Richard Avenarius

Abstract Avenarius is best known as the founder of “empirio-criticism” and the editor of the Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, the leading journal of positivism before Erkenntnis. Avenarius was an early advocate of radical empiricism; his empirio-criticism was basically a critical philosophy with an empiricist edge. Kant had not taken his critical philosophy far enough, Avenarius believed, because he left the scholastic residue of a priori principles, intuitions, and concepts. The main work of Avenarius’s philosophy was his Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, whose goal was to eliminate all a priori elements from experience. This chapter examines some of the early sources of Avenarius’s philosophy: his early study of Spinoza; his Habilitationsschrift; his introduction to the Vierteljahrschrift; and his dispute with Hermann Ulrici about scientific philosophy. Section 5 is a brief examination of Avenarius’s Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, while Section 6 treats his Der menschliche Weltbegriff. The final section, Section 7, is an examination of Avenarius’s neglected final articles, which were an attempt to give a last clarification of his critique of pure experience.