Abstract
Hans-Joachim Dahms’s long-awaited book on the so-called “positivism dispute” is a most timely and important study of a particularly puzzling episode in the history of 20th century Central European philosophy.1 Transcending the distinction between internal and external historiography, it tells a story that may be read not only as a well-situated philosophical critique of the positions at issue in that dispute, but also as a political history of mid-20th century Central European philosophy of science. Read either way, Dahms’s study is of great contemporary relevance despite its historical orientation.
Hans-Joachim Dahms: Positivismusstreit. Die Auseinandersetzungen der Frankfurter Schule mit dem logischen Positivismus, dem amerikanischen Pragmatismus und dem kritischen Rationalismus, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1994.
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Notes
Dahms’s book was preceded by two lengthy studies on the present subject in the Jahrbuch für Soziologiegeschichte 1990 and 1991 (Opladen: Leske Budrich) as well as articles on the politically motivated emigration of the Logical Positivists (e.g., “Vertreibung und Emigration des Wiener Kreises zwischen 1931 und 1940” in: Hans-Joachim Dahms (ed.): Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Aufklärung,Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 1985, pp.307–365) and further related topics.
Of this round, only Horkheimer’s “Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik” has been publicly available (Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6, 1937, pp.4–51, repr. in: Max Horkheimer: Kritische Theorie II, Frankfurt: Fischer 1968, pp.82–136, transl. “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics”, in: Max Horkheimer: Critical Theory, New York: Seabury 1972, pp. 132–187.
The central document of this episode has also been brought to light for the first time in this study.
In T.W. Adorno (ed.): Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie,Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand 1969, transl. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,London: Heinemann and New York: Harper Row 1976 (with a [revised] review of the German original by Popper).
R. Carnap, H. Hahn, O. Neurath]: Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung–Der Wiener Kreis, Wien: Wolf 1929, p.14, trans]. “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle” in: M. Neurath and R.S. Cohen (eds.): Otto Neurath, Empiricism and Sociology, Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel 1973, pp. 299–318.
Thus still in Habermas’ Nachmetaphysisches Denken (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1988, transl. Postmetaphysical Thinking,Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press 1991), chap. 3, we find the charge that “positivism and its sucessors” were possessed of the “unenlightened scientistic intention to absolutise empirical reasoning” - an apparently unreflected echo of his earlier Horkheimeresque pronouncement in Erkenntnis und Interesse,namely, “that we disavow reflection is positivism” (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1968, 2nd ed. 1973, trans]. Knowledge and Human Interests,London: Heinemann 1971, 2nd ed. 1978, Preface).
See note 2.
O. Neurath: “Inventory of the Standard of Living”, in: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6, 1937, pp.140–151.
See note 4.
For some of the relevant criticisms see, e.g., M. Hesse: “Science and Objectivity”, in: J.B. Thompson and D. Held (eds.): Habermas: Critical Debates, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press 1982, pp.98–115, and S. Vogel: “Habermas and Science”, in: Praxis International 8, 1988, pp. 329–349.
See note 6.
Consider, for instance, P. Frank: Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen, Vienna: Springer 1932, or Das Ende der mechanistischen Physik, Vienna: Gerold 1935, trans]. “The End of Mechanistic Physics” in: B. McGuinness: Unified Science, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1987.
For a defense of Neurath against Horkheimer in part along these lines see T.E. Uebel: Overcoming Logical Positivism From Within, Amsterdam-Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi 1992, pp. 295–300.
This strategy is evident in polemics against “school philosophy”, as in R. Carnap: Scheinprobleme der Philosophie,Berlin: Bernary 1928, transl. “Pseudoproblems in Philosophy” in: R. Carnap: The Logical Structure of the World,Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press 1967, pp.301–343, as it is in internal disputes, as in O. Neurath: “Radikaler Physikalismus und ‘wirkliche Welt’“, in: Erkenntnis 4, 1934, pp.346–362, transi. “Radical Physicalism and the `Real World’“, in: R.S. Cohen and M. Neurath (eds.): Otto Neurath, Philosophical Papers,Dordrecht: Kluwer 1983, pp.100–114.
See reference in note 13.
Compare R. Hegselmann: “It was to take until the end of the seventies for it to be noted that Logical Empiricism did not begin as the type of philosophy of science in the guise of which it was then received, but that it was its exile that turned it into one such, an exile that deprived the members of the Vienna Circle of the politico-cultural environment of Austromarxism […]” (“Alles nur Mißverständnisse? Zur Vertreibung des Logischen Empirismus aus Österreich und Deutschland”, in: F. Stadler (ed.): Vertriebene Vernunft II: Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft,Munich-Vienna: Verlag Jugend und Volk 1988, pp.188–202, at p.193, my translation). Elsewhere Dahms notes that still in the Germany of 1979 “the reminder that there existed besides the Frankfurt School also ‘another’ German-speaking philosophy in exile possessed a certain newsworthiness” (“Die Emigration des Wiener Kreises” in: F. Stadler (ed.): Vertriebene Vernunft I: Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft,Munich-Vienna: Verlag Jugend und Volk 1987, pp.66–122, at pp.66–67, my translation).
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Uebel, T.E. (1994). The Positivism Dispute Revisited. In: Pauer-Studer, H. (eds) Norms, Values, and Society. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2454-8_28
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