Education,Enlightenment and Positivism: The Vienna Circle's Scientific World-Conception Revisited

The scientific world-conception is properly understood as an enlightenmentphilosophy only if the current reassessment of the historical Vienna Circle(as opposed to the caricature still prevalent in the popular philosophicalimagination) is once more extended to comprehend not only its thorough-goingepistemological anti-foundationalism, but also the voluntarist point of its ethical`non-cognitivism'. That is to say, the scientific world-conception is properlyunderstood as the opposite of village positivism only if it is recognized that it hasan `other' and that the scientific world-conception was meant by its proponentsto perform its enlightenment work only in conjunction with that other of scientificreason – ethical will and willing. Scientific reason cannot determine all there is to determine, it cannot determine the will. In this sense, there was, pace villagepositivism, more than scientific reason dreamt of. Scientific reason was not madeabsolute: rather, its (self-) clarification was required if a satisfactory view of its placein `life' was to be attained.