Wittgenstein Initiative

On the kind invitation of the British Wittgenstein Society, LWP volunteers Michele Lavazza and Frederic Kettelhoit will be delivering the 36th BWS online lecture on 3 November 2026 at 18:00 GMT. All are welcome to attend!
Please register using the Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/iO2D4QaFTvua3F8znDbWRw

Abstract:

Digital Wittgenstein: Expanding Access to the Late Writings

This talk will present the new “Wittgenstein’s (Late) Writings” website in the context of other digital resources aiming to expand the availability of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass and edited writings.

The W(L)W website provides normalised, reader-friendly transcriptions of the Nachlass items dating from 1937 onwards (that is, starting from the time Wittgenstein transitioned from working on the Brown Book to working on what would become the Philosophical Investigations).

The new website’s goal—making Wittgenstein’s writings more accessible and readable while putting the Nachlass itself, rather than the “works”, in the spotlight—will be clarified by arguing that it is complementary to both the philologically accurate and meta-textually rich transcriptions published by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen and the multilingual reading editions published by the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project.

The website’s content, interface, and features will be briefly showcased before addressing the editorial choices that were made while designing and building it and the challenges that were met along the way. Because these challenges are partly due to the sheer size of the Nachlass, the strategies and tools that were used to automate some of the editorial work will be addressed explicitly; and a comparison will be drawn to the procedures adopted by the LWP to edit and translate texts, which rely on the work done manually by the LWP’s community of volunteers.

To conclude, an update will be shared about the translations and original-language editions that the LWP has recently published or is currently working on.

A wonderful interview with Anthony Gottlieb on his recent Wittgenstein biography

Recently Published Book Spotlight: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes | Blog of the APA Anthony Gottlieb studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge and was Executive Editor of The Economist from 1997 to 2006. A former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books. He is the author of the accl...

https://wittgensteininitiative.substack.com/p/marguerite-respinger-and-ludwig-wittgenstein-e1a

https://open.substack.com/pub/wittgensteininitiative/p/marguerite-respinger-and-ludwig-wittgenstein?r=5c0ct2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

COMING SOON on our website and on https://substack.com/

Marguerite Respinger and Ludwig Wittgenstein: Love and Power
by Annick Sjögren

Who was Marguerite Respinger, the woman who, before her marriage to Talla Sjögren, shared a profound and unusual friendship with Ludwig Wittgenstein? If this famously exacting philosopher could confide in his diary that she was the only woman he ever loved, she must have stood apart in ways that deserve closer attention.
..

As a grandmother, Marguerite wrote a memoir of the first half of her life, GRANNY et son temps, a publication for family and friends. By that time, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reputation was steadily growing, and the book was likely also written with a few trusted scholars in mind. It describes her childhood and youth, her years in Vienna, her married life with Talla, and ends abruptly, in the middle of her life, with Talla’s death in 1945.

https://wittgenstein-initiative.com/marguerite-respinger-and-ludwig-wittgenstein-love-and-power-coming-soon/

Happy birthday to Ludwig Wittgenstein, born on this day in 1889, in Vienna ✨

To mark this occasion, the Wittgenstein Initiative is delighted to announce Wittgenstein Week 2026:

'Was gezeigt aber nicht gesagt werden kann'
(What can be shown but not said)

15-19 June
Palais Schönborn
Vienna

Programme details to follow in the coming days ✨✨✨



Credits: Sjögren family/ Stonborough family

Allan Janik gestorben: Wittgenstein-Experte und Wien-Forscher wird 84
https://www.pressefeuer.at/news/allan-janik-gestorben-wittgenstein-experte-und-wien-forscher-wird-84-23797

The Wittgenstein Initiative has lost one of its founders, a great man and a towering scholar. Allan Janik passed away on 21 March after a long illness. Without him, we would probably not exist. It was Allan who urged us to start the endeavour to honour Wittgenstein in his city of birth, truly. Nobody knew more than Allan about the connection, personal and philosophical, between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Vienna. He authored not only the seminal “Wittgenstein’s Vienna” (together with Stephen Toulmin in 1972), but also studied and extended our perception of Wittgenstein as an Austrian beyond anyone else.

Allan Janik leaves us in his debt and with the great responsibility to continue to uphold the ethical standards he taught us.

A new tool on our website:

MAP OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VIENNA
This map is an invitation to explore Wittgenstein’s Vienna. Locations were selected based on the 1998 publication Wittgenstein in Vienna: A Biographical Journey Through the City and Its History by Allan Janik and Hans Veigl. This book traces Wittgenstein’s Vienna in close connection with his family environment and the city’s cultural and historical context.
https://wittgenstein-initiative.com/wittgensteins-vienna-map/