The Politics of Logical Empiricism

The relationship between scientific and/or philosophical programmatic manifestos and political commitment has often been debated. Are certain political positions inherent in scientific approaches or is there a contingent relation between science and politics? Can even opposing political statements result from the same scientific programs? Particularly due to National Socialism it has often been discussed in a number of case studies (see e.g. the debates on Martin Heidegger) whether pro-Nazi statements by and attitudes of certain philosophers or scientists are a direct consequence of their works or if scientific research and philosophical reflections have to be assessed strictly separate from questions of ethics and politics. Logical Empiricism (LE) is for various reasons a worthwhile example for the study of this precarious relationship. First, logical-empiricist (or neopositivist) approaches have often been qualified by their opponents as merely "scientistic" projects without any political aspirations or, even worse, as affirmative political philosophy that stabilizes the political status quo. Despite historical and empirical evidence that confuted such arguments a problematic political image of Logical Empiricism or Neopositivism is still alive. Second, the proponents of LE obviously differed politically. Although its representatives have displayed common sense with respect to the need for an enlightened, anti-metaphysical, empirically and scientifically oriented new philosophy, their political views, however, ranged from a more or less apolitical Liberalism to militant Marxism. Third, some of the Logical-Empiricists themselves openly discussed whether there is or can be a sort of political agenda of their philosophical and scientific work. This discussion, however, again led to strictly opposing results among proponents of LE: Some of them clearly separated matters of politics from their scholarly activities and stressed the non-cognitive character of ethics (and even politics). Others, however, presumed a close correlation between the revolutionary scientific spirit of optimism that was expressed in the 1929 manifesto entitled "Scientific Conception of the World" and other cultural and political developments leading to social reform and rational planning. Fourth, most of the proponents of LE agreed that science is not only an elitist matter that should be reserved for debates within a close scientific community. Rather, communication between academic or independent scholars and the public was to take place regularly and intensively. Thus, it was at this very time (1928 resp. 1927) that institutions such as the Ernst Mach Association ("Verein Ernst Mach") in Vienna and the Berlin Society of Empiric/Scientific Philosophy ("Gesellschaft für empirische/wissenschaftliche Philosophie") were initiated by or with the help of leading proponents of LE. The research project contextualizes, analyses and critically discusses the intellectual and scientific activities of the respective associations and their proponents such as Moritz Schlick, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Grelling, Walter Dubislav, and Alexander Herzberg.

In the history of philosophy, Logical Empiricism is often referred to as neo-positivism. Since the positivism debate of the 1960s at the very latest, positivism has been considered the very embodiment of an affirmative philosophy that, in contrast to critical theory, is completely devoid of a social criticism component and lacks even the capacity to develop a transcendental perspective with respect to the existing social and economic order. Ever since, generations of students have been intellectually socialized with this negative image of positivism, which was also transferred to the Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism of the interwar years. In the context of the historical centers of continental European Logical Empiricism, the research project analyzed two organizations that were dedicated to the dissemination of this approach in philosophy of science: The Ernst Mach Association and the Berlin Society of Empirical Philosophy (renamed Berlin Society of Scientific Philosophy in 1931). The associations were founded independently of one another in 1927 and 1928; however, a comparative analysis of their origins demonstrates remarkable parallels. Many representatives of the scientific world-conception (which was the title of the Vienna Circles manifesto) came from an ideologically informed late-Enlightenment milieu that was anything but apolitical. Associations such as the Monists, the Freethinkers and even representatives of non-religious humanitarian ethics played key roles in the establishment of both societies. Although the activities of both associations became increasingly scientific in the following years, they were never apolitical. Red Vienna and Red Berlin were opposed by Black Vienna and Black Berlin, both of which forcefully attacked their respective counterparts, as analysis of contemporary media coverage shows. Eventually they were banned by Fascism and National Socialism for political reasons. In addition to the organizational histories, the research projects examined the intellectual and political biographies of its most important representatives: Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank and Rudolf Carnap in Vienna; Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Grelling, Walter Dubislav and Alexander Herzberg in Berlin. As scrutiny of their political biographies makes clear, later logical empiricists were intellectually socialized in the youth movement before and after World War I. Therefore, the research project marshaled the systematic evidence of a progressive, social-liberal-to-Marxist basic stance on the part of representatives of Logical Empiricism and their associations, and applied it to the fundamental question of the extent to which the youth movement, or certain currents within it, influenced their later Logical Empiricism. With respect to the ideas of science and education as well as to their progressive and emancipatory political attitudes, continuities such as these could be convincingly demonstrated. Without a doubt, Logical Empiricism was also a political project.