Abstract
In his earliest philosophical work, Moritz Schlick developed a proposal for rendering aesthetics into a field of empirical science. His 1908 book Lebensweisheit developed an evolutionary account of the emergence of both scientific knowledge and aesthetic feelings from play. This constitutes the framework of Schlick’s evolutionary psychological methodology for examining the origins of the aesthetic feeling of the beautiful he proposed in 1909. He defends his methodology by objecting to both experimental psychological and Darwinian reductionist accounts of aesthetics. Having countered these approaches, Schlick applies Külpe’s psychological distinction between stimulus-feelings and idea-feelings to collapse the traditional philosophical opposition between the agreeable and the beautiful. Both types of feeling, Schlick argues, result from humans’ adaptation to their environment. Because of this adaptation, feelings that were once only stimuli for action can come to be enjoyed for their own sake. This thesis underlies Schlick’s 1908 argument that art, qua mimesis, is necessarily inferior to aesthetic feelings directed towards the environment. Part of Schlick’s justification for this view is that humans are, through a long evolutionary process, better adapted to their environment than to artworks. Schlick nevertheless concedes that mimetic art can involve ways of abstracting from the objects it copies to produce idealised regularities that are not found in the original. Schlick thus concludes that art teaches its audience how to perceive the world in this abstract and idealised manner. This type of environmental aesthetics constitutes a means for reaching Schlick’s utopian ecological vision of a future in which culture will become harmonised with nature.
Allen, G. 1880. “Aesthetic Evolution in Man”. Mind 5(20), 445–64.10.1093/mind/os-V.20.445Search in Google Scholar
Ayer, A. J. 1946. Language, Truth and Logic. London.Search in Google Scholar
Barbone, S. 1997. “Schlick on Aesthetics”. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 24, 105–10.Search in Google Scholar
Blau, E. 2006. “Isotype and Architecture in Red Vienna: The Modern Projects of Otto Neurath and Josef Frank”. Austrian Studies, 14, 227–59.10.1353/aus.2006.0014Search in Google Scholar
Bonnet, C. 2016. “Schlick et l’origine pratique de la connaissance”. In Wissenschaft und Praxis. Zur Wissenschaftsphilosopie in Frankreich und Österreich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. by C. Bonnet/E. Nemeth. Dordrecht, 43–53.10.1007/978-3-319-22366-7_3Search in Google Scholar
Bright, L. K. 2017. “Logical Empiricists on Race”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 65, 9–18.10.1016/j.shpsc.2017.07.001Search in Google Scholar
Carnap, R. 1966. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. New York/London.Search in Google Scholar
Dahms, H. J. 2004. “Neue Sachlichkeit in the Architecture and Philosophy of the 1920s”. In Carnap Brought Home: the View from Jena. Ed. by S. Awodey/C. Klein. Chigago, 357 f.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2019. “Logical Empiricism and Art: The Correspondence Otto Neurath/Meyer Schapiro”. In Neurath Reconsidered. Ed. J. Cat/A. Tuboly. Cham, 471–88.Search in Google Scholar
Darwin, C. 1897. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York.Search in Google Scholar
Fechner, G. T. 1876. Vorschule der Aesthetik. Leipzig.Search in Google Scholar
Ferrari, M. 2016. “Wiener Gefühle. Fragen der Ethik zwischen Schlick und Carnap”. In Wissenschaft und Praxis. Zur Wissenschaftsphilosophie in Frankreich und Österreich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. by C. Bonnet/E. Nemeth. Dordrecht, 5–28.10.1007/978-3-319-22366-7_1Search in Google Scholar
–. 2019. “Lewis and Schlick: Verificationism between Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism”. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 11(1).Search in Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 1997. “Helmholtz’s Zeichentheorie and Schlick’s Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre: Early Logical Empiricism and Its Nineteenth-Century Background”. Philosophical Topics 25(2), 19–50.10.5840/philtopics199725213Search in Google Scholar
Galison, P. 1990. “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism”. Critical Inquiry 16(4), 709–752.10.1086/448557Search in Google Scholar
Guyau, J. M. 1884. Les Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine. Paris.Search in Google Scholar
Iven, M. 2006a. “Vorwort des Herausgebers”. In Schlick 2006, 1–9.10.7788/boehlau.9783412338121.viiSearch in Google Scholar
–. 2006b. “Editorischer Bericht”. In Schlick 2006, 19–40.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2009. Moritz Schlick. Die frühen Jahre (1882–1907). Berlin.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2010. “‘… er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt’: Moritz Schlick liest Friedrich Schiller”. In Moritz Schlick: Ursprünge und Entwicklungen seines Denkens. Ed. by F. O. Engler/M. Iven. Berlin, 129–170.Search in Google Scholar
Kokai, K. 2019. “Ästhetik und Logischer Empirismus”. In Der Wiener Kreis – Aktualität in Wissenschaft, Literatur, Architektur und Kunst. Ed. by U. Arnswald/F. Stadler/P. Weibel. Vienna, 193–212.Search in Google Scholar
Leinfellner, W. 1985. “A Reconstruction of Schlick’s Psycho-Sociological Ethics”. Synthese 64, 317–49.10.1007/BF00485523Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, J. 1988. “Schlick’s Critique of Positivism”. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1, 110–17.10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1988.1.192975Search in Google Scholar
