Avenarius, Richard (1843–96)

Richard Avenarius, a German philosopher, is known as a proponent of ‘empiriocriticism’ and the principle of economy of thinking. Empiriocriticism is a modern version of empiricism which attempts to restore the concept of the natural world and ‘pure experience’ through the elimination of ‘introjection’, understood as an insertion of redundant or distorted ideas and images into the objects of our knowledge. Avenarius traced back the origin of introjection to the cultural stages dominated by magic and mythology, yet his criticism applied also to traditional philosophy and science. His position is usually classified as a version of positivism, closely resembling the empiricist doctrine of Ernst Mach. Although his influence on some members of the Vienna Circle, especially Moritz Schlick, was considerable, the impact of his contribution has been hampered by his idiosyncratic use of language, especially in his masterpiece Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (The Critique of Pure Experience) (1888–90).