Verdrängter Humanismus, Band 5: Österreichische Philosophie 1920 - 1951

After the History of Austrian Philosophy from the 15th century onwards, the present volume offers the intellectual positions, as well as the influence of philosophy in various directions. A general trend was the development of philosophical empiricism, thus carrying on the traditions of the Enlightenment (cf. Prolegomena). Consequently, new access is shown with the development of particular scientific methods, leading towards narrowness, both in the theory and the practice. This, however, brought about a modified use of rationality as a sphere of conceptual fields of reason; which led to remarkable dissent and polemics, marking the first half of the century. The counter-position charged scientific empiricism with the loss of the founding function of reason in claiming a new "objectivity" in sciences and a distance from value precepts in the humanities. Along this horizon, the claimed turning-points in the natural sciences are investigated in the present volume together with their effects. The counter-positions in the social sciences, well known as the equilibrium between competitive and cooperative societal functions or abstract forms of value exchange, are being discussed according to their conceptual structures. Here, the extreme phenomena of the "polytheism of values" versus a "nihilism of relevances" were companions to the concrete research efforts (Mach, Boltzmann, W. Pauli jr., Schrödinger, Chagraff). Thus, this body of work was organized according to two main views. On the one hand, the chronological development provides a sequence for the XVII main parts. On the other hand, this sequence is broken up by external events, as well as internal scientific or philosophical affairs. From World War I until Austria`s resistance against acknowledging its own part in the events between 1920 and 1950 we find a fertile ground for ideologies opposite to philosophy, perverting often kindred disciplines towards their opposites. The most fruitful answers could be offered only vigorously - Austrian Marxism, forms of clerical traditionalism or rather pragmatism in its achievements in taming hardline tendencies in social sciences into liberal forms, such as the phenomenology of A. Schütz in his discourse with E. Voegelin. The latter took place at a time, when members of the Vienna Circle and the master, Wittgenstein, had already left the country: These perspectives show the widely divergent possibilities left to intellectuals during those days: Emigration abroad or inner emigration, as shown by the example of Profs. Dempf or Thirring, Demus, Knoll, and many more, but also the restricted survival of the sciences in the affirmation of the ruling NS-system. The positions of emigration abroad and internally became philosophically relevant in the natural as well as the formal sciences, in social scientific endeavors, and in the humanities, e.g. history, theology and atheist research. So, within the preparation of a critical anthropology (R. Zimmermann - A. Dempf), along with a permanent discourse involving literature and the fine arts, philosophy reaches an empirical basis, which is not only bound to the measure of natural sciences; yet, beside its antiquarian perspective it gains, if strong enough, a critico-monumentalistic outlook. Here, the many spider-webs of Austrian thoughts meet in the year of Wittgenstein`s death, despite the varieties of repression still prevailing, an interdependence, which in our days only could be achieved by a vast team of recognized authors.