ABSTRACT
Far less well-documented is a remarkable parallel blossoming of value theory in Austrian philosophy, most of it concentrated into a mere 25 years around the turn of this century. In depth and breadth this development outstrips both the other near-contemporary movements in philosophical value theory in Europe: the Baden or South-West German school of neo-Kantians (Windelband, Rickert, Bauch and others) and the slightly later developments in the phenomenological movement (especially Scheler and N.Hartmann). The fountainhead of this other Austrian school of value theory was the philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917), who taught at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1895. Brentano, his pupils and grandpupils together contributed immeasurably to the philosophy and psychology of modern times. Some of Brentano’s students (e.g., Carl Stumpf, Edmund Husserl) made their careers and reputations in Germany, but those who will concern us here, the value theorists, remained within the borders of the Danube monarchy. Following Eaton (1930, p. 16) and Rescher (1969, p. 50) we shall call them collectively the second Austrian school of value theory. The suggestion of a parallel to the Menger school is intentional, for not only have we here two flourishing schools of value theory in Austria; there are doctrinal parallels and scientific and personal interactions between the two schools. The basic ideas of the principal members of the second school, their development and their interaction with those of the first, are the main topics of our essay. Despite its philosophical importance, the value theory of the phenomenological school will not be dealt with here, firstly because
this development took place outside Austria, but more crucially because, being somewhat later, it both presupposed the work of the second Austrian school, and did not enjoy the mutual interaction with economics which so uniquely characterises the latter. The person linking the two schools, Edmund Husserl, was less interested in value theory for its own sake, and published no major work in the area, although he canvassed in outline the idea of a formal axiomatics of value to parallel that of logic. It is mainly the application of Husserl’s phenomenological method by others to the area of value which is known, and which has been influential.
