Austrian Philosophy Past And Present

This book is about Austrian philosophy leading up to the philosophy of Rudolf Haller. It emerged from a philosophy conference held at the University of Arizona by Keith Lehrer with the support of the University of Arizona and Austrian Cultural Institute. We are grateful to the University of Arizona and the Austrian Cultural Institute for their support, to Linda Radzik for her editorial assistance, to Rudolf Haller for his advice and illuminating autobiographical essay and to Ann Hickman for preparing the camera-ready typescript. The papers herein are ones preseJ,lted at the conference. The idea that motivated holding the conference was to clarify the conception of Austrian Philosophy and the role of Rudolf Haller therein. Prof Rudolf Haller of Karl-Franzens University of Graz has had a profound influence on modern philosophy, which, modest man that he is, probably amazes him. He has made fine contributions to many areas of philosophy, to aesthetics, to philosophy of language and the theOl)' of knowledge. His seven books and more than two hundred articles testify to his accomplishments. But there is something else which he did which was the reason for the conference on Austrian Philosophy in his honor. He presented us, as Barry Smith explains, with a unified conception of Austrian Philosophy.

In the twentieth century English-language philosophy came to be science- and logic-oriented, and was suspicious of metaphysics. The Disappearance of the Soul and the Turn against Metaphysics traces our present philosophical outlook back to debates in Austro-German philosophy about the relation between empirical science and metaphysics: does empirical psychology depend on the metaphysics of the soul, the mental substance? The negative answer - that there is 'a psychology without a soul' - shaped Austrian philosophy and provided a model for ontologies that dispense with substances. Mark Textor tells the story of how and why (Austrian) philosophy turned against metaphysics . He introduces the key thinkers of the time, including the 'fathers of Austrian philosophy' Franz Brentano and Ernst Mach, whose Intentionalism (Brentano) and Neutral Monism (Mach) became distinctive and influential positions in the philosophy of mind. Textor goes on to use the 'psychology without a soul' view as a vantage point from which to reconstruct and assess the immediate pre-history and formation of analytic philosophy (Ward, Stout, Moore, Russell). While Austrian philosophers retired the soul, early analytic philosophers were happy to introduce a successor, the subject, and conceive of the mental as constituted by subject-object relations. The final part of the book returns to the theme of anti-metaphysics from a different perspective. In this part the early Moritz Schlick, who would soon become the leading figure of the Vienna Circle, takes centre stage. The final part of the book reconstructs Schlick's arguments for the conclusion that metaphysics lies beyond the limits of knowledge that are rooted in the philosophy of mind discussed in previous parts.

"When Franz Brentano introduced the concept of intentionality into modern philosophy, he initiated a revolution in philosophical thinking whose effects are still being felt - not least in contemporary developments in the field of cognitive science. Barry Smith's Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano is the first extensive study of the philosophy of the Brentano school." "The Brentanian philosophy is oriented towards the problem of mental directedness, of how mind relates to objects. Thus in working out their 'theories of objects', the Brentanian philosophers - in contrast to Frege and his successors in the analytic movement - did not abandon psychological concerns in favor of an orientation towards language. Rather, their investigations in ontology proceeded always in tandem with work on the cognitive processes in which objects are experienced. In thus spanning the gulf between psychology and ontology, the Brentano school gave rise to movements of thought such as phenomenology and Gestalt psychology (the term 'Gestalt' was introduced as a technical term of philosophy by Brentano's student Ehrenfels)." "The Brentanists enjoyed close relations with Carl Menger and other early members of the Austrian school of economics and Austrian Philosophy contains a detailed study of the interconnections between their work on the general theory of value and subjective theories of value developed in the economic sphere. Brentano's student Kasimir Twardowski initiated the rich tradition of scientifically and logically oriented philosophy in Poland, and the role of Brentanianism in Polish philosophy, and especially in the development of Lesniewski's mereology, is here for the first time subjected to extended historical treatment. Another Brentano student, Carl Stumpf, was responsible for introducing into philosophy the technical term 'Sachverhalt' or 'state of affairs', and the associated doctrine of realism in logic, too, is shown to have been a special preserve of the Brentano movement on the continent of Europe." "In setting out the ways in which Brentanian philosophers crucially influenced the development of scientific philosophy in Central Europe around the turn of the century Barry Smith's ambitious new work provides a detailed survey of developments in Austrian philosophy in its classical period, from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Austrian School has made some of the most significant contributions to the social sciences in recent times but attempts to understand it have remained locked in a polemical frame. In contrast, The Philosphy of the Austrian School presents a philosophically grounded account of the School's methodological, political and economic ideas. Whilst acknowledging important differences between the key figures in the School - Menger, Mises, and Hayek - Raimondo Cubeddu finds that they also have significant things in common. Paramount amongst these are theories of subjective value and notions of spontaneous order, both of which rest on theories of seminal avenues of research in the social sciences and a major reformulation of liberal ideology.

The book discusses Franz Brentano’s impact on Austrian philosophy. It contains both a critical reassessment of Brentano’s place in the development of Austrian philosophy at the turn of the 20th century and a reevaluation of the impact and significance of his philosophy of mind or ‘descriptive psychology’ which was Brentano's most important contribution to contemporary philosophy and to the philosophy in Vienna. In addition, the relation between Brentano, phenomenology, and the Vienna Circle is investigated, together with a related documentation of Brentano's disciple Alfred Kastil (in German). The general part deals with the ongoing discussion of Carnap's "Aufbau" (Vienna Circle Lecture by Alan Chalmers) and the philosophy of mind, with a focus on physicalism as discussed by Carnap and Wittgenstein (Gergely Ambrus). As usual, two reviews of recent publications in the philosophy of mathematics (Paolo Mancosu) and research on Otto Neurath's lifework (Jordi Cat/Adam Tuboly) are included as related research contributions. This book is of interest to students, historians, and philosophers dealing with the history of Austrian and German philosophy in the 19th and 20th century.

At head of title: Howard O. Eaton, PH. D. Bibliography: p. [373]-375.

First published in 1986, this book presents a reissue of the first detailed confrontation between the Austrian school of economics and Austrian philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Brentano school. It contains a study of the roots of Austrian economics in the liberal political theory of the nineteenth-century Hapsburg empire, and a study of the relations between the general theory of value underlying Austrian economics and the new economic approach to human behaviour propounded by Gary Becker and others in Chicago. In addition, it considers the connections between Austrian methodology and contemporary debates in the philosophy of the social sciences.