wittgenstein’s remarks on colour

Philosophical Investigations 22:3 July 1999ISSN 0190-0536

Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour

Alan Lee, Flinders University

If there is a consensus about Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour it is tothe effect that the work has a number of loosely related themes, butno clear structure or thesis.1 So, for example, Jonathan Westphal, inhis book-length study of the Remarks, offers no interpretation of thetext as a whole, but instead confines his attention to a number of‘puzzle propositions’ derived from it.2 In offering a solution to themost prominent of these puzzles – whether anything can be trans-parent white – he goes so far as to assert that he does not understandwhat Wittgenstein meant by his discussion of the issue, or what hewould have countenanced by way of a solution.3 Marie McGinn alsoregards the work as lacking a structure. Her article on the Remarks

begins with the observation that ‘the task of giving some sort ofinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour is an extraordin-arily difficult one’ because, as she says, the book is ‘exceptionallyfragmentary’.4 She observes that it is unclear ‘how the work as awhole fits into the traditional philosophical discussion of colour thathas arisen in the wake of the distinction between primary and sec-ondary qualities’.5 Finding no connection to this tradition, she is ledto the view that Wittgenstein’s problems derive from our everydaylanguage of colour, and that the aim of the work is to ‘resolve thequestions about colour that puzzle us most deeply’.6 Zeno Vendler,in his examination of the relation between the Remarks and Goethe’streatise on colour, shows how closely Wittgenstein’s ideas can beassociated with Goethe’s. Yet his analysis does not develop from or

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, G. E. M. Anscombe (ed.), Linda L.McAlister and Margaret Schättle (trans.) (Oxford: Oxford, 1977).2. Jonathan Westphal, Colour: Some Philosophical Problems from Wittgenstein (Oxford:Blackwell, 1987), p. 1.3. Op. cit., pp. 12–13.4. Marie McGinn, ‘Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour’, Philosophy, 66, 1991, pp.435–53, p. 435.5. Op. cit., p. 435.6. Ibid.

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lead to an understanding of how Wittgenstein composed his text as aresult of reading Goethe’s book.7 He notes that Goethe andWittgenstein present their observations in an unsystematic fashion,and that where Goethe’s text is ‘incomplete and not wellorganized’,8 Wittgenstein’s text is equally so: ‘As to Wittgenstein, weare accustomed to his criss-crossing the landscape, following the nat-ural inclination of his thoughts: Goethe propositions turn up asneeded to raise or illustrate philosophical points’.9

Contrary to these views, I shall argue that Remarks on Colour is farfrom being a fragmentary collection of puzzles, and that the natureof its connection to Goethe’s treatise has been misunderstood. Whenthe origins of the work are traced in Wittgenstein’s earlier writings,and its complex and indirect relationship to Goethe’s text is recog-nized, then Remarks on Colour can be seen to have been carefullyorganized and to have an identifiable thesis. The seemingly disparatetopics were brought together because of the way they bear on moregeneral problems, and the final draft of the work (i.e. the 88 remarksof Part I), shows clear signs of being arranged for the understandingof a future readership. That last version can be thematically dividedas follows: (1) the opening remark with its connection to theTractatus; (2) the response to Lichtenberg on the concept of white(I–3 to 5); (3) the status of green as compound or simple, which isrelated to colour mixture and colour-blindness (from I–6 to 16);then the distinctively new content begins with (4) Runge’s problemabout transparent white (beginning at I–17), which is closely inter-connected with (5) colour in pictorial representation (passim); then(6) the criticism of Goethe (I–70 to 74); from which point the dis-cussion of colour trails off into more general remarks about theconcept of seeing (I–75 to 88).

In his biography of Wittgenstein, Ray Monk has pieced togetherthe circumstances in which the work now published as Remarks on

Colour was produced.10 It was while visiting his family in Vienna inJanuary 1950 that Wittgenstein took up Goethe’s Theory of Colours inthe hope that it would spur him to philosophize. Before leaving

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7. Zeno Vendler, ‘Goethe, Wittgenstein, and the Essence of Color’, Monist, Vol.78 (1995), pp. 391–410.8. Op. cit., p. 392.9. Op. cit., p. 395.10. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1991),p. 561.

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Vienna he had produced the sequence of 20 remarks, which nowform Part II of the published work. This brief section is helpful incoming to understand the genesis of the whole work because itrecords the discovery of the problem about transparent white. The350 remarks of Part III were written next, with dates in the textranging from 24 March to 12 April, and almost a year later the 88remarks of Part I were selected from this with little change of con-tent or wording, but with significantly altered organization andordering. Wittgenstein’s work at this time was, presumably, to selectthe most important material and put it in meaningful sequence.

The central idea that gives structure to the text is the discoverythat it is an ‘internal’ or ‘timeless’ fact about white that it is opaque.The investigation of this anomalous status of white among thecolours takes the form of asking why, and in what sense, transparentwhite is impossible. The first remark of the final draft announces thelogical distinction that is to give philosophical significance to theseemingly trivial fact of white’s opacity. However, the example oflightness values between colours, which is used to introduce the log-ical distinction, and which is not mentioned again in the final draft,poses a problem for any understanding of Wittgenstein’s text:

A language game: Report whether a certain body is lighter ordarker than another. – But now there’s a related one: State therelationship between the lightness of certain shades of colour.(Compare with this: Determining the relationship between thelengths of two sticks – and the relationship between two num-bers.) – The form of the propositions in both is the same: ‘X islighter than Y’. But in the first it is an external relation and theproposition is temporal, in the second it is an internal relation andthe proposition is timeless. (I–1, p. 2e)

P. M. S. Hacker has noted a tendency for Wittgenstein to repeatmaterial from the Tractatus in his later writings, but in a way that is‘semi-ironical’, so that he is using ‘old bottles to hold new wine’.11

This could be such a case. The opening remark seems intended tomake a connection between Wittgenstein’s new ideas about whiteand earlier writings, notably the following passage from the Tractatus:

A property is internal if it is unthinkable that its object shouldnot possess it.

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11. P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion, revised ed. (Oxford: Oxford, 1986), p.146.


(This shade of blue and that one stand, eo ipso, in the internalrelation of lighter to darker. It is unthinkable that these twoobjects should not stand in this relation.)

(Here the shifting use of the word ‘object’ corresponds to theshifting use of the words ‘property’ and ‘relation’.)12

The emphasis in ‘these two objects’ draws attention to the distinctionwhich is later to be expressed by the contrast between what is ‘inter-nal’ and ‘timeless’ as compared to what is ‘external’ and ‘temporal’.That is to say, two physical objects may be perceived to have a certain lightness relation, but their properties may change as one ofthem fades and the other tarnishes. However, if within the system ofcolours it is possible to identify the colours that the two objects tem-porally have, then these two objects (the colours themselves) areimmutable, and any relation they bear to each other is internal to thesystem of colours.

