Schlick and Wittgenstein on Ethics and Acts of Will

Abstract

In Paolo Parrini’s masterly reconstruction of the Logical-Empiricist movement and its critical history carried out in a variety of writings (1987, 2002, 2003), particular attention is paid to Moritz Schlick’s thought from his 1918 volume Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre[1] to the fundamental essays of the years 1930-1936, produced in the decade of the so-called Viennese phase of his activity, which preceded the tragic and premature end of his life. It was a decade that saw him found the Vienna Circle, the “Wiener Kreis”, and follower of the movement’s programmatic manifesto: the Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung (Carnap, Hahn, Neurath, 1929). The theme of Schlick’s relationship with Ludwig Wittgenstein can be considered a separate chapter in the broader history of the Logical-Empiricist movement and remains, unlike this latter which has been subject of a number of studies in recent and less recent critical literature, a subject rarely developed in a systematic manner.