Rudolf Haller was one of the pioneers of “Austrian philosophy” and analytic philosophy dealing with Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Mach up to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, especially Schlick and Neurath. As professor at the University of Graz he fostered this field with his teaching and research and promoted it together with a lot of invited renowned foreign scholars. In addition, he created the influential Grazer Forschungs- und Dokumentationsstelle für Österreichische Philosophie which hosts important philosophical archives. Moreover, he co-founded the (...) Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society in Kirchberg/W. in 1976 and supported the Institute Vienna Circle since its establishment in Vienna in 1991. This article is a personal review and remembrance of the author’s pleasing interaction and cooperation with Rudolf Haller, as an appreciation of his extraordinary achievements. (shrink)

Schlick has been accused of a number of philosophical sins over the years, most notably his rather casual, and frequent, traversing of the borders between language, experience, and reality. While we allow our scientists the freedom to roam creatively throughout the peripheral regions of Epistemology and Metaphysics, we are not so tolerant of our philosophers. We know that Schlick gave up the physics laboratory for the philosopher’s armchair, and we expect him to stick to a particular position.Schlick’s colleagues in the (...) Vienna Circle were not totally blameless in this regard, either, and it may be that part of the charm of their work is precisely their inability to stick to the positions that solidified over 2500 years of western philosophy. (shrink)