Friedrich Stadler

A handwritten version of this text exists, as well as a version in a hectographed brochure: „Im Nebel. Hrsg. von den Mitarbeitern, Tel Aviv, 1945“. The brochure is self-published. One copy is in the estate of Paul Engelmann in the Brenner Archive in Innsbruck, another copy in the German National Library, where an electronic reproduction is also available online (URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2013100125551). In addition to Schächter’s „Lehre und Irrlehre“ (7–16), the brochure also contains „Im Nebel“ by Joseph Markus and „Ein verfehlter Versuch“ by Paul Engelmann. The handwritten text is dated 1943 and is owned by Friedrich Stadler. In the upper left corner Schächter has written: „Dem Andenken Moritz Schlicks (1882–1936)“. The following reproduction reprints the hectographed text, the deviations from the handwritten text are noted in footnotes as „HS“.

On June 14, 1993, I—Friedrich Stadler—was invited by the “Van Leer Jerusalem Institute” to give a lecture as part of a series on “Vienna and Jerusalem—Past, Present, Future”. This was in connection with an exhibition and catalog that was shown for the first time at the Venice Biennale under the title Vertreibung der Vernunft/The Cultural Exodus from Austria (ed. by Friedrich Stadler and Peter Weibel, Löcker Verlag, Vienna 1993; second revised and enlarged edition: Springer, Vienna—New York 1995). On this occasion, I had the pleasure of meeting the respected Austrian historian Dr. Herbert Rosenkranz (born 1924 in Vienna, died 2003 in Jerusalem). This led to a personal exchange, which included an interview that Herbert Rosenkranz conducted with Josef Schächter in 1981 and deposited as an audio cassette at Yad Vashem, where he also worked as an archivist and department head. He then taught at the universities in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (Hebrew University), where he supported the memorial service of young Austrians. His main works include the books Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung. The Jews in Austria 1938–1945 (1978), Reichskristallnacht. 9. November 1938 in Austria (1968), His late brother Kurt Rosenkranz founded the Jewish Institute for Adult Education in Vienna in 1993.

This essay was written in Haifa and first published in Synthese 8 (1950/1951) 8/9: 367–384. In a letter to Henk Mulder (owned by Friedrich Stadler), dated 07.07.1967, Schächter writes: „Ich habe am Schlick-Seminar für Studenten teilgenommen (von Ostern 1928 bis zu seinem Tod). Ich habe auch am Proseminar von Friedrich Waismann teilgenommen (über die Methode der Seminare siehe meinen Ansatz [sic] ‚Über das Verstehen‘, der in der ‚Synthese‘ (8, 367) bei D. Reidel erschienen ist. Dort finden Sie eine fast genaue Darstellung)“.

The following interview with Schächter was conducted by Herbert Rosenkranz in Haifa in 1981. It was recorded on a cassette, which is now archived (as O.85/343: Schaechter Josef, Dr.) in Yad Vashem. Schächter talks about his childhood and the time he spent in Vienna. The recording ends abruptly, apparently because the end of the cassette has been reached; there is no continuation. The following transcript reproduces the wording unchanged to give an impression of the character of the conversation and Schächter’s manner of speaking. For a better overview, headings have been added (in German, as the whole interview was conducted in German). Schächter speaks very slurredly and swallows whole syllables (the conversation takes place in what appears to be a very relaxed and informal atmosphere), so in some cases it was not possible to clearly identify what he was saying.

Schächter’s following account of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s life and intellectual development was published in Judaism and Education in Our Time (יהדות וחינוך בזמן הזה, Dvir, Tel Aviv 1965/66, 161–196). The Hebrew text relies heavily on the material Schächter cites: It draws from George Henrik von Wright’s narration of Wittgenstein’s life and—more importantly—Paul Engelmann’s recollections of his friendship with Wittgenstein. Schächter chooses various passages and themes from these authors to reproduce in Hebrew. While in most places, the structure of Schächter’s Hebrew resembles the German and English texts he builds upon, the emphases in his selections and his wording convey their own tone and meaning. In addition to these adaptions into Hebrew, Schächter presents the central arguments of Wittgenstein’s thought and provides various commentaries throughout the text.

