Prototractatus: An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (review)

490 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Introduction ~ la Philosophie. Par Ren6 Le Senne. Cinqui~me 6dition augment6e et raise/t jour par Edouard Morot-Sir et Paule Levert. (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1970. Pp. vii+604. 28 F) This fifth edition of a well-known text by the late Prof. Le Senne of the Sorbonne and leader of the recent movement known as "Philosophie de l'Esprit" has been supplemented by a new Part IV, written by Prof. Morot-Sir, who was familiar with Le Senne's work and thought, and who is an influential contributor to contemporary French philosophy, education and culture. A note about this new Part IV is in order here. This new part is entitled La Conscience philosophique en France de 1940 d nos jours. This emphasis on "consciousness" is significant. In addition to the prevalence in France during the last decades of phenomenological method, the French people and nation have been very self-conscious. Their critical, agonizing experience has prompted an exploration of self-consciousness and subjectivity that has yielded new dimensions to the theory of human existence and sensitivity. Prof. Morot-Sir describes the various aspects of this exploration with clarity and authenticity. The story is told in four stages: (1) the rejection of idealism as an adequate account of mind and person, in favor of a broader, less inteUectualistic, existential basis and relevance; (2) the awareness of the critical "historical actuality" of recent decades; (3) "the dramatization of consciousness" in fact, phenomenology, and art; (4) the "thdf~tralisation" of consciousness . The analysis of this last stage is especially significant. Putting self-consciousness on the stage, viewing subjectivity objectively in action and in representation adds a fresh insight into the "spirit" of contemporary French thought and also a new chapter in the general history of philosophy. Except for the last decade, Ren6 Le Senne was himself a leading spirit, and this analysis from a post-mortem perspective would have intrigued him and, I imagine, pleased him. For it shows how the structure of communication and inter-personal experience becomes central for an adequate understanding of personality; and to this theme Le Senne had devoted his own thought and the last chapters of his Introduction . Good Notes and References make this book a very informative text. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont Graduate School Prototractatus: An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ed. B. F. McGuinness, T. Nybert and G. H. von Wright. Trans. by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. Historical Intro. by G. H. von Wright and a facsimile of the author's manuscript. (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971. Pp. 256) Professor von Wright discovered a manuscript version of the Tractatus in Vienna in 1965. This work is published here in facsimile, together with an introduction by yon Wright and the printed German text and English translation on facing pages. The editors and translators have done a painstaking job, indicating in the German text all, including the most trivial, deviations from the final published form of the Tractatus. Many of these deviations are purely stylistic, often consisting in the adding or omitting of punctuation. Most of the significant changes appear to take the form of additions and elucidations in the later version. Nothing in the earlier version, I think it fair to BOOK REVIEWS 491 say, is likely to alter current understanding of the Tractatus in any appreciable way, nor does it shed much light on the many perplexing passages with which commentators have wrestled for years. Professor yon Wright's introduction, however, gives us fascinating glimpses into Wittgenstein's character, and goes some way to resolving some of the controversies that have surrounded the Ogden translation. The Times Literary Supplement a few years back contained in its correspondence columns (apropos of the Pears and McGuinness translation) an often lively and at least once rather disgraceful exchange involving on one side the Wittgenstein executors and on the other a gentleman who claimed to have heard Wittgenstein say that he, Wittgenstein, had checked and approved Ogden's translation. Professor yon Wright now confesses that his researches into the publication history of the Tractatus do tend to show that Wittgenstein did read and approve the Ogden...