Richard Wahle

Richard Wahle (born February 14, 1857 in Vienna ; † October 21, 1935 there ) was an Austrian philosopher, psychologist and educator who is now considered an important representative of positivism in Austria. He taught in Vienna and Chernivtsi. Based on the neuroscientific research results of his time, he developed a physiological description of human thought and represented a scientifically based materialism in the discourse on the role of metaphysics in philosophy .

Life

Wahle studied medicine , law and philosophy in Vienna . In 1782 Joseph II granted the Jews of Vienna and Lower Austria almost the status of 'full citizens' with his tolerance patent . The Viennese Jews were given freedom of education and trade, access to the country's universities and were able to acquire real estate of all kinds. An enormous number of Jews immigrated to the metropolis of Vienna from all over the Habsburg Empire . The increasing anti-Semitism of the 19th century was least noticeable in the academic milieu. At the end of the 1890s, almost half of all medical students were of Jewish origin.

A large number of Jewish medical professionals performed pioneering work, e.g. B. Emil Zuckerkandl (1849–1910), who became known for his research on craniology , or Salomon Stricker (1834–1898), who founded and headed an experimental institute for pathology at the University of Vienna , which became an international center for scientific research Training and teaching was; likewise the physiologists Sigmund Exner (1846-1926) u. Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (1846-1891). And many more.

Like Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923), Wahle had been a student of Ernst Mach (1838–1916). In his time he still represented the type of the classical polymath. He received his doctorate in philosophy (Dr. phil.) In 1884. 1885-1895 he taught as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Vienna, where he, among other teachers of Heinrich Gomperz (philosopher) (1873-1942) and Konrad Mautner was (Volkstumsforscher) (1880-1924). 1895 to 1917 Wahle was a full professor of philosophy, education and psychology at the University of Chernivtsi (Bukowina; Černivici / Чернівці, Ukraine). After his retirement in 1917, Wahle taught as a lecturer at the University of Vienna and lived as a private scholar in Vienna.

He converted from the Mosaic to the Roman Catholic faith in 1887 .

Wahle died on October 21, 1935 as a result of a serious accident. He was unmarried.

Topics of his philosophizing

Wahle was particularly well known for his criticism of traditional philosophy. He rejected their metaphysical claim to possess or be able to achieve absolute truths . Knowledge in the usual sense - as the transcendental philosophy widespread in his time promised - he considered impossible. What people start from in order to orient themselves are their individual ideas and memories, which are constituted by sensations and body movements . He advocated philosophizing with minimalist assumptions and called his project 'definitive philosophy'. Occurrences and their series formation are the recurring components of human thought and inference that he used for his representations. He avoided arguments about words and artificially inflated rhetoric and instead referred to specific physiological occurrences in order to clarify facts and problems.

Definitive philosophy instead of metaphysics

Wahle published the criticism of conventional philosophy and the sketch of its alternative in The Whole of Philosophy and Its End and The Tragicomedy of Wisdom .

Wahle began with extensive criticism. The previous, almost exclusively metaphysically oriented philosophy lacks a fund of knowledge and methods that - as in other sciences - enable a scientific development of philosophy. Well-known philosophies offer only words, but no help in life, nor do they have any noticeable use. He can therefore only give a disrespectful report about it, which, however, always leads to laughter if you look more closely at the philosophical ideas.

One of many examples of Wahles: For example, it is funny that it seems strange to Platonists when they realize that there is an idea for every thing - even for ugly and inferior ones. At the same time, this is Plato's full opinion: every thing must have its immortal independent form, which prevents its complete destruction. On the other hand, no earthly complex reaches its ideal form to which it is related.

Against his criticism, Wahle briefly presented his definitive philosophy, the assumptions of which he attached to the neuroscientific knowledge of his time. (In the Mechanism of Spiritual Life , he published his assumptions comprehensively.) All occurrences of human life that can be philosophized about are only present with "simultaneous action of the nervous apparatus". From this he concluded that the true nature of things through the senses and the brain " is veiled ". So people have no access to the true nature of things, the thing in itself. And "... so what is called realism is done and eliminated ..." We therefore neither know how nor what things really are.

