Otto Neurath, the Vienna Circle and the Austrian Tradition

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 249-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Uebel
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Austrian Tradition

It is one of the distinctive claims of Neurath, though not of the Vienna Circle generally, that the Vienna Circle's philosophy was not really German philosophy at all. The relation is, if Neurath is to be trusted, anything but straight-forward. To understand it, not only must some effort be expended on specifying Neurath's claim, but also on delineating the different party-lines within the Vienna Circle.

scholarly journals Pictorial Statistics Following the Vienna Method

ARTMargins ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Neurath
Keyword(s):  
General Structure ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Educational Achievements ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Visual Pedagogy ◽  
Austrian Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
International Social

This text introduces a programmatic text of Otto Neurath on the educational use of the method of pictorial statistics. Neurath emphasizes the importance of a visual method to transfer scientific knowledge to popular audiences. At the same time, his Vienna Method attempts to adapt the popular educational strategy to an increasingly visual modernity. The specific educational interest of Neurath's Vienna Method consists in political education, in transferring basic knowledge about the general structure and dominant developments of society. His program thus echoes his contemporaries’ debates on the possibilities of social realism. To understand the historical significance of Neurath the introductory text accentuates three lines of possible discussion. It points out the importance of Neurath's visual pedagogy for the tradition of contemporary discussions around the so-called Bildwissenschaften. It also contextualizes Neurath's visual pedagogy in the Austrian tradition of Second International Social Democracy and in the context of the philosophical debates of the Vienna circle. Against this double historical background, the text eventually tries to understand the educational achievements and political pitfalls of Neurath's attempt to represent general societal developments visually.

Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: Three Austrian Realists

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Peter Simons
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
High Quality ◽  
German Speaking

The architect and publicist of the Vienna Circle Otto Neurath pointed out in the 1930s that the course taken by philosophy in the Habsburg Empire and the rump Republic of Austria differed markedly from that in the rest of the German-speaking world. Philosophy in Austria had, as he put it, spared itself the Kantian interlude. Until the temporary extinction of Austria in 1938 her philosophers, like her artists, musicians and writers, produced a disproportionately large amount of high quality creations. In philosophy this work was characterised by a rejection of all forms of idealism, an emphasis on psychological and linguistic analysis, respect for empirical science, a general mistrust of philosophical speculation, and stylistically by an eschewal of profound-sounding obscurity in favour of plain clarity of exposition and thought. Neurath's thesis was seconded and extended by Rudolf Haller, so that Barry Smith has termed the thesis of the distinctness of Austrian against German philosophy the Neurath–Haller Thesis.

Otto Neurath's Visual Politics: An Introduction to “Pictorial Statistics Following the Vienna Method”

ARTMargins ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-107
Author(s):  
Johan Frederik Hartle
Keyword(s):  
General Structure ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Visual Politics ◽  
Visual Pedagogy ◽  
Austrian Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
International Social

This text introduces a programmatic text of Otto Neurath on the educational use of the method of pictorial statistics. Neurath emphasizes the importance of a visual method to transfer scientific knowledge to popular audiences. At the same time, his Vienna Method attempts to adapt the popular educational strategy to an increasingly visual modernity. The specific educational interest of Neurath's Vienna Method consists in political education, in transferring basic knowledge about the general structure and dominant developments of society. His program thus echoes his contemporaries’ debates on the possibilities of social realism. To understand the historical significance of Neurath the introductory text accentuates three lines of possible discussion. It points out the importance of Neurath's visual pedagogy for the tradition of contemporary discussions around the so-called Bildwissenschaften. It also contextualizes Neurath's visual pedagogy in the Austrian tradition of Second International Social Democracy and in the context of the philosophical debates of the Vienna circle. Against this double historical background, the text eventually tries to understand the educational achievements and political pitfalls of Neurath's attempt to represent general societal developments visually.

Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Personal Connection ◽  
International Language ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Basic English ◽  
And Linguistics

This book is a historical study of influential currents in the philosophy of language and linguistics of the first half of the twentieth century, explored from the perspective of the English scholar C. K. Ogden (1889–1957). Although no ‘Great Man’ in his own right, Ogden had a personal connection, reflected in his work, to several of the most significant figures of the age. The background to the ideas espoused in Ogden’s book The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with I.A. Richards (1893–1979), is examined in detail, along with the application of these ideas in his international language project Basic English. A richly interlaced network of connections is revealed between early analytic philosophy, semiotics and linguistics, all inevitably shaped by the contemporary cultural and political environment. In particular, significant interaction is shown between Ogden’s ideas, the varying versions of ‘logical atomism’ of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and Ludwig Wittgensten (1889–1951), Victoria Lady Welby’s (1837–1912) ‘significs’, and the philosophy and political activism of Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) of the Vienna Circle. Amid these interactions emerges a previously little known mutual exchange between the academic philosophy and linguistics of the period and the practically oriented efforts of the international language movement.

Glaube und Vernunft

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Birgit Sandkaulen
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Common Features ◽  
The Relationship

The question of the relationship between faith and reason marks one of the fundamental issues for classical German philosophy. The paper is guided by a systematic interest in identifying some common features in the approaches taken by Kant and Hegel that are also of interest for the contemporary discussion: 1. The specific modernity of Kant’s and Hegel’s considerations, evident in their rejection of the resources traditionally appealed to by religion and rationalist metaphysics; 2. the anti-naturalist conviction that, in contrast to animals, a metaphysical dimension is inscribed into the human mind; and 3. the thesis that metaphysical questions are existential questions arising from an impulse toward freedom, and hence that a purely theoretical approach is inadequate to address them.

The problem of reflection in German philosophy of the XVIII - XIX centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (152) ◽  
pp. 141-145
Author(s):  
L. A. Checal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Historical Aspect ◽  
Theoretical Significance ◽  
Self Knowledge

This study focuses on a conceptual representation of the metaphysical and non-classical context of reflection in its subjective dichotomous understanding. The author successively reviews the specifics of reflection, as well as the features of methodology of cognition and self-knowledge in the context of determining the values and priorities of human development and consciousness. The article also includes an overview of the main categories of reflection through a breakdown of theoretical relationships and the most important conceptual discourses. The theoretical significance of the problem of cognition and self-knowledge is determined by the central role of man in society and history. The analysis shows that the methodology of cognition and self-knowledge should be based on the principles of axiological disengagement, a combination of logical and historical aspect, as well as on the coherence of theory and practice.

scholarly journals Points of convergence between logical empiricism and inductive metaphysics: Hans Reichenbach and Erich Becher in comparison

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansgar Seide
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
External World ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Hans Reichenbach

AbstractIn this paper, I take a closer look at Hans Reichenbach’s relation to metaphysics and work out some interesting parallels between his account and that of the proponents of inductive metaphysics, a tradition that emerged in the mid- and late 19th century and the early 20th century in Germany. It is in particular Hans Reichenbach’s conception of the relation between the natural sciences and metaphysics, as displayed in his treatment of the question of the existence of the external world, that shows some very interesting similarities with inductive metaphysics. By a comparison with the position of the inductive metaphysician Erich Becher and his handling of the problem of realism, I work out the parallels between Reichenbach’s program and inductive metaphysics. I come to the conclusion that while there are certainly some respects in which Reichenbach’s logical empiricism is closer to the positions of the representatives of the Vienna Circle, it turns out that with regard to his views on metaphysics there is a greater affinity with the program of inductive metaphysics.

Reactionaries of the lectern: Universalism, anti-empiricism and corporatism in Austrian (and German) social theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-305
Author(s):  
Alan Scott ◽  
Silvia Rief
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Opposite View ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Early Manifestation

This article discusses one early manifestation of a recurring theme in social theory and sociology: the relationship between general (‘universal’ or ‘grand’) theory and empirical research. For the early critical theorists, empiricism and positivism were associated with technocratic domination. However, there was one place where the opposite view prevailed: science and empiricism were viewed as forces of social and political progress and speculative social theory as a force of reaction. That place was Red Vienna of the 1920s and early 1930s. We examine how this view came to be widespread among Austro-Marxists, empirical researchers and some members of the Vienna Circle. It focuses on the arguments and institutional power of their opponents: reactionary, universalistic and corporatist social theorists. The debate between Catholic corporatist theory and its empiricist critics is located not merely in Vienna but also within wider debates in the German-speaking world. Finally, we seek to link these lesser-known positions to more familiar strands of social thought, namely, those associated with Weber and, more briefly, Durkheim and Elias.

T. E. Hulme and German Philosophy: Dilthey and Scheler

1969 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
J. Kamerbeek
Keyword(s):  
German Philosophy
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