“Loos introduced Kokoschka to many of his friends and acquaintances, including
Kraus and Altenberg and the art historians Hans and Erica Tietze […]. My
early black portraits arise in Vienna before the World War; the people lived
in security, yet they were all afraid. I felt this through their cultivated
form of living, which was still derived from the baroque; I painted them in
their anxiety and pain.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 118)


“Art is great when it is atemporal and revolutionary. The artisan produces
objects for use here and now, the artist for all men everywhere. The ancient
Greeks understood this. Their utensils and architecture were built for their
own purposes, in the attempt to perfect the environment in which they lived;
their tragedy, on the other hand, depicted the universal human condition. Art
aims at edifying men's minds by refocusing their attentions from the dullness
and drudgery of everyday life into the sphere of fantasy and spiritual values.
In this sense, art is always revolutionary; it aims at transforming a man's
vision of the world and his attitudes toward his fellow men.” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 117)


“The form of objects for use is thus a reflection of life in a society, and
the only justified changes in the former are those which arise from changes in
the latter. This is the meaning of Loos's assertion that he was "against
revolution." It was not that he was a counterrevolutionary, but that his was a
revolution against revolutions in design which are not rooted in the demands
of social life.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 116)


“So, just as Kraus had taken it upon himself to complete the task on which
Schnitzler had begun, it was left to Loos to drive home the sad fact about the
Secession-that its ideals were unrealizable, because its members were too much
a part of the established society. Art, like belles-lettres, could be reformed
only by an artist who assumed the role of an Old Testament prophet. This is
precisely what Loos did. He declared war on all forms of ornamentation in
architecture and design. His essay "Ornament and Crime," which won the status
of Scripture among Dada artists, condemned all forms of decoration on
articles of use. The degeneracy of his contemporaries could be read in the
fact that modern Europeans actually bore tattoo marks on their bodies.
Tattooing had a significant place in Papuan culture, but in Habsburg culture,
Loos insisted, "those who have been tattooed and are not in custody are latent
criminals or degenerate aristocrats.” They could be classed only with the
creators of graffiti - "You can measure the culture of a country by the extent
to which its lavatory walls are scribbled on.” Loos claimed that there was a
definite link between the antisocial tendencies of criminals and the fact that
so many of them sported tattoos; while the "good taste" of the middle class in
the Habsburg monarchy marked them, in his view, as no better than
sophisticated barbarians. He went so far as to date the political decay of the
Dual Monarchy from the establishment of a government-subsidized Academy for
Applied Art. […] Ornament could genuinely embellish American and British
artifacts; but, in Austria, "ornament is no longer organically related to our
culture, it is no longer the expression of our culture.” It had become a
Frankenstein monster and was smothering the artisan's creativity.” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 115)


“Passion for ornament turned into a delight in the unreal, with every artifact
having a quite distinct "appearance" and "reality" […]. Ornament thus became a
way of distorting things, an end in itself rather than an embellishment.
Nothing was immune. Funerals themselves became extravaganzas, not unlike
circus parades, as the very design of artifacts came to reflect the elaborate
emptiness of social life and politics in the last days of Habsburg rule. In a
society for which “good taste" was the first among values, to challenge
popular and academic taste radically was to question the very foundations of
society. This was the task that the nineteen members of the Secession had
begun; but their efforts to bring art closer to life fell far short of the
mark. Their aesthetism succeeded merely in transforming the contemporary
views about ornamentation; they cured the symptoms, not the disease.” (Janik
and Toulmin, 1973, p. 114)


[…] his deep conviction that the sphere of values is altogether distinct from
the sphere of facts. The evil effects of mingling the two are most evident,
firstly, in the feuilleton, in which imagination runs riot with the facts,
and secondly, in the concept of "moral legislation" (for example, the laws
against prostitution), in which morality is represented as something that can
be deduced from "natural moral laws" than which nothing could be more
unnatural. Kraus's insistence that he is trying to effect, by a polemical
analysis of grammar and language, the same "creative separation" between the
sphere of reason (or fact) and that of fantasy (or value) as Adolf Loos was
doing in his critique of bourgeois Viennese taste, by distinguishing merely
functional artifacts from genuine objects of art, should be taken quite
literally. […] he identified absolutely the aesthetic form and the moral
content of a literary work, seeing its moral and aesthetic worth as reflected
in its language.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 90)


Adolf Loos and I - he literally and I grammatically - have done nothing more
than show that there is a distinction between an urn and a chamber pot and
that it is this distinction above all that provides culture with elbow room.
The others, those who fail to make this distinction, are divided into those
who use the urn as a chamber pot and those who use the chamber pot as urn.


“Kraus declared, leads to a falsification of the factual, and a debasement or
distortion of the aesthetic and moral.


“Throughout his life, Kraus's efforts to carry on the work of Nestroy involved
him in litigation. […] Die Neue Freie Presse would not report the funeral of
Peter Altenberg, for example, because this would have compelled it to mention
Kraus, who had read at graveside.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 89)


“Franz Lehar, composer of such operettas as The Merry Widow and The Count of
Luxemburg, was a cynical crowd pleaser who wrote his operas simply to make
money and was consequently an enemy of all that was authentic in contemporary
culture. The success of Lehar's operettas was likewise, in Kraus's eyes, a
barometer of the moral degeneration of Viennese life. By catering to their
basest instincts, Lehar made himself, more than any other figure, responsible
for the poor taste of the Viennese populace. He gave them a new "realism" in
the operettas, with an explicit treatment of sexual themes which titillated
rather than edified his audience. The very success of this deliberate
titillation enraged Kraus - " An inartistic truth about an evil is itself an
evil. Truth must be valuable in and of itself. Then it becomes reconciled to
evil and its gri ef over the fact that there is evil.' […] In this, Lehar was
the antithesis of Jacques Offenbach, whom Kraus admired so much that he
actually translated La Perichole into German, and sang it in a sort of
Sprechgesang. […] For Kraus, operetta was "the fulfillment of the true meaning
of the theater," because it was most capable of forming the character of its
audience; its very essence was to teach moral values of aesthetic experience.
Through this vehicle-at least, in the conception of romantic operetta which he
considered alone authentic - the audience was put directly into contact with
the world of fantasy. Offenbach carried this out better than any other
composer; in this capacity only Johann Nepomuk Nestroy surpassed him. If
Offenbach succeeded where Kraus's contemporaries failed so miserably, this
was because the imaginary settings and the implausibilities of his plots
enabled the audience to detach itself from the banalities of everyday life and
be transported into a magical world where they experienced before their very
eyes the triumph of good over evil. This was the only sort of theater - which
was naturally musical, one in which music was an essential part of the drama,
and not merely an additional source of effects. […] Mozart's Magic Flute is
the best-known example of the Austrian "magic farce," a kind of fairy-tale
pantomime which was at the same time a pedagogic instrument. Nineteenth-
century Austrian drama had been deeply rooted in this traditional popular
theater. […] Before the 1848 revolution, it dominated the Viennese theatrical
scene, in the play s of Raimund, and it found its perfect realization in the
works of Nestroy. Johann Nepomuk Nestroy would perhaps have passed into
oblivion had it not been for the efforts of Kraus. […] As a writer, he
transformed the plots of French social satires into sparkling parodies of
Viennese life. (The musical show Hello, Dolly! is, in fact, an updated
version of an adaptation by Thornton Wilder of one such Nestroy play!) The
basis of Nestroy's humor lay in his amazing feeling for the nuances of
ordinary spoken language. […] During the short-lived success of the 1848
uprising, Nestroy tried his own hand at writing political plays; but, with the
counterrevolution, they were suppressed by the censor. This led him to write
dialogue which was in itself inoffensive but which, when delivered by Nestroy
the actor with a wink or a shrug of the shoulders, changed its meaning
completely and resulted in frequent jail sentence s for him. Nestroy's
tongue-twisting songs, with their parodies of German multisyllabic words,
combined to make his a unique form of music drama. To the majority, who did
not penetrate his subtlety, Nestroy provided a coarse, earthy humor; to the
Habsburg censor, he was a dangerous nihilist; yet to a few who saw the full
depths of his work, Nestroy was, in the words of Egon Friedell, "the greatest,
in fact the only, Austrian philosopher."” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 87)


“Like Wagner, Hofmannsthal thought that spectacular theatrical effects were
capable of producing equally spectacular effects in those who beheld them, and
this belief inspired his collaboration both with Reinhardt and with Richard
Strauss. Strauss's curious sense of theatrical authenticity has been well
described by Barbara Tuchman in her Proud Tower, as "freaks of realism" - for
example, his demand that Clytemnestra's sacrifice in Elektra should involve
live sheep and bulls. Kraus, by contrast, was convinced that nothing did more
to destroy and distract from the experience of theater than such "effects."
Hofmannsthal was endeavoring to recapture the baroque by imitating it and by
enhancing its style and plots with the effects that a Max Reinhardt could
provide. But the attempt to influence politics and society by these curious
anachronistic pageants was totally absurd - all the “more so after World War
One. To suppose that lighting, noise, and the spectacle of a reconstituted
baroque, could directly change the world was for Kraus sheer illusion. Here
was yet another "cure" which was merely "part of the disease." […] he himself
was deeply committed to the role of the theater as an important force for
morality within society. Hofmannsthal infuriated him, because his conception
of drama was so banal. Hofmannsthal did indeed have a sense of the role that
fantasy ought to play in life, but he was unaware of the extent to which it
must be mediated by reason. Kraus rightly saw that by producing works of art
so obviously based upon uncontrolled fantasy, one reduced it to the level of
the commonplace and so betrayed it.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 85)


“The aim of Hofmannsthal's plays was to evoke in the audience a new type of
catharsis. Wagner conceived a music drama which should revivify the German
Volk, by presenting the great Germanic virtues as exemplified in old Norse
myths. His theory of art was in fact a social philosophy, and his drama was a
means toward implementing that philosophy. Hofmannsthal assimilated this
conception and applied it, first by imitating ancient Greek plays, as in his
Elektra, then by adapting it to certain medieval and baroque conceptions, to
yield the new Christian drama of the Festival Plays and such operas as Die
Frau ohne Schatten. In this way, Hofmannsthal hoped to regenerate the
society […].” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 84)


“Kraus considered Reinhardt's theatrical techniques a kind of glorified
sleight of hand, an extravaganza intended to divert the audience from the
quality of the drama. In Reinhardt's hands, a theatrical production became a
mere spectacle and an exercise in deception, for all the embellishments
served only to distract the audience from what they had come to see […]. In
Reinhardt's "theater of spectacle," all was external. It followed that such a
theater could achieve no more than superficiality.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973,
p. 83)


“None of the standard literary or artistic categories-Impressionist,
Expressionist, Social Realist, and so on - is applicable to him. To Kraus,
this was a triumph , for he desired precisely to be unique. […] The
distinguishing characteristic of all that is moral and artistic, for Kraus, is
integrity.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 82)