Elsewhere in Wittgenstein’s work the lightness relations betweencolours is given as an example in drawing the distinction betweeninternal and external relations. There is one such version in FriedrichWaismann’s notes of Wittgenstein’s conversations from December1929, under the heading ‘External–Internal’:

I can say that this suit is darker than the other one. But I cannotsay that one colour is darker than the other one. For this is of theessence of a colour; without it, after all, a colour cannot bethought.13

Another example is to be found in Remarks on the Foundations of

Mathematics, where the expression ‘White is lighter than black’ is saidto be ‘non-temporal’ and to express the existence of an ‘internal rela-tion’.14 Its being ‘non-temporal’ is also explained by saying that theproposition does not express the result of an experiment. Theaccount here is more extended than that in Remarks on Colour, andclearer for being more discursive.15


12. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tactatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F. Pears and B. F.McGuinness (trans.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 4.123, p. 27.13. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, notes recorded by F. Waismann, B. F.McGuinness (ed.), J. Schulte and B. F. McGuinness (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell,1979), p. 55.14. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, G. E. M.Anscombe (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), p. 30e.15. Ibid. The relevant discussion begins at section 99, and extends through section105, pp. 29–31.


The notes made by three of Wittgenstein’s students at his lectureon 4 November 1946 are of interest because they provide a recordof the logical distinction being made in an extended discussion aboutcolour, but with the simplicity of white being used as an example ofa timeless fact.16 The three parallel sets of notes give a lively sense ofthe discussion, but P. T. Geach’s version is perhaps the most conciseand explicit on this particular point:

Jackson: ‘White is simple’ is timeless.Wittgenstein: ‘White is simple’ is to ‘the room’s colour is simple’ as‘7 is prime’ is to ‘the number of papers in my pocket is prime’.17

Another version of the idea, which is to be found in Zettel, is of special interest because an explicit connection is made to Goethe’sTheory of Colours. To a remark that says in part: ‘we calculate with cer-tain concepts and not with others’ Wittgenstein has added a marginalnote: ‘On propositions about colours that are like mathematical ones e.g. Blue is darker than white. On this Goethe’s Theory ofColour.’18 The brief Vienna manuscript, which recordsWittgenstein’s first thoughts about transparent white, makes no ref-erence to internal relations, or to lightness relations between colours.However, the idea indicated in Zettel clearly does form the startingpoint for work on the long draft. That draft begins under the date 24March 1950 with just three brief remarks. The first suggests thatwhite must be the lightest colour in a picture. This is followed bythe claim that the white, red and blue of the Tricolour have a fixedlightness relation, and of this it is said: ‘Here we have a sort of math-ematics of colour’ (III–3, p. 17e). The next remark is dated two dayslater, and here Wittgenstein says he is uncertain whether pure red islighter or darker than blue, and that in order to answer this hewould have to see them, adding: ‘And yet, if I had seen them, Iwould know the answer once and for all, like the result of an arith-metical calculation’ (III–4, p. 17e). The next remark draws adistinction between colour theory and botany, and, though Goethe

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16. Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946–47, notes by P. T. Geach,K. J. Shah, and A. C. Jackson, P. T. Geach (ed.) (New York: Harvester, 1988). Seepp. 17–21 for Geach’s account of the lecture and p. 18 for the specific reference towhat is ‘timeless’; pp. 135–39 and specifically p. 136 for Shah’s record of the same;and pp. 256–61 and specifically pp. 257–58 for Jackson’s.17. Geach, op. cit., p. 18.18. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.)(Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), section 347, p. 64e. According to the editors most type-scripts date from 1945–48.


is not mentioned, it is presumably intended as a reference toGoethe’s scientific endeavours in these two fields. However, the dis-tinction Wittgenstein draws is one that Goethe would not haverecognized:

Is there such a thing as a ‘natural history of colours’ and to whatextent is it analogous to a natural history of plants? Isn’t the lattertemporal, the former non-temporal? (III–8, p. 17e).

The elements that are being sketched out at the beginning of thisdraft are related to the opening remark of the final draft quotedabove (i.e. I–1, p. 2e). Later in the long draft, under the date 4 April,there is a full version of the opening remark (at III–131, p. 34e), yeta number of small differences between this version and I–1 indicatethe care taken over its composition.19

While it is evident that the logical distinction made in the openingremark had enduring significance in Wittgenstein’s thought, it is notclear what connection it has to Goethe’s Theory of Colours. The sug-gestion made in the marginal note in Zettel is explicit, and the waythe long draft begins is consistent with Wittgenstein’s havingbelieved that Goethe’s text dealt with such ideas. Nevertheless, therewould seem to be nothing in Goethe’s text that answers toWittgenstein’s expectation. Goethe does not propose anything thatcan be construed as a mathematics or arithmetic of colour, and hehas no systematic account of colours in relation to their lightness val-ues. Moreover, nothing in Wittgenstein’s subsequent discussionstands as a direct continuation of these opening remarks, and nothinghe says indicates how he thought these ideas were connected withGoethe.

A possibility that deserves consideration is that this failure to con-nect with Goethe’s text arose through Wittgenstein having attributedto Goethe an idea that originates from a book on colour whichSchopenhauer wrote after some conversations and correspondencewith Goethe.20 From Wittgenstein’s earliest adult years, when he is known to have been so deeply impressed by Schopenhauer’s


19. E.g. in the 4 April version the last sentence lacks the double contrast betweenwhat is ‘external’ and ‘temporal’ compared to what is ‘internal’ and ‘timeless’ (i.e. itsimply reads: ‘But in the first language-game they are temporal and in the secondnon-temporal’).20. Arthur Schopenhauer, Über das Sehn und Farben (first edition 1816), SämtlicheWerke, Vol. III, Wolfgang Frhr. von Löhneysen (ed.) (Stuttgart/Frankfurt am Main:Cotta-Insel, 1962), pp. 204–97.


philosophy, he may have had some partial or indirect knowledge ofthis book, and consequently he may have attributed to Goethe aremarkable and independently famous idea that was Schopenhauer’sinnovation.21 The idea is that colour is to be understood in terms ofthe activity or response of the retina, such that, where white is fullactivity, black is zero activity, and all the colours can be representedby some arithmetic fraction between one and zero. Furthermore,each of the three complementary colour pairs (i.e. red/green,orange/blue and yellow/violet) also have complementary lightnessvalues, in the sense that the fractions representing those values addup to unity. Red and green, which Schopenhauer sees as having pre-cisely equal lightness values, must be in the proportion 1/2:1/2,while orange is lighter than its complement blue, such that this pairare in the proportion 2/3:1/3. Yellow is even closer to white, and itscomplement violet correspondingly closer to black, and they areseen as being in the proportion 3/4:1/4. Schopenhauer holds theserelationships to be self evident.22 His answer to Wittgenstein’s ques-tion about the lightness relation between red and blue would be thatit is the difference between 1/2 and 1/3. This judgement wouldrequire some peculiar combination of visual perception and arith-metical calculation, but this is just what Wittgenstein does suggest. Itis possible that the question he formulated in 1950 was prompted byhis having read Goethe’s description of a colour plate in his bookshowing various sets of juxtaposed red and blue squares set on whiteand on black backgrounds. Goethe says of the two colours: ‘Red isproportionally much lighter on black than blue is’.23 However, thisobservation is about the printed surfaces in his diagrams, and is notnecessarily intended to be about the colours red and blue in anymore general sense. Even if it were, Goethe certainly does not draw

