‘I read a great deal in Goethe's “Farbenlehre” ‘

Perhaps unsurprisingly given its title, Remarks on Colour has been treated as a collection of incidental philosophical observations about colour. Seemingly carried along by the intrinsic interest of the subject, philosophers, colour theorists and artists interested in colour mostly pay attention to Wittgenstein's scattered insights. This way of reading his remarks squares with his confession in the Preface of Philosophical Investigations that ‘the best [he] could write would never be more than philosophical remarks’ and his acknowledging that while he sometimes has ‘a fairly long chain [of remarks] about the same subject’, he makes ‘sudden change[s] , jumping from one topic to another’. It does not, however, square so well with his accompanying wish that his ‘thoughts proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks’. Regardless of how unstructured Remarks on Colour may seem at first sight, it would be remarkable if colour were not treated with the same rigour as language and the mind is treated in the Investigations. It is to be expected that the book is informed by a similar philosophical vision and possesses a discernible underlying rationale.

Nobody can deny that Remarks on Colour is less organized than the Investigations. It is not a polished work but is, as G. E. M. Anscombe describes it in her ‘Editor's Preface’, ‘a clear sample of first-draft writing and subsequent selection’. Still it is not a random collection of occasional remarks to be dipped into and quoted. Rather the reverse. Wittgenstein clearly believed what he had written could be reorganized and presented in a more orderly manner. Indeed, in Part I, a collection of remarks largely chosen –with additions –from Part III, the remarks are less jumbled. Moreover if Wittgenstein's past practice is anything to go on, he would in time have culled and supplemented the remarks of Part I with the object of clarifying and strengthening the philosophical points and claims he sought to make. Much harder to know, assuming Wittgenstein was not merely setting down random thoughts, is what he is about. It cannot be ruled out, on pain of an incomplete or faulty interpretation of the text, that his remarks are shaped by a definite philosophical stance and he is directing his fire against specific philosophical targets.