Chiara Russo Krauss

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Naples Federico II

Even though the relationship between Einstein and Mach is well studied, the literature on the topic often overlooks the fact that Mach never provided an interpretation for the theory of relativity. Rather, it was Mach’s pupil Joseph Petzoldt who published several works to prove that Machian philosophy provided the correct philosophical framework fo...

Friedrich Albert Lange was a neo-Kantian and a socialist. Scholars have questioned whether there is a connection between these two aspects of Lange’s work. The paper argues that such a connection is apparent once Lange’s philosophy is understood in light of Schiller’s Kantianism. According to Lange, Schiller’s aesthetic redemption consists of two t...

Friedrich Albert Lange is usually regarded as a representative of physiological neo-Kantianism or as a forerunner of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. In this paper I try to reconstruct Lange’s theory of values to argue that his philosophy is better framed as an intermediate point in the development of the two-world theory (facts/values) betwee...

This paper provides an account of the debate between Wilhelm Wundt and Richard Avenarius on the definition of psychology. It shows that – despite the fame of the former as the founder of experimental psychology – it was the latter who first defined this science on the basis of the experimental method. Moreover, the paper reconstructs how Avenarius...

Le présent volume, qui regroupe les contributions de sept auteurs, est le premier ouvrage à proposer une réflexion d'ensemble sur les multiples aspects constitutifs de la pensée de Theodor Lipps (1851-1914). Figure majeure de la philosophie, de la psychologie et de l'esthétique allemandes de la fin du XIXe siècle et du début du XXe siècle, Lipps es...

Friedrich Albert Lange was a neo-Kantian and socialist. Scholars have questioned whether there is a connection between these two aspects of Lange's work. The paper argues that such a connection is apparent once Lange's philosophy is understood in light of Schiller's Kantianism. According to Lange, Schiller's esthetic redemption consists of two task...

Friedrich Albert Lange was a neo-Kantian and socialist. Scholars have questioned whether there is a connection between these two aspects of Lange's work. The paper argues that such a connection is apparent once Lange's philosophy is understood in light of Schiller's Kantianism. According to Lange, Schiller's esthetic redemption consists of two task...

The German philosopher Friedrich Albert Lange was a pivotal figure in the nineteenth century, due to the publication of the extremely influential History of Materialism (1866). In his book, Lange proposed a compelling reconstruction of the development of materialism, from ancient Greece to the modern Materialismusstreit (controversy on materialism)...

Ernst Mach's claim that the objects are bundles of sensation was (and still is) widely interpreted in a phenomenalistic sense, as if he was asserting that perceptual experiences is the only reality. The talk will reconstruct the philosophical system of Mach's pupil Joseph Petzoldt, to propose a different interpretation of Mach's work, that put it i...

Joseph Petzoldt was Ernst Mach’s and Richard Avenarius’ main pupil, as well as the primary source for the habit to reunite these two thinkers under the label of “empiriocriticists”. Petzoldt developed Mach’s and Avenarius’ ideas in a philosophical system aiming at overcoming the dualism and agnosticism of the Kantian approach that was typical of Ge...

Russo Krauss outlines Wilhelm Wundt’s twofold strategy to respond to the new trend in experimental-physiological psychology. On the one side, he developed a theory about the purely psychological principles that characterize mental life (actuality, creative synthesis, relational analysis, and contrast amplification). On the other hand, he wrote a se...

Russo Krauss reconstructs Richard Avenarius’ intellectual career, from the early relationship with Wilhelm Wundt to the development of his philosophical system: Empiriocriticism. At first, Avenarius and Wundt collaborated to spread experimental psychology in the philosophical faculties. Later, Avenarius designed a philosophical foundation for a rad...

Russo Krauss exposes Wilhelm Wundt’s position on some fundamental issues of the philosophical and psychological debate at the turn of the century, such as: the antinomy between idealism and realism; the apparent contradiction between physiological explanation and psychical causality; the difference between natural and spiritual sciences. Russo Krau...

Russo Krauss outlines Wilhelm Wundt’s twofold strategy to respond to the new trend in experimental-physiological psychology. On the one side, he developed a theory about the purely psychological principles that characterize mental life (actuality, creative synthesis, relational analysis, and contrast amplification). On the other hand, he wrote a se...

Russo Krauss retraces the reception of Richard Avenarius’ ideas about the philosophical foundation of experimental-physiological psychology among former Wundt’s pupils and other leading psychologists of the late nineteenth century, such as Oswald Külpe, Hugo Münsterberg, Hermann Ebbinghaus, James Ward, and Edward B. Titchener (plus a digression on...

This book reconstructs the rise and fall of Wilhelm Wundt’s fortunes, focusing for the first time on the role of Richard Avenarius as catalyst for the so-called “positivist repudiation of Wundt.” Krauss specifically looks at the progressive disavowal of Wundtian ideas in the world of scientific psychology, and especially by his former pupils. This...

The essay examines the fifth chapter of Fechner’s Elements of psychophysics, analyzing its attempt to reconcile the latest achievements in modern science – such as the formulation of the principle of conservation of energy by Helmholtz – with the spiritual sphere of mind, will, and freedom. In so doing, the paper highlights the “non-reductionistic”...

The paper retraces the evolution of Heymann Steinthal’s opinion on Wilhelm von Humboldt. Firstly, Humboldt is interpreted in the light of Hegel, as an attempt to bring together the abstract universal and the concrete particular. This approach is nonetheless hampered by Kant’s influence on Humboldt, that leads him to postulate an unattainable ground...

A reAPPrAisAl oF eMPiriocriTicisM. The paper questions the assumptions that underlie the habit of considering Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach as representatives of the same philosophical current: Empiriocriticism. The essay firstly retraces the different backgrounds, aims and intellectual trajectories of the two authors, and then indicates the var...

This essay provides a fresh account of the break between Oswald Külpe and his master Wilhelm Wundt. Kurt Danziger's reconstruction of the “repudiation” of Wundt, which has become the canon for this significant episode of history of psychology, focused on the supposed influence of Ernst Mach on this set of events, overshadowing the other exponent of...