“Kraus firmly believed that a change in social mores would bring about the end
of the hysterical Viennese wife. Once men and women looked on marriage as a
life partners hip that ought to be entered into totally - within which sexual
and spiritual fulfillment were opposite sides of a single coin - married life
would become an arena where reason and fantasy could interact with out
hindrance, and this would lead to cultural as well as personal dividends. […]
Psychoanalysis, in his view, aimed at a further distortion of the balance
between the masculine and the feminine, reason and fantasy, the conscious and
the unconscious. This could lead only to a deepening crisis in society, as it
carried men farther away from the "origin," away from the fantasy. "I would
rather go back to childhood with Jean Paul than with Sigmund Freud,” Kraus
insisted. For Jean Paul, childhood was that time of life when fantasy vivifies
all that we do, while for Freud it is nothing but a series of crises that
issue in frustration. Kraus feared that the psychoanalytic approach to life,
with its emphasis on adjustment to society, threatened the artist: Nerve
doctors who ruin genius for us by calling it pathological should have their
skulls bashed in by the genius' collected works. … One should grind one's heel
into the faces of all rationalistic helpers of "normal humanity" who give
reassurance to people unable to appreciate works of wit and fantasy.” (Janik
and Toulmin, 1973, p. 78)


“Kraus himself was no philosopher, still less a scientist. If Kraus's views
have a philosophical ancestry, this comes most assuredly from Schopenhauer
[…]. The emotional essence of woman is not wanton or nihilistic, but is rather
a tender fantasy, which serves as the unconscious origin of all that has any
worth in human experience. Herein lies the source of all inspiration and
creativity. Reason itself is merely a technique, a means by which men obtain
what they desire. In itself it is neither good nor evil, it is merely
effective or ineffective. Reason must be supplied with proper goals from
outside; it must be given direction of a moral or aesthetic type. The feminine
fantasy fecundates the masculine reason and gives it this direction. The
source of moral and aesthetic truth is, thus, the unity between feeling and
reason […]. Kraus's point, then, is that the feminine is the source of all
that is civilizing in society. So the feminist movement became a threat from
the other side. The feminist picture of woman as man's equal was, in its own
way, as distorted as Weininger's; it attempted to eradicate the very
wellsprings of civilization. This is what made Kraus an implacable enemy of
woman 's rights.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 75)


“phenomenon which Theodor Lessing has described as "Jewish self-hatred" […].
In his monograph on Otto Weininger und sein Werk published in 1912, Carl
Dallago, a fellow-Austrian and a member of the Brenner Circle (which formed
around Ludwig Ficker in Innsbruck and included also such notables as Theodor
Haecker and Georg Trakl) praised Weininger's "spiritual honesty," an attitude
toward Weininger shared by Kraus and many others.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973,
p. 74)


“As Kraus saw her, woman is a totally sexual being: everything a woman does
emanates from the sexuality which is her essence - operatio sequitur esse. In
this respect, the woman differs from the man: the man has sexual urges, the
woman is sexuality itself. Woman is emotion, irrationality and sexuality
incarnate. She only appears to be of the same race as the man, for he, being
at least potentially rational, has a capacity, which she lacks, for
controlling his sexual nature. Hence, it makes no sense to hold a woman
rationally accountable for her conduct, since it is in fact determined by the
unconscious sensuality which is her very nature. […] Otto Weininger, which
Kraus both ad mired and reacted against at the same time.” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 72)


“he rallied to the support of the prostitutes, whom he considered more heroic
than soldiers. The latter served the existing social order by facing in
jury, disease and death; the former did likewise, but were subject in addition
to social and legal penalties. […] In such essays as "Sittlichkeit und
Kriminalität," Kraus ridiculed the legal system and defended the rights of
this persecuted minority, just as he did those of that other, more persecuted
sexual minority, the homosexuals.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 71)


“To the Viennese nothing was more important than the arts, especially
literature, theater and music, and their very tastes in these matters
reflected (in Kraus's view) the moral duplicity which existed throughout the
society. So it was precisely through literature and music that he would lay
bare the hypocrisy underlying life in the City of Dreams. Like so many of his
eminent contemporaries, Kraus came from a well-to-do Jewish family. His father
was a merchant who had emigrated from Bohemia […].” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973,
p. 68)


“Schnitzler's […] his concern with anti-Semitism is anything but
insignificant. He considered it to be one manifestation of the human
condition, a symptom of a universal spiritual malaise, rather than some sort
of social paranoia. In his novel Der Weg ins Freie he portrays the essential
insolubility of the Jewish problem, and is critical of his friend Herzl's all-
too-facile solution.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 64)


“Like Schönerer, Herzl sought to lead his people in founding a new society,
within which Truth would not be compromised by a degenerate aristocracy, a
materialistic middle-class, or an ignoble proletariat: rather, it would be
enshrined in a spiritual elite, whose collective will alone would bring it
into existence. […] In May 1913, it was discovered that the deputy director of
the Imperial-and-Royal Army Intelligence, Alfred Redl, was a traitor, and that
he had become one in order to finance a life of homosexual debauchery. […]
Redl, who was the son of a poor railway clerk in Lemberg (Lvov), had risen to
prominence in the Empire's military machine, by an exceptional capacity to
conceal his true opinions and attitudes, an uncanny knack for saying just
what his superiors wanted him to say, and for doing just what was expected in
any situation.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 62)


“Herzl had digested Dühring's arguments for the revocation of Jewish
emancipation-he had agreed that the businessman-Jew, who was lacking in
culture and nobility, ought to be excluded from Europe. In Paris, he now came
into contact with the writings of Drumont, and these confirmed in him the idea
that the Jew did not "belong" in Europe, and had no roots there. During this
period, Herzl covered two trials, each of which was to have an impact upon his
Zionism. The first was that of the anarchist Ravachol, who deeply impressed
him with his fanatical will to power. The other was the Dreyfus Affair, which
confirmed all that he had read in Dühring and Drumont. When Dreyfus was
condemned, France, the cradle of liberty, had rejected him too. Only socialism
could save the Jew, but what was there in socialism of the aristocratic or
aesthetic? Nothing. Failing any solution in rational politics, Herzl turned,
like his contemporaries Barres, D'Annunzio and George, to romantic solutions.
The first was that Jewish honor must be established by dueling; Herzl himself
would challenge a prominent Viennese anti-Semite, such as Lueger or Prince
Alois Liechtenstein, and if he were killed he would become a martyr to his
cause and excite world opinion in its favor. If, on the other hand, he killed
his opponent, he would stage a spectacular, moving defense, exposing the evils
of anti Semitism; as a result, he would be freed, and the world would be set
aright. His alternative plan was, if anything, even more of an adolescent
fantasy: he would enlist the support of the Pope against the enemies of the
Children of Israel; and in return he would see to it that the Jews of the
monarchy would present their youth in St. Stephen's Cathedral for mass
conversion. But it is to Herzl's "experience " of Wagner's Tannhäuser that we
directly owe his advocacy of the Jewish state. During a performance of that
opera, the truth of irrational Völkisch politics became clear to him, in a
flash of intuition. The only answer lay in a state where Jews would not be
guests or intruders, but would truly have roots. For Herzl, this involved
translating Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk from the sphere of art into that of
politics. How could such a Jewish state be realized? Herzl's answer was
characteristically Viennese: "If you wish it, it is no fairy tale," and "If
you don't wish it, it is a fairy tale."” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 62)


“Viktor Adler and Heinrich Friedjung, the liberal historian, both belonged to
this class of converts; as a young man, Herzl himself was ready to accept
baptism, apart from his fear of offending his parents. […] By 1910, indeed,
they constituted five percent of the city's population and made up the largest
segment of the legal, medical and journalistic professions. The Leopoldstadt
in the second district, across the Danube Canal; meanwhile housed large
numbers of immigrant Orthodox "Ostjuden" from Galicia, who were the very
antithesis of their capitalist coreligionists in the fashionable upper-middle
class. Taking the number of people of Jewish descent into account would drive
the figures considerably higher, for even the ranks of the anti-Semites
included many apostate Jews, who displayed a public anti-Semitism as a sign
that they had renounced their ancestral past. […] His Zionism was, in a real
sense, the result of his own initial anti-Semitism and his failure to escape,
as he sorely desired, from his own Judaism. Herzl was first, last and always a
dandy; his insistence that frock coats be worn at the first Zionist
International Conference in Basel is but one instance of that affectation
which was one of his primary characteristics.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p.
60)


“the nationalism which developed among the German working class, as they met
competition from Czechs who were willing to work in poorer conditions for
less pay. Both Czechs and Germans considered that the Social Democratic party,
with its emphasis upon gradualism and reconciliation, was selling them out. As
a result, each group formed its own working-class party in opposition to the
inter nationalist and prodynastic policies of Adler. It did not take very
long for the Germans to lay the blame for the failure, as they saw it, of the
Social Democrats in Bohemia. Were not their ranks Jew-ridden? […] The Badeni
Ordinances of 1897 stipulated that both German and Czech were to be languages
of the inner service in Bohemia, and provoked a violent reaction both there
and in Vienna.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 58)


“Schönerer began his political career by representing the interests of the
neighboring farmers, who recognized him as an "improving landlord." Like
Lueger and Adler, he at first associated himself with the left democrats among
the liberals in the Reichstag. As with so many among their number, he feared
that Taaffe's "Iron Ring" was destined to produce an encirclement of the
culturally superior and enlightened Germans by the inferior and barbarous
Slavs. This would be especially damaging to the Germans of Bohemia and would
orient foreign policy to ward the Tsar and away from Schönerer's ideal of
Germanic superiority, Bismarck. (Incidentally, German nationalism, like all
ideologies, was abhorrent to the pragmatic Bismarck.) Schönerer's fear of Slav
encirclement,combined with a feeling for social questions, led him to
collaborate with Adler, Friedjung and others, in drafting the Linz Program in
1882. (Curiously, the Statthalter would not permit Schönerer's group to
convene at Linz, so the program could not be adopted there.) In 1885 a twelfth
point was added, pledging that the nationalist faction of the Liberal party
would work for "the removal of Jewish influence from all sections of public
life ... indispensable for carrying out the reforms aimed at it."” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 57)


“I dislike the Hungarian Jews even more than I do the Hungarians, but I am no
enemy of our Viennese Jews; they are not so bad and we cannot do without them.
My Viennese always want to have a good rest; the Jews are the only ones who
always want to be active.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 56)


“Once securely established in power-having been elected mayor five times
before the Emperor, who found his rabble rousing techniques disgraceful and
unbecoming in a public servant, finally agreed to confirm his appointment -
Lueger's attacks on the "Judaeo-Magyars" grew fewer and fewer, and less and
less vehement. Throughout his career, indeed, he rarely declined invitations
to dine at the tables of the Jewish capitalists whom he excoriated in his
speeches. This attitude is best summed up in his infamous remark, "Wer ein
Jude ist, bestimme ich."” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 55)


“Catholic political thought in the Empire had previously been based on an
antiliberal, feudal aristocracy. It contrasted the idealized personal
character of the "relations of production" in the precapitalist era to the
dehumanizing plight inflicted on the proletariat by capitalist
industrialization. Its chief sponsors were the Princes Alois and Alfred
Liechtenstein, while the ideologue of the movement was a Prussian con vert
who had emigrated to the Empire, Karl von Vogelsang. (Vogelsang can also be
credited with the basic social ideas of Pope Leo XIII 's encyclical Rerum
Novarum, which makes him the father - or grandfather - of modern Catholic
social thought.)” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 55)


“Adler was of Jewish ancestry, though he had accepted Christian baptism and
had liberal, even nationalist, leanings. His early nationalism was cultural,
and he was for a time a vehement Wagnerite. But his experiences as a physician
treating the poor made him aware of the conditions of the proletariat, in a
city whose cost of living was the highest in Europe and comparable with that
in the United States.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 53)


