A CONTRACULTURA DO CÍRCULO DE VIENA: DESDOBRAMENTOS E IMPLICAÇÕES PARA ALÉM DA FILOSOFIA DA CIÊNCIA

This article discusses the philosophical and intellectual relations of the Vienna Circle with left-wing socio-political movements in the interwar period of the 20th century. It notes that opposing movements, with a totalitarian tendency, were predominant in the German-speaking world since the beginning of the century, giving rise to Nazifascism in the 1930s. The totalitarian movements were based on traditional Austro-German philosophy. From this historical context, this paper argues that the Vienna Circle’s stance of breaking with philosophical tradition was a counterculture to the prevailing intellectual trend. As such, the Vienna Circle’s philosophy is seen as being in direct opposition to the theoretical foundations of the rising totalitarian movements. The first part of the text establishes the historiographical frame based on the perspectives of Janek Wasserman, Helmut Gruber, Hans-Joachim Dahms, George Mosse and Friedrich Stadler, positioning the Vienna Circle in the context of Central European, specifically Austrian, modernism. The second part shows that the Vienna Circle’s critical analysis of the philosophy of its time reflects the directed apprehensions of social, religious and political relations that extended to the scientific field of its historical context. This is represented through the works of Philipp Frank, who critically identified the pernicious and hierarchical relationships in the history of traditional philosophy, providing an understanding of the barriers to scientific progress that occurred in the first decades of the 20th century.