Deep Thought in Dark Times
Long caricatured as an exponent of reductionist scientism, the interwar Vienna Circle comprised some of Europe's greatest minds. Thanks to a series of excellent reappraisals geared toward a mass audience, the Circle is finally getting the critical appreciation it deserves.
Wolfram Eilenberger,Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy, Penguin Press, 2020.
Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 2017.
Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918-1938, Cornell University Press, 2014.
TORONTO – For much of the developed world, the decade after World War I is known as the “Roaring Twenties” or the “Jazz Age,” a time of personal excess and economic recovery from the ruins of war. The common view of post-war Berlin and Vienna, however, is very different. There was wanton excess in both cities, of course, but economic life also seemed perpetually precarious.