“the most thriving political groups in Vienna were working-class movements
captained by defectors from liberalism. Viktor Adler, the organizing spirit
behind Austrian Social Democracy; Karl Lueger, the Christian Social
demagogue; Georg Ritter von Schönerer, the fanatical Pan-German; and even
Theodor Herzl, the prophet of Zionism - each began his political career as a
liberal. The defection of these men from liberalism resulted from the
traditional liberals' incapacity to come to grips with the problems of urban
growth and industrialization, with Adler and the Social Democrats seeking to
continue the constructive work of the liberal tradition, while in Lueger and
Schönerer - and, by reaction, Herzl - the politics of reason was transformed
into a politics of fantasy, built upon the social blight of anti-Semitism.
Adler and Schönerer had been associated with the radical wing of the liberal
party which drafted the Linz Program in 1882. (By 1884, Lueger too had
publicly endorsed one of its main points.) The Program combined social reforms
that were contrary to laissez-faire with a nationalism that was openly, but
not rabidly, anti-Semitic. Insofar as the liberals were unable and unwilling
to carry through such reforms, they fertilized the soil for the mass movements
which were to displace moderate middle class liberalism so completely, both
from the right and from the left. The housing crisis, alluded to earlier, was
but one of the grave problems facing the industrial proletariat in Vienna.
Vienna had always had a housing shortage, and the rapid growth of its
population (from 476,220 in 1857 to 2,031,420 in 1910) merely aggravated a
long-standing problem. By 1910, the average Viennese dwelling housed 4.4
persons, with an average of 1.24 per room (including kitchens, bathrooms and
front halls); "a considerable number of persons" were even reduced to "living
in caves dug in railway embankments, in boats, in hiding places under the
bridges, and in other emergency refuges." The situation in Budapest (the
fastest-growing capital city in nineteenth century Europe) was even worse: in
1905, thirty-five persons were found to be nesting in the trees of its public
parks […]. In 1910 there were but 5,734 single-family homes, housing a mere
1.2 percent of the total Viennese population. Only 7 percent of the buildings
used exclusively as dwellings were equipped with bathrooms and toilets, while
a scant 22 per cent had indoor toilets. On the average, rent took one quarter
of a worker's wages. Admittedly, the workers did not face the same slum
problem as their counterparts in, say, Naples or Glasgow […].” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 52)


“In the minds of the German-speaking population, then, liberal nationalism had
always been based upon cultural facts. What Slovak poets were there to
compare with Goethe and Hölderlin? What composers of the rank of Mozart, Gluck
and Beethoven, not to mention Wagner? The Italians alone could compare with
the Germans, but they were never interested in anything but a complete
separation from the Habsburg domains. Ruthene, Slovene and Slovak culture had
become literate only recently. Czech and Hungarian literary and musical
culture were barely a century old.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 50)


“The middle classes in general were never ready to assume political power.
Given so small a base - made even smaller by the scandals which followed the
Crash of 1873 - liberalism was spent by the 1890s and was supplanted by the
rise of the new mass parties which came to dominate Viennese politics.” (Janik
and Toulmin, 1973, p. 49)


“The very fact that sex was never to be discussed openly insured that it was
always upon one's mind. Sexual taboos, far from promoting "purity" of thought
and deed, served to make people sex-conscious to the extreme.” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 47)


“on the entire continent of Europe, Francis Joseph's Vienna could be compared
as a city only to Paris. […] Though Vienna had been a commercial center from
time immemorial and had been the center of large-scale public administration
since the reign of Maria Theresa, the Viennese bourgeoisie acquired its
individual character during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This
was the period of industrial expansion, when vast fortunes were made and lost
by the investor, the industrial organizer, or the man with an innovative
manufacturing technique - the Gründerzeit, which created the material fortunes
on which the next generation depended for leisure in which to cultivate the
arts.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 43)


“The external splendors of fin-de-siecle Vienna were, after all, largely due
to Francis Joseph in person. Between 1858 and 1888 he rebuilt the city, as
though to efface 1848 and everything it represented. […] He eschewed the
telephone, the automobile, and the typewriter, as well as the electric light.”
(Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 42)


“In the end, the monarchy's affairs assumed a formalism behind which there
existed nothing but vacuousness and chaos. At the best of times, Francis
Joseph was mediocre and shallow, relying always on ceremonial for insulation,
which more and more be came a cover both for his own personal failings and
for his ungovernable mélange […].” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 41)


“After studying nineteenth-century Habsburg history, one can hardly deny the
charm of Hegelian dialectic, as a mode of historical explanation; for in it
one continually sees situations begetting their own opposites. The effort to
introduce German in place of Latin, so as to streamline Imperial
administration, begat Hungarian and Czech cultural nationalism by reaction,
and this in due course developed into a political nationalism. Slav
nationalism in the politics and economics in turn begat German economic and
political nationalism; and this in its turn begat anti-Semitism, with Zionism
as a natural Jewish reaction.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 41)


“The Slovenes, who lived chiefly in the Styrian countryside, desired a
Gymnasium in which their language would be the language of instruction. The
Germans, who were a majority in the town and in the Styrian Diet,
consistently refused on the grounds that, as a result, German and Germans
would disappear from Cilli. The Slovenes had thus to take their case to the
Reichstag, where it was decided to establish such a school; and, when the
Germans in the ruling coalition heard of this decision, they left the
government, which consequently fell from power. Nationalism had taken its
toll. The Cilli Affair helped to make the Southern Slavs and the Czechs aware
of the rise of German nationalism, which was the basis of their common
plight.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 40)


“Paradoxically, it was the modernizing reforms of Joseph II that roused the
national consciousness slumbering in the Empire. At first, this consciousness
manifested itself merely in the revival of vernacular literature and
philology: the first vernacular poetry in Hungarian was produced among the
sons of the Hungarian nobility at the leading Habsburg Gymnasium, the
Theresianum.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 40)


“The 1848 upheaval brought the eighteen-year-old Francis Joseph to the
Imperial throne; and the failure of that upheaval brought in its train, on the
part of the new Emperor, a whole series of policies which, in the course of
his sixty-eight-year reign, became the more and more revolutionary-seeming
means toward consistently reactionary ends. The very length of Francis
Joseph's reign gave the monarchy an illusory stability. The most radical of
his moves-on the face of it - was the introduction into the western part of
the monarchy, in 1907, of universal manhood suffrage; but this seemingly
liberal move was, in fact, designed to protect the Emperor's control over the
Army against those in Hungary who wanted to create a separate Hungarian army.”
(Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 39)


“the Emperor Francis' so-called" Metternich System," which was the means of
excluding revolution and revolutionary ideas from the Habsburg domain.
(Metternich not only did not devise the system, he was not even in agreement
with all the policies it en compassed.) Yet even this did not satisfy
Francis, who was op posed to all change per se. He was so afraid of change,
indeed, that he refused to replace civil servants appointed by his
predecessor, the "revolutionary" Emperor, Joseph II, even though they were
opposed to his policies, insisting that the status quo be preserved in the
most literal sense. Francis' goal was Ruhe und Ordnung - the "law and order"
of a police state. Censorship was strict and universal. The construction of a
railroad system was forbidden, on the grounds that it might become a vehicle
of revolution. Protestant seminaries were founded, so that ordinands need not
leave the country for their education, and risk picking up new and presumably
subversive ideas. All change was a threat to the Habsburg idea - "My realm,"
Francis remarked, "resembles a worm-eaten house. If one part is removed, one
cannot tell how much will fall.” As Metternich summed it up on another
occasion, "J'ai gouverné l'Europe quelquefois, l'Autriche jamais.” (Janik and
Toulmin, 1973, p. 39)


“In music as in painting the voice of mediocrity, personified in Hanslick and
Makart, was able to dictate to Viennese society as a whole critical standards
and judgments that were for the most part sterile and academic. […] At the
turn of the century, likewise, Vienna was the medical center of the world.
America owes its pre-eminence in the medical sciences of our own time, in no
small part, to the thousands of medical students who traveled to Vienna at a
time when the standards of American medicine were scandalously low, in order
to study with such luminaries as Hebra, Skoda, Krafft-Ebing and Billroth. Yet,
in their own home city the pioneering work of Freud in psychoanalysis and of
Semmelweis on infection went unrecognized […].” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p.
36)


“Throughout the nineteenth century and right up to the present, Vienna has had
a grave housing shortage. Viennese working-class housing has always been
inadequate, both in quality and in quantity. Its apartments were dreary and
impossible to heat adequately, so there has always been a need to escape
these dingy and cold living quarters, and it was satisfied by the warmth and
cheer of the ubiquitous cafés. […] Few cities have been as unkind as Vienna,
during their life times, to those men whom it proclaimed cultural heroes
after their deaths.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 35)


“When Kraus called for a critique of language, as the crucial instrument of
thought, he did so with a moral hatred for that slovenliness in thought and
expression which is the enemy of individual integrity, and leaves one
defenseless against the political deceptions of corrupt and hypocritical men.”
(Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 31)


“Given a brilliant young man of great sensitivity, born into the very
individual surroundings of Wittgenstein's family-at the focus of not just the
industrial wealth, but also the culture, especially the musical culture, of
late Habsburg Vienna-and exposed to a rigorous training in the mathematics and
physical theory of men like Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann […].” (Janik
and Toulmin, 1973, p. 30)


“he himself took the initiative in approaching the two men. Far from his
becoming interested in philosophy only after those contacts, it appears that
he already had a well formed set of philosophical problems in mind and hoped
to find a solution for them, using the logical methods of Russell and Frege.
As for the origin of these problems themselves, he presumably encountered
them in the course of his Viennese upbringing and education. Certainly there
is something generally implausible about any picture of Wittgenstein as a
philosophical "pupil" or "follower" of Frege, Russell and Moore. We know that
Frege was quite at a loss to understand Wittgenstein's questions and passed
him on to Russell […].” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 29)


“His friend and pupil Maurice Drury has reported that Wittgenstein regarded
Kierkegaard as the most important thinker of the nineteenth century; Miss
Anscombe has suggested that his work is seen properly only in relation to that
of Frege; several writers have noticed similarities and parallels between the
views of Wittgenstein and those of Schopenhauer; Erich Heller and Werner Kraft
have emphasized the relation of the Tractatus to writings about the nature of
language by other Central European thinkers of the same time, such as Kraus,
Mauthner and Landauer; while Erik Stenius and Morris Engel have pointed to
Kantian elements both in the Tractatus, and in Wittgenstein's later
philosophy.” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 27)


“When, at Frege's suggestion, Wittgenstein first made contact with Russell and
was drawn into the charmed circle of Cambridge intellectuals who so
influenced his life both before 1914 and again from 1929 on, he was entering
into a cultural situation and a group of active, opinionated and self-willed
men having well-marked preoccupations and a very definite history. Russell, in
particular, was charmed, intrigued and impressed; it was gratifying and
flattering to find this brilliant young foreigner paying so much attention to
his work on logic and apparently ready to take up his own unsolved problems
just at the point where Russell left off. So it is understandable that Russell
him self thought of Wittgenstein as a highly talented friend and pupil, and
viewed his comments and writings entirely with an eye to his own problems in
symbolic logic and epistemology; and it is pardonable, also, that
Wittgenstein's later abandonment of formal, quasi-mathematical methods and
problems in favor of a more discursive, "natural-history" approach to human
language, should have struck Russell as a heresy, and even as a defection.”
(Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 21)


“Schönberg presenting a copy of his great musical textbook on Harmonielehre
to the journalist and writer Karl Kraus, with the inscription, "I have learned
more from you, perhaps, than a man should learn, if he wants to remain
independent.'” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 20)


“Was it an absolute coincidence that the beginnings of twelve tone music,
"modern" architecture, legal and logical positivism, nonrepresentational
painting and psychoanalysis-not to mention the revival of interest in
Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard were all taking place simultaneously and were so
largely concentrated in Vienna? Was it merely a curious biographical fact
that the young conductor Bruno Walter should regularly have accompanied Gustav
Mahler to the Wittgenstein family mansion in Vienna and should have discovered
in conversation that shared interest in Kantian philosophy which led Mahler to
present Walter at Christmas, 1894, with the collected works of
Schopenhauer?” (Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 19)


“The culture is, or appears at first sight to be, our own twentieth-century
culture in its infancy; the "modernism" of the early 1900s, represented by
such men as Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schönberg, Adolf Loos, Oskar Kokoschka and
Ernst Mach. The man is Ludwig Wittgenstein; the youngest son of Vienna's
leading steel magnate and patron of the arts, who set aside his necktie and
his family fortune in favor of a life of Tolstoyan simplicity and austerity.”
(Janik and Toulmin, 1973, p. 14)


Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973).


