Moritz Schlick, the Vienna Circle and Austrian Literature after World War II

In their autobiographical writings and numerous essays, both Jean Améry and Hilde Spiel repeatedly referred to the important role of the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein for their own intellectual development and for Austrian culture. Améry’s work is dominated by a defence of the Vienna Circle in the context of German-speaking and French philosophy between “positivism” and existentialism, while Spiel’s work is a critical appraisal of Karl Bühler and especially Moritz Schlick as manifestations of a rational and scientific philosophy under Austrofascism and National Socialism. What both have in common is their (late) Enlightenment self-conception in the midst of a so-called “positivism controversy” between Karl Popper and the Frankfurt School, in which their positions were criticised from both the left and the right – analogous to Julien Benda’s La Trahison des Clercs (Betrayal of the Intellectuals 1978). These forgotten controversies as well as the personal friendly
relationship between Améry and Spiel are described and the specifics of their analogous positions are characterised in comparison to the prevailing contemporary positions after the Second World War.