Wittgenstein Initiative

20/08/2026

A wonderful interview with Anthony Gottlieb on his recent Wittgenstein biography

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...

13/07/2026

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

13/07/2026

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

30/06/2026

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/

26/04/2026

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

26/03/2026

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

23/03/2026

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.

23/02/2026

23/02/2026

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/

06/02/2026

A good new article:
Saint Ludwig of Cambridge
"...It was a life that intersected with the great events of the twentieth century, and it showed many of the characteristics of saintliness: radical asceticism, carelessness of the opinions of the world, single-minded focus on how to live well in response to the gifts given him, desire to communicate those gifts to others, and a mode of living for which eccentricity is too moderate a word..."

On Wittgenstein and the Creed.