7 (Schlusssatz) Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.


6.54 Meine Sätze erläutern dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich versteht, am
Ende als unsinnig erkennt, wenn er durch sie – auf ihnen – über sie
hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf
ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.) Er muss diese Sätze überwinden, dann sieht er die
Welt richtig.


6.522 Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das
Mystische. 6.53 Die richtige Methode der Philosophie wäre eigentlich die:
Nichts zu sagen, als was sich sagen lässt, also Sätze der Naturwissenschaft –
also etwas das mit Philosophie nichts zu tun hat – und dann immer, wenn ein
anderer etwas Metaphysisches sagen wollte, ihm nachzuweisen, dass er gewissen
Zeichen in seinen Sätzen keine Bedeutung gegeben hat.


6.5 […] Wenn sich eine Frage überhaupt stellen lässt, so kann sie auch
beantwortet werden.


6.44 Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.


6.432 […] Gott offenbart sich nicht in der Welt.


6.4311 Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn
man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit
versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist
ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.


6.421 Es ist klar, dass sich die Ethik nicht aussprechen lässt. Die Ethik ist
transcendental (sic!). (Ethin und Ästhetik sind Eins.)


6.42 Darum kann es auch keine Sätze der Ethik geben. Sätze können nichts
höheres ausdrücken.


6.41 Der Sinn der Welt muss außerhalb ihrer liegen. In der Welt ist alles wie
es ist und es geschieht alles wie es geschieht […]


6.3751 Dass z.B. zwei Farben zugleich an einem Ort des Gesichtsfelds sind, ist
unmöglich und zwar logisch unmöglich, denn es ist durch die logische Struktur
der Farbe ausgeschlossen.


6.373 Die Welt ist unabhängig von meinem Willen.


6.363 Der Vorgang der Induktion besteht darin, dass wir das einfachste Gesetz
annehmen, das mit unseren Erfahrungen in Einklang zu bringen ist.


6.342 Und nun sehen wir die gegenseitige Stellung von Logik und Mechanik. […]
Dass sich ein Bild, wie das vorhin erwähnte, durch ein Netz von gegebener Form
beschreiben lässt, sagt über das Bild nichts aus. […] So sagt es auch nichts
über die Welt aus, dass sie sich durch die newtonsche Mechanik beschreiben
lässt; wohl aber, dass sie sich so durch jene beschreiben lässt, wie dies eben
der Fall ist. Auch das sagt etwas über die Welt, dass sie sich durch die eine
Mechanik leichter beschreiben lässt, als durch die andere.


6.341 Die newtonsche Mechanik z.B. bringt die Weltbeschreibung auf eine
einheitliche Form. Denken wir uns eine weiße Fläche, auf der unregelmäßig
schwarze Flecken wären. Wir sagen nun: Was für ein Bild immer hierdurch
entsteht, immer kann ich seiner Beschreibung beliebig nahe kommen, indem ich
die Flächen mit einem entsprechend feinem quadratischen Netzwerk bedecke und
nun von jedem Quadrat sage, dass es weiß oder schwarz ist. Ich werde auf diese
Weise die Beschreibung der Fläche auf eine einheitliche Form gebracht haben.
Diese Form ist beliebig, denn ich hätte mit dem gleichen Erfolge ein Netz aus
dreieckigen oder sechseckigen Maschen verwenden können. Es kann sein, dass die
Beschreibung mithilfe eines Dreiecks- Netzes einfacher geworden wäre; das
heißt, dass wir die Fläche mit einem gröberen Dreiecks- Netz genauer
beschreiben könnten, als mit einem feineren quadratischen (oder umgekehrt)
usw. Den verschiedenen Netzen entsprechen verschiedene Systeme der
Weltbeschreibung. Die Mechanik bestimmt eine Form der Weltbeschreibung indem
sie sagt: Alle Sätze der Weltbeschreibung müssen aus einer Anzahl gegebener
Sätze – den mechanischen Axiomen – auf eine gegebene Art und Weise erhalten
werden. Hierdurch liefert sie die Bausteine zum Bau des wissenschaftlichen
Gebäudes […]


6.234 Die Mathematik ist eine Methode der Logik.


6.2331 Der Vorgang des Rechnens vermittelt eben diese Anschauung. […]


6.233 Die Frage, ob man zur Lösung der mathematischen Probleme die Anschauung
bauche, muss dahin beantwortet werden, dass eben die Sprache hier die nötige
Anschauung liefert.


6.21 Der Satz der Mathematik drückt keinen Gedanken aus.


6.13 Die Logik ist keine Lehre, sondern ein Spiegelbild der Welt. Die Logik
ist transcendental (sic!).


6.1265 Immer kann man die Logik so auffassen, dass jeder Satz sein eigener
Beweis ist.


6.1263 […] Es ist von vornherein klar, dass der logische Beweis eines
sinnvollen Satzes und der Beweis in der Logik zwei ganz verschiedene Dinge
sein müssen.


6.1262 Der Beweis in der Logik ist nur ein mechanisches Hilfsmittel zum
leichteren Erkennen der Tautologie, wo sie kompliziert ist.


6.1261 In der Logik sind Prozess und Resultat äquivalent. (Darum keine
Überraschung.)


6.126 Ob ein Satz der Logik angehört, kann man berechnen, indem man die
logischen Eigenschaften des Symbols berechnet. Und dies tun wir, wenn wir
einen logischen Satz „beweisen“. Denn, ohne uns um einen Sinn und eine
Bedeutung zu kümmern, bilden wir den logischen Satz aus anderen, nach bloßen
Zeichenregeln. Der Beweis der logischen Sätze besteht darin, dass wir sie aus
anderen logischen Sätzen durch successive (sic!) Anwendung gewisser
Operationen entstehen lassen, die aus den ersten immer wieder Tautologien
erzeugen. (Und zwar folgen aus einer Tautologie nur Tautologien.) Natürlich
ist diese Art zu zeigen, dass ihre Sätze Tautologien sind, der Logik durchaus
unwesentlich. Schon darum, weil die Sätze, von welchen der Beweis ausgeht, ja
ohne Beweis zeigen müssen, dass sie Tautologien sind.


6.1232 Die logische Allgemeingültigkeit könnte man wesentlich nennen, im
Gegensatz zu jener zufälligen, etwa des Satzes „alle Menschen sind sterblich“.
Sätze wie Russells „Axiom of reducibility“ sind nicht logische Sätze, und dies
erklärt unser Gefühl: dass sie, wenn wahr, so doch nur durch einen günstigen
Zufall wahr sein könnten.


5.641 […] Das Ich tritt in die Philosophie dadurch ein, dass die „Welt meine
Welt“ ist.


5.64 Hier sieht man, dass der Solipsismus, streng durchgeführt, mit dem reinen
Realismus zusammenfällt. […]


5.61 Die Logik erfüllt die Welt; die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre Grenzen.
Wir können also in der Logik nicht sagen: Das und das gibt es in der Welt,
jenes nicht. Das würde nämlich voraussetzen, dass wir gewisse Möglichkeiten
ausschließen und dies kann nicht der Fall sein, da sonst die Logik über die
Grenzen der Welt hinausmüsste; wenn sie nämlich diese Grenzen auch von der
anderen Seite betrachten könnte. […]


5.6 Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.


5.5561 Die empirische Realität ist begrenzt durch die Gesamtheit der
Gegenstände. Die Grenze zeigt sich wieder in der Gesamtheit der
Elementarsätze. Die Hierarchien sind, und müssen unabhängig von der Realität
sein.


5.5521 Und wenn dies nicht so wäre, wie könnten wir die Logik anwenden? Man
könnte sagen: Wenn es eine Logik gäbe, auch wenn es keine Welt gäbe, wie
könnte es dann eine Logik geben, da es eine Welt gibt.


5.552 Die „Erfahrung“, die wir zum Verstehen der Logik brauchen, ist nicht
die, dass sich etwas so und so verhält, sondern, dass etwas ist: aber das ist
eben keine Erfahrung. Die Logik ist vor jeder Erfahrung – dass etwas so ist.
Sie ist vor dem Wie, nicht vor dem Was.


5.551 Unser Grundsatz ist, dass jede Frage, die sich überhaupt durch die Logik
entscheiden lässt, sich ohne weiteres entscheiden lassen muss. (Und wenn wir
in die Lage kommen, ein solches Problem durch Ansehen der Welt beantworten zu
müssen, so zeigt dies, dass wir auf grundfalscher Fährte sind.)


5.5423 Einen Komplex wahrnehmen, heißt, wahrnehmen, dass sich seine
Bestandteile so und so zueinander verhalten. Dies erklärt wohl auch, dass man
die Figur  auf zweierlei Art als Würfel sehen kann; und alle ähnlichen
Erscheinungen. Denn wir sehen eben wirklich zwei verschiedene Tatsachen.


5.533 Das Gleichheitszeichen ist also kein wesentlicher Bestandteil der
Begriffsschrift.


5.53 Gleichheit des Gegenstandes drücke ich durch Gleichheit des Zeichens aus,
und nicht mit Hilfe eines Gleichheitszeichens. Verschiedenheit der Gegenstände
durch Verschiedenheit der Zeichen.


5.5151 […] Der positive Satz muss die Existenz des negativen Satzes
voraussetzen und umgekehrt.


5.4733 Frege sagt: Jeder rechtmäßig gebildete Satz muss einen Sinn haben; und
ich sage: jeder mögliche Satz ist rechtmäßig gebildet und wenn er keinen Sinn
hat, so kann das nur daran liegen, dass wir einigen seiner Bestandteile keine
Bedeutung gegeben haben. […]


5.47321 Occams Devise (Ockhams Rasiermesser ist gemeint, Anm.) ist natürlich
keine willkürliche, oder durch ihren praktischen Erfolg gerechtfertigte,
Regel: Sie besagt, dass unnötige Zeicheneinheiten nichts bedeuten. Zeichen,
die Einen Zweck erfüllen sind logisch äquivalent, Zeichen die keinen Zweck
erfüllen, logisch bedeutungslos.


5.473 Die Logik muss für sich selber sorgen. Ein mögliches Zeichen muss auch
bezeichnen können. Alles was in der Logik möglich ist, ist auch erlaubt.
(„Sokrates ist identisch“ heißt darum nichts, weil es keine Eigenschaft gibt,
die „identisch“ heißt. Der Satz ist unsinnig, weil wir eine willkürliche
Bestimmung nicht getroffen haben, aber nicht darum, weil das Symbol an und für
sich unerlaubt wäre.) Wir können uns, in gewissem Sinne, nicht in der Logik
irren.


