Overcoming Positivism: Husserl and Wittgenstein

In this paper I shall briefly analyze Husserl´s and Wittgenstein´s divergent reactions against the positivist stance on natural science and on the new cultural role that philosophy should play in relation to science. To a great extent, their philosophies can be considered as a departure from positiv...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: González Castán, Óscar Lucas
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/103978
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/103978
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:165.2
165.32
Science
Truth
Radical agnosticism
Models
Language grammar
Historicism
Ideality
Humanidades
Filosofía
Teoría del conocimiento
72 Filosofía
7201 Filosofía del Conocimiento
7201.02 Epistemología
7205 Filosofía de la Ciencia
Descripción
Sumario:In this paper I shall briefly analyze Husserl´s and Wittgenstein´s divergent reactions against the positivist stance on natural science and on the new cultural role that philosophy should play in relation to science. To a great extent, their philosophies can be considered as a departure from positivism, although for quite different reasons. I shall argue that Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, took positivism as a starting point that he tried to overcome from within. This endeavour led him to defend some theses of a pragmatist flavour as well as a peculiar type of radical agnosticism on ontological and epistemological issues. Husserl, however, considered that positivism was a dead-end for philosophy. Positivism has beheaded philosophy as a consequence of advancing a reductive view of science. Phenomenology is the attempt to understand the genetic and subjective processes that have ended up in an objective and scientific image of the world.