Christian von Ehrenfels

Dzieła

• 1890Über „Gestaltqualitäten” (O jakościach postaciowych)

  Esej w „Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie”: melodia lub figura przestrzenna jest postrzegana jako całościowa jakość, która pozostaje, gdy zmieniają się wszystkie jej elementy, jak przy transpozycji melodii; takie jakości postaciowe są czymś więcej niż sumą wrażeń.

• 1897System der Werttheorie (System teorii wartości)

  Dwa tomy (1897–98) o psychologii pożądania i o etyce: rzeczy mają wartość, ponieważ są pożądane lub byłyby pożądane; Ehrenfels spierał się z Meinongiem o to, czy wartość opiera się na pożądaniu, czy na uczuciu.

Stanowisko

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”.

Życie i kontekst

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.

Dalsze główne dzieła

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