Asher Schechter is a Curriculum supervisor at the Ministry of Education in Israel, now teaching Philosophy, History and Judaism in USA. After he was ordained to the rabbinate, he turned to the academic and educational world. As part of his curricular responsibility, he is in charge of writing curricula in various fields: Bible, Talmudic studies, Islam, Christianity, Jewish philosophy in interfaces with general philosophy. He taught Jewish philosophy and History at Horev High School for girls in Jerusalem, one of the best high schools in Israel. His academic works mainly deal with Dr. Schächter’s philosophy. His master thesis, The Thought of the Sages in the Philosophy of Dr. Josef Schächter, in which he analyzes Dr. Schächter’s method of interpretation of the Sage’s thought and general Philosophy. The topic of his dissertation is From Science to Faith –The Early Thought of Dr. Josef Schächter in the Land of Israel (Hebrew University—Jerusalem Israel, 2009). He sought to decipher the Schächterian contact between two conflicting worlds, the Viennese circle for its non-metaphysical approach and the Jewish spiritual world. One of the papers published based on this work is titled as “How theology can be created on an anti-theological environment” (Canada 2010). During his postdoctoral studies at Harvard University (USA), he wrote the paper “When the Pantheist Met the Panentheist”, which is an analysis of the dialogue between Mr. David Ben-Gurion—the first Israeli Prime Minister—and Josef Schächter about religion and science. In addition, he wrote a biography of Dr. Josef Shechter. A small chapter of the biography was expanded for the purpose of writing this paper. Over the years, Schechter lectured on Dr. Josef Schächter’s philosophy at international and educational conferences in Israel and around the world. In recent years, he digitized the writings of his grandfather, Dr. Josef Schächter. This paper is based on papers written by Dr. Josef Schächter and memories of his father, Dr. Zvi Schechter and his brother Rabbi Yaakov Dov Schechter.

In this chapter of the Hebrew book Reflections on Dilemmas in Our Time (פרקי עיון לנבוכי זמננו, Dvir, Tel Aviv 1970, 66–70), Schächter answers questions of his many readers and critics in Israel. He outlines his intellectual trajectory in the context of his time working within the Vienna Circle: Even while he was still in Vienna, Schächter writes, he knew that he could not remain an “only-positivist-positivist”. Even then, he was looking for a connection between logic and religion with the aim of creating a new theology. After having differentiated the religious from the scientific sphere, Schächter understood that not only a differentiation but also an integration of the two linguistic spheres was utterly necessary for him as a religious intellectual. However, religious thought and commands can never be brought into the descriptive sphere, according to Schächter, as the experiential-emotional aspect of faith requires a different form of expression. His attempts to “give expression to the inexpressible”, to find a way to express that linguistic sphere of religion, have led him to, among other things, his lively publishing activity in Israel. Perhaps the intellectual trajectory of Schächter—from a logical linguistic sphere towards adding a religious one—is also connected with the different linguistic spaces in which he worked: It is possible that the integration of a “religious sphere” and a “logical sphere” in Hebrew, the language of everyday life as well as of the Torah, is attainable in a different way.

Schächter taught at several Jewish educational institutions in Vienna (see the interview in Chap. 11 in Vol. 2), though it is not apparent where he might have taught logic. Undoubtedly, however, this is a textbook written with the intention of teaching modern logic – Schächter calls it “logistics”, as was customary in his time – to people who speak Hebrew. It is unique in its kind. Schächter takes much from Russell’s and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, but above all from Rudolf Carnap’s Abriss der Logistik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen (Springer, Wien 1929).

