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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
I have two aims in this paper. My wide one is to discuss what it is for philosophy to enlighten. I am using the same concept of enlightenment that Kant wrote about: It is what brings a rational outlook to social and political life, in opposition to superstition, self-deception and other forms of immaturity. If philosophy is to do this, it is not sufficient for it to have a rational theory about society, nor is having such a theory even necessary, since philosophers can try to make a community more reasonable without formulating a social philosophy. The Vienna Circle is an example. The point of enlightenment is to change society rather than to develop research programs. The difference is between involvement with real life on the one hand and an idle theory on the other.
My narrow aim is to display the self-image of the Vienna Circle as philosophers of enlightenment. They agreed that the important task of any philosophical school was to enlighten and that positivism did so because it expressed the scientific spirit. This is the second concept I discuss. I will show that what they meant by ‘the scientific spirit’ was a moral outlook present in socialism and hostile to fascism. This is not what people usually understand by it. I am also not giving the received historical view of the Circle. Rather the English and American idea is that positivism was entirely an academic movement. The social concerns of its advocates were incidental to its philosophical significance. The Frankfurt School's view is that it had a hidden alliance with technology. My purpose is to counter both these misinterpretations.
I gave a version of this paper as the Presidential Address to the Northwest Conference on Philosophy (November, 1985). The title then was ‘Philosophy and Fascism.’
2 Kant, Immanuel ‘An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”,’ in Reiss, Hans ed., Kant's Political Writings, trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971), 54Google Scholar
3 Feigl, Herbert ‘The Wiener Kreis in America,’ in Cohen, Robert S. ed., Inquiries and Provocations: Selected Writings 1929-74 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1981), 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Neurath, Otto Carnap, Rudolf and Hahn, Hans ‘Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis,’ in Neurath, Marie and Cohen, Robert S. eds., Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1973), 301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schlick, Moritz ‘The Vienna School and Traditional Philosophy,’ Philosophical Papers, Volume 111: 1925-1936 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1979), 496–7Google Scholar; and Popper, Karl ‘Autobiography,’ in Schilpp, P.A. ed., The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Vol. I (La Salle, IL: Open Court 1974), 70Google Scholar.
4 On rationality, see among many other places Reichenbach, Hans ‘Aims and Methods of Modern Philosophy of Nature,’ in Reichenbach, Maria and Cohen, Robert S. eds., Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1909-1953 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1978), 383Google Scholar.
On cooperation, see Carnap, Rudolf The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, trans. George, Rolf A. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1967), xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar; also, Carnap, Hahn and Neurath in Neurath, 306Google Scholar; also Reichenbach, Hans The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1962), 117–19Google Scholar.
On modernity, see Carnap, xviii; Carnap, Hahn and Neurath in Neurath, 317Google Scholar; Reichenbach, Scientific Philosophy, viiGoogle Scholar.
5 Feigl, 409: ‘As I see it, we are living in a new age of enlightenment in which we ask persistently, and we hope with good results, two major questions: “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?”’ Schlick, 11.369: ‘When we look for the most typical example of a philosophic mind we must direct our eyes towards Socrates. All the efforts of his acute mind and his fervent heart were devoted to the pursuit of meaning.’
6 Carnap, xvi
7 For relativity theory, see Feigl, 2; also, Reichenbach, Selected Writings, 1.2Google Scholar.
Feigl, 62-3, describes his mission to the Bauhaus. I assume that Carnap refers to the Bauhaus when he writes (xviii) that the attitude of positivism is present ‘in artistic movements, especially in architecture.’
About psychoanalysis, Sidney Hook (‘Memories of Hans Reichenbach, 1928 and Later,’ in Reichenbach, Selected Writings, 1.34) notes that Reichenbach and all the positivists he met ‘were quite vehement in defending the scientific validity of Freud's basic views.’ He adds that he never understood this.
For socialism, see Carnap, Hahn and Neurath in Neurath, 304-5; also, Carnap, xviii. Reichenbach in 1918 wrote ‘Socializing the University,’ which he advertised as ‘the first in a series of pamphlets presenting to the public the demands and plans of Socialist students’ (Selected Writings 1.136).
