STÖHR, ADOLF
(1855–1921)

Adolf Stöhr, the Austrian philosopher, psychologist, and linguist, was born at St. Pölten and studied law and philology, then botany, and finally philosophy, at the University of Vienna. In 1885 he was appointed Privatdozent in theoretical philosophy at the same university, rising to associate professor in 1901 and to full professor of the philosophy of the inductive sciences in 1911. He published some thirty works in logic, natural philosophy, psychology, and philosophy.

Language and Thought

Stöhr developed his system of logic in the closest connection with the psychology of thought processes and linguistics. His work deals in great detail with the dependence of thought upon language (what he calls the glossomorphy of thought), and he warned against the dangerous consequences that flow from confusing forms of speech with forms of thought. Not only do we make use of language to fix our thoughts and to communicate our knowledge; we also think in our language, so that the structure of our thought reflects the logical forms of our language. When the course of thought becomes automatic, the result may be that self-critical thought is replaced by an "idle flow of speech" ("glossurgy"), which is frequently even self-contradictory.

Through such reflections Stöhr began the "critique of language" pursued later with such success by other important thinkers. With the aid of this critique, he sought above all to oppose the misuse of language in philosophy and to unmask the muddled philosophical thinking that gives rise to the reification of concepts, metaphors, and allegories. Because "our language compels us to designate consciousness as if it were constructed of a subject, of mental acts and of physical objects" (as in the sentence "I see an object"), the illusion arises that "thoughts have the form (morphe ) of the language (glossa )." The final outcome is that fictions are taken for facts; metaphors, for that which is actually meant. Thus the fact of the psychological "I" is confused with the fiction of the mental "subject," and the fact of phenomenal matter as a complex of visual and tactile sensations is confused with the materialistic fiction of a metaphysical matter (Wege des Glaubens, pp. 20ff.).

Metaphysics

Stöhr distinguished three roots of metaphysical thinking: wonder at the facts (the "theorogonous" metaphysics of the "constructing imagination"); pain (the "pathogonous" metaphysics of the "suffering heart"); and glossomorphic confusion (the "glossogonous" metaphysics of the "rolling word"). Metaphysics can supply no universally valid knowledge because the transcendental is in principle unknowable; one can only "have faith" in the existence of something beyond experience. This metaphysical faith is the expression of a subjective reaction of the heart and is "lived." Knowledge cannot engender faith, and faith cannot substitute for knowledge; for the two are of an entirely different nature" ("Ist Metaphysik möglich?," p. 30). "Everyone proceeds along that path of faith which his whole constitution obliges him to take. There is neither an inductive nor a deductive proof for or against a faith" (Wege des Glaubens, p. 36).

Stöhr rejected both "pathogonous" and "glossogonous" metaphysics, and thus the whole of metaphysics in the traditional sense, with its claim to knowledge of the transcendental. Anyone who pretends to provide such knowledge is philosophizing both "pathogonously" and "glossogonously." Anyone who is unable to find the meaning of life in life itself, in the work and tasks of life, and therefore suffers in being alive, seeks that meaning beyond the world and life. Since he would like to convince others of the truth of his outlook on life and the world, which is directed to the beyond, he intentionally or unintentionally misuses language in order to offer rhetorical pseudo solutions to metaphysical pseudo problems as if they were genuine solutions to real problems.

Stöhr himself professed "theorogonous" metaphysics. He defined it as "the satisfaction of an artistic propensity by means of the elegant construction of a world view"—which, of course, must not contradict the facts. "Thus metaphysics, in contrast to the empirical sciences, does not grow through apposition, but continuous building, rebuilding and building anew" (Lehrbuch der Logik, p. 304). Stöhr constructed his own view of nature in this manner, not dogmatically but as an exercise, assigning more importance to the creation than to the validity of a system. (He often said in discussion: "I am only playing with these ideas. I do not say that this is the way things are. I do not say even that this is the way they probably are. All that I say is that this is the way they may be.")

Natural Philosophy

Stöhr attempted to explain the structure of matter and the peculiarities of organic happenings in conformity with his undogmatic approach. Since for him mechanism was the sole intelligible conception of nature, he sought to understand both the organic world and the inorganic world with the help of mechanistic conceptual models. Stöhr proved to be as original a thinker in the philosophy of nature as in logic and psychology. That many of his ingenious solutions to problems have become outmoded by the progress of the sciences does not alter the epistemological excellence of his clear and exact style of thought.

Bibliography

Stöhr's major works include Umriss einer Theorie der Namen (Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke, 1889); Alegbra der Grammatik (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1898); Philosophie der unbelebten Materie (Leipzig, 1907); Der Begriff des Lebens (Heidelberg: Winter, 1909); Lehrbuch der Logik (Leipzig: Deuticke, 1910); "Ist Metaphysik möglich?" in Jahrbuch der philosophischen Gesellschaft an der Universität zu Wien 1914 und 1915 (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 25–36; Psychologie. Tatsachen, Probleme und Hypothesen (Vienna and Leipzig, 1917; 2nd ed., Vienna and Leipzig: W. Braumüller, 1922); and Wege des Glaubens (Vienna and Leipzig, 1921).

Works on Stöhr include Franz Ferdinand Worlitzky, Über die Philosophie Adolf Stöhrs, a dissertation (Vienna, 1925), and Franz Austeda, "Der Oesterreicher Adolf Stöhr—einer der bedeutendsten Denker unseres Jahrhunderts," in Neue Wege (Vienna) (104) (1955): 3–5.

Franz Austeda (1967)

Translated by Albert E. Blumberg