Wittgenstein's remarks on colour

Philosophical Investigations

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 215-239

  Lee, Alan ^a  

^a FLINDERS UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 52649141505     PISSN: 01900536     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9205.00096     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, G. E. M. Anscombe (ed.), Linda L. McAlister and Margaret Schättle (trans.) (Oxford: Oxford, 1977)
2. Jonathan Westphal, Colour: Some Philosophical Problems from Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), p. 1
3. Op. cit., pp. 12-13
4. Marie McGinn, 'Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour', Philosophy, 66, 1991, pp. 435-53, p. 435
5. Zeno Vendler, 'Goethe, Wittgenstein, and the Essence of Color', Monist, Vol. 78 (1995), pp. 391-410
6. Op. cit., p. 392
7. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991), p. 561
8. P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion, revised ed. (Oxford: Oxford, 1986), p. 146
9. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tactatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (trans.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 4.123, p. 27
10. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, notes recorded by F. Waismann, B. F. McGuinness (ed.), J. Schulte and B. F. McGuinness (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), p. 55
11. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), p. 30e
12. Wittgenstein's Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946-47, notes by P. T. Geach, K. J. Shah, and A. C. Jackson, P. T. Geach (ed.) (New York: Harvester, 1988). See pp. 17-21 for Geach's account of the lecture and p. 18 for the specific reference to what is 'timeless'; pp. 135-39 and specifically p. 136 for Shah's record of the same; and pp. 256-61 and specifically pp. 257-58 for Jackson's
13. Geach, op. cit., p. 18
14. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), section 347, p. 64e. According to the editors most type-scripts date from 1945-48
15. E.g. in the 4 April version the last sentence lacks the double contrast between what is 'external' and 'temporal' compared to what is 'internal' and 'timeless' (i.e. it simply reads: 'But in the first language-game they are temporal and in the second non-temporal')
16. Arthur Schopenhauer, Über das Sehn und Farben (first edition 1816), Sämtliche Werke, Vol. III, Wolfgang Frhr. von Löhneysen (ed.) (Stuttgart/Frankfurt am Main: Cotta-Insel, 1962), pp. 204-97
17. Some suggestive evidence about Wittgenstein's milieu and the availability of unreliable accounts of Goethe's colour theory is provided by Johannes Itten, the Bauhaus pedagogue, who was teaching in Vienna in 1920. He gives a detailed account of Schopenhauer's colour fractions, attributing the whole system to Goethe without any mention of Schopenhauer. See his The Elements of Color (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), pp. 59-63
18. Schopenhauer, op. cit., note 20, 233
19. An account of Schopenhauer's theory can be found in P. F. H. Lauxtermann, 'Hegel and Schopenhauer as Partisans of Goethe's Theory of Color', Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 51, 1990, pp. 599-624, see especially p. 618
20. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, Charles Lock Eastlake (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), section 262, p. 108; the reference is to fig. 1, Plate III
21. He may have been prepared to regard the system with the same ironic approval he shows for Schopenhauer's idea that 'man's real life span is 100 years'. Wittgenstein acknowledges that such an idea sets aside concerns about how long men do actually live, but says: 'It is just as though you have understood a creator's purpose. You have grasped the system', Culture and Value, G. H. von Wright (ed.), Peter Winch (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 26e, from a source dated 1937
22. The index to the full German text lists seven references to Lichtenberg, all of which prove to be incidental. J. W. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, Manfred Wenzel (ed.) (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1991)
23. George Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, Vol. II (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1971), Wolfgang Promies (ed.), Heft K, section 366, pp. 468-69
24. A translation of the relevant passage can be found in J. P. Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (Bloomington: Indiana, 1959), p. 96
25. Ray Monk, op. cit., note 10, p. 561
26. Wittgenstein's Lectures: Cambridge: 1930-32, Desmond Lee (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 8
27. G. E. Moore's notes from the lectures of the 1930s are also helpful, especially because Moore reports having discussed with Wittgenstein the idea that the colour system was a matter of 'grammar' and not psychology; see Moore's Philosophical Papers (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 317-18
28. A graphic idea of how Goethe believed this could happen is shown in Plate IV, fig. 1, Theory of Colours, op. cit., note 23
