Fritz Mauthner (22 November 1849 – 29 June 1923) was an
Austrian
Austrian may refer to:
* Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent
** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law
* Austrian German dialect
* Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...
novelist, theatre
critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...
and satirist. He was an exponent of
philosophical scepticism derived from a critique of human knowledge and of
philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
.
Mauthner was born on 22 November 1849 into an assimilated, well-to-do
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family from Horzitz in Bohemia (now
Hořice in the Czech Republic). He was the fourth of the six children of Emmanuel and Amalie Mauthner.
He became editor of the ''
Berliner Tageblatt'' in 1895, but is remembered mainly for his ''Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache'' (''Contributions to a Critique of Language''), published in three parts in 1901 and 1902.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...
took several of his ideas from Mauthner, and acknowledges him in his ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define the ...
'' (1922).
[Wittgenstein L., ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'', "4.0031 All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense)."]
Mauthner died in
Meersburg am Bodensee on 29 June 1923.
Works
;Philosophy
''Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache'' three volumes, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1901–1903.
* ''Aristoteles'', 1904
* ''Spinoza'', 1906
* ''Die Sprache'', 1907
* ''Wörterbuch der Philosophie'', 1910–11, 1923–24
* ''Schopenhauer'', 1911
* ''Der letzte Tod des Gautama Buddha'', 1913
* ''Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande'' (4 books), 1920–23
* ''Muttersprache und Vaterland'', 1920
;Fiction
* ''Anna'', 1874
* ''Lyrik''
* ''Die große Revolution'', 1872
* ''Nach berühmten Mustern'', satirical, 1878, 1889
* ''Einsame Fahrten'', 1879
* ''Vom armen Franischko'', story, 1879
* ''Die Sonntage der Baronin'', 1881
* ''Der neue Ahasver'', 1882
* ''Dilettantenspiegel'', satirical, 1883
* ''Gräfin Salamanca'', 1884
* ''Xanthippe'', 1884
* ''Berlin W.'' (trilogy of novels): ''Quartett'', 1886; ''Die Fanfare'', 1888; ''Der Villenhof'', 1890
*
Der letzte Deutsche von Blatna', novel, 1887
* ''Der Pegasus'', 1889
* ''Zehn Geschichten'', 1891
* ''Glück im Spiel'', 1891
* ''Hypatia'', 1892
* ''Lügenohr'', 1892 (under the title: ''Aus dem Märchenbuch der Wahrheit'', 1899)
* ''Kraft'', novel 1894
* ''Die Geisterseher'', novel 1894
* ''Die bunte Reihe'', 1896
* ''Der steinerne Riese'', novella, 1896
* ''Die böhmische Handschrift'', novella 1897
* ''Der wilde Jockey'', 1897
* ''Der letzte Tod des Gautama Buddha'', novel 1913
* ''Der goldene Fiedelbogen'', 1917
;Essays and theoretical works
* ''Kleiner Krieg'', 1879
* ''Credo'', 1886
* ''Tote Symbole'', 1892
* ''Zum Streit um die Bühne'', 1893
* ''Totengespräche'', 1906
* ''Gespräche im Himmel und andere Ketzereien'', 1914
;Translations
* ''Henriette Marechal'', by
Edmond de Goncourt, 1895
;Editorial
* ''Wochenschrift für Kunst und Literatur'', 1889-1890
* ''Magazin für die Literatur des In- und Auslandes'', 1991
* ''Bibliothek der Philosophen'', from 1911
;Collected works
* ''Ausgewählte Schriften'', 6 books, 1919
;Miscellaneous
* ''Erinnerungen'', autobiography 1918
* ''Selbstbiographie 1922'', in: ''Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen'', Bd. 3.
References
Further reading
*Arens, Katherine. ''Empire in decline: Fritz Mauthner's critique of Wilhelminian Germany.'' New York: P. Lang, 2001.
*Ben-Zvi, Linda. Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner and the Limits of Language. ''PMLA''. Vol. 95(2): 183-200. 1980.
*Bredeck, Elizabeth. ''Metaphors of Knowledge: Language and Thought in Mauthner's Critique''. Wayne State University Press, 1992.
*Dapía, Silvia. ''Die Rezeption der Sprachkritik Fritz Mauthners im Werk von Jorge Luis Borges.'' Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 1993
*Knowlson, James & Pilling, John. ''Frescoes of the skull''. London: John Calder, 1979.
*Kühn, Joachim. ''Gescheiterte Sprachkritik: Fritz Mauthners Leben und Werk.'' Walter de Gruyter, 1979.
*Ludwig, Otto & Heydrich, Moritz. ''Shakespeare-Studien''. Halle: H. Gesenius, 1901.
*Skerl, Jennie. Fritz Mauthner's "Critique of Language" in Samuel Beckett's "Watt". ''Contemporary Literature.'' Vol. 15(4): 474-487. University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.
*Sluga, Hans. Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism. In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.) ''Pyrrhonian Skepticism.'' Oxford University Press, 2006
*Vierhufe, Almut. ''Parody and Language Critique. Studies on Fritz Mauthner's Nach berühmten Mustern.'' Niemeyer, 1999.
*Weiler, Gershon. ''Mauthner's Critique of Language''. Cambridge University Press, 1970.
External links
Fritz Mauthner Collectionat the Leo Baeck Institute
Guide to the Fritz Mauthner Correspondence Collection 1765-1868Book review of Fritz Mauthner's Die Sprache*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mauthner, Fritz
1849 births
1923 deaths
People from Hořice
People from the Kingdom of Bohemia
Austro-Hungarian Jews
German people of Czech-Jewish descent
Czech writers in German
Austrian-Hungarian writers
Austrian male writers
19th-century Czech philosophers