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In his lifetime Ludwig Wittgenstein published one short book of philosophy and a spelling dictionary for Austrian village schools. The first, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was finished during the First World War, while he served in the Austro-Hungarian army, and appeared in 1921; he then gave up philosophy, gave away his share of his family’s fortune and became a primary-school teacher. He came back to Cambridge in 1929 and spent the rest of his life writing notebooks he never thought ready to print. Two years after his death in 1951, Philosophical Investigations came out, and in a 1999 poll of philosophers it was the book most often named among the most important of the twentieth century. This guide covers his 10 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1921–1977 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Wittgenstein published only the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; in English 1922) in his lifetime. His other major books were edited from his papers after his death in 1951: Philosophical Investigations (1953), The Blue and Brown Books (1958), On Certainty (1969) and Culture and Value (1977). Start with The Blue and Brown Books, lecture notes he dictated to students that lead straight into the Investigations.
Where to Start with Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you want the easiest way in
→ The Blue and Brown Books (1958) — dictated lecture notes that prepare the ground for the Investigations.
If you want his most influential book
→ Philosophical Investigations (1953) — language-games, meaning as use, the private language argument.
If you want the early Wittgenstein
→ Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) — the short, numbered book he wrote during the First World War.
If you want his remarks on life, music and religion
→ Culture and Value (1977).
10 Ludwig Wittgenstein Books, in Order
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
A short book of numbered propositions, drafted in notebooks during his war service and finished by 1918. It argues that a sentence pictures a possible state of affairs, and that ethics, aesthetics and the meaning of life lie outside what can be said. It first appeared in German in 1921 in Wilhelm Ostwald’s journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie, an edition he disowned; the bilingual English edition, translated by C. K. Ogden with help from Frank Ramsey and with an introduction by Bertrand Russell, followed in 1922. Cambridge accepted it as his PhD thesis in 1929.
Philosophical Investigations
Published by Blackwell in 1953, two years after his death, in German with an English translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. In numbered remarks it turns against much of the Tractatus: the meaning of a word lies in its use within “language-games”, the things we call games share only “family resemblances”, and a language only one person could understand is impossible (the beetle-in-a-box). It also contains the duck-rabbit picture. A 1999 poll in The Philosophical Forum found it the work most often named among the five most important books of twentieth-century philosophy.
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
Edited from his manuscripts by G. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe. The remarks, mostly from the late 1930s and early 1940s, ask what it means to follow a mathematical rule or to prove something, and include his much-debated comments on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.
The Blue and Brown Books
Two sets of notes he dictated in Cambridge: the Blue Book to his class in 1933–34, the Brown Book to Francis Skinner and Alice Ambrose in 1934–35. They are named after the colours of the covers the copies were bound in, and circulated privately from 1935. Rush Rhees edited them for Blackwell in 1958 as Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations”; they introduce language-games and ostensive definition in plainer prose than the later book.
Notebooks 1914–1916
The surviving wartime notebooks in which the Tractatus took shape, edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe, with English translation by Anscombe. They show the logic of the book developing alongside entries on God, will and the meaning of life.
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief
Not written by Wittgenstein himself but compiled from notes taken by students at his lectures and conversations, edited by Cyril Barrett. It covers what we mean when we call something beautiful, Freud, and what it means to believe in a Last Judgement.
Zettel
“Zettel” is German for slips of paper: the book collects the cut-out remarks he kept in a box, many on psychology, meaning and intention, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright in 1967.
On Certainty
Written in four stretches during the last eighteen months of his life, the last entries shortly before his death, and published by Blackwell in 1969 in a German and English parallel text edited by Anscombe and von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and Anscombe. Its 676 remarks start from G. E. Moore’s claim to know that “here is one hand” and argue that some things must stand fast for doubting, and knowing, to be possible at all.
Culture and Value
Remarks from his notebooks that are not technical philosophy, selected by G. H. von Wright and published in German as Vermischte Bemerkungen in 1977; Peter Winch’s English translation followed in 1980. It includes thoughts on religion, culture and Shakespeare, a list of thinkers who influenced him, and his first recorded use of “family resemblance”, in a 1931 note on Spengler.
Remarks on Colour
Among his last writings, from the final period of his life, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe. He asks why there can be no transparent white or reddish green, and whether such facts are about the world or about the logic of our colour words.
In What Order to Read Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophers speak of an early and a later Wittgenstein. The early work is the Tractatus and the notebooks behind it; almost everything else belongs to the later period, from his return to Cambridge in 1929 until his death. Publication order says little about when things were written: the posthumous books appeared in the order his executors finished editing them.
Most readers find the later work easier to enter, because it argues by everyday examples rather than formal notation. Reading the Tractatus after the Investigations makes it clearer what he was arguing against; reading it first shows where he started.