This paper was initially published as “Der Sinn pessimistischer Sätze” in Synthese (3 (1938) 5: 223–33) and then much later in the English translation which is reprinted here (“The Meaning of Pessimistic Sentences”, in: Brian McGuinness, Joachim Schulte (eds.), Ethics and the Will. Essays (= Vienna Circle Collection 21), Springer, Dordrecht 1994, 9–17). It is based on a lecture Schächter gave to members of the Vienna Circle in 1937 (see Chap. 8 of Vol. 2) and has much overlap with a section (reprinted as Chap. 8 of Vol. 2) of a book he published in 1978.

The Vienna Circle is the name given to a regular discussion group of some 20 members around the physicist and philosopher Moritz Schlick (1882–1936). In this so-called “Schlick-Circle” the reform of traditional philosophy, its foundations and methods were discussed between 1924 and 1936 against the background of relativity theory, quantum physics, symbolic logic and language analysis. It endeavored to redefine the currents of rationalism and empiricism and combine them into “logical empiricism”. The task of philosophy was to clarify the language of science by determining the meaning of statements. An encyclopedia of unified science challenged philosophy’s claim to leadership in the sciences (Stadler 2015).

Schächter completed his dissertation Kritische Darstellung von N. Hartmanns „Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis“ in 1931. Schächter’s grandson remembers (see Chap. 13 of Vol. 2) that this dissertation topic was proposed to Schächter by his supervisor Moritz Schlick. Nicolai Hartmann’s book was a very obvious subject for a critical investigation in the spirit of the Vienna Circle. Not only was metaphysics one of the main targets of the Vienna Circle, Hartmann was also one of the leading exponents of this discipline. In an introductory book to Hartmann’s philosophy, one reads: „Das Erscheinen der Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921) machte Hartmann mit einem Schlag berühmt. Er genoß großes Ansehen bei seinen Fachkollegen und hatte, wie die zahlreichen Publikationen über seine Philosophie zeigen, eine beachtliche Breitenwirkung“. The second edition was published as early as 1925, the third in 1941. Schlick did not dedicate a book or paper to Hartmann, but he mentions him in his writings and they also met in person. One might say that Schlick and Hartmann were equal players in rival directions of philosophy at the time. For Schächter, on the other hand, Hartmann seems to be of little importance apart from the dissertation.

This essay, like “On the Essence of Philosophy”, was originally written in German, then translated into Italian (by Ludovico Geymonat) and Dutch. The translations were published as „Contributo all’analisi del concetto di cultura”, Rivista di Filosofia 28 (1937): 289–297, and “Bijdrage tot de Analyse van het Begrif ‚Cultuur‘“, Synthese 2 (1937) 2: 47–54. The two papers do not match completely; in some places, the Italian text even contradicts the Dutch text (for example, on the question of whether animal behaviour should be included in the definition of culture); and there are some omissions in the Italian version. As there is some evidence that the Dutch version is closer to the German original, it was chosen as the basis for this translation. However, where the Dutch text seemed unclear, the Italian was consulted for the translation; some passages of the text have nevertheless remained unclear. Where available, the terminology has been taken from the German abstract (reprinted after the text as in the original). Since the text was initially written in German and is also particularly interesting against the background of the cultural conditions in Vienna before the Second World War, a German translation is given here.

This text was first published in German as: Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik (=Schriften zur Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung Bd. 10), Springer, Wien 1935. About 40 years later, it was translated into English by Paul Foulkes, provided with an additional English preface by J. F. Staal and published by Reidel (Dordrecht – Boston 1973). In 1978, a further German edition was published, this time with an afterword by Gerd H. Reitzig. The afterword is not reprinted here; however, a passage from it aptly characterises Schächter’s undertaking and reads as follows: “Already at the beginning of the 1930s, Schächter devoted himself to the task of clarifying the logical-grammatical status of sentences in pedagogy, religion – here especially the logical status of the sentences in the Talmud – and etiquette. He partly creates the necessary instruments for this himself by presenting with the […] Prolegomena […] ‘an easily comprehensible exposition’ of his ‘ideas for the justification of a critical grammar’.” (transl. E. H.-R.)