By bringing clarity to the “fog over the mind”, he hoped to have a cleansing effect on all theories in the humanities , on the examination of history , on the doctrine of constitutional law and every reflection . ”On the other 300 pages, Wahle documented his account History of philosophy , which is why, from his point of view , it is time for a scientific ( definitive ) philosophy to give up metaphysical philosophy and the associated inflation of the human mind . He concluded with the remark:

“ So we are leaving the block mountain of philosophy, the witches' assembly of lofty, nonsensical ideas. "

Thought and reality

Thinking assigned Wahle to 'psychic phenomena ' and 'to the small patch of the respective world of individuals'. He also called thinking mind or 'spiritual life'. In contrast to the physical, it has neither weight nor can it be carried from one place to another. For an unprejudiced investigation of thinking, it is essential to say goodbye to the exploration of ideas that are thousands of years old, such as matter and soul , outside and inside, being and knowledge . These ideas are fantasy products of an outdated philosophy, which could not produce any results and which so far only produced verbose errors .

Philosophically today one can only assume events.

" Incidents as real products ... are there; ... "

They arise under the action of the senses and the brain . They are real products that we can study. That is not much that he is holding in his hands. Wahle therefore asks for patience: What he has to say is more difficult to understand than to criticize.

In addition to our nervous system , primary factors are also involved in the production of occurrences . They are reality, epistemologists called this thing-in-itself . It existed before the body saw, heard and felt. These are legitimate assumptions resulting from the position of our little world in the universe of things that are.

“ Something has always been and become, even before one eye has opened and when all eyes have closed. "

However, these primary factors are not accessible to us. We can therefore neither say how they are nor what they are; also not to what extent they participate in our reality and our occurrences in them.

“ We have absolutely no right to assume that the truly existing world of the subjective, phenomenal, optical-tactile in any form is the same or similar. "

Cognitive criticism

With regard to 'knowledge', Wahle distanced himself from familiar philosophical implications. I.a. of concepts such as matter , subject , spirit , I , consciousness , of the assertion that there is an 'inside' and 'outside'. Their assumption led to errors that hide the actual facts. The basic factual state of affairs is the 'occurrences under the existence of the senses'. From the events we can conclude that we have something in front of us that can be called an object but cannot be determined. Memories of and fantasies from occurrences do not result in knowledge that can be described as knowledge.

Instead of 'spirit' he spoke of the psychic . The psychic is like something "that has become, nourished and rooted". Kind of a product that is researchable. 'Become' meant: The nervous system enables us to feel from birth. We refer to it thinking. 'Nourished' meant that our nervous system produces lifelong incidents with which we shape our lives. 'Roots': the psychological is always connected with the nervous system. I.e. the mechanism of our thinking or spiritual life is physiologically conditioned. Mechanism means the chemical and physical processes of our nervous system.

That without our nervous system the world is or could be the way we perceive it with it is an unfounded assumption. So our desires for knowledge are in vain. This also applies to the use of physical and chemical aids:

“ We always have incidents under the inventory of the senses. "

