Overview

*New Statesman, Books of the Year* *FiveBooks, One of Nigel Warburton's Best Philosophy Books of 2020* On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelbck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelbck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle - an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick - and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gdel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat.

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9780691164908

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A cracking read. ---Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist [An] engrossing and eminently readable history of the circle. ---David Conway, Jewish Chronicle [L]ively and accessible. . . . [Edmond's] research has also uncovered important new biographical information, including about [the Vienna Circle's] lesser-known female members. ---Adam Kirsch, New Yorker I very much enjoyed this book, and found its direct style refreshing, and I hope it will serve as a model for others. [Edmonds] actually tells you what you want to know! ---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution As pacy as a thriller. ---Joe Humphreys, Irish Times Absorbing. . . . so fascinating and relevant now. ---Thomas Filbin, The Arts Fuse

[An] engrossing and eminently readable history of the circle. ---David Conway, Jewish Chronicle

Author Information

David Edmonds is the coauthor, with John Eidinow, of the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker as well as Rousseau's Dog and Bobby Fischer Goes to War, and the author of Would You Kill the Fat Man? (Princeton). Cofounder, with Nigel Warburton, of the popular Philosophy Bites podcast series, he is a distinguished research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Twitter @DavidEdmonds100

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