8 ‘Memories of Hans Reichenbach,’ 34
9 Philosophical Papers, 11.497
10 Carnap, xviii
11 Philosophical Papers, 11.497
12 Selected Writings, 1.56-7
13 Lichtheim, George Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1972), 156–8Google Scholar
14 Carnap, Hahn and Neurath in Neurath, 304, note the reticence: ‘The attitudes toward questions of life also showed noteworthy agreement, although these questions were not in the foreground of themes discussed within the Circle.’ About the primacy, see all of 317-18, especially the concluding two sentences: ‘We witness the spirit of the scientific world-conception penetrating in growing measure the forms of personal and public life, in education, upbringing, architecture, and the shaping of economic and social life according to rational principles. The scientific world-conception serves life, and life receives it.’
Schlick asserts the importance of ethics in the text I have quoted (n. 11) from II.497. In the same place he continues that there are only psychological reasons-not reasons of principle-why the Circle's investigations have not centered on ethics.
Reichenbach's dictum that scientific philosophy was a crusade (n. 12) shows his attitude. He continues, ‘Don't be misled by the frequency with which others mention their concern for mankind and the infrequency with which I use such words.’ This accords with his belief that morality is not learned from speculative philosophy (including positivism as a theory) but from practical activity (including scientific and philosophic activity). (See Selected Writings, 1.386.)
15 ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University,’ The Review of Metaphysics 38 (1985) 477
16 Much of it is expressed by Mussolini in ‘The Doctrine of Fascism,’ in Oakeshott, Michael ed., The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe (New York: MacMillan 1947), 164–79Google Scholar. Chesterton, G. K. made some of it the moral of an almost whimsical novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (London: J. Lane 1914)Google Scholar.
See Lichtheim, 156-60. Also, Gay, Peter ‘Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider,’ in Fleming, Donald and Bailyn, Bernard eds., The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1969), 13–14, 59-60Google Scholar. Also, Koenne, Werner ‘On the Antagonism between Philosophy and Technology in Germany and Austria,’ in Durbin, Paul T. ed., Research in Philosophy and Technology, Volume II, 1979 (Greenwich, CO: Jai Press 1979), 325–44Google Scholar.
17 Reported by Popper, Karl ‘Memories of Otto Neurath,’ in Neurath, 53Google Scholar
18 Reported by Carnap, ‘Intellectual Autobiography,’ in Schilpp, P.A. ed., Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (La Salle, lL: Open Court 1963), 51Google Scholar
19 Lichtheim, 161, 247-8, and 271. Also, Lewy, Guenter The Catholic Church and Nazi Gennany (New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company 1964) 39-43, 57, 99, 157 and 163Google Scholar. Also, Kedward, H. R. Fascism in Western Europe 1900-45 (Glasgow and London: Blackie 1969), 147–51Google Scholar. All three sources note the ideological sympathy of Catholicism for fascism.
20 Richard W. Miller construes it as a constant advocate of tolerance and moderation, and he does so because he thinks the Vienna Circle resembled David Hume (Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power and History [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1984], 304-13). Miller makes this large mistake because he removes the Circle from their real social background and interprets them based on the only similarity he recognizes.
The two authors I know who recognize that positivism was politically radical are both Europeans. I do not know whether this is coincidence or not. One is Werner Koenne, who writes (240) that the Vienna Circle was ‘a belated child of the Enlightenment which had not fallen on fertile ground in Germany.’ The other is Fink, Hans Social Philosophy (London and New York: Methuen 1981), 105–6Google Scholar: Positivistic ‘views received their first sharp formulation in Vienna and other parts of Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 30s. In the semi-feudal and deeply Catholic atmosphere of these countries such views constituted a radical and efficient criticism of all kinds of pompous and religious defences of tradition; and they could also be used to attack fascist conceptions of “;the people,” “the race” or “the historical task of the nation.” When fascist parties came to power therefore, this kind of theorizing was abruptly eliminated in Eastern Europe.’