5.156 So ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit eine Verallgemeinerung. Sie involviert
eine allgemeine Beschreibung einer Satzform. Nur in Ermangelung der Gewißheit
gebrauchen wir die Wahrscheinlichkeit. […]


5.154 In einer Urne seien gleichviel weiße und schwarze Kugeln (und keine
anderen). Ich ziehe eine Kugel nach der anderen und lege sie wieder in die
Urne zurück. Dann kann ich durch den Versuch feststellen, dass sich die Zahlen
der gezogenen schwarzen und weißen Kugeln bei fortgesetztem Ziehen einander
nähern. Das ist also kein mathematisches Faktum. Wenn ich nun sage: es ist
gleich wahrscheinlich, dass ich eine weiße Kugel wie eine schwarze ziehen
werde, so heißt das: Alle mir bekannten Umstände (die hypothetisch
angenommenen Naturgesetze mitinbegriffen) geben dem Eintreffen des einen
Ereignisses nicht mehr Wahrscheinlichkeit als dem Eintreffen des anderen. Das
heißt, sie geben […] jedem die Wahrscheinlichkeit ½. Was ich durch den Versuch
bestätige ist, dass das Eintreffen der beiden Ereignisse von den Umständen,
die ich nicht näher kenne, unabhängig ist.


5.1362 Die Willensfreiheit besteht darin, dass zukünftige Handlungen jetzt
nicht gewusst werden können. […]


5.1361 Die Ereignisse der Zukunft können wir nicht aus den gegenwärtigen
erschließen. […]


5.135 Auf keine Weise kann aus dem Bestehen irgendeiner Sachlage auf das
Bestehen einer, von ihr gänzlich verschiedenen Sachlage geschlossen werden.


5.133 Alles Folgern geschieht a priori.


5.132 Folgt p aus q, so kann ich von q auf p schließen; p aus q folgern. Die
Art des Schlusses ist allein aus den beiden Sätzen zu entnehmen. Nur sie
selbst können den Schluss rechtfertigen. Schlussgesetze […] sind sinnlos und
wären überflüssig.


4.464 Die Wahrheit der Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich der
Kontradiktion unmöglich. „Gewiss“, „möglich“, „unmöglich“ – hier haben wir das
Anzeichen jener Gradation, die wir in der Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre brauchen.


4.112 Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken. Die
Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit. […] Die Philosophie soll
die Gedanken, die sonst gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen
und scharf abgrenzen.


4.111 Die Philosophie ist keine der Naturwissenschaften. […]


4.0011 Auf den ersten Blick scheint der Satz […] kein Bild der Wirklichkeit zu
sein. Aber auch die Notenschrift scheint auf den ersten Blick kein Bild der
Musik zu sein. […] Und doch erweisen sich diese Zeichensprachen auch im
gewöhnlichen Sinne als Bilder dessen, was sie darstellen.


4.0031 Alle Philosophie ist Sprachkritik (allerdings nicht im Sinne Mauthners
(Fritz, Anm.)). Russells (Bertrand, einer von Wittgensteins Lehrern, Anm.)
Verdienst ist es, gezeigt zu haben, dass die scheinbare logische Form des
Satzes nicht seine wirkliche sein muss.


4.003 Die meisten Sätze und Fragen, welche über philosophische Dinge
geschrieben worden sind, sind nicht falsch, sondern unsinnig. Wir können daher
Fragen dieser Art überhaupt nicht beantworten, sondern nur ihre Unsinnigkeit
feststellen. Die meisten Fragen […] beruhen darauf, dass wir unsere
Sprachlogik nicht verstehen. (Sie sind von der Art der Frage, ob das Gute mehr
oder weniger identisch sei als das Schöne.) Und es ist nicht weiter
verwunderlich, dass die tiefsten Probleme eigentlich keine Probleme sind.


3.3421 Eine besondere Bezeichnungsweise mag unwichtig sein, aber wichtig ist
es immer, dass diese eine mögliche Bezeichnungsweise ist. Und so verhält es
sich in der Philosophie überhaupt: Das Einzelne erweist sich immer wieder als
unwichtig, aber die Möglichkeit jedes Einzelnen gibt uns einen Aufschluss über
das Wesen der Welt.


1-2 Hauptsächlich Definitionen von Begriffen, Axiome und elementare
Ableitungen


Ludwig Wittgenstein and Joachim Schulte, Tractatus logico-philosophicus: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963).


Wenn wir philosophieren, denken wir uns die verschiedensten Situationen und
Gespräche aus, in denen ein Satz ausgesprochen wird. Es ist ein grundlegender
Fehler der Philosophie, nach Erklärungen zu suchen, wo die Tatsachen selbst
als „Urphänomene“ betrachtet werden sollten.


Es ist ein Irrtum, zu glauben, die Psychologie drehe sich um Vorgänge in der
psychischen Sphäre, so wie die Physik von physischen Vorgängen handelt. Die
Physik sieht die Erscheinungen, die sie untersucht, z. B. elektrische
Phänomene. Die Psychologie dagegen kann nur Äußerungen eines Subjekts
beobachten. Innere Vorgänge – wie hoffen, erwarten oder Ansichten haben –
bedürfen äußerer Kriterien. Wenn jemand sagt: „Ich hoffe, er wird kommen“,
kann das sowohl ein Bericht seines Gemütszustandes als auch eine Äußerung von
Hoffnung sein, insbesondere wenn er dabei seufzt. Entscheidend ist der
Kontext, in dem der Satz ausgesprochen wird.


Philosophie als das Beschreiben von Tatsachen


Ohne einen Kontext, in dem sie gedeutet werden können, sind Zeichen tot. Nur
durch den Gebrauch werden sie zum Leben erweckt. Das Zeichen des Pfeils etwa
trägt in sich noch keine Bedeutung. Es sind tote Striche, die erst in der
praktischen Anwendung durch ein Lebewesen einen Sinn bekommen. Ebenso sind
Wörter zufällig und auf Vereinbarungen beruhend. Der Satz „Das Wetter ist
schön“ beispielsweise ist eine Aneinanderreihung von willkürlichen Zeichen.
Man könnte an ihre Stelle auch „a b c d“ setzen, aber dann könnten wir keine
Aussage im Sinne von „das Wetter ist schön“ damit verbinden. Wir sind es nicht
gewohnt, „a“ anstelle von „das“ zu gebrauchen; wir beherrschen eine solche
Sprache nicht, und deshalb sagt sie uns nichts. Ebenso sind wir es nicht
gewohnt, Temperatur in Fahrenheit zu messen, deswegen können wir nichts damit
anfangen.


„Eine Hauptursache philosophischer Krankheiten – einseitige Diät: Man nährt
sein Denken mit nur einer Art von Beispielen.“ (S. 251)


Sätze haben keinen verborgenen Sinn, den es zu entschlüsseln gilt. Alles liegt
offen zutage. Ein Grundfehler des Philosophierens besteht darin, dass man
glaubt, das verborgene Wesen flüchtiger Erscheinungen beschreiben zu müssen.
Aber in der alltäglichen Sprache gibt es keine tiefere Ursache oder Erklärung,
die sich hinter der Erscheinung versteckt. Die Grammatik erklärt nicht den
Gebrauch sprachlicher Zeichen, sie beschreibt diesen nur. Ihr Zweck ist die
sprachliche Verständigung, der Zweck der Sprache ist es, Gedanken
auszudrücken. Wenn man jemandem einen Befehl gibt, z. B.: „Bring mir Zucker!“,
dann reicht es, dass die Zeichen und Wörter ihren Zweck erfüllen und
verstanden werden. Niemand wird einwenden, das seien ja nur Wörter, hinter
denen noch etwas Tieferes liegen müsse, das einer Erklärung bedürfe.


„Jedes Zeichen scheint allein tot. Was gibt ihm Leben? – Im Gebrauch lebt
es.“ (S. 208)


Wenn wir in der Sprache denken, dann trennen wir nicht zwischen
Ausdrucksmittel und Bedeutung. Die Sprache selbst ist das Mittel, das Vehikel
unseres Denkens. Denken ist nicht ein Vorgang, den man von der Sprache
loslösen kann.


Die Bedeutung der Wörter liegt in ihrem Gebrauch


„Wenn ich in der Sprache denke, so schweben mir nicht neben dem sprachlichen
Ausdruck noch ‚Bedeutungen‘ vor; sondern die Sprache selbst ist das Vehikel
des Denkens.“ (S. 174)


Nun könnte man sich vorstellen, jemand erfindet für seine eigenen Gefühle
private Wörter, indem er etwa eine bestimmte Empfindung als „E“ bezeichnet und
immer ein „E“ in sein Tagebuch einträgt, wenn sich diese Empfindung bei ihm
einstellt. Eine solche Privatsprache ist sinnlos, denn es fehlen eine
unabhängige, öffentliche Instanz und verlässliche Kriterien für die
Überprüfung, ob der Ausdruck richtig gebraucht wird – d. h. genau so, wie der
Erfinder sich vorgenommen hat, ihn zu gebrauchen. Über die richtige oder
falsche Verwendung eines Wortes kann nur in einer Sprache entschieden werden,
die mehrere Personen verstehen.


„Was ist dein Ziel in der Philosophie? – Der Fliege den Ausweg aus dem
Fliegenglas zeigen.“ (S. 168)


Ein Kleinkind, das Schmerz fühlt, schreit. Erst später lernt es von den
Erwachsenen den Begriff „Schmerz“ für seine Empfindung zu verwenden. Man sagt,
dass jeder nur durch die eigene Erfahrung eine Vorstellung davon hat, was
Schmerzen überhaupt sind. Folglich kann er nur vermuten, was Schmerz für
andere bedeutet. Die Beschreibung von Empfindungen und Bewusstseinszuständen
funktioniert, anders als jene eines Zimmers oder eines Dings, nicht nach dem
einfachen Muster „Gegenstand – Bezeichnung“. Ausdrücke der Empfindung werden
nicht verwendet, um einen Seelenzustand genau abzubilden, sondern sie dienen
in verschiedenen Sprachspielen unterschiedlichen Zwecken. So wird das Schreien
des Kindes vom Begriff „Schmerz“, den dieses für seine Empfindung zu verwenden
lernt, nicht beschrieben, sondern ersetzt. Das heißt, durch die Worte und
erklärenden Hinweise der Erwachsenen lernt das Kind ein neues Schmerzbenehmen.


Eine Privatsprache für Empfindungen ist sinnlos


„Die Sprache ist ein Labyrinth von Wegen. Du kommst von einer Stelle und
kennst dich aus; du kommst von einer andern zur selben Stelle und kennst
dich nicht mehr aus.“ (S. 134)


Jemandem, der keinen Begriff von „Regel“ besitzt, würde man das Wort durch
Beispiele und Übungen von Regelmäßigkeit beibringen. Man könnte ihm z. B.
Reihenornamente vorführen, gleiche Figuren, gleiche Farben, gleiche Längen
zeigen usw. Man macht etwas vor, der andere macht es nach und wird dabei
gelobt, ermutigt oder korrigiert. Ein darüber hinausreichendes Verständnis,
eine „tiefere“ Erklärung würde man nicht geben, denn man kennt sie selbst
nicht. Regeln sind wie unendlich lange Gleise, denen wir folgen – blind und
ohne Einsicht in ihre Ursachen. Sie müssen uns so selbstverständlich sein wie
die Tatsache, dass wir eine Farbe „rot“ nennen. Wenn wir „rot“ hören, fällt
uns ein bestimmtes Bild einer Farbe ein, wir fragen nicht, warum. Es gibt
keine tiefere Erklärung dieser Bezeichnung, wir haben einfach in der Praxis
gelernt, das Wort mit einem Bild zu verbinden und rote von nicht roten Dingen
zu unterscheiden. Weil wir Deutsch gelernt haben, erkennen wir, dass eine
bestimmte Farbe Rot ist.