Publications

• Brain and consciousness. Physiological-psychological study. Vienna: Hölder 1884, 97 pp.
• A defense of free will. Halle an der Saale: Heynemann 1887, 64 pp.
• About the geometric method of [Baruch de] Spinoza. Vienna: Tempsky 1888 (= meeting reports of the Philosophical-Historical Class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Volume 116. 1.), pp. 431–452.
• About the relationship between substance and attributes in [Baruch de] Spinoza's ethics. Vienna: Tempsky 1889 (= meeting reports of the Philosophical-Historical Class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Volume 117. 8.), 22 pp.
• The doctrine of happiness in the "ethics" of [Baruch de] Spinoza. Vienna: Tempsky 1889 (= meeting reports of the Philosophical-Historical Class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Volume 119. 11.), 44 pp.
• The whole of philosophy and its end. Her legacies to theology, physiology, aesthetics and state education. With 60 figures in woodcuts. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1894, XII, 539 pp.
• Historical overview of the development of philosophy up to its last phase. A guide for generally educated students and college and middle school students. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1895, IV, 66 pp.
• The ethics of [Wilhelm] Wundt. Leipzig: Reisland [1897], 25 pp. Separate print from: Quarterly publication for Scientific Philosophy, 21st year, No. 1.
• Brief explanation of the ethics of [Baruch de] Spinoza and presentation of the definitive philosophy. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1899, VIII, 212 pp.
• Ideas for organizing education. Berlin: Stilke 1901, 16 pp. Separate print from: Die Gegenwart, 30th year, no.28.
• Proposal for a universal middle school. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1906, 17 pp.
• About the mechanism of spiritual life. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1906, VI, 573 pp.
• Joshua. A happy gospel for days to come. After a French manuscript. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1912, 65 pp.
• The tragic comedy of wisdom. The results and the history of philosophizing. A reader. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1915, VII, 415 pp.
• A way to eternal peace. Vienna: Anzengruber 1917 (= Der Aufstieg. 1.), 14 pp.
• 205 stimulating cases of straight and crooked thinking. A practical logic for young and old, man and woman. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1923, 86 pp.
• Creation of the characters. Munich: Drei Masken-Verlag 1928 [recte 1927], VI, 388 pp.
• Foundations of a new psychiatry. A reading book for lay people, students and researchers. Vienna: Steyermühl 1931, 87 pp.
• Happy register of few philosophical truths. Vienna – Leipzig: Braumüller 1934, 39 pp.
• Don Pizarro. Drama set in Spain at the beginning of the French Revolution. Vienna – Leipzig – Zurich: Gerstel 1935, 30 pp.
• From delusional knowledge to true ignorance. Selected, edited and introduced by Franz Austeda. Vienna: Deuticke 1979 (= Austrian thinkers. 4.), VIII, 331 pp.

literature

• Maria Auböck, Maria Marchetti: Vienna around 1900: Art and culture. Vienna (C. Brandstätter) 1985 pp. 410-418.
• Bernhard Bolech: Brain, Spirit and Society. Places of the subject in Viennese human sciences around 1900. Diss. Vienna 2010.
• Wolfgang Brezinka : Education in Austria: The history of the subject at the universities from the 18th to the end of the 20th century, Volume 1. Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2000, ibs. P. 7 and 24.
• The free word: Frankfurt bi-monthly publication for progress in all areas of intellectual life, volume 15. Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1916, p. 432.
• German Society for Psychology: Archive for Psychology, Volume 33, Academic Publishing Society, 1915. ibs. P. 195.
• Friedrich Flinker: The destruction of the self. A critical exposition of Richard Wahle's teaching. Vienna 1927.
• Heinrich Gomperz : The world as an ordered event. Comments on Richard Wahle's "definitive philosophy". Journal for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism, Vol. 118 (1901) u. Vol. 119 (1902).
• Otto Gramzow: History of philosophy since Kant: life and teaching of the newer thinkers in common understandable individual representations. Charlottenburg (G. Bürkner) 906, p. 656f.
• Rudolf Haller, Johannes Brandl: Wittgenstein - A reassessment / files of the 14th International Wittgenstein Symposium Celebration of the 100th birthday 13th to 20th August 1989 Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria). Heidelberg (Springer-Verlag) 2013, ibs. P. 266.
• William M. Johnston: Austrian cultural and intellectual history: Society and ideas in the Danube region 1848 to 1938. Vienna 2006, Ibs. Pp. 205-212. Google
• Manfred Lauermann : Spinozan ethics and science. Carneri, a miscell - Freud a footnote. Darwin an excursus. In: Klaus Hammacher, Irmela Reimers-Tovote, Manfred Walther (ed.): On the topicality of Spinoza's ethics: Medicine / psychiatry, economy, law, religion: Spinoza in the history of philosophical ethics. Pp. 57-85. Würzburg (Königshausen & Neumann) 2000, ibs. P. 84f
• Austrian Society for the History of Science: The Society, Communications, Volumes 19–21. 1999, pp. 37-40. (Wahles ideas on school pedagogy)
• Review of the “Mechanism of Spiritual Life” in: monthly sheets to supplement the Allgemeine Zeitung 1906, p. 325.
• Review of “The tragic comedy of wisdom” in: Voices of Time. Catholic monthly for the intellectual life of the present, Volume 90. Freiburg 1916, p. 399.
• Bert Riehle: A new order of the world: federal peace theories in the German-speaking area between 1892 and 1932. Göttingen 2009, ibs. P. 146 ff.
• Friedrich Stadler : The Vienna Circle: Origin, Development and Effect of Logical Empiricism in Context. Heidelberg 2015, ibs. P. 242.
• Rudolf Steiner : Basic lines of an epistemology of the Goethean worldview. Books on Demand 2011, ibs. P. 19.
• Christian Tilitzki : The German university philosophy in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich. Berlin 2002, ibs. P. 231.
• Friedrich Ueberweg , Karl Praechter, Matthias Baumgartner, Max Frischisen-Köhler, Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich: Outline of the history of philosophy: T. The German philosophy of the XIX. Century and the present. Hamburg (ES Mittler) 1923, p. 397.
• Erwin Ritter von Zach (1872–1942) - collected reviews: Chinese history, religion and philosophy in criticism, Wiesbaden 2005, review of Wahles tragicomedy of wisdom, p. 69 f.

