The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project is a website that aims to make available as many of Wittgenstein's works as possible free of charge and with a free license.
On 1 January 2022, Wittgenstein's works entered the public domain in those countries where rights expire 70 years after the death of the author: this includes most of the European Union, Asia and Oceania, most Latin American Countries and Canada.
Starting from that date, The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project provides complete, well-formatted, downloadable, free books: the German or English originals as well as translations in multiple languages that were purpose-made by our team.
Cover photo: Skjolden, Norway. Wittgenstein stayed in Skjolden many times between 1913 and 1950. Photo by Nicolás Boullosa, CC BY.
Luciano Bazzocchi's new edition of the Tractatus, published in 2021, already incorporates the tree-structure idea very well. Available from Anthem Press. What is now the philosophical value of this new approach to editing the book in this manner?
Luciano Bazzocchi's new edition of the Tractatus, published in 2021, already incorporates the tree-structure idea very well. Available from Anthem Press. What is now the philosophical value of this new approach to editing the book in this manner?
" This is for the real adepts in madness, who have gone beyond all psychiatry, psychoanalysis, who are unhelpable. This third book is again the work of a German, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Just listen to its title: TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. We will just call it TRACTATUS. It is one of the most difficult books in existence. Even a man like G.E.Moore, a great English philosopher, and Bertrand Russell, another great philosopher - not only English but a philosopher of the whole world - both agreed that this man Wittgenstein was far superior to them both. Ludwig Wittgenstein was really a lovable man. I don't hate him, but I don't dislike him. I like him and I love him, but not his book. His book is only gymnastics. Only once in a while after pages and pages you may come across a sentence which is luminous. For example: That which cannot be spoken should not be spoken; one should be silent about it. Now this is a beautiful statement. Even saints, mystics, poets, can learn much from this sentence. That which cannot be spoken must not be spoken of. Wittgenstein writes in a mathematical way, small sentences, not even paragraphs - sutras. But for the very advanced insane man this book can be of immense help. It can hit him exactly in his soul, not only in the head. Just like a nail it can penetrate into his very being. That may wake him from his nightmare. Ludwig Wittgenstein was a lovable man. He was offered one of the most cherished chairs of philosophy at Oxford. He declined. That's what I love in him. He went to become a farmer and fisherman. This is lovable in the man. This is more existential than Jean-Paul Sartre, although Wittgenstein never talked of existentialism. Existentialism, by the way, cannot be talked about; you have to live it, there is no other way. This book was written when Wittgenstein was studying under G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell. Two great philosophers of Britain, and a German... it was enough to create TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. Translated it means Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. I, on my part, would rather have seen Wittgenstein sitting at the feet of Gurdjieff than studying with Moore and Russell. That was the right place for him, but he missed. Perhaps next time, I mean next life... for him, not for me. For me this is enough, this is the last. But for him, at least once he needs to be in the company of a man like Gurdjieff or Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma - but not Moore, Russell, not Whitehead. He was associating with these people, the wrong people. A right man in the company of wrong people, that's what destroyed him. My experience is, in the right company even a wrong person becomes right, and vice-versa: in a wrong company, even a right person becomes wrong. But this only applies to unenlightened men, right or wrong, both. An enlightened person cannot be influenced. He can associate with anyone - Jesus with Magdalena, a prostitute; Buddha with a murderer, a murderer who had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people. He had taken a vow to kill one thousand people, and he was going to kill Buddha too; that's how he came into contact with Buddha. The murderer's name is not known. The name people gave to him was Angulimala, which means 'the man who wears a garland of fingers'. That was his way. He would kill a man, cut off his fingers and put them on his garland, just to keep count of the number of people he had killed. Only ten fingers were missing to make up the thousand; in other words only one man more.... Then Buddha appeared. He was just moving on that road from one village to another. Angulimala shouted, "Stop!" Buddha said, "Great. That's what I have been telling people: Stop! But, my friend, who listens?" Angulimala looked amazed: Is this man insane? And Buddha continued walking towards Angulimala. Angulimala again shouted, "Stop! It seems you don't know that I am a murderer, and I have taken a vow to kill one thousand people. Even my own mother has stopped seeing me, because only one person is missing.... I will kill you... but you look so beautiful that if you stop and turn back I may not kill you." Buddha said, "Forget about it. I have never turned back in my life, and as far as stopping is concerned, I stopped forty years ago; since then there is nobody left to move. And as far as killing me is concerned, you can do it anyway. Everything born is going to die." Angulimala saw the man, fell at his feet, and was transformed. Angulimala could not change Buddha, Buddha changed Angulimala. Magdalena the prostitute could not change Jesus, but Jesus changed the woman. So what I said is only applicable to so-called ordinary humanity, it is not applicable to those who are awakened. Wittgenstein can become awakened; he could have become awakened even in this life. Alas, he associated with wrong company. But his book can be of great help to those who are really third-degree insane. If they can make any sense out of it, they will come back to sanity."