21 ‘The Vienna Circle,’ in Midwest Studies in Philosophy VI: The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1981), 180. Ayer might be misled by Carnap's account. Carnap said that most of the Circle were socialists, but they liked to keep philosophy separate from their political aims; Neurath thought that this neutrality helped reactionaries (The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, 23).
Carnap meant that political views could not justify philosophical claims. He was talking about truth rather than importance, as is clear from a similar passage on page 51: Neurath defended materialism because ‘during the last hundred years, materialism was usually connected with progressive ideas in political and social matters, while idealism was associated with reactionary attitudes. Schlick and I, however, asked for philosophical arguments instead of sociological correlations.’ Neurath was urging that an ontological theory be accepted for its political implications, and this is what Carnap opposed. He did not see positivism as apolitical. On the contrary, he credited Neurath with bringing him to see the ‘connection between our philosophical activity and the great historical processes going on in the world’ (23).
Ayer does recognize (inconsistently, I think) that fascism and the Circle were ideologically hostile: ‘So far as I know, only Neurath and Waismann among its members were Jewish, but the radical spirit of the group, and its rational out-look, made it unacceptable to the Nazis’ (180). Now, a radical spirit and a rational outlook were essential to the Circle's philosophy; so, it was for all its members and not for Neurath alone ‘in part a political movement.’
22 Ayer, 187
23 Neurath, 317
24 Habermas, Jurgen ‘Dogmatism, Reason, and Decision: On Theory and Praxis in Our Scientific Civilization,’ Theory and Practice, trans. Viertel, John (Boston: Beacon Press 1973), 268–70Google Scholar
25 Habermas and Reichenbach speak differently about what is to be learned from scientific activity. The former:
[A]ccording to these same [positivistic] criteria, it can be demonstrated quite compellingly that rationality is a means for the realization of values, and therefore cannot itself be placed on the same level with all other values …. It guarantees the “efficiency” or “economy” of procedures. Both of these terms betray the interest of knowledge guiding the empirical sciences to be a technical one. (269)
The latter:
Scientific work is group work; the contributions of individual men to the solution of a problem may be smaller or larger, but will always be small compared to the amount of work invested in the problem by the group …. The social character of scientific work is the source of its strength. (Scientific Philosophy, 117-18)
26 Philosophical Papers I. 107. Reichenbach thought that philosophy should bridge the gap for the uneducated between science and everyday life. ‘Thus we view the work of present-day philosophy of science not only from the standpoint of its scholarly significance, as a clarification of basic scientific concepts, but also at the same time from the standpoint of society’ (Selected Works, 1.305).
27 I am referring not only to the fascist sentiments of his address at Freiburg but also to his membership in the Nazi party. In a reconsideration of the address, which he wrote in 1945, Heidegger still could say that he saw ‘positive possibilities’ in Nazism (‘The Rectorate 1933/34: Facts and Thoughts,’ The Review of Metaphysics 38 [1985] 485-6).
I am inclined to agree with Lichtheim's judgment (195): ‘Heidegger was by no means the only German philosopher who jumped down the sewers of 1933, but the enthusiasm he evinced at the sight of the Hitler cloaca had few parallels.’
28 Humanism and Terror, trans. John O’Neill (Boston: Beacon Press 1969). On the Moscow trials, see 25-70; on the future of Stalinism, 101-48. Steven Lukes discusses Merleau-Ponty's views in Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1985), 132-8.
In Adventures of the Dialectic, Merleau-Ponty summarized his position in Humanism and Terror: ‘Just after the war we tried to formulate a Marxist wait-and-see attitude …. Since adherence to communism was, we thought, impossible, it was all the more necessary to have a sympathetic attitude which would protect the chances of a new revolutionary flow’ (trans. Joseph Bien [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1973], 228-9). I do not understand his last sentence, why the impossibility of adherence is a reason for a sympathetic attitude.
29 Philosophical Papers, II.496
30 From The Conflict of the Faculties, quoted by Goodman, Paul Compulsory Mis-education and The Community of Scholars (New York: Vintage Books 1962), 185.Google Scholar
