INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The Vienna Circle was made the topic of this lecture series for good reasons. The philosophical ideas of that group, which started to blossom during the years between the wars and soon gained international influence, belong, without doubt, to the most important and most fruitful manifestations of Vienna's intellectual life of that time.

That I have been given the honorable task of speaking here about the Vienna Circle and about the evolution and influence of its ideas is certainly due in part to the fact that I belong to the nowadays small group of people who personally knew or know the leading thinkers of the Vienna Circle and similar-minded groups.

Furthermore, my intellectual development was strongly influenced by the thinkers of the Vienna Circle, as well as by Hans Reichenbach, the leading personage of the Berlin Group of empiricist philosophers. I feel a deep respect for and gratitude toward those thinkers; but gradually, I came to question their basic ideas, as I have indicated in my writings. But this was entirely in the spirit of my teachers, who always encouraged their students toward independent and critical thinking.

In view of my close connection with the movement of logical positivism or, as it was later called, logical empiricism, I hope it will be seen as appropriate if I start with some personal recollections about the leading representatives of the Vienna Circle.