The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Author), R.J. Hollingdale (Translator)

Book Description

Series: New York Review Books Classics | Publication Date: September 30, 2000

German scientist and man of letters Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was an 18th-century polymath: an experimental physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, a practicing critic both of art and literature. He is most celebrated, however, for the casual notes and aphorisms that he collected in what he called his Waste Books. With unflagging intelligence and encyclopedic curiosity, Lichtenberg wittily deflates the pretensions of learning and society, examines a range of philosophical questions, and tracks his own thoughts down hidden pathways to disconcerting and sometimes hilarious conclusions.

Lichtenberg's Waste Books have been greatly admired by writers as very different as Tolstoy, Einstein, and Andre Breton, while Nietzsche and Wittgenstein acknowledged them as a significant inspiration for their own radical work in philosophy. The record of a brilliant and subtle mind in action, The Waste Books are above all a powerful testament to the necessity, and pleasure, of unfettered thought.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Odd title, unusual book. Lichtenberg (1742-1799) was a German polymath: astronomer, experimental physicist, mathematician and critic of art and literature. In his student days he began the lifelong practice of recording his thoughts, observations and reminders in notebooks that he called Sudelb¸cher after the "waste books" in which English business houses of the time entered transactions temporarily until they could be recorded in formal account books. By the end of his life he had accumulated 11 Sudelb¸cher, which he labeled as volumes A through L (skipping I). Hollingdale, a translator of Nietzsche, Goethe and Schopenhauer, has translated the notebooks. Here he presents excerpts, focusing on what he says are best called aphorisms. Lichtenberg turns out to be quite an aphorist, repeatedly surprising and entertaining the modern reader. Examples: "Whenever he was required to use his reason he felt like someone who had always used his right hand but was now required to do something with his left." "You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying." "The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books." "Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Review

''Among the great achievements of the German spirit.'' -- Gordon Craig, author of The Germans

''One of the most compulsively readable books to come out of the 18th-century German Enlightenment.'' -- The Vancouver Sun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (September 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940322501
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322509
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #667,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing, October 11, 2003

By 

KC Tang (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Lichtenberg truly observes and thinks, forgive my cliched phrase, with a child's wonder. Thinking and Observing are, for him, downright entertainment not, as for most of us, labour-work. Even such strict critics as Schopenhauer and Nietszche have to off-hat to this unusual man.

One point to note for this translation: Mr. Hollingdale sometimes omits some part of an aphorism without obvious reasons. Take the first aphorism as an example: the translation reads:'the great artifice of regarding small deviations from the truch as being the truth itself is at the same time the foundation of wit...'; while the original is 'Der grosse Kunstgriff, kleine Abweichungen von der Wahrheit fur die Wahrheit selbst zu halten, worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist, ist auch zugleich der Grund unserer witzigen Gedanken...'; why the phrase 'worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist' is not translated? Sometimes Lichtenberg's idea just keeps rambling, and it makes sense on the translator's part to cut it short, but in some cases Mr. Hollingdale's chopping puzzles me.

All the same, this edition is a valuable one, supplementing the "Lichtenberg Reader" translated, edited and introduced by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield. Readers who have German can consult the 4-vol. "Schriften und Briefe" edited by Wolfgang Promies (with 2 useful vol.s of "Kommentar"; Hanser Verlag, 1967).

I guess any lover of Lichtenberg would often murmur to themselves: 'May this wonderful man be better known!' And I think this translation has served well to make Lichtenberg better known in many parts of the world.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A philosopher with esprit ..., August 20, 2005

By 

FrizzText "frizz" (Wuppertal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery." This is a cynic notation considering the fate of the Red Indians. "A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments..." sounds like George W. Bush - but is written down by Professor (not Condoleezza Rice), by Professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799. He has been a philosopher, but his writing-style was more comfortable to any reader, than the work of the other German genius of that time: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lichtenberg loved the ideas of the French Enlightenment and he tried to explain the ideas of empiric science with humor. He was critical against Christian dogmatics. He once shortly noted: "An Amen face." Or longer: "Nothing offers me such clear proof of how things stand in the world of learning than the circumstance that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, worthless person and his opinions as dangerous." Lichtenberg has been a philosopher - but writing with esprit. If you can tolerate his bile, buy his book: "Who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and purchase this book." But bear in mind: "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it, - an apostle is unlikely to look out!"

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A philosopher with esprit ..., August 20, 2005

By 

FrizzText "frizz" (Wuppertal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Waste Books (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery." This is a cynic notation considering the fate of the Red Indians. "A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments..." sounds like George W. Bush - but is written down by Professor (not Condoleezza Rice), by Professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799. He has been a philosopher, but his writing-style was more comfortable to any reader, than the work of the other German genius of that time: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lichtenberg loved the ideas of the French Enlightenment and he tried to explain the ideas of empiric science with humor. He was critical against Christian dogmatics. He once shortly noted: "An Amen face." Or longer: "Nothing offers me such clear proof of how things stand in the world of learning than the circumstance that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, worthless person and his opinions as dangerous." Lichtenberg has been a philosopher - but writing with esprit. If you can tolerate his bile, buy his book: "Who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and purchase this book." But bear in mind: "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it, - an apostle is unlikely to look out!"