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21. Some suggestive evidence about Wittgenstein’s milieu and the availability ofunreliable accounts of Goethe’s colour theory is provided by Johannes Itten, theBauhaus pedagogue, who was teaching in Vienna in 1920. He gives a detailedaccount of Schopenhauer’s colour fractions, attributing the whole system to Goethewithout any mention of Schopenhauer. See his The Elements of Color (New York:Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), pp. 59–63.22. Schopenhauer, op. cit., note 20, 233. An account of Schopenhauer’s theory canbe found in P. F. H. Lauxtermann, ‘Hegel and Schopenhauer as Partisans of Goethe’sTheory of Color’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 51, 1990, pp. 599–624, see espe-cially p. 618.23. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, Charles Lock Eastlake (trans.)(Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), section 262, p. 108; the reference is to fig.1, Plate III.


the distinction that is central to Wittgenstein’s interests (i.e. the dis-tinction expressed in I–1). As Wittgenstein says in these openingremarks of the long draft, he is concerned with something ‘once andfor all, like an arithmetical calculation’ (III–4, p. 17e). And thecolours which figure in these timeless judgements are ‘pure’ or ‘satu-rated’ in a sense which he directly acknowledges to be problematic:‘Where do we draw the line here between logic and experience?’(III–4, p. 17e). ‘The word whose meaning is not clear is “pure” or“saturated”. How do we learn its meaning?’ (III–5, p. 17e).

It need not be supposed that Schopenhauer’s colour arithmeticwould have been any more credible to Wittgenstein than it is to us,yet when he took up Goethe’s Theory of Colours in January 1950 hemay have been hoping to find the original expression of some ideasabout colour that he had long been using to his own ends.24 If hehad made this mistaken attribution it would help to explain why, ina work putatively inspired by Goethe’s book, he engages so littlewith anything actually written by Goethe.

Whether or not the opening remark is in this way related to mis-taken expectations about Goethe’s Theory of Colours, in the endWittgenstein still regarded that remark as the appropriate introduc-tion to the final draft of his work. Since lightness relations betweencolours are not discussed again in the final draft, it would seem thatthe opening remark is there for the sake of the logical distinction itintroduces, and also for the connection it makes to Wittgenstein’searlier writings. There is no obvious connection between lightnessrelations and the topic that is distinctively new in Remarks on Colour,namely the discussion of transparent white. The Vienna manuscriptis almost exclusively concerned with Wittgenstein’s first thoughtsabout this topic, and in the other two drafts almost a third of all theremarks, up to the point where the discussion of colour ends, areeither about transparent white, or about the concept of white.Ultimately, if we are to discern a unifying thought operating withinRemarks on Colour, we must see how the logical distinction has appli-cation to this new topic. However, before arriving at the discussion


24. He may have been prepared to regard the system with the same ironic approvalhe shows for Schopenhauer’s idea that ‘man’s real life span is 100 years’. Wittgensteinacknowledges that such an idea sets aside concerns about how long men do actuallylive, but says: ‘It is just as though you have understood a creator’s purpose. You havegrasped the system’, Culture and Value, G. H. von Wright (ed.), Peter Winch (trans.)(Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 26e, from a source dated 1937.


of transparent white, which begins at I–17, it is important to con-sider how, despite appearances, the remarks that precede this have aplace in the story.

The second remark immediately connects the lightness relationbetween colours with two of the most important topics in what is tofollow, namely pictorial representation and the problematic nature ofwhite:

In a picture in which a piece of white paper gets its lightness fromthe blue sky, and sky is lighter than the white paper. And yet inanother sense blue is the darker and white the lighter colour.(Goethe). On the palette white is the lightest colour. (I–2, p. 2e)

This remark seems to be an explicit formulation of the thoughtbehind the otherwise obscure remark that begins the long draft, i.e.‘?White must be the lightest colour in a picture’ (III–1, p. 17e). Eventhis explicit version is compressed and benefits from a reading of itstwo draft versions (III–57, p. 24e, and III–132, p. 34e). A piece ofwhite paper is represented as being seen in the shade, so that it isilluminated only by light from the sky, and not by the direct light ofthe sun. The colour used to represent it will correspond to the blueof the sky, but it must be darker. If the painter fails to follow suchrules, a naturalistic effect of space and illumination will not beachieved in the picture.

The sequence of remarks from I–3 to 5 further develop the themeof the problematic nature of white by criticizing an idea attributed toLichtenberg, but as with other material in the Remarks the signifi-cance is lost if we do not know the text to which Wittgensteinrefers:

Lichtenberg says that very few people have ever seen pure white.So do most people use the word wrong, then? And how did helearn the correct use? – He constructed an ideal use from the ordi-nary one. And that is not to say a better one, but one that hasbeen refined along certain lines and in the process something hasbeen carried to extremes. (I–3, p. 2e)

The source is not to be found in Goethe’s text. Even though Goethedoes make a number of passing references to Lichtenberg, there isnothing about him having claimed that very few people have seenpure white.25 There is, however, a text of Lichtenberg’s where the

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25. The index to the full German text lists seven references to Lichtenberg, all ofwhich prove to be incidental. J. W. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, Manfred Wenzel (ed.)(Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1991).


idea does occur, and in a context that allows clear sense to be madeof Wittgenstein’s remark. In 1793 Goethe had sent Lichtenberg anessay on coloured shadows which prompted him to set down hiscontrary views in a notebook entry.26 After remarking that Goethe’sexplanation was already to be found in an earlier French text,Lichtenberg goes on to say that what is really needed is ‘an exactinvestigation of what it is we call white’.27 That is, he proposes aconceptual investigation in contrast to Goethe’s physical and physio-logical one. The strange idea that Wittgenstein criticizes proves tohave been offered in a hypothetical sense. That is, Lichtenberg sug-gests that the physical conditions for producing pure white wouldonly exist in the purest sunshine on the highest point of the earth’ssurface, and hence cannot be the basis of our everyday judgements ofwhiteness: ‘even though we can observe no pure white, yet weknow very well what we understand by white’.28 On Lichtenberg’sview we are able to see things as white because we are always cor-recting our sensations by ‘inferences’. The passage anticipates laterexplanations of the phenomenon of coloured shadows in terms ofcolour constancy and the relativity of colour.

