Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Max Brod - Felix Weltsch: intuition and concept

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2019

Abstract

This review study is concerned with the recently published second edition of the philosophical work Anschauung und Begriff. Grundzuge eines Systems der Begriffsbildung, the authors of which are members of the "narrow" Prague Circle: Max Brod and Felix Weltsch.

They themselves characterise their work as a "monograph about vague ideas". A salient feature of their theory is the attempt to determine afresh the relation between intuition and concept, reflecting the ideas of the time in philosophy and experimental psychology.

The authors are of the opinion that in the sphere of the vague and uncertain, there appear certain observable connecting links: these are intuitive concepts which lack any role in the formation of a scientific concept as it is understood in the neo-Kantian tradition. Study of this work contributes to our understanding of the historical reception of Brentanism in the context of the intellectual milieu of Prague at the time, which was characterised by an overt interplay between Prague German philosophy and literature.