क्रिस्टियन फ़ॉन एहरेनफ़ेल्स

कृतियाँ

• 1890गेस्टाल्ट गुणों पर

  वियर्टेलयाआरसश्रिफ़्ट फ़ूर विसेनशाफ़्टलिशे फ़िलॉसफ़ी में निबंध: कोई धुन या स्थानिक आकृति एक समग्र गुण के रूप में प्रत्यक्ष होती है जो उसके सारे तत्त्वों के बदलने पर भी बनी रहती है, जैसे धुन के सुर बदलने पर; ऐसे गेस्टाल्ट गुण संवेदनाओं के योग से अधिक हैं।

• 1897मूल्य-सिद्धांत की प्रणाली

  इच्छा के मनोविज्ञान और नीतिशास्त्र पर दो खंड (1897–98): वस्तुओं का मूल्य इसलिए है कि वे चाही जाती हैं या चाही जाएँगी; एहरेनफ़ेल्स ने माइनॉन्ग से विवाद किया कि मूल्य इच्छा पर टिका है या भावना पर।

मत

Ehrenfels is on the map as the philosopher who introduced the concept of Gestalt. In “On Gestalt Qualities” (1890), starting from observations by Ernst Mach, he asked why a melody remains the same when transposed into another key, although every tone has changed, while it becomes a different melody if the same tones are rearranged. His answer was that we perceive, along with the elements, a “Gestalt quality” of the whole – a melody, a spatial figure, a rhythm – which is not the sum of the sensations but is founded on them. The idea was taken up by Meinong and the Graz school, by Husserl in the “Philosophy of Arithmetic” (1891) and, in transformed form, by Wertheimer, Köhler and Koffka, who made the whole prior to its parts and founded Gestalt psychology. In value theory he held against Meinong that value is grounded in desire rather than in feeling: a thing has value because it is, or would be, desired. Later he wrote a speculative “Cosmogony” (1916) and on religion. His programme for a reform of sexual ethics, which joined eugenic ideas with racial fears, is set out under “Context & critique”.

जीवन और संदर्भ

Christian von Ehrenfels was born on 20 June 1859 in Rodaun near Vienna into a family of Lower Austrian nobility. He first studied agriculture, then philosophy in Vienna under Franz Brentano and in Graz under Alexius Meinong, with whom he took his doctorate in 1885. He taught in Vienna from 1888 and in 1896 became professor of philosophy at the German University in Prague, where he taught until 1929; Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, was among his students. Besides philosophy he wrote dramas and a libretto and was a fervent admirer of Richard Wagner. After 1900 he devoted much effort to proposals for a reform of sexual morality. He died at Lichtenau in Lower Austria on 8 September 1932.

अन्य प्रमुख कृतियाँ

• Über „Gestaltqualitäten“ (1890)
• System der Werttheorie (2 vols., 1897–98)
• Sexualethik (1907)
• Kosmogonie (1916)
• Das Primzahlengesetz (1922)