Wittgenstein would not have missed Lichtenberg’s point, nor canwe suppose he intended his remarks to be understood apart from theoriginal text. In the light of that text his remarks have the muchricher sense of, firstly, endorsing Lichtenberg’s call for a conceptualinvestigation of white (and perhaps also endorsing his critical attitudetowards Goethe), and then, secondly, raising his own further ques-tion about the need to explain how we acquire the conception ofwhiteness that Lichtenberg invokes. This whole passage fromLichtenberg is so relevant to Wittgenstein’s investigation that he mayhave wanted to cite it, or quote it, as a kind of introduction to hiswork on colour, in much the same way as the quotation from St.Augustine concerning language acquisition stands as an introductionto Philosophical Investigations.

This initial reference to Lichtenberg, and the way Runge’s ideasare taken up later in the text, suggest the possibility that Wittgenstein


26. George Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, Vol. II (Munich: CarlHanser Verlag, 1971), Wolfgang Promies (ed.), Heft K, section 366, pp. 468–69. Atranslation of the relevant passage can be found in J. P. Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrineof Scattered Occasions (Bloomington: Indiana, 1959), p. 96.27. Ibid., loc. cit. Emphasis in original.28. Ibid., loc. cit.


was disappointed with Goethe’s ideas as he found them in 1950. In aletter to G. H. von Wright dated 10 January of that year, he said ofthe book: ‘It’s partly boring and repelling, but in some ways alsovery instructive and philosophically interesting’.29 These observa-tions are consistent with his having previously known Goethe’scolour theory largely or exclusively from secondary sources.Furthermore, it may be possible to see the development of an inde-pendent understanding of Goethe’s book in the difference betweenWittgenstein’s first and last direct references to Goethe. In theVienna manuscript he writes: ‘Phenomenological analysis (as e.g.Goethe would have it) is analysis of concepts and can neither agreewith nor contradict physics’ (II–16, p. 16e). Goethe never describedhis work as phenomenological analysis, so it would seem thatWittgenstein was approaching it under the influence of later inter-pretations which did construe it in this way. In what is perhaps amore considered view, expressed at the end of the discussion ofcolour in the final draft, Goethe’s work is more accurately classifiedas physics, and directly condemned for its failings as science. Andhere there is no suggestion that there is some other better way tojudge it. Of Goethe’s theory of the spectrum he says:

. . . it really isn’t a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted with it.It is, rather, a vague schematic outline of the sort we find inJames’s psychology. Nor is there any experimentum crucis whichcould decide for or against the theory. (I–70, p. 11e)

At the same place, he is no less critical of Goethe’s claim that hisdoctrine of colours would be of practical use to painters and decora-tors (I–73, p. 12e). Overall, this is not the assessment of an apologistor fellow-traveller.

The remarks from I–6 to 16 discussing the simplicity of green andcolour blindness follow the three remarks about Lichtenberg’s ideawithout any connection or explanation, and the issues that are raisedseem at first to be unrelated to Goethe or to the central theme aboutwhite. The discussion begins with the question: ‘What is there infavour of saying that green is a primary colour, not a blend of blueand yellow?’ (I–6, p. 2e). The answer that follows this is consistentwith what might be called Wittgenstein’s doctrine of the four pri-mary colours, but the emphasis on green is distinctive, and it is this

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29. Ray Monk, op. cit., note 10, p. 561.


that shows a connection to Goethe, and ultimately to the problemabout white.

In the painter’s traditional system there are three primary colours(red, yellow and blue), whereas in the phenomenologists’ systemgreen is also a primary. In the painter’s system the primaries are thosecolours from which all others may be generated by mixture on thepalette, whereas the phenomenologists’ system purports to describeintrospectable qualities of the colours themselves. In his various dis-cussions of the colour system with its four primaries (or six, whenblack and white are included in the three dimensional model of the colour octahedron), Wittgenstein never questions the correctnessof the received system, rather he seeks to give it a different founda-tion.30 The argument in favour of the simplicity of green in Remarks

on Colour is consistent with his long held position. In this particularcase it amounts to saying that green cannot be seen as bluish yellowin the same way that orange can be seen as reddish yellow, or in theway that purple can be seen as bluish red. A yellow that is slightlyorange can just as well be said to be slightly reddish (hence ‘orange’might be thought of as a redundant term). A yellow that is slightlygreen cannot, however, be seen as slightly bluish (and likewise a bluethat is slightly greenish cannot be seen as slightly yellowish). Hence,green cannot be replaced by ‘bluish yellow’ in a system of colourdescriptions, even if green is not required by the painter for mixing afull range of colours.

These problems about the status of green are connected withGoethe’s name, but only through disputes which arose as a conse-quence of later discoveries about colour. Although there is nothingin Goethe’s writings that resembles Wittgenstein’s way of analyzingcolour relations, Goethe did believe green to be essentially a com-pound of blue and yellow. For him, even the green in the spectrumwas assumed to be the result of the overlapping of blue and yellowlight.31 Hermann von Helmholtz argued that Goethe’s familiarity


30. Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge: 1930–32, Desmond Lee (ed.) (Oxford:Blackwell, 1980), p. 8. G. E. Moore’s notes from the lectures of the 1930s are alsohelpful, especially because Moore reports having discussed with Wittgenstein theidea that the colour system was a matter of ‘grammar’ and not psychology; seeMoore’s Philosophical Papers (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 317–18.31. A graphic idea of how Goethe believed this could happen is shown in Plate IV,fig. 1, Theory of Colours, op. cit., note 23.


with the results of mixing paint led to this misguided conviction.32

The green in the spectrum is not a compound of any other colours,but Goethe’s idea is especially misconceived since a mixture of blueand yellow light does not make green at all; it is only the ‘subtrac-tive’ mixture of blue and yellow, with filters or paints, that results ingreen. Helmholtz’s analysis of Goethe’s error about green is similarto his analysis of the error that led to Goethe’s anti-Newtoniantheory. Helmholtz suggested that for Goethe ‘the idea that whitelight could be composed of colored light seems to have been quiteinconceivable’,33 and consequently, according to Helmholtz, histheory was little more than a factitious description of the evidence interms of the fixed idea of the simplicity of white. In general, it is difficult to save Goethe’s reputation as a phenomenologist in the faceof Helmholtz’s suggestions that his theorizing was dominated byincompetent experimentation.

