Determining the copyright status of a literary work is not always straightforward, because copyrights are territorial and the relevant laws differ significantly country by country. In some legislations, for example, a work’s copyright status may depend on the publication date, on whether the publication was posthumous, on the quantity and quality of editorial interventions the manuscript underwent before publication, etc. 2021 marked the 70th anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death. In many countries, the duration of the copyright term is the author’s life (...) plus 70 years. Thus, as of the moment of this writing, it is important to attempt a comprehensive analysis and to try to determine whether, where and why his manuscripts and his published works are in the public domain. This paper clarifies the general principles of copyright and describes the rules and best practices that must be followed in the context of internet publications. Additionally, it examines the factors that make it particularly challenging to ascertain the copyright status both of Wittgenstein’s published works and of the transcriptions of his manuscripts. Lastly, it provides a detailed account of the copyright status of some of Wittgenstein’s works that were published in the second half of the 20th century, proving that they are in the public domain in most countries. (shrink)

The Editors’ Preface to the fourth edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is disparaging of the earlier editorial efforts of G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees and in particular of their inclusion and titling of the material in “Part II”. I argue, on both historical and philosophical grounds, that the Editors have failed to refute the editorial decisions of Rhees and Anscombe – a failure born both of a neglect of the historical circumstances and Wittgenstein's own expressed hopes and intentions (...) for his writings, and of a myopic understanding of his philosophy. Wittgenstein's legacy has not been well served by their interventions, which should be undone in future editions. (shrink)

Rush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright were Wittgenstein’s literary heirs and edited many posthumous volumes from Wittgenstein’s writings. Their archived correspondence provides unique insights into this editorial work. The selection of letters written by Rhees which is presented here stems from an early phase of his editorial endeavour to shed light on Wittgenstein’s philosophical development between the _TLP_ and the _PI_. The letters were written between 1962 and 1964, in connection with the volume that appeared as _Philosophische (...) Bemerkungen_, and show how Rhees’ understanding of Wittgenstein’s texts developed during editing. They contain some of the central considerations that governed Rhees’ work as Wittgenstein’s literary executor. (shrink)

Using new archival material, this article reconstructs the editorial history of Philosophical Grammar, an edition that Rush Rhees crafted from Wittgenstein's papers. Contrasting the often‐held view that Rhees, in editing Philosophical Grammar, arbitrarily interfered with Wittgenstein's Big Typescript, the article illuminates the work, motives and reasons that underlie Rhees’ editing. Although recent philological evidence supports his editorial decisions, Rhees, at the time, made them based on his desire to do justice to his understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophical orientation. Against this background, (...) purely text‐philological criticism of Philosophical Grammar seems to come from a philosophical culture that was alien to Rhees. (shrink)

This paper uses archival material to contextualize Georg Henrik von Wright’s making of Vermischte Bemerkungen (Culture and Value), an edition that assembles Wittgenstein’s remarks on cultural topics. Von Wright was particularly interested in these remarks but initially regarded them as too detached from philosophy to be published. In 1967-68, however, he began seeing socio-political questions as belonging to philosophy. He then resumed editing Wittgenstein’s ‘general remarks’ and published them in 1977. Von Wright did not read Culture and Value as a (...) philosophical work, but as a means for helping readers understand Wittgenstein in relation to his times. It is argued that the intention to provide documents enabling readers to recognize the historical Wittgenstein motivated much of von Wright’s work as one of Wittgenstein’s literary executors. Moreover, through making available his own archives, he inspired the same documentary approach to fathom the history of editing Wittgenstein in its historical context. (shrink)