Otto Neurath and the Neurath Reception: Puzzle and Promise

Abstract

Otto Neurath is being rediscovered. The present collection of essays on his philosophical thought, the first in the English language, makes accessible the important results—so far available only in German—of a distinctive group of scholars who have been in the forefront of this rediscovery. The essays translated in this volume treat what has been a forgotten dimension of the history of Anglo-American analytical philosophy in the Vienna Circle; as such, they provide a complement to the recently reawakened interest in the theories of Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick. At the same time, the essays collected here document a recent chapter of Continental analytical philosophy—what could be called ‘the Austrian school of Neurath criticism’—and so testify to a particularly interesting aspect of the ‘internationalisation’ of the analytical idiom. It is the merit of these essays to show that, when taken seriously, Neurath reveals himself to be a serious thinker, one whose belated recognition is bound to transform the picture of the past of analytical philosophy.