While there was no disputing Helmholtz’s authoritative refutationof Goethe’s colour theory, some psychologists did try to argue thatGoethe’s bad physics could be reinterpreted as good psychology.34

Their general complaint against Helmholtz’s theory of colour visionis based on the fundamental claim of psychophysical parallelism, i.e.that there must be some direct correspondence between colour phe-nomenology and the physiological mechanisms that are the basis ofcolour vision. Since white light is experienced as being simple, andnot a combination of the red, green and blue processes postulated inthe Young–Helmholtz theory, they recognized themselves as holdingan objection against Helmholtz that was analogous to Goethe’sobjection against Newton. In 1942 Edwin Boring, in his Sensation

and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology, could suggest

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32. The point does not feature in Helmholtz’s various writings about Goethe, andseems only to have been made fully explicit in an exchange between Helmholtz andEwald Hering, which Hering quotes in his Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense, LeoM. Hurvich and Dorethea Jameson (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1964), pp.48–49.33. ‘The Scientific Researches of Goethe’ (1853), Selected Writings of Hermann vonHelmholtz, Russell Kahl (ed.) (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press,1971), pp. 56–74, quotation from p. 67.34. The relevant history can be found in Edwin G. Boring, Sensation and Perceptionin the History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Irvington, 1942). See especiallypp. 112–16 for the account of Goethe, and pp. 206–14 for the account of the phe-nomenological theory of colour vision as it arises in opposition to Helmholtz’stheory.


that ‘Goethe may be said to head a phenomenological tradition’.35

However, this reputation is largely due to the interpretations of apol-ogists who have read phenomenological insights into Goethe’sconvictions about physical theory, rather than anything that isexplicitly argued in his book—as Boring suggestively puts it: ‘InGoethe’s theory of color . . . observational intuition appears at itsworst’.36

As Boring explains, the problem about the nature of green wascentral to an intense and futile dispute, the final stage of which camewith Franz Brentano’s contention that green is, after all, a mixture ofblue and yellow in the phenomenological sense. The question thatbegins Wittgenstein’s discussion (I–6, as quoted above) bears a strik-ing resemblance to the way Brentano’s lecture begins: ‘Is(phenomenal) green not a mixture of the (sensations) blue and yellow?’37 In putting his case Brentano was arguing against what heacknowledged to be the consensus view among psychologists. Heheld that Goethe had been right, and that the artistic tradition repre-sented a kind of majority of perceivers, against which a fewpsychologists stood as an insignificant minority. Boring suggests thatthis dispute showed up the barrenness of introspective methods inpsychology: ‘With the essential concepts undefined, no experimentum

crucis could be arranged’.38 He reports that he was once present in agroup of psychologists when the question of the complexity of greencame up for discussion. E. B. Titchener maintained that green wassimple, while E. B. Holt (in this matter following Brentano) main-tained that it was complex: ‘These two men flatly disagreed as to theevidence of introspection, and there was nothing that anyone couldpropose to bring about agreement’.39 Boring’s account of the historyof this problem could stand as justification of Wittgenstein’s con-tention in Remarks on Colour that: ‘There is no such thing asphenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems’(I–53, p. 9e).


35. Boring, op. cit., 116. Emphasis in original.36. Boring, op. cit., 114.37. Franz Brentano, ‘Vom phänomenalen Grün’, Untersuchungen zur Sinnes-psychologie (original publication 1907) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1979), pp.5–43; the quoted translation gives the content of Brentano’s opening sentence as for-mulated by H. T. Watt in his review, Mind, Vol. XVII, 1908, pp. 128–29. Wattgives a concise account of Brentano’s argument about green and the purported vin-dication of Goethe and the painters’ tradition.38. Boring, op. cit., note 34, p. 131.39. Boring, op. cit., note 34, p. 131.


It seems likely that Wittgenstein had at least some knowledge ofBrentano’s heterodox views about green – the sequence of remarksfrom I–6 to 16 might even be read as a response to Brentano.40

Consider, for example, that he develops his argument about greenwith a discussion of colour blindness – so too does Brentano. Andthough Wittgenstein makes sense of the connection in his ownterms, there can be little doubt that at some stage he was led to thesearguments by what he had come across in the psychological litera-ture. For some psychologists colour blindness provided a furtherargument against Helmholtz’s theory. Although that theory couldexplain the limited discriminatory powers of colour blind subjects bypostulating the absence of one of the three visual pigments, itseemed not to explain their experience of colour. As one representa-tive psychologist had put it:

The original supposition of the Helmholtzians was that one or theother of the three sorts of fibres was either wanting or paralysed . . . A person who is green-blind ought, upon this supposition, tosee in white only its red and blue constituents, and hence whiteought to look to him as purple looks to us.41

Without considering Wittgenstein’s discussion of the simplicity ofgreen and colour blindness in detail, it is clear that greater signifi-cance attaches to what he says if it can be assumed he had someknowledge of this dispute. Moreover, it would explain how theseproblems were connected in his mind to problems about the sim-plicity of white, since both issues feature in those arguments againstthe Young-Helmholtz theory which turn on the claim that phenom-enology is a guide to physiology. This seems to be the essentialbackground to Wittgenstein’s whole investigation of colour, since, ingeneral, he seeks to show that a certain kind of conceptual investiga-tion has priority over both phenomenology and physiology. As heonce explicitly put it: ‘The prejudice in favour of psychophysicalparallelism is a fruit of primitive interpretations of our concepts’.42

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40. Op. cit., note 37. Wittgenstein might have learned of Brentano’s views from sec-ondary sources such as: Boring, loc. cit., note 34; Watt, op. cit., note 37; E. B. Holt inThe New Realism, Edwin B. Holt, et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1912), p. 333.41. C. L. Franklin, Mind, NS Vol. 2, 1893, pp. 478–79.42. Zettel, op. cit., note 18, section 611, p. 106e. Although the remark here is madein relation to memory, the doctrine of psychophysical parallelism associated with EwaldHering’s theory of colour vision was given influential expression in his 1870 Viennalecture: ‘On Memory as a Universal Function of Organized Matter’, On Memory and theSpecific Energies of the Nervous System (Chicago: Open Court, 1895), pp. 1–27.


Following this discussion of green and colour blindness, the themeof white is resumed with the introduction of the distinctively newideas about transparency and opacity. Although the problem abouttransparent white originates with Wittgenstein’s January 1950 read-ing of Goethe’s book, it is important to see that it does not derivefrom Goethe. This is made clear in the final draft where, at thebeginning of the relevant discussion, Wittgenstein says: ‘Runge says(in the letter that Goethe reproduced in his Theory of Colours), thatthere are transparent and opaque colours. White is an opaque colour’(I–17, p. 4e). He is referring to a substantial letter (i.e. about 1,600words long) from the painter Philip Otto Runge which Goetheappended to his text. The letter is omitted from the translations ofGoethe’s book, and this may explain why it has not been the subjectof analysis in discussions of Wittgenstein’s remarks about transparentwhite.43 As far as I know, Jonathan Westphal is alone in having citedthe letter and given consideration to its possible influence, though hesees no special significance in Wittgenstein’s references to it.44

Although Zeno Vendler is directly concerned to trace the connec-tions between Goethe’s text and Wittgenstein’s Remarks, he seemsnot to have any direct knowledge of the letter.45 Not only doesRunge’s letter prove to be the source of the problem about transpar-ent white, it outlines a view of colour that Wittgenstein recognizesas being close to his own. And Runge’s approach to colour ismarkedly different from Goethe’s, despite what Goethe says in intro-ducing the letter to his readers.46 As we shall see, it was Runge, notGoethe, who spurred Wittgenstein to philosophize.

The specific passage referred to in Wittgenstein’s first reference tothe Runge letter is easily identified. It follows the description of the


43. It is omitted from the Eastlake translation of 1840, op. cit., note 23, and alsofrom the recent translation by Douglas Miller: J. W. von Goethe, Scientific Studies(New York: Suhrkamp, 1988). A translation can be found in Goethe’s Colour Theory,R. Matthei (ed.), H. Aach (trans.) (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971), pp.190–94.44. Westphal (op. cit., note 2, pp. 54–55) quotes a passage from the letter, butwithout translation. In a footnote on page 40 he describes as merely ‘curious’Wittgenstein’s comments about Runge’s claim that there are opaque and transparentcolours.45. Vendler (op. cit., note 7) cites only the Eastlake translation which omits the let-ter, and although he quotes one of Wittgenstein’s quotations from Runge (p. 396),he does not inquire into its source.46. ‘This printed testimony is by a young man who is not acquainted with myefforts, yet found himself on the same road’, Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 190.


systematic mixture of all the colours, first among themselves, andthen with black and white. Runge goes on to say: ‘Aside from thedifference between lighter and darker among the clean colors, thereis yet another important distinction coming from nature . . . whichconcerns transparency or opacity’.47 Runge would have been quitewrong if he regarded degrees of transparency and opacity as an‘internal’ variable of the colour system in the way that lightness anddarkness are. Yet this is the very issue that is central to Remarks on

Colour. The passage in the letter that most directly suggests theimpossibility of transparent white follows on from this, and may wellhave been a crucial stimulus for Wittgenstein’s entire undertaking. Itoccurs as a seemingly incidental observation in which Runge warnsagainst misunderstanding an idiomatic sense of the word ‘white’:

White as well as black are both opaque or solid. Do not get misledby the expression ‘white glass’, when ‘clear’ is meant. White waterwhich is pure is as inconceivable as clear milk.48

The fact that the idiom persists in German, and has its equivalent inEnglish, indicates that there is more to it than an incidental usage.The rationale for using ‘white’ where ‘clear’ is meant is that what-ever is being described must already be understood to be transparentin its nature, as wine is. Then it is called white to indicate that it isfree of all coloration, i.e. that it is colourlessly transparent. Withoutsuch prior understanding, to call a liquid white would be to describeit as being like milk.

If we look at what Wittgenstein said about white in the lecture of4 November 1946, it is possible to see how Runge’s remarks aboutthe opacity of white can have struck him as significant. In 1946Wittgenstein had given special emphasis to the idea that white andred are simple, in the sense that they are not compounded from anyother colours.49 Among the numerous inventive examples recordedin the three parallel sets of students’ notes there is no indication that he had suggested any sense in which white is not simple. The

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47. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 193.48. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 193. Wittgenstein quotes part of this passage (atI–21, p. 5e) and his quotation corresponds exactly to the German original; I haveslightly amended the translation in Matthei’s text to correspond to that in Remarks onColour.49. Geach et al., op. cit., note 16. The idea that ‘red is something simple’ is thestarting point recorded in all three sets of notes: Geach p. 18; Shah p. 135; Jackson p.257.


examples required by the discussion concern the distinction betweencolours, such as red and white, that cannot be visualized as com-pounds of other colours, and those such as brown, orange, purple,and pink, that seem, visually, to be mixtures. Special emphasis isgiven to the idea that the simplicity of white and red is ‘timeless’ – itdoes not depend upon the results of experiments with paint mixture,or blending colours on spinning discs. And, according to Geach’snotes, Wittgenstein said: ‘It makes no sense to ask what white wouldbe like if it weren’t simple. White is essentially simple . . .’.50 InPhilosophical Investigations, in an extended discussion of how it can beproblematic to classify something as either simple or composite,Wittgenstein asks ‘And is white simple, or does it consist of thecolours of the rainbow?’51 Clearly, in this context, we are expectedto answer that our concept of white is of something essentially sim-ple. It is against this background that the impact of Runge’sobservations can be understood. It is not, of course, that whiteproves to be compounded of other colours, but rather it proves to becompounded of a colour (i.e. a unique position in colour space, butone for which there is no common name), and something else (i.e.opacity). If some object is said to be red it might turn out to betransparent or opaque, yet if it is said to be white it is already,thereby, described as opaque. Although opacity and transparency areproperties of objects, independent of their colours, opacity wouldseem to be ‘internal’ to the concept of white – it is unthinkable thatwhite should not possess this property, hence, transparent white isunthinkable. A particular remark in the long draft suggests that this ishow the idea first became apparent to Wittgenstein:

It is easy to see that not all colour concepts are logically of thesame kind. It is easy to see the difference between the concepts:‘the colour of gold’ or ‘the colour of silver’ and ‘yellow’ or ‘grey’.

But it is hard to see that there is a somewhat related differencebetween ‘white’ and ‘red’. (III–241, p. 48e)

The difference between ‘white’ and ‘red’, which is central to what isidentifiably new in the Remarks, is related to the difference betweenvarious quasi-colours (e.g. gold or silver) and colours properly socalled (e.g. yellow or grey). And, as we shall see later, Wittgenstein


50. Geach et al., op. cit., note 16, p. 18.51. Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), p. 22.


explores this difference in terms of the role of colours in pictorialrepresentation.

