1 Thinking Through Music: Wittgenstein’s Use of Musical Notation Eran Guter and Inbal Guter The importance of aesthetics in the development of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy has become a topic of increasing interest for aestheticians and Wittgenstein scholars alike. Although aesthetics as a distinct topic received limited attention (concentrated as it is mostly in Wittgenstein’s early writings and his middle-period lectures), and despite his remarks on aesthetic matters being scattered across his Nachlass, scholars argue that Wittgenstein’s thinking about aesthetics, and in particular his frequent use of musical examples and analogies, was conducive in one sense or another both to his thinking about language and the mind, and to his philosophical method and writing. 1 This paper contributes to this growing body of literature by exploring a collection of intriguing yet hitherto overlooked items in the Nachlass, in which Wittgenstein employs musical notation as a means by which to convey and ponder about philosophical ideas. We aim to show that this diverse collection of original musical fragments attests to two different ways of integration of thinking about, and through music with Wittgenstein’s philosophical writing. Some of the fragments are used to give musical form to ideas that, while arising quite naturally in music, are not musical in their subject matter, while others are used to deploy considerations of musical composition and style, self-reflectively and self-critically, as metaphors for intellectual creativity. Wittgenstein composed five musical fragments during his transitional middle period (1929–36). Only one of these, the Leidenschaftlich theme (Wittgenstein 1998, 19), has been made available to a general readership and has captured the imaginations of both scholars and musicians. 2 The other four, however, have thus far remained in the relative obscurity of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, concealed from scholarly view. Wittgenstein jotted down all five pieces in his pocket notebooks, which he regularly carried around with him so he could capture his thoughts. This interdisciplinary essay studies the complete set of these thought-provoking rarities critically for the first time. The nature and form of this sort of primary material calls for a methodological caveat. The pocket notebooks record initial inscription of ideas and thoughts as they occurred to Wittgenstein at different times. Some are developed more than others; some are interspersed with notes, additions and alterations jotted down on a later occasion. Oftentimes, the manuscript facsimile (Wittgenstein 2019) affords visual cues (such as writing on the margins or between the lines, the use of different pens, differentiation in the handwriting Published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 81(3), September 2023, 248-262. Please refer only to the published paper. Please note that all figures in this file are copyrighted and cannot be copied or reproduced without the permission of OUP and the authors.