Volume 3, Issue 1: Vienna Circle - The Director's Cut

 Vienna Circle: The Director’s Cut

 

David Edmonds: The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020. Hardcover ISBN: 9780691164908. pp. xiv +313. $27.95

 

 

„In came an eight-hour working day and unemployment benefits. In came an impressive housing program, 64,000 dwellings in vast blocks, accommodating 200,000 people (a tenth of the city’s population). In came rent control. Major investment went into hospitals and public health, and money flowed to set up and support libraries, parks, and sports facilities. Education was given a high priority, and not just in schools. Over the years there developed an extensive network of adult evening classes. The aim was to improve the minds of the masses, both as an end in itself and also because an educated worker, as everyone knew (or thought they knew), is a socialist worker. While many leftist European parties without power were promoting policies to improve the lot of the least advantaged, [here] the policies were being put dramatically into effect. The rich had to pay: taxes were raised from luxury consumption and goods (including servants)”

 

Is this part of a populist program, or is it an enjoyable (or, for others, worrying) wishful thinking? The above description is given of the so-called Red Vienna of the 1920s and early 1930s, a democratic utopia that was too good to last forever. In this surprisingly progressive and modernist atmosphere, intellectual trends were forged hand-in-hand with the ever more satisfying socio-economical and educational conditions. In this city, the so-called Vienna Circle of logical empiricism grew rather organically despite all the counterattacks and dangerous political uprisings on the right. This review is about a book that is about the story of the Vienna Circle, one (if not the) most interesting discussion-group of the history of analytic philosophy.

            When one starts to talk about the history of analytic philosophy, most people would still expect an abstract rational reconstruction of the most basic arguments of and conceptual divergences among top-rated philosophers. Historiographical trends are changing, however, and conceptual structures are often replaced by interwoven stories of accusations, canonized figures are left behind for peripheral influencers, and intellectual connections are changed for personal hatreds. The best would be, of course, if one could somehow join these two strategies, and would be able to use the best results of both approaches to produce a novel narrative and a fascinating story of the given subject.          

            In the case of the Vienna Circle, the opinioned reader had various chances during the last few years to experience how well-received scholars tried to present their own histories of logical empiricism popularly. Given the various editions and translations of these books, one could wonder whether there is any further place for a popular account of the Vienna Circle. Not caring much about what the market will prove, the philosophical answer is an obvious yes! 

            David Edmonds gained a reputation not just as a professional philosopher working on ethical issues, but also as an exceptionally engaging popular writer. After Popper and Wittgenstein, for everyone’s luck and happiness, Edmonds has turned in his latest book to The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle needs no introduction to readers and lovers of philosophy, but one approach would characterize it as an interdisciplinary discussion group led by Moritz Schlick that get together on a weekly basis mainly between 1925 and 1936 in Viennese coffeehouses and the Library of the Mathematical Institute of the University of Vienna (at the now-famous Boltzmanngasse 5). Members of the Circle varied in age, academic status, sex, and interest, as well as in their professional education. There were physicist-trained-philosophers (Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank), mathematicians and logicians (Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Kurt Gödel, Olga-Hahn Neurath, Rose Rand), sociologists (Otto Neurath and Edgar Zilsel), philosopher of law (Felix Kaufmann), philosophers (Friedrich Waismann), geographer (Viktor Kraft), and many others. All these people shared some vague values of education-based Enlightenment; of the progressivity of science; of rationality developed through intersubjective discussion, and they tried to place philosophy on a more scientific footing (whatever that meant differently to individual actors).

            In one sense, the Vienna Circle was not at all unique as such in Red Vienna. Discussion groups outside the walls of the highly conservative and hierarchical university were blooming in the coffeehouses. Edmonds is keen to help us understand why such forms of cognitive enterprises were so virulent and unique to Vienna. With regard to such complex questions of how networks of knowledge production and dissemination work, there are no easy and definite answers, of course. But as Edmonds goes through some candidates, we learn bit-by-bit more about how (intellectual and cultural) life evolved in Vienna. We got to know a lot about how inverted the universities were with their rigid structures of professorships, often based on and fuel by anti-Semitism and envy, and thus did not help and foster free critical discussions of recent scientific and philosophical results. The miserable housing conditions in post-war Vienna often forced people to spend as much time as possible in town: “Viennese apartments were in short supply, and typically small, dark, and cold” (pp. 69-70).

            What made the Vienna Circle outstanding was its breadth on the one hand that showed itself within the numbers of participants and the comprehensive topics they discussed; on the other hand, the Circle had a definite and often self-acknowledged socio-political agenda that was supported by its brand-building, initiated by the “big locomotive” of the movement, Otto Neurath. Edmonds shows nicely how the Circle tried to stay above the waves of Central European history, how individual members struggled with anti-Semitism, irrationality, religious dogmatism, conservative attacks on their persons and views, which led, in the end, to the murder of Schlick in 1936. But there is no sadness or gloominess in the book – Edmonds was able to paint such a lively picture of the movement that shows all the hidden hopes, promises, and expectations of the members that helped them through various emigrations within Europe, and from Europe to the United States. 

            Throughout our intellectual journey, Edmonds provides detailed and highly contextualized answers to his original questions, such as “why had the Vienna Circle crushed by the authorities? Why had its members been forced into exile? And has it been succeeded in its ultimate ambition – to vanquish metaphysics and banish the multiple varieties of pseudo-knowledge?” (p. 4). One of the biggest strengths of the book is its proportionality: all the figures of the Circle get sufficiently equal treatment in their views and actions. Though Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, Gödel, Wittgenstein, and Popper (the last two being only related to the Circle), evidently got more pages due to their leading roles, one does not feel that he is reading a book about Carnap, or Neurath, or about Wittgenstein. A very balanced account of the Circle and its major happenings is provided.

           The book is mainly organized temporally, and we go through all the major stages of the Circle, beginning with the private issues of the middle-1920s, going through the so-called public-phase that started with the dividing manifesto (1929), and resulted in a growing internalization that made relatively smooth emigration possible. Only the American phase of the Circle is somehow quickly crossed over, though there would have been similarly much socio-politically interesting changes in the life of philosophy and philosophers (some of these, like the notorious FBI investigations, are loosely touched upon). But that is presumably an entirely different story to tell.

            Edmonds has written a compelling, captivating, and easily approachable book on the history of the Vienna Circle. He is witty, engaging, knows where to put emphasis, and how to draw lively pictures of those philosophers that are still too often conceived as technically minded abstract logicians. The Vienna Circle was not a body of top-rated professors and postdocs that published up-to-date discussion notes in Q1 journals. First of all, they made most of our Q1 journals and developed those institutes and programs that are out there to join for professional careers. Secondly, they were much more: they were a socio-political movement, a big family with all the typical inner tensions, hatreds, likings, betrayal, mockery, touching humanity (we got to know a lot of stories how one member supported financially other members during emigration). If you would like to read one account of the Vienna Circle from the many available recent sources, choose this. With one of the best covers of the last few years (a useful index, bibliography, and biographies of the main actors), Edmonds’ book will make you understand why the Vienna Circle was so important back in the 1920s, and still important in the 2020s.

            

Adam Tamas Tuboly

Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, ELRN

Supported by the MTA Lendulet Morals and Science Research group and by the MTA Premium Postdoctoral Scholarship.