„Einen Satz verstehen heißt eine Sprache verstehen. Eine Sprache verstehen
heißt eine Technik beherrschen.“ (S. 133)


Regeln sind wie Wegweiser. Aber Wegweiser können unterschiedlich gelesen
werden: Ob wir die Straße benutzen oder querfeldein gehen, ob wir die Richtung
wählen, in die die Hand zeigt, oder die entgegengesetzte, lässt der Wegweiser
zunächst offen. Wir lernen ihn zu deuten, indem wir darauf abgerichtet werden.
Die richtige Deutung des Zeichens beruht darauf, dass wir in der Praxis
lernen, wie man ihm folgt. Entsprechend liegt der richtigen Deutung eines
Wortes die Tatsache zugrunde, dass wir die Sprache, ihre Regeln und ihre
Techniken gelernt haben.


Lernen geschieht durch Abrichten auf Regeln


„Wir sind, wenn wir philosophieren, wie Wilde, primitive Menschen, die die
Ausdrucksweise zivilisierter Menschen hören, sie missdeuten und nun die
seltsamsten Schlüsse aus ihrer Deutung ziehen.“ (S. 130)


Am Beispiel des Wortes „lesen“ lässt sich zeigen, dass erst die Umstände,
unter denen es gebraucht wird, seine Bedeutung festlegen. Das Wort „lesen“ –
verstanden als die Tätigkeit, Gedrucktes oder Geschriebenes in Laute
umzusetzen – ist in unserem alltäglichen Leben allgemein bekannt. Die Rolle
aber, die es in unserem Sprachgebrauch spielt, lässt sich nicht eindeutig
festlegen. Ab wann kann man sagen, dass jemand liest? Wenn er Silbe für Silbe
entziffert? Wenn er die Augen über die Worte gleiten lässt und etwas auswendig
Gelerntes dahersagt? Muss er etwas empfinden, muss er verstehen, was er liest
– oder bloß wie eine Lesemaschine funktionieren und auf bestimmte
Schriftzeichen reagieren? Das Lesen von Groß- oder Kleinbuchstaben, von
Gedrucktem oder Morsezeichen ist nicht das Gleiche. Was also ist das Wesen von
„lesen“? Wir gebrauchen das Wort für eine Vielzahl von Situationen und wenden
daher von Fall zu Fall unterschiedliche Kriterien dafür an. Auf ähnliche Weise
sind auch die Kriterien für Wörter wie „passen“, „können“, „verstehen“,
„wissen“ oder „meinen“ sehr viel komplizierter, als es auf den ersten Blick
scheint.


„Die Ergebnisse der Philosophie sind die Entdeckung irgendeines schlichten
Unsinns und Beulen, die sich der Verstand beim Anrennen an die Grenze der
Sprache geholt hat.“ (S. 83)


In der Philosophie wird der Gebrauch der Wörter oft mit dem Spielen nach
festen Regeln verglichen. Unser tatsächlicher Sprachgebrauch weicht aber
ständig von der Logik der idealen Sprache ab. „Ideal“ bedeutet hier nicht,
dass sie besser wäre als die Umgangssprache, sondern dass sie deutlich
umgrenzt, kristallklar und streng logisch ist. Doch dieses Ideal verstellt den
Blick auf das Wesen der Sprache, die nicht eine formelle Einheit, sondern –
wie das Spiel – eine Familie verwandter Gebilde ist. Die Philosophen versuchen
Wörter wie „Wissen“, „Sein“, „Gegenstand“, „Ich“, „Satz“ usw. durch strenge
Definitionen in ihrem Wesen zu erfassen, aber im Alltag werden die Begriffe
nicht auf diese Weise verwendet. Anstatt die Sprache zu erklären, sollte es
Aufgabe der Philosophen sein, sie in ihrem alltäglichen Gebrauch zu
beschreiben.


Der alltägliche Sprachgebrauch


„Wir führen die Wörter von ihrer metaphysischen wieder auf ihre alltägliche
Verwendung zurück.“ (S. 82)


Was ist das wesentliche Prinzip der Sprache? Es gibt keine bestimmte
Eigenschaft, die allem Sprachlichen gemeinsam ist, sondern nur Verwandtschaft,
Ähnlichkeit. Dies lässt sich am Beispiel des Spiels verdeutlichen. Es gibt die
verschiedensten Arten von Spielen: Brettspiele, Kartenspiele, Ballspiele,
Kampfspiele usw. Worin besteht der Grund, dass wir sie alle „Spiel“ nennen?
Nicht alle sind unterhaltsam oder von Regeln begrenzt, nicht immer geht es um
Gewinnen oder Verlieren, Geschick oder Glück. Manche Spiele spielt man zu
mehreren, andere zu zweit oder allein. Nicht ein einziges Wesensmerkmal,
sondern ein Netz aus sich kreuzenden Ähnlichkeiten macht das aus, was wir
„Spiel“ nennen. Der Begriff ist ohne feste Grenzen. Obwohl wir nicht genau
definieren können, was „Spiel“ ist, wissen wir es – ebenso wissen wir, wie
eine Klarinette klingt, können es aber nicht beschreiben. Und in gleicher
Weise schließlich lässt sich unsere Sprache als Gesamtheit unserer
Sprachspiele nicht auf ein einziges fundamentales Wesensmerkmal reduzieren.
Die Erscheinungen, die wir als Sprache bezeichnen, sind aber auf verschiedene
Art miteinander verwandt.


Das Prinzip der Verwandtschaft


„Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unseres Verstandes durch
die Mittel unserer Sprache.“ (S. 81)


Das Sprechen ist wie das Handeln Teil einer Lebensform. So kann man sich z. B.
eine Sprache vorstellen, die nur aus Befehlen, nur aus Meldungen oder nur aus
Fragen besteht. Mit einer solchen Sprache stellt man sich auch eine bestimmte
Lebensform vor. Zu unserer Geschichte (und also unserer Lebensform) gehören
Sprachspiele wie befehlen, fragen, erzählen und schwatzen ebenso wie gehen,
essen, trinken und spielen. Nur aufgrund unserer gemeinsamen Lebensform,
unserer gemeinsamen Definitionen und Überzeugungen können wir die sprachlichen
Äußerungen, den Tonfall, die Gesten und den Gesichtsausdruck anderer Menschen
verstehen.


„Die Idee sitzt gleichsam als Brille auf unserer Nase, und was wir ansehen,
sehen wir durch sie. Wir kommen gar nicht auf den Gedanken, sie abzunehmen.“
(S. 78)


Die Sprache kann man mit einer alten Stadt vergleichen, die von Plätzen und
verwinkelten Gassen sowie von alten und neuen Häusern aus ganz verschiedenen
Zeiten geprägt ist, umgeben von Vororten mit geraden, regelmäßigen Straßen und
einförmigen Häusern. Ständig verändert sie sich, neue Stadtteile entstehen,
alte sterben ab. Ähnliches geschieht auch in der Sprache.


Sprache als Teil einer gemeinsamen Lebensform


„Wir wollen etwas verstehen, was schon offen vor unsern Augen liegt. Denn
das scheinen wir, in irgendeinem Sinne, nicht zu verstehen.“ (S. 73)


Die Bedeutung eines Namens darf nicht mit seinem Träger verwechselt werden.
Wenn man z. B. sagt, „Herr N. N.“ sei gestorben, meint man den Träger, nicht
die Bedeutung des Namens. Der Begriff „Bedeutung“ bezeichnet in den meisten
Fällen den Gebrauch eines Wortes im Gefüge der Sprache. Indem man auf einen
Gegenstand zeigt und dessen Namen ausspricht, benennt man ihn. Doch dieses
Benennen dient nur der Vorbereitung, ähnlich wie die Aufstellung der Figuren
im Schachspiel. Die Bedeutung bekommt das Wort erst in einem Satzzusammenhang.


„Man kann für eine große Klasse von Fällen der Benützung des Wortes
‚Bedeutung‘ – wenn auch nicht für alle Fälle seiner Benützung – dieses Wort
so erklären: Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache.“
(S. 40)


So, wie man nach verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten Werkzeuge in Werkzeugarten oder
Schachfiguren in Figurenarten einteilen kann, können auch Wörter und Sätze
ihrer Funktion entsprechend nach Wort- und Satzarten sortiert werden. Wenn
etwa jemand „Platte!“ ruft, kann er ganz Verschiedenes meinen, z. B. auch
einen verkürzten Satz im Sinne von: „Bring mir die Platte!“ Der Ausruf „Fünf
Platten!“ kann eine Feststellung sein („Auf dem Stapel liegen fünf Platten“)
oder ein Befehl („Bring mir fünf Platten!“). Es gibt unzählige Arten der
Verwendung von Wörtern und Sätzen: behaupten, befehlen, berichten, Hypothesen
aufstellen, Geschichten erzählen, Theater spielen, einen Witz machen, bitten,
danken, fluchen und vieles mehr. Diese zahlreichen Formen der Sprache – diese
„Sprachspiele“ – sind nichts Festes, Gegebenes, sondern sie verändern sich;
ständig entstehen neue und werden alte vergessen.


„Ich möchte nicht mit meiner Schrift andern das Denken ersparen. Sondern,
wenn es möglich wäre, jemand zu eigenen Gedanken anregen.“ (S. 9)


Nach einer verbreiteten Vorstellung der menschlichen Sprache hat jedes Wort
eine feste Bedeutung. „Tisch“ bezeichnet den Gegenstand Tisch, „Stuhl“ den
Gegenstand Stuhl usw. Kinder lernen ihre Muttersprache, indem sie darauf
abgerichtet werden, Menschen, Gegenstände, Formen, Farben, Schmerzen usw. zu
benennen, als ob überall Namensschildchen angeheftet wären. Man zeigt auf ein
Ding und nennt dessen Namen. Diesen Vorgang, also das Benennen und
Nachsprechen des vorgesagten Wortes, könnte man als „Sprachspiel“ bezeichnen.
Der Begriff trifft aber auch auf den ganzen Kosmos der Sprache und der
Tätigkeiten, die mit ihr verbunden sind, zu.


Sprache als Benennen von Gegenständen


Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen , 1., vol. 501, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984).


