La philosophie autrichienne, depuis Bolzano jusqu’à Musil et Wittgenstein en passant par Mach et la tradition brentanienne, est marquée par une obsession singulière : la clarté et la précision. Quelques traits de cette obsession, en particulier la critique sévère des différentes formes de bavardage philosophique, sont décrits et situés par rapport à la culture autrichienne en général. Mais chaque vertu a son vice, et les vertus cognitives de la pensée autrichienne n’échappent pas à la règle. Quatre exemples de la pathologie (...) de la précision sont analysés : Freud, Ehrenfels, Weininger et le dernier Husserl .Austrian philosophy from Bolzano, Mach and the Brentanian tradition to Musil and Wittgenstein is characterised by an obsession : clarity and exactness. Some features of this obsession, in particular the harsh criticisms of different types of philosophical blethering, are described, as is their place within Austrian culture. Each virtue has its vice and the cognitive virtues of Austrian thought are no exception. Four examples of the pathology of exactness are analysed : Freud, Ehrenfels, Weininger and the later Husserl. (shrink)

This paper aims at specifying the complex links which two major and polemically related 18th-century linguistic theories James Harris' universal grammar in Hermes (1751) and John Horne Tooke's system of etymology in the Diversions of Purley (1786, 1804) bear to empiricism. It describes both the ideologicalethical determining factors of the theories and the epistemological consequences dependent upon their respective philosophical orientation (Harris using classical Greek philosophy against empiricism, Tooke criticizing Locke's semantics along Hobbesian lines). The effects within the linguistic theories (...) are examined through a comparison of the theories of determination which follow from divergent theses concerning abstraction. The analysis proposed in this paper exemplifies once more the historical question of the exact location of the compatibility/incompatibility between empiricist and non-empiricist linguistic theories. (shrink)