29. The point does not feature in Helmholtz's various writings about Goethe, and seems only to have been made fully explicit in an exchange between Helmholtz and Ewald Hering, which Hering quotes in his Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense, Leo M. Hurvich and Dorethea Jameson (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1964), pp. 48-49
30. 'The Scientific Researches of Goethe' (1853), Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Russell Kahl (ed.) (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1971), pp. 56-74, quotation from p. 67
31. The relevant history can be found in Edwin G. Boring, Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Irvington, 1942). See especially pp. 112-16 for the account of Goethe, and pp. 206-14 for the account of the phenomenological theory of colour vision as it arises in opposition to Helmholtz's theory
32. Boring, op. cit., 116. Emphasis in original
33. Boring, op. cit., 114
34. Franz Brentano, 'Vom phänomenalen Grün', Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie (original publication 1907) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1979), pp. 5-43
35. the quoted translation gives the content of Brentano's opening sentence as formulated by H. T. Watt in his review, Mind, Vol. XVII, 1908, pp. 128-29. Watt gives a concise account of Brentano's argument about green and the purported vindication of Goethe and the painters' tradition
36. Boring, op. cit., note 34, p. 131
37. Op. cit., note 37
38. Wittgenstein might have learned of Brentano's views from secondary sources such as: Boring, loc. cit., note 34
39. Watt, op. cit., note 37
40. E. B. Holt in The New Realism, Edwin B. Holt, et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1912), p. 333
41. C. L. Franklin, Mind, NS Vol. 2, 1893, pp. 478-79
42. Zettel, op. cit., note 18, section 611, p. 106e
43. Although the remark here is made in relation to memory, the doctrine of psychophysical parallelism associated with Ewald Hering's theory of colour vision was given influential expression in his 1870 Vienna lecture: 'On Memory as a Universal Function of Organized Matter', On Memory and the Specific Energies of the Nervous System (Chicago: Open Court, 1895), pp. 1-27
44. It is omitted from the Eastlake translation of 1840, op. cit., note 23
45. and also from the recent translation by Douglas Miller: J. W. von Goethe, Scientific Studies (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988)
46. A translation can be found in Goethe's Colour Theory, R. Matthei (ed.), H. Aach (trans.) (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971), pp. 190-94
47. Westphal (op. cit., note 2, pp. 54-55) quotes a passage from the letter, but without translation. In a footnote on page 40 he describes as merely 'curious' Wittgenstein's comments about Runge's claim that there are opaque and transparent colours
48. Vendler (op. cit., note 7) cites only the Eastlake translation which omits the letter, and although he quotes one of Wittgenstein's quotations from Runge (p. 396), he does not inquire into its source
49. 'This printed testimony is by a young man who is not acquainted with my efforts, yet found himself on the same road', Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 190
50. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 193
51. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 193. Wittgenstein quotes part of this passage (at 1-21, p. 5e) and his quotation corresponds exactly to the German original; I have slightly amended the translation in Matthei's text to correspond to that in Remarks on Colour
52. Geach et al., op. cit., note 16
53. The idea that 'red is something simple' is the starting point recorded in all three sets of notes: Geach p. 18
54. Shah p. 135
55. Jackson p. 257
56. Geach et al., op. cit., note 16, p. 18
57. Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), p. 22
58. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, pp. 191-92
59. For the original passages see Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 191 and p. 193
60. On the history of such models see E. G. Boring, op. cit., note 34, pp. 147-49 and p. 154. It is only in later correspondence with Goethe that Runge gave a full description of his colour sphere
61. Op. cit., note 12, p. 71
62. See, for example, Hacker, op. cit., note 11, pp. 108-12. Although the problem about colour exclusion is different from the problem about contradictory colour descriptions, they are related, and both are discussed by Wittgenstein. The physical analogy is relevant to both
63. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, pp. 190-191
64. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 191
65. Goethe's Colour Theory, Matthei (ed.), p. 191
66. Wittgenstein's German text gives an exact transcription of Runge's words
67. Westphal, op. cit., note 2, pp. 19-23
68. On pictorial representation of gold, see: I-33, III-79 and 100; for amber, see: III-151; for blond, see: I-63 and 64
69. The following ten remarks show the development of the idea: III-53, 56, 68, 69, 255, 256, 259, 265-268
70. Investigations, op. cit., note 51, p. 213e
71. I am grateful to Chris Provis for helpful discussions about this work