Ethics and the Will

INTRODUCTION The present volume unites contributions by the leading figure of the Vienna Circle and by two of his closest assoCiates, contributions that deal with an area of thought represented, indeed, in this Collection but certainly not the central one in the common picture ofthe Circle's activities. It is no accident that an interest in ethics and the philosophy of action was particularly marked in what Neurath was apt to call the right wing of the Circle. For them, as for Wittgenstein (the respected mentorofSchlickandWaismanninparticular),theadvancetobehoped for in philosophy consisted not solely in freeing natural science from a confused sense of dependence on speculative metaphysics but also in seeingthatotherareasoflanguageandaction hadto bethoughtaboutin theirownterms, whichwereneitherthoseofnaturalsciencenorthoseof philosophy as traditionally conceived. The scepticismofSchlick about theprogrammeofUnifiedSciencewaswellknown: EinheizwissenschaJt he called it, as it might be 'boozified science'. And in sober truth the programme sometimes masked a left-wing set of values taken (surely illogically) for granted, though the membersofthe Circle entertained a wide range ofpolitical views. Schlick's own contribution to the present volume is a section from thenotesforoneofhisfinal lectureseries,forsightofwhich wewarmly thanktheonlysurvivingcontributortoourvolume,DrJosephSchachter: Schlick'sgrandsonDra. M. H. vandeVeldehaskindlyconsentedtotheir publication. This section poses the problem we have outlined: there are questionsandaneedforclarificationinethics,butthesenomoredemand a metaphysical solution than does a similar situation in epistemology. Here, as in his earlier Problems of Ethics,l Schlick sets his face against thewholeprocess,mostobviousin Kant,ofmakingtheconceptofvalue absolute. One might say that for Schlick there is no unhypothetical imperative.

Klappentext

The contribution made by the Vienna Circle to ethics and the philosophy of action is increasingly being recognized. Here two previously unpublished pieces by Moritz Schlick and his pupil Josef Schächter set the scene, showing how ethics is not dependent on metaphysics but does require a sensitivity to strata of language other than that of science. Schächter (author of emProlegomena to a/em emCritical Grammar/em, also in the VCC, and now doyen of educational philosophers in Israel) further develops this ethical theme in a too little known study of pessimistic dicta that he published in 1938. He succeeds (without ever assenting to it) in giving sense to the idea that it were better for a man never to have been born. br/ The bulk of the book is devoted to two works by Friedrich Waismann, probably written not long after his emigration to England, also in 1938. There are a paper on ethics and science, which defends the Wittgensteinian view that morality is something one cannot defend, but only profess, and (itself more than half the volume) a treatise on will and motive, where the influence of Wittgenstein is mediated by that of Ryle and where many points in modern theory of action are anticipated with the author's usual sensitivity both to language and to the complexity of the human situation. (Joachim Schulte recently edited these two works in the original German, otherwise they have remained unpublished). br/ This valuable addition to the VCC should illuminate both the history of the Circle and the kind of reflection on language and action which dominates the practical philosophy of our own day. br/

Inhalt
The Main Ideas of the Theory of Values.- The Meaning of Pessimistic Sentences.- Notes on Problems of Ethics and the*Philosophy of Culture.- Ethics and Science.- Will and Motive.- Index Of Names.