Blue and Brown Books

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Summary

Brown Book, Part II, Sections 19–25

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Summary Brown Book, Part II, Sections 19–25

The conclusion Wittgenstein wants us to reach is that use determines the meaning of words. This conclusion contradicts a common misconception of the relationship between language and the world that says words simply describe things in the world. This is the idea that the word "chair" names a chair, the word "understanding" names a particular feeling, and so on. This conception sees the primary relationship in language to be between words and things. The mystery, then, is to discover what sort of link connects a word with the thing it names. Wittgenstein urges us to see that the primary relationship in language is actually between words themselves. In the language games of Part I, he showed us that even simple words like "slab" or "brick" are not simply names, or that they can only be names in languages that are far simpler than our own. To see even these words as names is to ignore the complex machinery of grammar that goes into building relationships between words.

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