Moritz Schlick is a German philosopher born with Berlin the April 14th 1882. Founding father of the logical Positivism and the Circle of Vienna, it is one of the first “analytical” philosophers. Graduate of physics, it will be interested largely in science, but also in a less famous way to ethics. He dies in Vienna the June 22nd 1936, assassinated by one of his former students.

Biography

Originating in an easy family, Schlick studied the Physique with Heidelberg, then finally in Berlin, as raises max Planck. It passes its doctorate in 1904 with the thesis Über die Reflection of Lichts in einer inhomogenen Schicht ( On the reflection of the light in the nonhomogeneous mediums ). In 1908 it publishes an opuscule on the Eudémonisme: Lebensweisheit ( the wisdom of the life ). Its work of enabling, Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach DER modernen Logik ( the nature of the truth according to the modern logic ), appears in 1910. Several tests followed on esthetics, before Schlick does not turn its attention towards problems of epistemology, philosophy of sciences, and more general questions concerning science. It was distinguished in this last category while publishing in 1915 an article in connection with the theory of relativity of Einstein, a subject of hardly 10 years. It also published Raum und Zeit in DER gegenwärtigen Physik ( space and time in modern physics ), where it deals more systematically with post-Newtonian physics.

In 1922, Schlick became professor of philosophy of inductive sciences at the university of Vienna, after two unsatisfactory stations with Rostock and Kiel. During the same time two events oversteer which were going to mark the remainder of its life. Firstly, a group of philosophers and scientists (including inter alia Rudolf Carnap, Hebert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, and Friedrich Waismann) suggested in Schlick that they meet regularly to discuss science and philosophy. They were entitled initially the Société Ernst Mach, but were then exclusively known under the name of Cercle of Vienna. The second great event was the publication in 1921 of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a concise opuscule and brilliance which supported, among other elements, a theory of symbolism and a theory of the language like image.

Schlick and its group were impassioned by the work: they made of it a subject of discussion of almost all their meetings. Schlick contacted even Wittgenstein in 1924 and glorifia the virtues of the book of the Austrian near his close relations of the Circle. Finally Wittgenstein agreed to meet Schlick and Waismann to speak about Tractatus and other ideas. Via the influence of Schlick, Wittgenstein was encouraged to return to the philosophy, which he had then forsaken for a few years. It is partially following the influence of Schlick that Wittgenstein started to write the reflections which formed later “the second” philosophy of Wittgenstein. The meetings between Schlick, Waissmann and Wittgenstein continued, until the latter suspects Carnap used some of its ideas without its permission in a test. The author of Tractatus maintained conversations epistolary with Schlick, but its formal relationship with the Circle of Vienna finished in 1932.

Between 1918 and 1925, Schlick worked on its Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (general Theory of knowledge), and, although the later developments of its philosophy were going to return many its intolerable positions epistemological, its general Theory east can be its philosopher's stone as regards its criticism of the summary knowledge a priori.

Schlick worked then of 1926 with 1930 to finish its Problèmes of ethics (Fragen der Ethik), by which it surprised some of his companions by integrating ethics in the viable branches of philosophy. For the same period, the Company Ernst Mach published famous “the yellow booklet”: scientific design of the world, the Circle of Vienna . The article, Co-signed by Carnap, Hahn and Neurath, presented the position savagely anti-metaphysics which characterized the Circle of Vienna and returned, in its foreword, an explicit homage to Schlick.

Vis-a-vis the rise of the Nazism in Germany and Austria, many members of the Circle left the continent for the the United States or the England. However Schlick remained at the university of Vienna: when it accepted the visit of Herbert Feigl in 1935, it expressed amazement vis-a-vis the events taking place in Germany. The June 22nd 1936, whereas it assembled the steps of the university to go to a course, Schlick was confronted with a former student Johan Nelböck, who left a gun and drew to him in full chest. Schlick died little of time afterwards. The student was considered and condemned, but at that time became a symbol of the feelings anti-Jews in progression in the city. The fact that Schlick was not Jewish often tends to being forgotten. Nelböck was very quickly released and became a member of Austrian Nazi party after the Anschluss.

Works

  • Lebensweisheit. Versuch einer Glückseligkeitslehre , 1908

  • Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach DER modernen Logik , 1910
  • Raum und Zeit in DER gegenwärtigen Physik , 1917
  • Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre , Berlin 1918
  • Vom Sinn of Lebens , 1927
  • Fragen der Ethik , Vienna 1930
  • Gesammelte Aufsätze 1926-1936 , Vienna 1938

Sources

  • Moritz Schlick , Francoise Armengaud, Encyclopædia Universalis version 11.

See too

Bond external

  • www.moritz-schlick.de

    • Biography on moritz-schlick.de
  • a short Critical presentation
  • of a book of Schlick

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