596 Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter (Eds.) Wittgenstein

596 Book reviews Volker A. Munz and Bernhard Ritter (eds.) Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures: Cambridge, 1938–1941, from the Notes by Yorick Smythies. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2017, 392 pp.; isbn: 978-1-119-16633-7. Wittgenstein produced philosophy not only in the form of writing (and sometimes dictating) but also in the form of teaching, especially lecturing. In fact, he considered his lecturing a form of publication (see Lewy 1976, xi). Conse- quently, a comprehensive, scholarly study of Wittgenstein’s philosophy not only requires the study of the works published during his lifetime or posthu- mously from his Nachlass (von Wright 1969, bee 2000),1 as well as the Nachlass itself, but also a study of his lectures or what we have as documentation thereof. Wittgenstein offered regular courses at the University of Cambridge during three periods of time: from Lent term 1930 until Easter term 1936, from Lent term 1938 until Lent term 1943 (with Lent term 1939 for the first time as professor and chair of the department), and from Michaelmas term 1944 until Easter term 1947. Yorick Smythies (1917–1980) attended Wittgenstein’s lectures from Michaelmas term 1935 until Easter term 1947. By 1938, Smythies (S.) and Wittgenstein (W.) had become friends. Although W. tended to dislike it when students took notes during his lectures, he permitted S. to do so. Prior to Munz and Ritter’s edition (abbreviated in the following ‘swn’), W.’s lectures and sub- sequent discussion classes had been available as follows:2 Lent term 1930–Easter term 1936 • 1930L-32E—D. Lee (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932 (lwl, 1980) • 1930L-33E—G.E. Moore (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33 (mwl, 1954– 55; reprinted in po, 1993) • 1930L-33E—D. Stern, B. Rogers, G. Citron (eds.): Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cam- bridge 1930–1933 (mwn, 2016) 1 For a comprehensive bibliography of Wittgenstein’s works and the abbreviations used for them, see http://www.ilwg.eu/files/Wittgenstein_Bibliographie.pdf. Additional titles re- ferred to in this review are listed under References, below. 2 M = Michaelmas term (October-December), L = Lent term (January-March), E = Easter term (April-June). For a quick overview of lectures and publications thereof, see Pichler 1994, 117– 137; for a comprehensive and thoroughly researched account J. Klagge’s “The Wittgenstein Lectures” in ppo 2003, 340–359. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/18756735-000051Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:32:52PM via free access <UN> Book reviews 597 • 1932M-35E—A. Ambrose (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935 (awl, 1979; 1933M-1934E are not covered) • 1935M—no edition • 1936L-36E—R. Rhees (ed.): The Language of Sense Data and Private Experi- ence (rsd, 1984; reprinted in po, 1993) Lent term 1938–Lent term 1943 • 1938L-38E—R. Rhees (ed.): Cause and Effect: Intuitive Awareness (ce, 1976; reprinted in po, 1993) • 1938L-38E—C. Barrett (ed.): Lectures and Conversations (la, 1966) • 1938M—no edition3 • 1939L-39E—C. Diamond (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics: Cambridge, 1939 (lfm, 1976) • 1939M-40E—no edition • 1940M—P. Rhees, R. Rhees (eds.): A Lecture on Freedom of the Will (ysf, 1989; improved edition in po, 1993) • 1940–41—M. Iven (ed.): Rand und Wittgenstein: Versuch einer Annäherung (rwn, 2004) • 1941L-43L—no edition Michaelmas term 1944–Easter term 1947 • 1944M-46E—no edition • 1946M-47E—P. Geach (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychol- ogy 1946–1947 (pgl, 1988) Now, swn, focusing on the period 1938–41, contains extensive notes from 1938E, 1939M-40M as well as some notes from 1941L. Thus, not only does this new edition of notes complement the documentation of W.’s lectures that were only partly covered by previous editions (some of which already make use of S.’ notes), but it fills in several gaps. swn does not, however, yet contain notes from 1938L, 1938M-39E and 1941E-41M. Readers should also keep in mind that S.’ notes constitute a record of W.’s lectures that is incomplete in the following ways: As S. has pointed out, sometimes “long gaps of no-note-taking occurred during a lecture”; sometimes he “left a particular Wittgenstein lecture before it 3 It is possible that there were no lectures in the 1938 Michaelmas term; see Klagge in ppo 2003, 349. grazer philosophische studien 95 (2018) 589-603 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:32:52PM via free access <UN> 598 Book reviews had become completed”; and he omitted, at least in the edited versions of his notes, “all notes relating to Logic and Mathematics” (quoted in Munz 2010, 80f). swn is an exemplary piece