–. 1990a. Positivism and Realism in the Writings of Moritz Schlick. Dissertation, Indiana University.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1990b. “Hidden Agendas: Knowledge and Verification”. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 2, 159–68.Search in Google Scholar
Mormann, T. 2010. “Zwischen Weisheit und Wissenschaft. Schlicks weites philosophisches Spektrum”. Grazer Philosophische Studien 80, 263–85.10.1163/18756735-90000882Search in Google Scholar
Neuber, M. 2017. “Külpe and American Critical Realism”. Discipline Filosofiche, 27(2), 205–22.10.2307/j.ctt1x07wzp.12Search in Google Scholar
O’Neil, J./Uebel T. 2018. “Between Frankfurt and Vienna: Two Traditions of Political Ecology”. In Nature, Action and the Future: Political Thought and the Environment. Ed. by S. Smith/K. Forrester. Cambridge.Search in Google Scholar
Potochnik, A./Yap, A. 2006. “Revisiting Galison’s ‘Aufbau/Bauhaus’ in Light of Neurath’s Philosophical Projects”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 37(3), 469–88.10.1016/j.shpsa.2005.11.001Search in Google Scholar
Ryckman, T. A. 1991. “Conditio sine qua non? Zuordnung in the Early Epistemologies of Cassirer and Schlick”. Synthese, 88(1), 57–95.10.1007/BF00540093Search in Google Scholar
Schlick, M. 1939. Problems of Ethics. Trans. by D. Rynin. New York.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1952. Natur und Kultur. Vienna/Stuttgart.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1959. “The Foundation of Knowledge”. In Logical Positivism. Ed. by A. J. Ayer. Trans. by D. Rynin. Glencoe, IL, 209–27.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1962. Aphorismen. Ed. by B. Hardy Schlick. Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1974. General Theory of Knowledge. Trans. by A. E. Blumberg. New York/Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1979a. “The Fundamental Problem of Aesthetics seen in an Evolutionary Light”. In Moritz Schlick: Philosophical Papers: Volume One (1909–1922). Ed. by H. L. Mulder, B. van de Velde-Schlick. Dordrecht, 1–24.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1979b. “On the Meaning of Life”. In Moritz Schlick: Philosophical Papers: Volume Two (1925–1936). Ed. by H. L. Mulder/B. van de Velde-Schlick. Dordrecht, 112–29.Search in Google Scholar
–. 1987. The Problems of Philosophy in Their Interconnection: Winter Semester Lecture, 1933–34. Ed. by H. L. Mulder/A. J. Kox/R. Hegselmann. Trans. by P. Heath. Dordrecht.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2006. Lebensweisheit: Versuch einer Glückseligkeitslehre u. Fragen der Ethik. Ed. M. Iven. Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2008a. “The Future of Philosophy [1931]”. In Die Wiener Zeit: Aufsätze, Beiträge, Rezensionen 1926–1936. Ed. by J. Friedl/H. Rutte. Dordrecht, 297–303.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2008b. “The Future of Philosophy [1932]”. In Die Wiener Zeit: Aufsätze, Beiträge, Rezensionen 1926–1936. Ed. by J. Friedl/H. Rutte. Dordrecht, 371–90.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2013a. Nietzsche und Schopenhauer. Ed. by M. Iven. Dordrecht.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2013b. Erkentnisstheoretische Schriften, 1926–1936. Ed. by J. Friedl/H. Rutte. Dordrecht.Search in Google Scholar
Shelton, J. D. 2009. “Beauty, Play, and the Meaning of Life”. Philo, 12(1), 24–30.10.5840/philo20091212Search in Google Scholar
–. 2014. “Li Zehou and Moritz Schlick on the Roots of Beauty”. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 9(4), 602–14.Search in Google Scholar
Siegetsleitner, A. 2010. “Schlicks Fragen der Ethik und die vorherrschende Sicht logisch-empiristischer Ethik”. In Logischer Empirismus, Werte und Moral. Ed. by A. Siegetsleitner. Vienna.10.1007/978-3-7091-0160-5Search in Google Scholar
–. 2014. Ethik und Moral im Wiener Kreis: Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus. Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
Textor, M. 2018. “Schlick on the Source of the ‘Great Errors in Philosophy’”. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 4(1), 105–25.10.1017/apa.2018.14Search in Google Scholar
Tuboly, A. T. 2020. “Making Logical Positivism Less Logical: The Case of Schlick and von Mises”. In The Socio-Ethical Dimension of Knowledge: The Mission of Logical Empiricism. Ed. by C. Damböck/A. T. Tuboly. Cham. Forthcoming.Search in Google Scholar
Uebel, T. 1992. Overcoming Logical Positivism from Within: The Emergence of Neurath’s Naturalism in the Vienna Circle’s Protocol Sentence Debate. Amsterdam.10.1163/9789004458192Search in Google Scholar
–. 2007. Empiricism at the Crossroads. The Vienna Circle’s Protocol Sentence Debate. Chicago.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2015. “American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle: The Early Years”. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 3(3), 1–35.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2020. “Schlick and Wittgenstein: The Theory of Affirmations Revisited”. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 58(1), 141–66.10.1353/hph.2020.0007Search in Google Scholar
Vrahimis, A. 2012. “Modernism and the Vienna Circle’s Critique of Heidegger”. Critical Quarterly, 54(3), 61–83.10.1111/criq.12005Search in Google Scholar
–. 2020a. “The Vienna Circle’s Reception of Nietzsche”. Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 8(9), 1–29.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2020b. “Philosophy (and Wissenschaft) without Politics?: Schlick on Nietzsche, German Idealism, and Militarism”. In The Socio-Ethical Dimension of Knowledge: The Mission of Logical Empiricism. Ed. by C. Damböck/A. T. Tuboly. Cham. Forthcoming.Search in Google Scholar
–. 2021. “Wittgenstein, Loos, and the Critique of Ornament.” Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics, Forthcoming.Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
