The Neurath Principle: Its Grounds and Consequences

Abstract

After the powerful intellectual eruptions at the end of the old and the beginning of the new century, out of whose stream our thinking and research is still being nourished, the time seems to have come for taking breath, for taking stock and reflecting. There is a search for sources, a return to the fixed stars of the past, only to orient oneself anew in the confusion of the present. This undeniable fact seems to be, in any case, one of the reasons for the renaissance of interest in the Vienna Circle, and even in its direct and indirect ancestors-or, to phrase it according to a thesis of Neurath’s which I find appropriate for my own efforts-this fact seems one of the reasons why there is today not only a world-wide interest in the Austrian literature, fine art or architecture of this century, but also in that which can be called Austrian philosophy.

Notes

First published as ‘Das Neurath-Prinzip — Grundlagen und Folgerungen’, in Arbeiterbildung in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Hsrg. F. Stadler, © 1982, Österreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, Wien, pp. 79–87. Translated with kind permission of Osterreichisches Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum and the author by T. E. Uebel.