Web links

• Biography of Wahles Uni Graz
• Johannes Feichtinger: Positivism in Austrian Philosophy. A historical look at the early reception of positivism. Publication of the University of Graz.
• Rudolf Steiner on Richard Wahle's brain and consciousness. Deutsche Wochenschrift, Volume 3, No. 36, Issue 1, September 6, 1885. Complete edition Rudolf Steiner, Vol. 30, pp. 475–477.
• Richard Wahle: On the psychology of the question
• Ders .: Metaphysics and History of Philosophy.
• Ders .: The whole of philosophy and its end.
• Ders .: The dissolution of subjectivism.
• Ders .: Questions about similarity and intensity.
• Publications of Wahles in Digitized Collections of the Berlin State Library.
• Publications of Wahles in the catalog of the Austrian National Library.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Klaus-Dieter Alicke (author and editor): Jewish communities in Vienna.
2. ↑ See Michaela Feurstein and Gerhard Milchram: Jewish Vienna: city walks. Vienna 2001, p. 39 u. 82f.
3. ↑ See RECOGNIZING:. E-JOURNAL OF PIERRE RAMUS SOCIETY Volume 23 ó ó number 23 the summer of 2015. knowledge ( Memento of the original on May 15, 2016 Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Cf. Anna Staudacher: "... reports the departure from the Mosaic faith. 18,000 withdrawals from Judaism in Vienna. Frankfurt am Main and others Orte (Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften) 2009, p. 631.
5. ↑ Cf. Franz Austeda, Introduction to From delusional knowledge to true ignorance. Selected, edited and introduced by Franz Austeda. Vienna: Deuticke 1979, p. 3f.
6. ↑ Cf. Tragicomedy of Wisdom, pp. 1–12.
7. ↑ Cf. Tragicomedy of Wisdom , pp. 209f
8. ↑ With it called election, that which is there. Cf. Mechanism of Spiritual Life , p. 35. He seemed to regard “incidents” as the cause of the emergence of ancient Greek philosophy. The conclusions of the first philosophers that there is always only one thing behind what happened . from which much arises, he named as the great new idea of ​​the ancients after the myth had been abandoned. See Die Tragikomedy der Weisheit , pp. 183f.
9. ↑ See tragic comedy of wisdom , p. 85.
10. ↑ See tragic comedy of wisdom , p. 86
11. ↑ See tragic comedy of wisdom , p. 17.
12. ↑ See tragic comedy of wisdom , p. 394.
13. ↑ Mechanism of Spiritual Life , 34f.
14. ↑ See tragic comedy of wisdom . Preface to the 2nd edition.
15. ↑ Mechanism of Spiritual Life , p. 35.
16. ↑ Mechanism of Spiritual Life, 36.
17. ↑ Mechanism of Spiritual Life , p. 42.
18. ↑ See the entire section: On the Mechanism of Spiritual Life , pp. 34–50.