of editing work. It lays out its textual sources in a meticulously detailed manner and applies methods of textual criticism to an appropriate degree. Another such exemplary edition of notes on W.’s lectures is the new edition of notes that G. E. Moore took in the years 1930–33 (mwn), edited by David Stern, Brian Rogers and Gabriel Citron.4 swn and mwn re- semble each other in terms of the editorial labour that the respective materials required. However, the S. corpus is even more complicated than the Moore one. The S. corpus contains manuscripts, typescripts and audio cassette tapes. The manuscripts alone amount to ca. 2,000 pages. To begin with, these include the actual notes, which were taken during the lectures: shorthand notes aiming at accurately capturing what W. said but difficult to decipher. S. kept most of these notes in small spiral-bound notebooks, of which he used to fill the right-hand pages first. Then, “sometime during the late 1930s and 1940s” (Munz 2010, 80), S. edited fair copy versions, some of which he kept in the same sort of small spiral- bound notebooks as his original shorthand notes and some in larger notebooks. These edited versions of his notes he showed to W. whereupon W. encouraged him to publish his notes (swn, xii). Consequently, S. worked hard on getting his notes published and he even authored an introduction for a possible publication (part of which is quoted in Munz’ preface, p. xi). From the fair copies S. dictated into 23 audio cassette tapes. When producing the fair copies and audio tapes, S. typically rearranged some of the original contents—like Moore had done when editing his notes—so that, in order to establish the original chrono- logical lecture sequence, one must go back to the original lecture notes. At the same time, S. tried hard to stick to W.’s original words even if at times it might have been awkward English (cf. swn, xii). In the 1970s and 1980s, S.—still work- ing on the publication of his notes—had a secretary transpose his tapes into around 30 typescripts, totalling ca. 700 pages. Unfortunately, these typescripts contain a large number of transposition errors. Peg Smythies,5 Rush Rhees and D. Z. Phillips all tried to correct these errors on the basis of S.’ fair manuscript copies, with the aim of producing a new, publishable text. 4 The original, Moore’s own, edition of these notes (mwl) had not so much been an authentic record of what Wittgenstein said in those lectures as a text that had been significantly edited, rephrased and rearranged by Moore. So there are significant differences between Moore’s own 1954–55 publication and the 2016 mwn publication. 5 Peg Smythies was the wife of S.; she is also known as Peg Rhees, since after S.’ death she re- married with Rush Rhees. grazer philosophische Downloadedstudien from 95 Brill.com09/27/2021(2018) 589-603 05:32:52PM via free access <UN> Book reviews 599 Munz and Ritter set themselves the task of preparing a readable text and a comprehensive and accurate edition of this complicated corpus. For this pur- pose, they had to find out how to best move between first notes, fair copies, tapes and typescripts; in particular, they had to learn how to decipher S.’ hand- writing and the abbreviations used in the shorthand notes. Munz and Ritter prepared swn from the original notes taken during the lectures, wherever this was at all possible, and they record significant deviations between these notes (abbreviated ‘N’), the fair copies (abbreviated ‘ms’) and the typescripts (abbreviated ‘ts’) (see swn, xviii). Dating the lectures posed great challenges because S. never indicates the year of the lecture and only rarely mentions any dates at all. Munz and Ritter were able to establish some dates on the basis of the names of students who contributed to the meetings and who are mentioned in S.’ notes, since for most of Wittgenstein’s students it is well known during which terms they attended his lectures. The book contains twelve chapters. The editors introduce us thoroughly to each and provide detailed information about the sources they have used. They also enrich the text with comments about similar or complementary passages in the Nachlass. The lecture and discussion notes themselves are published in the first eight chapters. Each of these chapters is introduced with a description of the textual sources, a dating of the lectures themselves and thematic con- nections in the Nachlass. Below is a brief overview of the first eight chapters; except for the title of Ch. 2 which is by the editors, all lecture series titles are by S.: • Ch. 1: Eleven “Lectures on Knowledge” from, as dated by the editors, 1938E. The first lecture and part of the tenth lecture derive from notes by J. C. Taylor. • Ch. 2: Twelve “Lectures on Necessity” from 1938E.

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