The Blue and Brown Books were written by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1933 and 1935. The contents of two books are lecture notes that Wittgenstein dictated to his students at Cambridge University, with the Blue Book being dictated in 1933–1934 and the Brown Book in 1934–1935. Both books provide readers with an indication of the direction Wittgenstein’s thinking took during these years, and the Brown Book represents an early draft of ideas that would later appear in Wittgenstein’s posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953). The Blue and Brown Books circulated among Wittgenstein’s students and friends for many years before they were bound and published together for the first time in 1958.

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