Nizyeva Larisa
The article is dedicated to the investigation of Ernst Mach’s philosophical ideas and to the analysis of their influence on Fritz Mauthner’s language critique theory. It is well known that both Austrian thinkers were personally acquainted and maintained correspondence since 1889 until 1915. Their private correspondence is kept in the archives of the Fraunhofer Institute named after Ernst Mach in Freiburg, Germany. Mutual letters of the philosophers, as well as the records of Ernst Mach’s diaries and notebooks, were published only in 1982. The author points out that at the turn of the twentieth century Mach’s philosophy reflected dominating views and ideas in Austria and extended far beyond positivism, affecting not only the critique of language and phenomenology, but also culture, literature and art of that period of time. Fritz Mauthner is practically unknown in the contemporary Russian philosophical literature, and even if he is mentioned it is rather in connection to the most recognized Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The article provides an analysis based on the private correspondence of E. Mach and F. Mauthner and on Ernst Mach’s personal documents, which shows how Ernst Mach’s philosophical reflections influenced Fritz Mauthner’s oeuvre, and how they were developed in his language critique. According to Austrian philosophical tradition, both philosophers are united in the critique of I. Kant’s philosophy, “thing-in-itself” and I-analysis.
Keywords: Austrian philosophy, perception, language critique, language worlds, critique of the “thing-in-itself”, I-analysis.