Oszkár Jászi, who was1 the principal of the new [the “Free School for Social Studies”], said at its opening that a new ethic was necessary, an ethic that would go beyond religion and metaphysics and would be founded on science and human solidarity. He pleaded for a fruitful use of “the basis of principles and methods of the universal scientific objectivity” applied to all disciplines.

One discerns the influence in these words of the positivism of De Saint-Simon and Comte. They, too desired a science that would be based only on positive facts, and that would abandon religion and metaphysics. Just as their spiritual kin in England, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, they believed strongly in the progress of humanity. They strove for a worldview founded on science and erected in utility. A late phase of positivism can be seen taking shape in Austria at the end of the nineteenth century, particularly around the figures of Mach and Avenarius.

The “Society” argued for a scientifically based politics. In its view the ideal state of Plato pointed in the right direction; philosophers, people with a perfect theoretical knowledge and moral purity, ought to be in control of the government. The leadership of the Social-Democratic Party, however, suspected the intellectuals who, after all, were strongly bound to the wealthy middle class. Party members of the Social-Democratic Party.

Dr. Henk E.S. Woldring, [1986] Karl Mannheim. The development of his thought, New York, St Martin’s Press, 10-12.

Jászi was the editor of Huszadik Század.

Note

  1. In Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century. ↩︎