From the Vienna manuscript it can be seen that Wittgensteinalready had Runge’s ideas in mind when he first set pen to paper:

Blending in white removes the colouredness from the colour; butblending in yellow does not. – Is that the basis of the propositionthat there can be no clear transparent white? (II–2, p. 15e)

Without his later acknowledgements it would be difficult to recog-nize this as a reference to the Runge letter – Runge’s name does notappear in the Vienna manuscript. Wittgenstein’s question seems torefer to the passage in Runge’s letter where he begins to explain thenecessary opacity of white in terms of the mixture of paints on thepalette:

Two clear colors, yellow and red, result in a clean orange mixture.. . . White through its inclusion makes all colors matte; thoughbecoming lighter in value, they lose their clarity and fire.52

In the final draft the central importance of Runge’s ideas is clearlyindicated at the beginning of the discussion that introduces the prob-lem of transparent white (i.e. beginning at I–17, p. 4e, as quotedabove). Shortly after this Wittgenstein quotes part of the ‘clear milk’passage, but this is preceded by another striking idea from Rungethat has also caught his attention:

Runge: ‘If we were to think of a bluish-orange, a reddish-green,or a yellowish-violet, we would have the same feeling as in thecase of a southwesterly northwind. . . . Both white and black areopaque or solid. . . . White water which is pure is as inconceivableas clear milk.’ (I–21, p. 5e, Wittgenstein’s ellipses.)53

Runge was one of the first to devise a three-dimensional model ofcolour space. His Farbenkugel (1810) was published in the year of hispremature death, and has its place among the first in the line ofmodels to which Wittgenstein’s colour octahedron belongs.54

Something of his distinctive achievement may have been known toWittgenstein independently of what he read in Goethe’s text. SinceRunge conceived his colour space in the form of a sphere, with

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52. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, pp. 191–92.53. For the original passages see Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 191 and p. 193.54. On the history of such models see E. G. Boring, op. cit., note 34, pp. 147–49and p. 154. It is only in later correspondence with Goethe that Runge gave a fulldescription of his colour sphere.


divisions like those of longitude and latitude (but carried through itsthree dimensions), it is understandable that he should have likenedreddish green to contradictory wind directions. Nevertheless, that hedid this shows how carefully he had thought out some of the conse-quences of his system, and it is clear that these insights have struck achord with Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus at 6.3751 Wittgenstein hadsaid: ‘the simultaneous presence of two colours at the same place inthe visual field is impossible . . . it is ruled out by the logical struc-ture of colour’. This is then likened to the way a contradictionappears in physics: ‘a particle cannot have two velocities at the sametime’.55 The importance of the colour exclusion problem in the sub-sequent development of Wittgenstein’s philosophy has been widelyrecognized.56 Given that the problem had such significance for him,it is not surprising that he should have been impressed to see thatRunge, as one of the first to describe the ‘logical structure ofcolour’, had hit upon an analogy so much like the one invoked inthe Tractatus.

Another example of Wittgenstein’s close engagement withRunge’s ideas is to be found in one of the discussions about the sim-plicity of green in the long draft. After giving a version of hisargument about how green is not bluish yellow in the way orange isreddish yellow, Wittgenstein suggests: ‘If someone had called thisdifference between green and orange to Runge’s attention, perhapshe would have given up the idea that there are only three primarycolours’ (III–113, p. 31e). At the beginning of his letter Rungeexplains that his system depends on ‘intermixing three colors’, andhow from this he hoped to attain ‘a picture covering the entireworld of color’, one that is ‘large enough to include all transforma-tions and phenomena’.57 His letter also gives a graphic schema of thetraditional painter’s colour circle in which green is a secondarycolour set between the primaries blue and yellow, in the same waythat orange is set between red and yellow.58 Although Goethe’s textalso follows this tradition, Wittgenstein seems to have believed that


55. Op. cit., note 12, p. 71.56. See, for example, Hacker, op. cit., note 11, pp. 108–12. Although the problemabout colour exclusion is different from the problem about contradictory colourdescriptions, they are related, and both are discussed by Wittgenstein. The physicalanalogy is relevant to both.57. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, pp. 190–191.58. Matthei, op. cit., note 43, p. 191.


only Runge would have understood his way of establishing the pri-mary status of green.

What may be an especially interesting reference to Runge’s ideasfollows the selected quotations from his letter at I–21 (as quotedabove), where Wittgenstein gives what is clearly to be read as a gen-eral characterization of his own aims:

We do not want to establish a theory of colour (neither a physio-logical one nor a psychological one), but rather the logic of colourconcepts. And this accomplishes what people have often unjustlyexpected of a theory. (I–22, p. 5e)

This remark is not merely associated with Runge by being placedbetween two direct quotations from him, it may also be an inten-tional amplification of something Runge says to Goethe. Afterexplaining how his own colour researches were motivated by hisdesire, as a painter, to reproduce natural effects, he goes on to writeof his study of ‘the characteristics of colours’, and of his attempt to‘penetrate into their nature’, and then the paragraph ends with theassertion that ‘this viewpoint will neither contradict nor obviatephysical research about color’.59 The same is certainly not true ofGoethe’s anti-Newtonian colour theory. In the long draft the remarkIII–188 (p. 43e) is identical to I–22, and this earlier version alsodirectly follows a remark that begins with a quotation from Runge’s‘clear milk’ passage, although in this case there is no attribution toRunge.60 The identification of the source of this quotation is impor-tant because these remarks occur in the middle of the most sustaineddiscussion of transparent white to be found anywhere in Remarks on

Colour (i.e. running from III–172 to 212, pp. 40e–45e). AlthoughRunge’s name does not appear in this part of the text, when the dis-cussion is read in relation to the Runge letter it can be seen thatWittgenstein is engaging closely with Runge’s ideas. Notably, it canbe seen that the problem about transparent white is developed interms of how such a thing could, or could not be, represented in apicture. For example, he explains that a certain description of trans-parent white is ‘not a proposition of physics, but rather a rule of thespatial interpretation of our visual experience’ (III–173, p. 41e). This contrast between physics and visual experience is furtherexplained by saying ‘We could also say, it is a rule for painters’, which

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59. Goethe’s Colour Theory, Matthei (ed.), p. 191.60. Wittgenstein’s German text gives an exact transcription of Runge’s words.


is followed by an explicit rule for representing a red transparentmedium. Later, the problem about transparent white is explicitly for-mulated in terms of pictorial representation: ‘What should thepainter paint if he wants to create the effect of a white, transparentmedium?’ (III–198, p. 44e).

That Wittgenstein casts the problem about the impossibility oftransparent white in terms of pictorial representation is not a restric-tion on the scope of the investigation, rather it is part of his analysis.It is implicit throughout the discussion that colours are to be under-stood as essentially visual qualities. Hence, it would need to be shownof any definition of whiteness stated in terms of some physical specifi-cation that it has an appropriate relation to our visual experience.Jonathan Westphal argues that transparent white is impossible becauseno object can both reflect and transmit all of the light incident uponit. He defines whiteness as the property of diffusely and non-selectively reflecting at least eighty per cent of the incident light.61

But such a definition is irrelevant to Wittgenstein’s investigationbecause we have no perceptual acquaintance with light before itreaches the surface which it illuminates. The ratio between illumina-tion and reflection is not part of our visual experience. At the end ofthe Vienna manuscript Wittgenstein does develop some ideas thatrelate hypothetical physical conditions to perceptual experience. Firsthe suggests that there could be a special kind of light which tends toimpose its own colour, or lack of colour, upon objects – in effect,illuminating them but overcoming their intrinsic colours. Then heconsiders the case of ‘an invisible light source, not perceptible to theeye’, which causes objects to radiate in their own colours (II–17 and18, p. 16e). He goes on: ‘Yes, suppose even that things only radiatedtheir colours when, in our sense, no light fell on them – when forexample the sky were black?’ (II–18, p. 16e). Significantly, the discus-sion ends with the observation: ‘I don’t see that the colours of bodiesreflect light into my eye’ (II–20, p. 16e). This uniquely technicalthought experiment is not reproduced in the later drafts, and it wouldbe reasonable to conclude that Wittgenstein recognized that suchphysical specifications of perceptible effects were not relevant to hisinvestigation of colour concepts: ‘Psychology connects what is expe-rienced with something physical, but we connect what is experiencedwith what is experienced’ (III–234, p. 48e).


