Recommendations from our site
“They envisaged an entirely rational world, based on the Enlightenment, where all problems were subjected to empirical analysis. And if they couldn’t be subjected to that, they didn’t exist. The philosopher AJ Ayer used to come to the Vienna Circle’s meetings. He wrote a book which was heavily based on their outlook, and which was called Language, Truth and Logic. I recommend that book if you want to have a bird’s eye view into the way they looked at the world (even if Ayer more or less disowned it later). It’s quite a short book, and, even for non-philosophers, mostly understandable.” Read more...
Nicholas Parsons, Historian
“without Ayer my book would not have been written. More than that, without Ayer, I may not have gone into philosophy in the first place. He captured me—or enticed me—into the world of philosophy, as he did many people. I read Language, Truth and Logic when I was 19. I was a militant atheist, as Ayer probably was. I thought that belief in God was not only stupid, but harmful as well. And Ayer provided me with the ammunition, as a teenager, to be entirely dismissive of religion and—I feel embarrassed about this now—entirely dismissive of religious believers too.” Read more...
The best books on The Vienna Circle
David Edmonds, Philosopher
