Occasionally classified as his middle period, this stage of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophical thinking, from which the Philosophical Remarks and the Philosophical Grammar were posthumously edited and published by his executors, cannot be taken as an independent and self-contained part of the complete work, though. A careful study of the manuscripts shows that such classifications are misleading and likely to obstruct access to the work. The complex of the so-called Big Typescript marks the beginning of Wittgenstein's renewed preoccupation with philosophy in 1927 in Vienna after a nine-year hiatus. However, the links connecting this body of work to the later manuscripts as well as the connections within the later manuscripts are extremely complex. To this day, fifteen volumes of the Vienna edition have appeared on the basis of the posthumous manuscript corpus of the Big Typescript, dating from the years 1929-1938. Karl Popper called it the most important book edition of the century. In order to complete the edition of the Wittgenstein MSS corpus Big Typescript dating from 1929-1934, seventeen further volumes are to be published by 2021 by Vittorio Klostermann. Eighteen years after the appearance of Volume 8,1 of the Viennese edition of Wittgenstein's writings, the second part of the volume (WA8,2) is scheduled for publication: The Synopsis of Manuscript Volumes V to X, which together with the Synopsis of Volumes I to IV ( WA7) represents Wittgenstein's first revision of his manuscript volumes towards his second book in the making - the famously so-called Big Typescript. Wittgenstein's second revision, a collection of notes from these synopses, parts 1, 2 and 3 of vol. WA10, and vol. WA7 will be published towards the end of the year 2019, eventually making available the corpus of the Big Typescript in its entirety in the Vienna edition.
Der gelegentlich als »mittlere Periode« klassifizierte Teil des Wittgenstein'schen Werkes, aus welchem die "Philosophischen Bemerkungen" und die "Philosophische Grammatik" veröffentlicht wurden, bietet keinen selbständigen und in sich abgeschlossenen Teil des Gesamtwerkes. Durch ein sorgfältiges Studium der Manuskripte lässt sich zeigen, dass derartige Klassifizierungen irreführend sind und den Zugang zum Werk verstellen. Der Komplex des sog. "Big Typescript" markiert den Anfang von Wittgensteins erneuter Beschäftigung mit der Philosophie im Jahre 1927 in Wien nach einer neunjährigen Pause. Die Querverbindungen zu den späteren Manuskripten und die Verbindungen auch innerhalb der späteren Manuskripte sind jedoch überaus komplex. Bis heute sind auf der Grundlage des nachgelassenen Manuskript