61. Westphal, op. cit., note 2, pp. 19–23.


As suggested above, Wittgenstein associated the anomalous statusof white among the colours with the way such colour effects as goldand silver were ‘logically’ different from colours, properly so called.As a painter, Runge seems to have recognized that there are indefi-nitely many visually discriminable qualities that are not properlycalled colours, in the sense that they are not to be found anywhere inthe space of the colour solid. Quite possibly this would not havecome to his attention unless, as an accomplished naturalistic painter,he had been able to capture such effects by the use of his paints. Atmany places in the Remarks, Wittgenstein seems to suggest that picto-rial representation provides a practice that underpins a determinatesystem of colour (if anything does). So it is that he discusses the caseof representing a golden helmet, or a glass of amber fluid, or the case ofthe photograph in which a boy with blond hair can be seen.62 In eachcase the picture achieves a kind of reduction of heterogeneous coloureffects, since the picture itself is demonstrably made only of simplecolours. The most concise formulation of this principle is given in theremark: ‘There is gold paint, but Rembrandt didn’t use it to paint agolden helmet’ (III–86, p. 27e). The longest descriptive passages inthe final draft discuss this relationship between the effects to be seenin a picture, and the colours of which it is made (I–58 to 65, p. 30e).Wittgenstein suggests that a painting might be cut up like a jig-sawpuzzle, with the pieces small enough so that ‘even if a piece is notmonochromatic it should not indicate any three-dimensional shape’(I–60, p. 10e). Although he goes on to express misgivings aboutwhether such pieces ‘show us the real colours of the parts of the picture’, it is clear that he intends to contrast this relatively unprob-lematic reduction to the alternative which he goes on to describe:‘We are inclined to believe that the analysis of colour concepts wouldlead ultimately to the colours of places in our visual field’ (I–61, p. 10e).Unlike the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle, the hypothetical elements ofthe visual field cannot be moved about so as to be compared onewith another (III–108, p. 30e). The detailed drafts of these ideas inthe long manuscript confirm the deliberateness of this conjunction,even if Wittgenstein does not directly assert what the repeated com-parison implies.63

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62. On pictorial representation of gold, see: I–33, III–79 and 100; for amber, see:III–151; for blond, see: I–63 and 64.63. The following ten remarks show the development of the idea: III–53, 56, 68,69, 255, 256, 259, 265–268.


I believe that the central themes of Remarks on Colours have nowbeen identified and shown to have developed, at least to a significantextent, from Wittgenstein’s engagement with such sources as theRunge letter. Although an extensive examination would be neededto do full justice to the work, it may be possible to briefly suggesthow the central themes are related to Wittgenstein’s other late writ-ings. The distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ relations,which is introduced in the opening remark, already has a clearlydefined sense in the Tractatus. Nevertheless, in the Remarks this dis-tinction is developed in ways that bear comparison to the discussionof aspect perception in Part II of Philosophical Investigations. Seeingthat orange is yellowish red could be taken as a case of aspect per-ception. A person who has no deficiency of innate perceptualcapacity (i.e. someone who does not fail any colour-blindness test),might at first fail to see that orange is yellowish red, and subse-quently be taught to see it. In the Remarks Wittgenstein considersthe case of people who cannot learn our colour concepts:‘Therefore, they couldn’t “analyze blends of colours” nor could theylearn our use of X-ish Y. (Like people without perfect pitch.)’(III–129, p. 33e). Similarly in the Investigations he considers the possi-bility of human beings ‘lacking in the capacity to see something assomething’ and asks whether this ‘aspect blindness’ would be compa-rable ‘to not having absolute pitch’.64

In the Remarks it is suggested that the case of yellowish red mightbe used to explain ‘the role of logic in colour concepts’ (III–110, p.30e). The use of the word ‘yellowish’ will be learned through ‘lan-guage-games’ and is something ‘I can learn in agreement with otherpeople’, and characteristically ‘I learn to proceed independently justas I do in arithmetic’ (III–110, p. 30e). Apart from such elementarycases, there are others that are less certain, but still categorically ofthe same kind, such as being able to see that brown is always blackishand that it is related to yellow. Of this speculative case he says: ‘If wecontinue to think along these lines, “internal properties” of a colourgradually occur to us, which we hadn’t thought of at the outset. Andthat can show us the course of a philosophical investigation’ (III–63,p. 25e). Wittgenstein’s long favoured example of seeing the lightnessrelation between colours is only one of indefinitely many such abili-ties. Although the exercise of established colour concepts will lack


64. Investigations, op. cit., note 51, p. 213e.


the involuntary experiential qualities that characterize the dawningof an aspect, the object of sight in each case is equivalent: ‘what Iperceive in the dawning of an aspect is not a property of the object,but an internal relation between it and other objects’.65

Internal relations of the colour system do not entirely define thatsystem, since it is necessary to distinguish between colours properlyso called, and the wider range of visually discriminable qualities. Theproblematic status of white among the colours presents a problem ofdemarcation between internal and external relations of the coloursystem. Wittgenstein’s various thought experiments about transpar-ent white do not show him grappling with a problem that wasbeyond him, but investigating a more general problem. The use ofpictures as a criterion of visual experience plays a similarly complexrole in both the Remarks and the discussion of aspect perception inthe Investigations.66 Notably, some important conceptual distinctionscan be made by reference to pictures, while others cannot. In seeingan internal relation (e.g. seeing orange as yellowish red), the ‘object’of sight is not something that can be shown in a picture, any morethan a perceived similarity between two faces can be shown by mak-ing an accurate copy of them.67 On the other hand, the logicaldifference between yellow and gold can be shown by reference to anaturalistic painting of a golden helmet. And if anything could betransparent white then there could be an explicit rule to tell thepainter how to represent it in a picture.68

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65. Ibid., p. 212e.66. ‘What is the criterion of the visual experience? – The criterion? What do yousuppose? The representation of “what is seen”.’ Ibid., p. 198e.67. Ibid., p. 193e.68. I am grateful to Chris Provis for helpful discussions about this work.


wittgenstein’s remarks on colour

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