“Gödel, apparently suffering severely, sought and was granted admission to a
Princeton hospital, but soon thereafter insisted that he had no right to one
of the benefits proffered, since his insurance policy did not provide for it.
He therefore refused to accept the benefit. The details of the case escape me
now, though of course I am convinced that Gödel's logic in interpreting the
insurance contract was superior to the hospital's. But be that as it may, in
his juridical precision, Gödel unshakably maintained his ground, even though -
according to Morgenstern the hospital routine was disturbed, inconvenience
arose on all sides and, what was the most grievous result, Gödel was deprived
of some paramedical help. He died in January, 1978.” (Menger, 1994, p. 232)


“In Gödel's last years we were again in more or less constant contact, but
only indirectly, namely through Oskar Morgenstern. Although the latter was
himself gravely ill, he telephoned from time to time, always transmitting
greetings from Gödel (and on two occasions invitations, which I unfortunately
had to decline) and speaking a great deal about our friend, especially about
his diverse illnesses and difficulties with local physicians.” (Menger, 1994,
p. 231)


“"As far as my theorems about undecidable propositions are concerned, it is
indeed clear from the passage that you cite that Wittgenstein did not (Gödel's
emphasis) understand it (or that he pretended not to understand it). He
interprets it as a kind of logical paradox, while in fact it is just the
opposite, namely a mathematical theorem within an absolutely uncontroversial
part of mathematics (finitary number theory or combinatorics). Incidentally,
the whole passage you cite seems nonsense to me. See e.g. the 'superstitious
fear of mathematicians of contradictions'."” (Menger, 1994, p. 231)


“On May 20, 1972, Gödel wrote me that he had seen Wittgenstein only once in
his life (and on that occasion only from a distance)” […]. (Menger, 1994, p.
230)


“his incomparable talent was lying lamentably fallow. But it was clear that
Veblen was determined to retain Gödel at Princeton.” (Menger, 1994, p. 227)


“After the war, I accepted an invitation to the newly founded Illinois
Institute of Technology in Chicago. The chairman there, Dr. Lester R. Ford,
had been among those at the Rice Institute who had heard of Gödel as early as
1931. […] On every one of my admittedly infrequent visits to Princeton, I had
long talks with Gödel. Apart from his friendship with Einstein and (especially
after the latter's death) with Morgenstern, Gödel seemed to me rather lonely.
[…] At no time in his life did Gödel need intellectual stimulation to conceive
and develop original and unexpected ideas. But he needed a congenial group
suggesting that he report his discoveries, reminding and, if necessary, gently
pressing him to write them down. All this he had at the beginning of his stay
in Princeton with regard to the publication of his two booklets and his
article on Russell. And he presumably could have found such support later. But
apparently he never looked for it, and no one seemed to volunteer.” (Menger,
1994, p. 226)


“long before the entry of the United States, the Navy established at Notre
Dame one of its largest training centers for aspiring Naval officers. The work
load, especially for mathematicians, rose drastically - and, after the entry
of the United States into the war, up to the limit of feasibility.” (Menger,
1994, p. 225)


“he had complained about the revocation of his dozentship in the University by
the Nazi regime and had spoken about violated rights. "How can one speak of
rights in the present situation?" I asked, "And what practical value can even
rights at the University of Vienna have for you under such circumstances?" But
despite pleas and warning by all his acquaintances at Notre Dame and
Princeton, he was determined to go to Vienna; and he went. After a while,
rumors reached me that Nazi rowdies had attacked him on the street and knocked
his glasses off. The only reason was his obviously intellectual appearance and
manner, which these fellows took for semitic - in Gödel's case; as in many
others, erroneously. Later I learned that despite everything, he established
his rights to the dozentship in Vienna.” (Menger, 1994, p. 224)


“Oskar Morgenstern. He described to me how Gödel one day took him into the
Princeton University Library and piled up two stacks of publications: on one
side, books and articles that appeared during or shortly after Leibniz'
lifetime and contained exact references to writings of the philosopher
published in collections or series (with places and years of publication,
volume and page numbers, etc.); on the other side, those very collections or
series. But in some cases, neither on the cited page nor elsewhere was there
any writing by Leibniz; in other cases, the series broke off just before the
cited volume or the volume ended before the cited page; in still other cases,
the volumes containing the cited writings never appeared.” (Menger, 1994, p.
223f)


“Leibniz negotiated for a time with the Emperor and his government about the
founding of an Academy in Vienna, but that the negotiations came to nothing.”
(Menger, 1994, p. 223)


“Mach of course eschewed assertions about the existence of bodies or about our
belief in them. From this positivistic attitude, however, Gödel dissociated
himself more and more articulately, emphasizing instead the pragmatic
argument. In Gödel's mathematical thinking, the most realistic element -
realistic in contrast to nominalistic - was probably his early conviction that
the right axioms of set theory had not yet been discovered. […] Gödel was more
and more preoccupied with Leibniz. He was now completely convinced that
important writings of this philosopher had not only failed to be published,
but were destroyed in manuscript.” (Menger, 1994, p. 222)


“I did not keep minutes. […] Gödel esteemed some Scholastic logicians as being
forerunners of George Boole and Augustus de Morgan; and he asked Simon which
earlier logicians especially interested him. Simon recommended the writings of
John of St. Thomas, a Portuguese Thomist of the first half of the seventeenth
century. Gödel looked at these writings (with me), but did not find anything
of special interest to him. […] Gödel leaned more and more towards Platonism.”
(Menger, 1994, p. 221)


“he gave a course in logic at Notre Dame in the spring of 1938. […] At the
beginning, Gödel had an audience of about 20 - half of them mathematicians who
attended his lectures to their conclusion. […] Among them was a group who were
developing, under my guidance, a new axiomatic approach to the non-Euclidean
geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky and this seemed to interest Gode!. Once or
twice, Emil Artin attended Gödel's lectures […]. The other half of the
audience consisted of older philosophers and logicians, occasionally joined by
one or another member of the physics department. […] Professor Yves Simon, a
student and friend of Maritain's whom President O'Hara brought over from
France, made a special effort to take advantage of Gödel's presence. […] I was
not successful in developing an atmosphere resembling that of the Vienna
Colloquium.” (Menger, 1994, p. 220)


“In the 1930's President O'Hara, an extraordinarily energetic and resourceful
priest, invited scholars of many countries to his school. Among the elite of
the religious order I found very cultivated men motivated by unselfish ideals,
and I resolved to help them develop advanced studies of mathematics at the
University. […] Heavy attendance at a demanding mathematical symposium during
the spring semester of 1937. In the afterglow of this, I decided to speak to
Father O'Hara about Gödel and his discoveries. At the Catholic universities in
the United States in the mid-1930's, logic was completely dominated by the
writings of Jacques Maritain and the philosophical school of Laval University
in Quebec, both quite opposed to mathematical ('merely formal') logic. In
addition, there was the antipathy of religious circles for Bertrand Russell,
with whom many almost identified mathematical logic. Nonetheless, already in
that first conversation (in which I also mentioned that Gödel was a
Protestant) President O'Hara showed great interest in Gödel's work and had
literature on Notre Dame sent to his Vienna address. After a second
conversation, he asked me to inquire whether Gödel would care to visit the
school.” (Menger, 1994, p. 216)


“I received a cable offering me a professorship at the University of Notre
Dame in Indiana. I found it very hard to give up the Colloquium, but in Vienna
the time for meetings of the type of ours was obviously running out, while I
hoped that I might have the opportunity to develop a similar group in America.
And it was very sad to leave Gödel, Wald, and other others, but I trusted that
before long I should see them in the free world. In January, 1937, I took up
my new position.” (Menger, 1994, p. 215)


“In the fall of 1935, Gödel again travelled to Princeton to spend the academic
year there. But he became ill, interrupted his stay in America and returned to
Vienna in December in quite a bad state of health and mind. […] At the time of
Hitler's coming to power in Germany, there were periods of almost unbearable
tension in Vienna. Gödel kept himself well informed and spoke with me a great
deal about politics without showing strong emotional concern about the events.
[…] It was a tragic spectacle to observe the atrophy of the previously
vigorous intellectual life in Vienna outside of the university - a consequence
of propaganda, pressure and fear. The extreme nationalists ruled in the
faculty as well as in the student body in the university. The Schlick Circle,
which already had a world reputation, was disparaged and maligned, the
Colloquium, one of the most active centers of mathematical research, was
totally ignored, Gödel and the new logic were never mentioned. Objective
arguments were considered irrelevant, especially since Hahn, a tireless and
effective speaker for progressive causes, had died in 1934. Schlick remained
one of the few defenders of reason at the university. For liberal-minded
people who had loved Austria, life in Vienna became harder with every passing
month.” (Menger, 1994, p. 215)


“In the discussion after Wald's paper, Gödel said: "Every producer's demand
depends also on his in- come, which in turn depends on production costs. One
might formulate a system of equations accordingly and investigate its
solvability." This remark - to my knowledge the only one ever published by
Gödel in the area of economics - testifies to his familiarity with the
subject.” (Menger, 1994, p. 213)


“During Gödel's absence, Wald had begun to work, inter alia, on a problem of
mathematical economics, connected with Walras' famous production equations,
which connect the quantities and prices of products with those of the factors
of production. The number of the equations is equal to the combined numbers of
the products and the factors. On this ground economists naively assumed that,
given the quantities of the factors and the (expected) prices of the products,
the equations determined the quantities of the products and the prices of the
factors. But no one seems to have seriously tried to solve the equations since
such an attempt would have made it obvious that in general solutions do not
exist. The Viennese economist Karl Schlesinger had found a flaw in Walras'
equations. They were based on the tacit assumption that all available
quantities of the factors are actually used in the production. Schlesinger
modified the Walras equations (in the form simplified by Cassell) by making
allowance for unused quantities of factors and suggested to Wald, whom I had
recommended to him as a tutor, that the equations so corrected might have
solutions. By ingenious methods, Wald proved not only the existence of
solutions but also their uniqueness.” (Menger, 1994, p. 212)


“Since I thought Veblen might one day be able to help Gödel in America, I
wanted to give the visitor an opportunity to hear Gödel lecture (although of
course I could not foresee what an important role he would play in Gödel's
life). […] Veblen was very impressed by Gödel and invited him to visit the new
Institute. […] Gödel should spend the year 1933-34 in Princeton. In 1934 Gödel
returned from Princeton to Vienna in poor health. But at the very first
Colloquium session of the academic year (on November 6, 1934) he was again
present. […] Nöbeling having returned to Germany, Gödel most frequently talked
with Wald and Tarski, the latter being a participant in the Colloquium with a
fellowship during most of the academic year 1934-35. Gödel also had
discussions with Carnap whenever the latter came from Prague to Vienna for
short visits to the Schlick Circle.” (Menger, 1994, p. 211f)


“Gödel in those years also studied a great deal of philosophy including post-
Kantian German idealist metaphysics. One day he came to me with a book by
Hegel […] and showed me a passage that appeared to anticipate general
relativity theory. But Gödel had already begun to concentrate on Leibniz, for
whom he entertained a boundless admiration. […] Gödel no longer appeared
regularly as a member of the Schlick Circle. The 'manifesto', published by
Neurath (co-signed by Hahn and Carnap) in 1929 while Schlick was in America,
alienated Gödel from the Circle […]. After one session in which Schlick, Hahn,
Neurath and Waismann had talked about language, but in which neither Gödel nor
I had spoken a word, I said on the way home; "Today we have once again out-
Wittgensteined these Wittgensteinians: we kept silent." "The more I think
about language," Gödel replied, "the more it amazes me that people ever
understand each other." Around that time Hahn began to arrange for Gödel's
dozentship (Habilitation) at the University of Vienna.” (Menger, 1994, p. 210)


“In the fall of 1931, I edited the first issues of the proceedings, the
Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums (subsequently for brevity,
Ergebnisse) and asked Gödel and Nöbeling to be co-editors. Beginning with the
reports about 1928-29 and 1929-30 which were excerpted from the minutes (the
Protokollbuch), eight issues appeared. The present section is devoted to a
complete technical report on Gödel's logical contributions.” (Menger, 1994, p.
205)


“In the letter of congratulation that I wrote to Gödel expressing my
admiration for his discovery, I mentioned a minor logical problem that had
just occurred to me. […] Gödel sent me a mathematically rather simple proof of
an affirmative answer to my question.” (Menger, 1994, p. 203)


