Admired by philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Benjamin, and Wittgenstein, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 1799) is known to the English-speaking world mostly as a satirist. An eminent experimental physicist and mathematician, Lichtenberg was knowledgeable about the philosophical views of his time, and interested in uncovering the philosophical commitments that underlie our common beliefs. In his notebooks (which he called his Waste Books) he often reflects on, challenges, and critiques these philosophical commitments and the dominant views of the Enlightenment, German idealism, and British empiricism.