Shouldn't an existing (semi) Open Souce Tool like Obsidian with pdf annotation tools and hypertext markup and with a large community be perfect for your use case? the visualization functionalities provided are way more mature than the proof of concept provided here, That way you could focus on doing the philosophical work rather than the cumbersome implementation, a simple customization of the obsidian templates for your use case would do.
AGGIORNAMENTO: La raccolta fondi è stata completata con successo! La traduzione è stata pubblicata il 29 aprile 2023 ed è consultabile - insieme all'elenco di donatori e donatrici - qui: www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php/Carteggio_Ludwig-Paul_Wittgenstein_1920-1939 Grazie di cuore a tutti coloro che hanno contribuito!
Many thanks, for providing the details of public domain material, and copyright. I myself, find the Information Age to still have great potential for philosophy-to those few who are dedicated to understanding, both past and present, there will be no shortage of resources at their disposal! This remark of Wittgenstein came back to me, after seeing your video... “That writers, who after all were something, go ‘out of date’ is connected with the fact that their writings, when complemented by the setting of their own age, speak strongly to people, but that they die without this complementation, as if bereft of the lighting that gave them colour [...]”
Please note: Those among the audience’s remarks or questions that were not asked using a microphone were transcribed by the LWP volunteers who edited this video. The responsibility for any errors or omissions is entirely ours.
You guys are doing a great job in preserving Wittgenstein works after it become available in public domain. I know he's a big name and he won't be forgotten easily, but still, new generations needs to know about the way he used to think and reason about the world. Both your website and social medias will show it's value in the long-term. Thank you.
You should read Bertrand Russell's essay (or book) on logical atomism, because that will tell you what's so interesting about the Tractatus. Russell basically describes Wittgenstein as someone who adopts Russell's philosophy but finds slightly different, more acute solutions to various philosophical troubles! But then, make sure to read later Wittgenstein. You'll see a philosopher who sounds and acts completely opposite of his positions here. There's a great short audiobook series by Stephen Doty for a lecture Wittgenstein gave on the turning point in his philosophy, the Blue Book. I highly recommend it. There's also a great audiobook for his Philosophical Investigations, the unfinished magnum opus of his later works. These later works of his are really in conversation with (and not strictly against) the Tractatus.
Up until last December, Wittgenstein's works were copyrighted in countries with a copyright term of the author's life + 70 years, so royalties were being paid to W.'s heirs that affected the cover price of books. Most of W.'s works are still copyrighted in the US, so I believe the books are not going to become less expensive there anytime soon. The situation is better in Europe: in 2022, for example, Reclam published a German paperback edition of the TLP that sells for 3,60 €. It should also be considered that philosophy books don't have a huge market, and they always tend to be more expensive than, for example, fiction books of similar material characteristics. - M.L.
@@ludwig_wittgenstein_project Thanks for your kind reply, and I applaud the project. But, I have a hunch your reply is not accurate. I taught philosophy for several years. I know book prices. I suspect, with no concrete evidence, but because of experience with the entitlement mentalities of beneficiaries of geometrically dwindling familial inheritances, that the Wittgenstein heirs were demanding higher than regular royalties. Is this speculation true?
@@JJ-fr2ki What you say about certain entitled mentalities is certainly true in general. I don't know whether this affected royalties and book prices in the case of Wittgenstein. It may be important to note, however, that the heirs and copyright holders here were not members of Wittgenstein's family, but the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Bergen, Bergen; this, in turn, is because Wittgenstein appointed Rhees, Anscombe and Von Wright as his heirs in his last will. -M.L.
There should be a similar project called western philosopher project, it should make western philosophy available in all language. A new movement towards a brighter age of information.
