Here is a new translation of Lichtenberg’s work. As some will know I’m a great admirer of Lichtenberg and his equally endearing contemporary Adam Smith. I had the great privilege of meeting Reg Hollingdale who was a translator of Lichtenberg. If you are looking for a great commuting read, something that is accessible (i.e. aphoristic), provocative and amusing, few come better than Lichtenberg.
Despite having lived over two hundred years ago (July 1, 1742 – February 24, 1799) Georg Christoph Lichtenberg even from our current perspective, is temperamentally speaking, a thoroughly modern man. Were he alive today Lichtenberg might well have filled the role of public intellectual (or free-thinker) in his threefold capacity of scientist, atheist, and satirist. Whether or not Lichtenberg could be considered a philosopher in a conventional sense, i.e. professionally, he was certainly philosophical. Lichtenberg was well-known to some of the greatest minds of the Western world. He personally knew Kant and Goethe, Nietzsche, admired him, as did Wittgenstein who introduced Russell to Lichtenberg’s writing, Despite his Anglophilia and the high-esteem in which he has been held, Lichtenberg is still relatively unknown in the English speaking world: while much of his writings have been translated into English, there exists only one book-length treatment. The secondary literature is, for the most part, in German.
manwithoutqualities 