格奥尔格·亨里克·冯·赖特

作品

• 1951道义逻辑

  发表于《心》的论文，把义务、允许和禁止当作类似于必然与可能的逻辑算子，并提出联结它们的规律——这是道义逻辑作为一门学科的起点。

• 1971解释与理解

  比较因果解释的“伽利略”传统与目的论理解的“亚里士多德”传统，主张行动是通过实践三段论——行动者的意图和信念——来理解的，而实践三段论并不是因果律。

立场

Von Wright is on the map as a founder of modern philosophical logic and a bridge between analytic philosophy and the hermeneutic tradition. In “Deontic Logic” (1951) he showed that the concepts of obligation, permission and prohibition behave like the modal concepts of necessity and possibility and can be treated in a formal system; the paper launched modern deontic logic as a field (an earlier attempt was Ernst Mally’s “Grundgesetze des Sollens”, 1926, from Meinong’s school in Graz), and “Norm and Action” (1963) placed it within a general theory of norms. He also contributed to the logic of preference, of action and of time. In “Explanation and Understanding” (1971) he contrasted a “Galilean” tradition of causal explanation with an “Aristotelian” tradition of teleological understanding and argued, building on Anscombe’s “Intention”, that actions are understood through the practical syllogism: an agent intends an end and believes that a certain action is needed for it, and so sets about doing it – a connection that is logical, not causal. The book was widely discussed by hermeneutic philosophers, among them Paul Ricoeur, and helped to bring the two traditions into conversation. As an editor of Wittgenstein’s papers he shaped how Wittgenstein’s later work became known. His student Jaakko Hintikka continued the Finnish tradition in logic.

生平与背景

Georg Henrik von Wright was born on 14 June 1916 in Helsinki into a Swedish-speaking family. He studied philosophy with Eino Kaila and in 1939 went to Cambridge, where he attended Wittgenstein’s lectures and came to know G. E. Moore and C. D. Broad. His doctoral thesis, “The Logical Problem of Induction”, appeared in 1941. He became professor in Helsinki in 1946 and in 1948 succeeded Wittgenstein as professor of philosophy at Cambridge, returning to Finland in 1951. With Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees he was one of Wittgenstein’s literary executors and edited many of his posthumous writings. From 1961 he was a member of the Academy of Finland, and from 1965 to 1977 he also held a visiting professorship at Cornell University. In Finland and Sweden he was a prominent public intellectual and a critic of the belief in technological progress. He died in Helsinki on 16 June 2003.

其他主要作品

• The Logical Problem of Induction (1941)
• An Essay in Modal Logic (1951)
• Deontic Logic (Mind 60, 1951)
• Norm and Action (1963)
• The Varieties of Goodness (1963)
• Explanation and Understanding (1971)
• Wittgenstein (1982)