A reading path
1. The Blue and Brown Books (1958)
2. Philosophical Investigations (1953)
3. On Certainty (1969)
4. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
5. Culture and Value (1977)
Everything Else Ludwig Wittgenstein Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Published in his lifetime
1
1 book · 1926
- 1926Wörterbuch für Volksschulena spelling dictionary for elementary schools, Vienna, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky
Other posthumous volumes
4
4 books · 1969–1982
- 1969Philosophische GrammatikPhilosophical Grammar, from his early-1930s manuscripts
- 1980Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychologytwo volumes of late remarks
- 1980Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge, 1930–1932from students’ notes
- 1982Last Writings on the Philosophy of PsychologyGerman and English, late manuscripts
The years · 1889–1953
Quick facts about Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Known for
- Wittgenstein is known for changing his own philosophy of language twice over: first arguing that sentences picture facts, then that meaning lies in how words are used.
- 1889
- Born in Vienna
- 1911
- Arrives in Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell
- 1921
- Tractatus
- 1939
- Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge
- Born
- 26 April 1889, Vienna, the youngest of eight children of the steel industrialist Karl Wittgenstein
- Studied
- Engineering in Berlin and Manchester; logic at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell, 1911–1913
- War
- Austro-Hungarian army, 1914–1918; prisoner of war in Italy for nine months
- Teacher
- Primary schools in rural Lower Austria, 1920–1926
- Cambridge
- Trinity College research fellow from 1930; Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, 1939–1947
- Citizenship
- Austrian, then British from 1939
- Died
- 29 April 1951, Cambridge, aged 62
The red mark is 1953: Philosophical Investigations, published two years after his death.
How Ludwig Wittgenstein Writes: Numbered Remarks
He did not write essays with an argument running from start to finish. The Tractatus is a set of numbered propositions, with decimals showing which remark comments on which: 1, 1.1, 1.11 and so on, down to the seven main statements. The later books are numbered remarks too, often only a few lines each, that he cut, reordered and rewrote over years.
The later work argues through small, concrete cases rather than definitions: builders calling out “Slab!”, a beetle in a box nobody else can see into, a drawing that is a duck or a rabbit. Many remarks are questions, and many are a conversation with an imagined objector whose view he is taking apart.
Much of what is printed under his name was never prepared by him for print. The Blue and Brown Books were dictated, several volumes are students’ notes, and the rest were selected and arranged by his executors from the thousands of pages of manuscripts and typescripts. That is why the same thought often turns up in several books in slightly different words.
Frequently asked questions about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s books
How many books has Ludwig Wittgenstein written?
Only two appeared in his lifetime: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and a spelling dictionary for primary schools (1926). Everything else was edited from his papers or students’ notes after his death. This page lists 10 key books and five further volumes, but the posthumous editions run to more than a dozen.
What are Ludwig Wittgenstein’s books in order?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Philosophical Investigations (1953), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), The Blue and Brown Books (1958), Notebooks 1914–1916 (1961), Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (1966), Zettel (1967), On Certainty (1969), Culture and Value (1977) and Remarks on Colour (1977).
Where should I start with Ludwig Wittgenstein?
The Blue and Brown Books: lecture notes he dictated in 1933–35, plainer than his other work, that introduce the ideas of Philosophical Investigations. Then read the Investigations itself.
What is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most famous book?
Two compete. The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) is the one he published, and its last sentence is widely quoted. Philosophical Investigations (1953) is the more influential: a 1999 poll in The Philosophical Forum found it the book most often named among the most important of twentieth-century philosophy.
Was Philosophical Investigations published after Wittgenstein died?
Yes. He worked on it from the mid-1930s but died on 29 April 1951 before it was finished to his satisfaction. Blackwell published it in 1953, in German with G. E. M. Anscombe’s English translation. The Blue and Brown Books, On Certainty and Culture and Value were also published posthumously.
What is the difference between the early and the later Wittgenstein?
The early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus holds that a meaningful sentence pictures a possible fact, and that what cannot be pictured cannot be said. The later Wittgenstein of the Investigations rejects this picture: words get their meaning from how they are used in shared activities, which he calls language-games.
Why did Wittgenstein become a schoolteacher?
After the Tractatus he believed he had solved the problems of philosophy. In 1919 he gave his inheritance to his siblings, trained as a teacher in Vienna and from 1920 taught in primary schools in rural Lower Austria, in Trattenbach, Puchberg and Otterthal, until 1926. His dictionary for primary schools came out of those years.
What happened at Wittgenstein’s school in Otterthal?
In April 1926 he struck an eleven-year-old pupil, Josef Haidbauer, two or three times on the head, and the boy collapsed. Wittgenstein resigned on 28 April 1926. Court proceedings began in May; a judge ordered a psychiatric report, and what happened next is not known. In 1936 he went back to visit at least four former pupils to apologise.
Did Wittgenstein go to school with Hitler?
They attended the same Realschule in Linz in 1903–04 and were almost the same age, but they were never in the same class, and there is no evidence that they ever met there.
What were Wittgenstein’s last words?
According to his biographers, he said “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”, meant for the friends due to visit him. He died of prostate cancer in Cambridge on 29 April 1951, three days after his 62nd birthday.
Footnotes
- Ludwig Wittgenstein — Wikipedia
- Philosophical Investigations — Wikipedia
- On Certainty — Wikipedia
- Blue and Brown Books — Wikipedia
- Culture and Value — Wikipedia
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann — Trinity College Cambridge Archives
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), proposition 7, translated by C. K. Ogden
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