Georg Henrik von Wright

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Von Wright's home on Laivurinkatu Street, Helsinki: a commemorative plaque marking his long-term residence was installed in 2006
G. H. von Wright in 1961

Georg Henrik von Wright (Template:IPA;Template:Efn 14 June 1916 – 16 June 2003) was a Finnish philosopher.

Biography

G. H. von Wright<ref>An explanation of the von Wright name is given in "Georg Henrik von Wright: Intellectual Autobiography" (in: Schilpp, 1989): "Around the year 1650, the earliest known members of my family had to leave Scotland because, it is said, they had sided with King Charles against Cromwell. They settled in Narva in Estonia, which was then a province under Swedish rule. Georg(e) Wright there begat Henrik Wright, who fought in the armies of Charles XII and after a long and eventful life died in his home in Finland, another part of the old Swedish realm. Henrik Wright's son Georg Henrik was, together with his three other sons, raised to noble rank after the royal coup d'etat of 1772. This was how the odd combination of 'von' and 'Wright' originated." </ref> was born in Helsinki on 14 June 1916 to Tor von Wright and his wife Ragni Elisabeth Alfthan.<ref name="hacker" />

On the retirement of Ludwig Wittgenstein as professor at the University of Cambridge in 1948, von Wright succeeded him.<ref name="hacker">Template:Cite news</ref> He published in English, Finnish, German, and Swedish, belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland. Von Wright was of both Finnish and 17th-century Scottish ancestry,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the family was raised to nobility in 1772.<ref>Finlands ridderskaps och adels kalender 1992, p. 670, 672. Esbo 1991. Template:ISBN</ref>

In later years von Wright began to take an interest in political questions, having opposed the heavy bombing ordered by Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam War. He attended the Praxis School-organised Korčula Summer School.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Work

Von Wright's writings come under two broad categories. The first is analytic philosophy and philosophical logic in the Anglo-American vein. His 1951 texts An Essay in Modal Logic and "Deontic Logic" were landmarks in the postwar rise of formal modal logic and its deontic version. He was an authority on Wittgenstein, editing his later works. He was the leading figure in the Finnish philosophy of his time, specialising in philosophical logic, philosophical analysis, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, epistemology, and the close study of Charles Sanders Peirce.

The other vein in von Wright's writings is moralist and pessimist. During the last twenty years of his life, under the influence of Oswald Spengler, Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School's reflections about modern rationality, he wrote prolifically. His best known article from this period is entitled "The Myth of Progress" (1993), and it questions whether our apparent material and technological progress can really be considered "progress" (see Myth of Progress).

Awards

In the last year of his life, he was awarded several honorary degrees, including one by the University of Bergen.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He also was awarded the Swedish Academy Finland Prize in 1968.

Publications

  • The Logical Problem of Induction, PhD thesis, 31 May 1941<ref>Wright, Georg Henrik von. The logical problem of induction. Acta philosophica fennica, vol. 3. Societas Philosophica, Helsinki (Helsingfors) 1941. [second revised edition, 1957]</ref>
  • Den logiska empirismen (Logical Empiricism), in Swedish, 1945
  • Über Wahrscheinlichkeit (On Chance), in German, 1945
  • An Essay in Modal Logic, (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics: Volume V), L.E.J. Brouwer, E.W. Beth, and A. Heyting (eds.), Amsterdam: North-Holland,1951
  • A Treatise on Induction and Probability, 1951
  • "Deontic Logic" Mind, 60: 1–15, 1951
  • Tanke och förkunnelse (Thought and Preaching), in Swedish, 1955
  • Logical Studies, 1957
  • Logik, filosofi och språk (Logic, philosophy and language), in Swedish, 1957
  • The Varieties of Goodness, 1963. (revised version of the second half of his 1959–60 Gifford Lectures, given at the University of St. Andrews)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • Norm and Action, 1963 (revised version of the first half of his Gifford lectures at St. Andrews).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • The Logic of Preference, 1963
  • Essay om naturen, människan och den vetenskaplig-tekniska revolutionen (Essay on Nature, Man and the Scientific-Technological Revolution), in Swedish, 1963
  • An Essay in Deontic Logic, 1968
  • Time, Change and Contradiction, (The Twenty-Second Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture Delivered at Cambridge University 1 November 1968) Cambridge University Press. 1969
  • Tieteen filosofian kaksi perinnettä (The Two Traditions of the Philosophy of Science), in Finnish, 1970
  • Explanation and Understanding, 1971
  • Causality and Determinism, 1974
  • Handlung, Norm und Intention (Action, Norm and Intention), in German, 1977
  • Humanismen som livshållning (Humanism as an approach to Life), in Swedish, 1978
  • Freedom and Determination, 1980
  • Wittgenstein, 1982
  • Philosophical Papers I–III, 1983–1984
  • Of Human Freedom, 1985. (1984 Tanner Lectures at the University of Helsinki)
  • Filosofisia tutkielmia (Philosophical Dissertations), in Finnish, 1985
  • Vetenskapen och förnuftet (Science and Reason), in Swedish, 1986
  • Minervan pöllö (The Owl of Minerva), in Finnish, 1991
  • Myten om framsteget (The Myth of Progress), in Swedish, 1993
  • The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays, Leiden, Brill. Template:Doi , 1993
  • Att förstå sin samtid (To Understand one's own Time), in Swedish, 1994
  • Six Essays in Philosophical Logic. Acta Philosophica Fennica, Vol. 60, 1996
  • Template:AnchorViimeisistä ajoista: Ajatusleikki (On the End Times: A Thought Experiment.), in Finnish, 1997
  • Logiikka ja humanismi (Logic and Humanism), in Finnish, 1998
  • In the Shadow of Descartes: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind, Dordrech, Kluwer, Template:Doi 1998
  • Mitt liv som jag minns det (My Life as I Remember it), in Swedish, 2001

Von Wright edited posthumous publications by Wittgenstein, which were published by Blackwell (unless otherwise stated):

Von Wright also edited extracts from the diary of David Pinsent, also published by Wiley-Blackwell:

  • 1990. A Portrait of Wittgenstein as a Young Man: From the Diary of David Hume Pinsent 1912–1914. Template:ISBN.

For more complete publication details see "Bibliography of the Writings of Georg Henrik von Wright" (in Schilpp, 1989) and "The Georg Henrik von Wright-Bibliography" (2005).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Notes

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References

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Sources

Further reading

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