This essay of Schächter’s was first published as “Sull’essenza della filosofia”, Rivista di Filosofia 27 (1936): 1–13. It is a translation by the philosopher and mathematician Ludovico Geymonat (1908–1991) of an essay that seems to be written in German—as the German expressions inserted in brackets suggest. Since the original text has disappeared, the English version below has been translated from Italian. The essay was also translated into Dutch and published as: „Over het wezen der philosophie“, Synthese 2 (1937) 10: 395–405.

This book on the life and work of Josef Schächter, member of the Vienna Circle and Rabbi, covers all writings of his Viennese period until 1938. The works include his dissertation on Nicolai Hartmann, his monograph Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik inspired by Wittgenstein, his Introduction to Logic, and several articles on linguistic and analytic philosophy, ethics, and religion. It is an important source for anyone working on Schächter, Wittgenstein and/or the Vienna Circle. It provides students and researchers with a special contribution to the Jewish cultural history of Vienna before the Shoah.

Vienna-born Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994) is one of the best-known philosophers of the twentieth century, who has been the subject of controversial debates among the general public beyond the world of academic scholars right up to the present day. He gained this image after the publication of his book Against Method (1975)/Wider den Methodenzwang. Skizze einer anarchistischen Erkenntnistheorie (1976), which radically criticized the normative analytical philosophy of science. Before this career as a provocateur and enfant terrible of the philosophy of science, Feyerabend experienced a little-noticed intellectual socialization in Vienna, which shaped him until the end of his life, as can be grasped from his autobiography Killing Time (1994)/Zeitverschwendung (1995). After WW II Feyerabend studied at the University of Vienna art history and natural sciences before devoting himself to philosophy. Here he joined the discussion circle around the philosophy professor Viktor Kraft (the so called “Third Vienna Circle”), who, as the last member of the Vienna Circle, tried for a short time to continue this tradition. Ludwig Wittgenstein also participated in this circle shortly before his death, as did his later his literary heir Elizabeth Anscombe from England. All these conversations flowed into his dissertation Zur Theorie der Basissätze (1951). Feyerabend then worked as an assistant to visiting professor Arthur Pap from the USA in 1953/54, for whom he prepared the book Analytische Erkenntnistheorie (1955), dedicated to the Vienna Circle. From 1948 Feyerabend was a member of the Austrian College / Forum Alpbach, where he also met Karl Popper, and translated bestseller The Open Society and its Enemies (2 volumes) into German. In London, he became friends with Imre Lakatos, who had been exiled from Hungary and with whom he planned the joint book project “For and Against Method”. This remained unfinished due to Lakatos’ early death, so that his original essay “Against Method” (1970) in “Minnesota Studies” (ed. by Herbert Feigl’s “Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science”) became an international bestseller as a later monograph in 1975. In it, he argued against a privileged scientific method in favor of a historically oriented pluralistic philosophy of science. These forgotten episodes of early Feyerabend and his intellectual return to Vienna with the appreciation of Ernst Mach are described and contextualized.

