Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough () is a collection of Ludwig Wittgenstein's thoughts on James George Frazer's '. The commentary was initially published in 1967, with an English edition in 1979. Wittgenstein wrote the text in the summer of 1931. It represented his earliest efforts to compose what became the Philosophical Investigations (1953). An important theme of the Remarks, and one which Wittgenstein later explored more fully, is the conception of metaphysics as a "kind of magic".
The text was edited by Rush Rhees, who published it separately from Wittgenstein's other work, in a possible attempt to avoid alienating Wittgenstein's readership, in light of the sympathy shown to primitive thought and practices. In the Remarks, Wittgenstein describes Frazer as more savage than those he studied, and is exceptionally critical of Frazer's interpretations of primitive mythology, Christianity, and epistemology.
The remarks were later included in full in an anthology of Wittgenstein's miscellaneous work called Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951. The editors claim that Rush Rhees omitted a number of remarks from the bilingual book edition of the Remarks, and include in their anthology some remarks they believe Rhees may have erroneously excluded.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Mythology in Our Language: Remarks on FrazerâÂÂs Golden Bough, (German/English parallel text), Transl. by S. Palmié, Ed. by Giovanni da Col and S. Palmié, with critical reflections by V. Das, W. James, H. Kwon, M. Lambek, S. Laugier, K. Myhre, R. Needham, M. Puett, C. Severi, and M. Taussig, 2020, Hau Books, open access