“After the lectures, Gödel asked me to arrange a meeting with Tarski. […] In
the summer of 1930 I did not see Gödel - not even in September, when the
Schlick Circle met with a few congenial philosophers in Konigsberg, where at
the time the German Mathematiker-Vereinigung were holding a meeting. There, in
a discussion on the foundations of mathematics, Gödel mentioned for the first
time the discoveries he had made during that summer. I was absent, because I
was sailing to America to lecture in several places.” (Menger, 1994, p. 202)


“Gödel greeted my presentation with vividly approving nods. In the academic
year 1928-29 at the request of some students, I began directing a
Mathematisches Kolloquium - an informal evening gathering with those students,
who were soon joined by foreign visitors. In these meetings, topics and
results in their and my fields of interest were reported and discussed. We
followed the unconstrained style of the Schlick Circle; but from the fall of
1929 on I kept a Protokollbuch - minutes of a sort - something which Schlick,
as far as I know, unfortunately never did. Towards the end of 1929 I also
invited Gödel to the Colloquium and from then on he was a regular participant,
not missing a single meeting when he was in Vienna and in good health. From
the beginning he appeared to enjoy these gatherings and spoke even outside of
them with members of the group, particularly with Georg Nöbeling, sometimes
with Franz Alt and Olga Taussky, when she was in Vienna, and later on
frequently with Abraham Wald and foreign visitors. He was a spirited
participant in discussions on a large variety of topics. […] In
nonmathematical conversations he was very withdrawn.” (Menger, 1994, p. 201)


“Soon after assuming my position at the University of Vienna in the fall of
1927, I offered a quite well attended one-semester course which was on
dimension theory. The name of one of the students who had enrolled was Kurt
Gödel. He was a slim, unusually quiet young man. I do not recall speaking with
him at that time. Later I saw him again in the Schlick Kreis […]. I never
heard Gödel speak in these meetings or participate in the discussions.”
(Menger, 1994, p. 200)


“Nationalistic students tried to discredit Schlick even because of his given
name, Moritz, which many Austrians (perhaps because of its alliteration with
Moses) regarded as Jewish […]. Schlick was named after a close relative of his
mother, the once famous Ernst Moritz Arndt, one of the greatest heroes of
Germany in the Napoleonic period. To the end of his long life in 1861, he was
called 'the most German of all Germans' (der teutscheste aller Teutschen
[…].).” (Menger, 1994, p. 198)


“They now wrote that while murder was always condemnable it was not altogether
surprising that students of Schlick's corrosive philosophy (zersetzende
Philosophie) would etc., etc. … that the instruction in philosophy at Austrian
universities had to be reformed and so forth.” (Menger, 1994, p. 198)


“Schlick explained further. "For some time now I have been threatened by an
insane person who is in and out of mental institutions; and the man behind the
president used to be assigned to my protection." "So you are no longer
threatened," I said. Schlick sighed. "Until quite recently the fellow had been
interned," he said. "But just three days ago he was released again; and
yesterday I had another threatening telephone call from him. Yet, for all his
threats, he has never actually harmed me. So I don't dare complain to the
police again." And, as though it had happened only yesterday, I remember how
Schlick added with a forced smile, "I fear they begin to think it is I who is
mad" […]. Since Schlick had held Austria's most prestigious chair in
philosophy all newspapers published long, if uncordial obituaries.” (Menger,
1994, p. 197)


“In 1933-34, the university was closed for extended periods of time. Both
Schlick's Circle and my Colloquium, however, met regularly though Schlick,
Hahn, and I, being the only members with keys to the deserted buildings, had
to let the others in.” (Menger, 1994, p. 195f)


“in his opinion Hitler meant the Untergang des deutschen Volkes […] all should
join in a supreme effort to avert this imminent calamity. He also mentioned to
me his intention to write a letter to Cardinal Innitzer, the archbishop of
Vienna, whom many of us had met when he was professor of theology at the
University. We had admired him for restoring that institution for the year of
his rectorship to a place of teaching and learning: he energetically
suppressed riots of Nazi students that constantly plagued the university
before and after that year and forced most other rectors to keep the
institution closed for long periods. In his letter to the cardinal, while
mentioning his unrelatedness to Catholicism, Schlick planned to offer his
support of any action that might stem the flood.” (Menger, 1994, p. 195)


“In 1933 the year of Hitler's coming to power in Germany there were periods,
when life in Vienna was almost intolerable. […] I found it almost impossible
to concentrate and rushed out hourly to buy the latest extra. On one of these
days, I met Dr. and Mrs. Schlick in a street car. "It is impossible to
concentrate," the professor said, "I read extras from morning to night."
Schlick's position at the University became precarious. He was not and as far
as I knew, never had been politically active. His political views can probably
best be described as those of a British-style liberal. But this was far from
satisfactory to the nationalistic professors and students. Moreover, in all
administrative and academic matters, especially with regard to proposals for
new appointments, Schlick was always objective, unprejudiced and impartial
qualities that failed to ingratiate him with the majority of his colleagues at
that time. And that majority had more specific objections to his activity: his
insistence on keeping Waismann (who was Jewish) as his assistant; his supposed
friendship with the radical Neurath; his Kreis (the Vienna Circle!) which,
notwithstanding the strictly apolitical way in which Schlick conducted it, was
regarded as a sort of secret conspiracy; and finally his sponsorship of the
Ernst Mach Society, which was almost treated as an open rebellion (it would be
dissolved by the Dollfuss regime in the wake of the first civil war in 1934).


“A reaction reached me, indirectly, from Kraus at the German University of
Prague - the principal apostle of Brentano's ethical doctrine. Probably
incensed by my somewhat irreverent quotations from Brentano's writings Kraus
wrote an irate letter to a Viennese cousin of his, Mrs. Ella Dub, widow of a
prominent economics journalist. Kraus knew that Mrs. Dub was acquainted with
me. In violent terms, Kraus denounced my book as incorrect and immoral. Mrs.
Dub, who had been following my career with a somewhat motherly interest, was
greatly alarmed, spoke to me at once and then discussed my book and Kraus'
letter with Schlick, whom she knew well. But, as Schlick told me the next time
we met, despite sincere efforts he succeeded only partly in reassuring her. So
Mrs. Dub decided to consult her most revered friend and supreme authority, who
was expected to deliver a lecture in Vienna - Max Planck. She gave a lavish
party in honor of the Plancks and found an opportunity to hand to him the
material that she had been discussing with Schlick. […] Planck completely
reassured her, as she told me with every sign of relief, that he considered my
approach to ethics to be neither incorrect nor immoral.” (Menger, 1994, p.
190f)


“what the book suggests is 1) the study of general conditions for the
constitution of cohesive mutually compatible voluntary groups; 2) in specific
cases, the search, in the direction indicated, for alternatives to dictates
and compromises. While both the critical and the positive parts of the study
are strongly opposed to the categorical imperative another less known dictum
of Kant's seems to be in better harmony with voluntary groups. In one of his
explanations of morality, Kant wrote that "a legislation ought to be found in
every reasonable person and must be able to arise from his will." If one
realizes the multiplicity of possible regulations of a socio-ethical problem
(which seems to have escaped Kant completely), then the search suggested in my
book almost appears as a quest for the realization of that dictum of Kant's.”
(Menger, 1994, p. 190)


“Since the book aims at strict objectivity, it eschews value judgments even
with regard to the highest level of ethics; the words 'good' and 'evil' as
well as all related terms of evaluation are meticulously withheld not only
from norms and codes but also from forms of organization.” (Menger, 1994, p.
189)


“neither system allows a full and free competition of several ideas; and many
plans can never materialize at all. In every form of social organization,
there will of course be socio-ethical plans or combinations of projects that
cannot be realized on a voluntary basis; for this would require more
participants than they have adherents. This is a simple consequence of human
inventiveness in planning. Under uniform regulations, however, even many
projects and combinations of projects with sufficiently many adherents for
their realization cannot come to fruition.” (Menger, 1994, p. 189)


“In social reality, however, a plurality of regulations for ethical and social
problems, each regulation confined to its adherents, are rarely even aimed at.
Most populations, be they large or small, look for general solutions and
uniform regulations encompassing all members. The principal methods for
achieving this aim are dictates and compromises. Dictates issue from a single
dictator or a few persons (in fascism) or from a particular class
distinguished by certain characteristics such as ancestry or achievement (in
feudalism or elitism) or from a plurality or the majority of adherents (in
democracy); they may be opposed by a significant part of the population, even
by a large majority. Compromises between unlike codes are established by
modifying conflicting norms toward an intermediate formulation and/or by
selecting some regulations from each of the codes and combining them in an
eclectic system of norms; they introduce adulterating modifications into a
plan. For better or for worse, noncooperation of a significant part of the
population as well as modifications of a universal plan may be responsible for
the eventual failure of a principle.” (Menger, 1994, p. 189)


“likeness and even consensus of individuals is neither a necessary nor a
sufficient condition for their compatibility. Simple examples of cohesive
though nonhomogeneous groups include groups of tolerant individuals.” (Menger,
1994, p. 188)


“Schlick had criticized Kant's imperative as a command without a commander; to
me even more disturbing was the fact that the imperative did not permit the
inference of specific commands. In the more recent literature at that time,
especially the German literature, I found books of four types: sermons which
openly or in a veiled form preached a human behavior conforming to what, in
the last analysis, proved to be the taste of the respective writers […];
metaphysical writings, such as Nikolai Hartmann's and Max Scheler's in whose
intuitive vision of absolute values I failed to find, hard as I tried,
positive ideas of the kind I was seeking; lengthy methodological discussions
of the object and the procedures of ethics, many of them combined with
attempts to define good and evil; and finally empirical studies. Some books of
the last type revealed an immense wealth of historical, ethnographic,
sociological, psychological and biological examples supplying illustrative
material for an exact treatment of human relationships and organizations, but
they gave nothing more than examples. What I had been looking for, however,
was a theory of ethics an application of exact thinking that would bear to
traditional ethics a relation somewhat comparable to that of mathematical to
traditional logic. Even after all systems of morality, codes of norms and
value judgments have been expelled from the cognitive domain and relegated to
the realms of feelings or wishes, does there not remain, I asked myself, a
residue that lends itself to observation as well as to theoretical treatment -
perhaps from an extensional point of view? What indeed remains is the group of
adherents to the systems, to the codes and to the value judgments as well as
the relations between such groups. There existed, of course, descriptions of
the groups of people obeying specific ethical norms as well as histories of
the relationships between such groups. Descriptions and, even more,
classifications of social (if not particularly ethical) processes, groups and
relations also constituted the content of the work of L. von Wiese and his
school. But even those studies, though dealing with observable social
phenomena and hence more substantial than the vague statements of many other
sociologists, had little to do with exact thinking. A general theory of
relations between individuals and individuals, between individuals and groups,
and between groups and groups resulting from diverse characteristics and
attitudes of human beings and from their diverse demands on others - such a
theory seemed to be nonexistent in the literature. I fully realized that
ethics thus externalized would be regarded by most philosophers as quite
superficial. On the other hand, it would lend itself to sound applications of
the logic and mathematics of classes and relations and thus might bring about
what I had fervently hoped for: a positive contribution, however modest, by
exact thinking to questions of ethics. So during the winter of 1933-34, I
tried to develop such a theory in a short booklet entitled Moral, Wille und
Weltgestaltung, Grundlegung zur Logik der Sitten […].” (Menger, 1994, p. 183f)