Wiener Ausgabe. Band I. Philosophische Bemerkungen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 475 mean the traditional notion of arche, i.e., a present homogeneous origin/kingdom" (243). The significance of this Ursprung ("the demythologized content-sense of the being-question") is that of the event (Ereignis) of world pretheoretically yielding itself itself and things (including the environing world, the world we share with others and our respective, ultimately personal "selfworlds'). Van Buren's basic contention is that Heidegger's demythologized question about being in the early Freiburg period is overtaken by remythologizing tendencies, from the existential-transcendental configuration of the question in Being and Time to various mythopoetic reconfigurations. The latter developments are at odds with Heidegger's earlier Freiburg elaboration of the concrete historicity and the personal, lived, anarchic character of the question of being. One intriguing and far-reaching implication of van Buren's interpretation is that Being and Time amounts to an Abweg, a mistaken by-way, from which Heidegger, despite the Kehre, never fully recovers. The choice of the metaphor of an Abwegis revealing and, in this connection, perhaps not entirely felicitous. For, if Being and Time is truly "off track," then there is presumably a right way and it must be possible to demonstrate both that right way and the nature of Being and Time's deviation from it. The terms of this crucial argument have been expertly set by van Buren in his monumental study, but the argument itself remains to be made. DANIEL O. DAHLSTROM The Catholic UniversityofAmerica Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wiener Ausgabe. Band i. PhilosophischeBemerkungen. Herausgegeben yon Michael Nedo. Wiener Ausgabe edition, volume i. Vienna: SpringerVerlag , I994. Pp. xix + t96. $98.oo. This volume, first in a projected series of eleven,' presents for the first time a complete , scholarly edition of Wittgenstein's manuscripts written between 1929 (when he took up residence at Cambridge) and i933 (three years into his Trinity fellowship). Although microfilms of the original manuscripts have been available for over twenty years, and portions of the manuscripts were transcribed and published by Wittgenstein 's literary executors in PhilosophicalRemarks and PhilosophicalGrammar, the highly selective editing of these, as well as the difficulties of working with microfilm, have thus far led most scholars to skirt systematic consideration of this material. This is unfortunate , for the material is crucial for history and for philosophy. In this period Wittgenstein frequently talked with Moore, Ramsey, and Sraffa--three major Cambridge figures. On visits home to Austria he spoke with members of the Vienna Circle (in particular Schlick, Waismann, Carnap, and Feigl). He reacted to the published work of Nicod, to Brouwer's Vienna lecture (1928) and to G6ders famed incompleteness theorems (1931). With the publication of the Wiener Ausgabe scholars will at last be able to thoroughly study and interpret the written results of Wittgenstein's complicated wan- ' A further extension isintended. Alsonow availableare the excellent Introductoryvolume to the series and Volume II, PhilosophischeBetrachtungen. 476 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 derings through this revolutionary intellectual landscape. Thus the series is essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the history of twentieth-century philosophy . In this regard its publication is especially timely, since the need for a thorough study of that history has been increasingly felt as we approach century's end. The edition's scholarly quality is impressive (I have not been in a position to compare the text with the archives); my only regret is that the indexes and concordance volumes are not yet available. The volumes are beautifully bound and printed, and the provenance of the source material is thoroughly d!scussed. Most important, the editor has given us a remarkably complete and perspicuous representation of every manuscript page. The format supplies: the original pagination and date of composition of each remark, the structure of the writing on the page (placement of marginal symbols, numbering of remarks, coded or uncoded lettering, etc.), the graphic symbols (underlining for emphasis; wavy underlining for dissatisfaction, etc.) and the text variants (linear insertions, deletions, and transpositions). Later volumes will include photographic reproductions of Wittgenstein's marginal annotations to various books he read (e.g., Hardy's A Course of Pure Mathematics)juxtaposed with transcriptions of the copies of these annotations that Wittgenstein...