October, 2020
Washington – For those of us who need to brush up from time to time on our Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Heidegger, there is a fine book review by Adam Kirsch in The New Yorker about the Vienna Circle and what it propounded.
The review is a model of writing with clarity, making sense of difficult concepts.
Readers will learn who murdered Professor Schlick – when, why, and how. Through this tale we are given a new appreciation of the importance of the 1930s and the era's relevance for our own times.
Most of us live in Wittgenstein's world, not Heidegger's, but it is worth reflecting on what it was that attracted Heidegger to the Nazis and whether we might be headed in the same direction.
It's good to know that all of the Vienna Circle survived the Nazis. May logical empiricism survive our current era.