Ernst Mach war bereits ein international erfolgreicher Experimentalphysiker und Naturwissenschaftler, als er nach Professuren in Graz und Prag am Höhepunkt seiner Karriere im Jahre 1895 den für ihn neu geschaffenen Lehrstuhl für „Philosophie, insbesondere Geschichte und Theorie der induktiven Wissenschaften“ an der Universität Wien übernahm.Was bewog den passionierten „Naturforscher“, der sich Zeit seines Lebens als „Sonntagsjäger“ in der Philosophie betrachtete, gerade diesen wichtigen Lehrstuhl zu übernehmen, der dann die Grundlage für seine Nachfolger Ludwig Boltzmann und Moritz Schlick, dem Begründer des Wiener Kreises, bildete?Um diese Frage zu beantworten, muss man auf Machs geistige Sozialisation zurückgehen: sein Schlüsselerlebnis bei der Lektüre Kants, die Prägung durch den Kantianer Friedrich Beneke, sowie seine Auseinandersetzung mit den philosophischen Zeitgenossen: von Franz Brentano ausgehend, über Wilhelm Jerusalem, hin zu Theodor und Heinrich Gomperz, oder zu Pierre Duhem und William James.Nicht zuletzt spiegelt die pluralistische und differenzierte Rezeption Machs im Wiener Kreis (mit Wittgenstein und Popper) dessen (anti-)philosophisches Erbe, das sich nicht nur in der Aktivität des Vereins Ernst Mach manifestierte. Die späte Entdeckung Machs durch Paul Feyerabend polarisierte genauso wie dessen Streitschrift „Wider den Methodenzwang“.Vor dem Hintergrund dieser breiten und starken Wirkungsgeschichte in der Philosophie ist Machs pessimistisches Resümee erstaunlich, wonach am Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts wieder eine dominante aprioristische Wende eingetreten sei.Im Artikel werden die Umstände seiner Berufung beschrieben und Machs autobiografische Bestandsaufnahme im Vergleich zu seiner pluralistischen Wirkungsgeschichte aus heutiger Sicht neu bewertet – was ihn als Vorläufer einer aktuellen historischen Epistemologie und Wissenschaftsphilosophie jenseits von traditioneller „Schulphilosophie“ erscheinen lässt.

This volume is a result of the international symposium “The Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School in European Culture,” which took place in Warsaw, Poland, September 2015. It collects almost all the papers presented at the symposium as well as some additional ones. The contributors include scholars from Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland. The papers are devoted to the history and reception of the Lvov-Warsaw School, a Polish branch of analytic philosophy. They present the School’s achievements as well as its connections to other analytic groups. The contributors also show how the tradition of the School is developed contemporarily. The title will appeal to historians of analytic philosophy as well as historians of philosophy in Central Europe.

Die im Wiener Kreis dominierenden konträren Derücer Otto Neurath und Moritz Schlick werden jeweüs mit einem historisch-genetischen Profil persönlich, wissenschaftlich-phüosophisch und politisch charakterisiert. Dabei wüd trotz verschiedener Differenzen — als Extrempositionen im pluralistisch-heterogenen Wiener Kreis — die gemeinsame Müiimalplattform eüier "wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung" und das Bekenntnis zu einer als neuartig verstandenen Forschergemeinschaft transparent. Erst vor diesem Hintergrund sind die beiden Denker- und Persönlichkeitsphysiognomien in einen adäquaten Kontext gestellt: während bei Neurath eine konsistente Entwicklung von den Modellen einer "wissenschaftlichen Philosophie", "Einheitswissenschaft" bis zur "Enzyklopädie" im Zusammenhang mit einem Sozialreformerischen Programm und funktionaler Antimetaphysik zu erkennen ist, wird bei Schlick der Dualismus von Philosophie und Wissenschaft neben einem politischen Liberalismus beibehalten. Auf allgemeinster Ebene kollidieren"phüosophiefreier" RELATIVISMUS und "philosophischer" ABSOLUTISMUS.

The main claim of this talk is that mathematical physics and philosophy of physics are not different. This claim, so formulated, is obviously false because it is overstated; however, since no non-tautological statement is likely to be completely true, it is a meaningful question whether the overstated claim expresses some truth. I hope it does, or so I’ll argue. The argument consists of two parts: First I’ll recall some characteristic features of von Neumann’s work on mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics and will claim that von Neumann’s motivation and results are essentially philosophical in their nature; hence, to the extent von Neumann’s work exemplifies what is considered to be mathematical physics, mathematical physics appears as formally explicit philosophy of physics. The second argument is based on a rather trivial interpretation of what mathematical physics is. That interpretation implies that mathematical physics shares some key characteristic features with philosophy of physics which make the two almost indistinguishable.