162; EPB 1958: 163.
 This paper does not advocate a fully fledged functionalist ethnology, but rather represents an
intermediate stage in which Malinowski had not yet wholly freed his method from evolutionary
concepts (the “level of culture”). Cf. Stocking 1995: 284 f. – Wittgenstein probably knew at least
another contribution by Malinowski, first broadcast by the BBC and then published 1931 in the
series volume on Science and Religion (“Professor B. Malinowski”: 65 – 81). In a lecture on “be-
lief”, Wittgenstein criticized C. W. O’Hara, referring to a paper belonging to this BBC series and
published in the same volume (“The Rev. C. W. O’Hara, S. J.”: 107– 116; cf. the editor’s footnote in
LA 1966: 57). For further details cf. Brusotti 2014: 350.

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70 Marco Brusotti

Since the whole world of “things-to-be-expressed” changes with the level of culture, with
geographical, social and economic conditions, the meaning of a word must be always gath-
ered, not from a passive contemplation of this word, but from an analysis of its functions,
with reference to the given culture. (Malinowski 1994: 454)²²

About this holistic, functionalistic conception of meaning, Wittgenstein at first

must have had the same reservations he had about the causal theory – or
about Sraffa’s suggestion to take into account the role language plays in
human life. But Wittgenstein finally came to the conclusion that the role of lan-
guage in the life of a community does not need to be conceived in merely causal
terms and that recognizing its “grammatical” relevance does not necessarily
imply taking a causal-theoretical point of view and turning philosophy into an
empirical investigation of language. This change of approach lies in the back-
ground of the occasional identification of “language” and “culture” or of a “lan-
guage” and a “form of life” in the Brown Book.
The Brown Book recommends a procedure similar to the method drafted in
Malinowski’s paper. In order to assess whether and to what extent two expres-
sions of very different languages are “similar” (cf. MS 115: 147 s.; EPB 1958:
137), an extremely complex comparison is necessary. What has to be compared
is the “position” of each expression in its language (cf. MS 115: 274; EPB 1958:
225). By this, Wittgenstein means neither the position of the words in the senten-
ces (cf. MS 115: 175; EPB 1958: 158) nor the sort of sentences in which a word is
used (cf. MS 115: 173; EPB 1958: 157). Rather, when we deal with a very different
language, the translation should be adequate not only to the role of the word in
the “calculus” of language, but to the broader role the sentences involving it
have in the whole practice of the language game (cf. MS 115: 175; EPB 1958:
158; MS 115: 173; EPB 1958: 157; D 310: 55) or “in the whole life of the tribe” (D
310: 40; cf. MS 115: 162; EPB 1958: 149).²³ In the Brown Book, the life of these
imaginary “tribes”, communities, is only ever outlined very sketchily; but Witt-
genstein claims “that one can easily make these descriptions more complete”
(D 310: 40) and fill in further detail.
In Wittgenstein’s earlier manuscripts, the philosopher was like a field lin-
guist who was merely tabulating the rules of a language (or a game) in order

 Already Firth 1995 quotes these lines. On the “principle of Symbolic Relativity” cf. Stocking
1995: 284 f. Rothhaupt 2011: 148 f., refers to Edward Sapir, who is mentioned in The Meaning of
Meaning.
 “A criterion of what they mean would be the occasions on which the word we are inclined to
translate into our word […] is used, the rôle, we might say, which we observe this word to play in
the life of the tribe.” (D 310: 26 f.)

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 “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.” 71

to write up its “inventory of rules” (Regelverzeichnis). In The Brown Book, how-

ever, tabulating rules is clearly not enough. The translating ethnologist, who
has become a paradigm of the philosopher’s attitude to his own language, has
rather to compare “the whole life” of the two communities. Malinowski had
tried to show that ethnological translation requires a broader, indeed holistic,
comparison between the two cultures. This conception of translation comes
close to the idea that in order to describe the use of (aesthetic) words “you
have to describe a culture” (LA 1966: 8); and the philosophical method Wittgen-
stein applies not only in the Brown Book, but also in his lecture on aesthetics, is
a fruitful development, and a deep transformation, of this ethnological approach
to translation.

Bibliography
Ackerman, Robert A.: J. G. Frazer. His Life and Work, Cambridge 1987.
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