From the author of Wittgenstein''s Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe''s history
On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelb-ck, a deranged former student of Schlick''s, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelb-ck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle-an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick-and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason.
The Vienna Circle''s members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt G-del. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans
