It is generally well-known that Prague and Czechoslovakia were during 1920s and 30s the isles of freedom and democracy in the Central Europe. Prague became a conglomerate of numerous traditions, cultural influences and scientific aspirations.1)  To many intellectuals at that time it provided a refuge, a place of stopover where they could live and work. Traditions of Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein or Phillipe Frank were then still very much alive there and many Czech intellectuals commonly spoke Czech as well as German. Prague also provided home to many leading intellectuals of various branches of learning such as theoretical linguistics or electrochemistry. In a certain sense ‘war das intelektuelle Milieu des Prags 20. und 30. Jahre ein Vorbild einer möglichen Integration am Ende dieses Jahrhunderts’, which is Tondl’s assessment in his collection Wien–Berlin–Prag  (Tondl: 589). Czech, German, Jewish and Russian influences came all to be mingled here. On one side, there would be Franz Kafka and on the other there may be, for example, Pitrim A. Sorokin, the sociologist who later became known for his  Crisis of Our Age (published in 1950).

In order to be able to define the place and importance of  both the Prague Linguistic Circle and the Wiener Kreis on the intellectual map of the time, we have to take a look back at the cultural history. In line with the then prevailing empirical approach, linguistics in the 19th century was concerned with the sound, not the content or meaning, of the words. It was the school of ‘young grammarians’ (die Junggrammatiker) that started to address more systematically the origins and development of a language, looking at its historical aspects. Their aim was to reconstruct a presupposed ‘proto–language’. The main representative of the school of Junggrammatiker in Bohemia was Jan Gebauer (1838-–1907), the author of The Historical Grammar of  the Czech Language  and The Dictionary of  the Old Czech. Besides Gebauer there was Josef Zubaty (1855–1931), professor of Indian studies and comparative Indo–European linguistics, who was also involved in this field.2)

Apart from this diachronic approach to the study of a language or historical linguistics there was also a synchronic approach (descriptive linguistics), entailing the study of a linguistic system in a particular state, without reference to time. The main representative of the latter approach was the world-renown Wilhelm von Humboldt. The first person who within the Czech environment attempted to synthesize the two approaches was Vilem Mathesius (1882–1945).3) He was inspired by the work of his friend, the natural scientist Jaroslav Peklo. Mathesius was looking for an equivalent of the classification system employed by the natural history and, as he said, he had found it in general or theoretical linguistics. Besides the term ‘diachronic/synchronic’ Mathesius established another  distinguishing term ‘static/dynamic’. Eventually, his most important work became a paper on the ‘potentiality of linguistic phenomena’, which was published in 1911 in the Bulletin of the Royal Czech Society. So, four years before Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Vilem Mathesius was to present these, the propositions that were to affect the course of the development of linguistics.

In 1920  Mathesius met Roman Jakobson and came into contact with another tradition. Soon, the other Russian linguists came to Prague: P.N. Bogatyrev, S.I. Kartsevsky, and N.S. Trubetskoy. Contacts were also established with the German linguists H. Becker and F. Slotty. Kartsevsky, who was a professor of Russian at Geneva the University, introduced and brought the knowledge of the work of de Saussure to Prague. These linguists were joined by B. Trnka, B. Havranek and  Jan Mukarovsky (1891–1975). They wanted to establish a discussion club or a group and this came about following the lecture by Henrik Becker entitled Der europaische Sprachgeist on 26 October 1926, when the Prague Linguistic Circle was born. This happened in Mathesius’s study near the present Philosophical Faculty, in a meeting attended by Mathesius, Becker, Jakobson, Trnka, Havranek and Jan Rypka (1886–1968), later a prominent orientalist. In later years there were also lectures given by Rudolph Carnap (Über die logische Syntax) on 20 May 1935 and by Edmund Husserl  who spoke on Phänomenologie und Sprachwissenschaft on 18 November of the same year. The Prague Linguistic Circle also made contributions to developing Husserl’s ideas that were inspiration behind the works of Jan Patocka and German philosopher L. Langrebe. Altogether, the Prague Linguistic Circle comprised eight Czech, five Russians, two Frenchmen, a German (H. Becker) and there was also, loosely connected with the Circle, an Englishman Simeon Potter, linguist and teacher of English at the University of Brno.4)

Wiener Kreis, the Viennese Circle was established as we know in the 1920s as a result of seminars given by Moritz Schlick, professor of ‘inductive sciences’ at the Vienna University. It is worth mentioning that this ‘inductive sciences’ faculty was founded in the 1890s specifically for the needs of Ernst Mach.5) The others who took part in the Circle’s meetings were mathematicians Hans Hahn, Kurt Gödel, sociologist Otto Neurath, historian V. Kraft, physicist P. Frank, who commuted from Prague where he was a professor at the German University. The other members were Rudolph Carnap, F. Weismann and E. Zilsel who all had mathematical schooling. Close to the Wiener Kreis was also a group of Berlin academicians in the Gesellschaft für empirische Philosophie, later renamed Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. Leading members of this group were, for example, Hans Reichenbach and  C.G. Hempel. The Berlin society, together with the Vienna’s Ernst Mach Gemeinschaft. published in the 1930s a magazine Erkenntnis, which became an official organ of logical positivists.

Close to the Austrian and German neo-positivists were also the followers of the Lvov–Warsaw School, although developing separate traditions quite independently of the Wiener Kreis. The leading figures of the School were philosophers J. Lukasiewicz, T. Kotarbinski and A. Tarski. Apart from these large neo-positivist groups there were also a number of smaller ones; for example, in Denmark. With the occupation of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938-39, this scientific and cultural scene disintegrated. Carnap, Reichenbach, Frank, Popper, to name only a few, emigrated to America or England. The magazine Erkenntnis was relocated, first to Holland and then to America.

Carnap’s premise, like that of Wittgenstein’s before him (cf. Tractatus logico-philosophicus  of 1921) was based on regarding philosophy as means for a logical analysis or study of a language (see Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Sprache, published in Berlin in 1928). What Carnap publicly subscribed to was an extreme nominalist approach tied to solipsism, where meanings are being either constituted or reduced. This constitutional system, that is, a logical construction of reality, is based on the experiences of the psyche itself.6) Members of the Wiener Kreis described their starting point as ‘consequential empiricism’; the Kreis would have nothing to do with Hans Vaihinger’s ‘Philosophie des Als Ob’.

Subsequent developments led to the problems concerning syntax of the language of science. The fundamental works of this, what may be termed, ‘syntactic period’ was Logische Syntax der Sprache  by Carnap, published in 1934. With the principle of tolerance (i.e. free construction of symbols and the system of rules) and rules of inference (deduction) it is then possible to generate, say, a system of sentences about objects, with the philosophy’s concern then being these sentences rather than the objects referred to. Further development then took into account semantics. This was the result of influence of the Polish logicians, especially A. Tarski, and also the American pragmatists, particularly Charles Morris.
It was the congress of  Slavic scholars in October 1929 that had a significant impact on the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle. The Circle actually dedicated to this congress its publication containing the main theses prepared by Jakobson, Havranek, Mathesius and Mukarovsky and entitled Travaux de Cercle Linguistique de Prague. The general approach of the Prague Linguistic Circle is generally described as a combination of structuralism (i.e. the context, not just the basic units or components, is what is important) and functionalism (every unit or component of a language – phoneme, morpheme, word, sentence, exists only because each fulfils a certain function). Taken further, synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of language are interconnected, influencing one another, but without the synchronic approach being static (i.e. it is not the ‘static’ as in Mathesius’ corroborative term ‘static/dynamic’). A language is a system of systems, i.e. subsystems. These subsystems may each have their specific problems, but they cannot be separated, isolated from one another. As a ‘system of subsystems’ a language is never in a state of equilibrium. There are many structural deviations, but the language functions precisely because of these deviations. And any enforced standardization or normalization is detrimental to the development of the language.

N.B. The Circle’s theses, or proceedings, were originally published in French. They were translated into English later.7)

At first it seems that the relations between Prague Circle and Wiener Kreis can be described only in terms of personal  interrelations and contacts as touched upon above. But, looking at the two Circles, we may be able to talk about their similar or parallel approach to the study of language. Each was stressing the syntax. A structure can be thought out and, subsequently, analyzed without considering either its historical or descriptive aspects, that is, regardless of the character of the language units and components that make up such a structure. With this approach it is actually irrelevant whether we are looking at a linguistic or a natural science structure. It was this analogy that in the 1920s was an impetus that, as mentioned above, made Mathesius to turn to the general linguistics.

Likewise, it might seem that whenever we are talking about Prague Circle and Wiener Kreis we are talking about the 1930s, that fateful decade between the wars. Yet this neo positivist approach was to play an important part in the Czech environment during the 1950s, when it became a guiding philosophy of the political opposition persecuted, as were its protagonists, by every means available to the regime. The work of the Wiener Kreis was appreciated particularly by mathematicians and philosophers (logicians). The most active among them were the eventual organizer of dissident transdisciplinary seminars, mathematician Miroslav Katetov, founder of the Czech school of logic and also a semiotic group Otakar Zich, and docent of philosophy at the Charles University Ladislav Tondl. (By the way, these seminars, transdisciplinary but not dissident, are still going on.) With Lenin’s Materialism and Critique of Empirism  of 1909 then being the Marxist bible, neo-positivist approach, together with empirism and Wiener Kreis, was considered an ideological enemy of Marxism. The official Marxist philosophy was oriented towards the realist ideals, that is, those of the Platonist ideals suitably exhorting adoration of the state, party and proletariat. The nominalism of the Wiener Kreis was simply ideologically unacceptable. Hence, it came to pass that Ladislav Tondl was forced to leave university following a stage-managed process that was to deal with ideological enemy (in the presence of Soviet advisers, no less). This process took place at the university on 13 February 1958. Given the current development in the Czech Republic, it is paradoxical, if not significant, that Ladislav Tondl does not teach at the Philosophical Faculty to this day, while his past ideological adversaries are still there. The 1960s brought about a relaxation of ideological control which resulted in publication of the works of, particularly, Rudolph Carnap8) and those of A. Tarski and C.G. Hempel who was in Prague at that time. In June 1968 Carnap sent Tondl a letter in which he welcome Prague Spring.9)

Briefly, the developments concerning Prague Linguistic Circle were as follows. The term Prague school (or L’École de Prague) was first used in 1932 at the international conference in Amsterdam. The Circle concerned itself not only with linguistics but also with aesthetics, literary theory, ethnography, and musicology. The members of the Circle included musicologists such as Gustav Becking, Vladimir Helfert and Albert Wellek. In 1935 the Circle started publishing a magazine Le mot et l’art du mot  (Word and Art of the Word), which still exists today (Volume 59 in 1998). Besides various collections of works, the last publication that came already during war in 1942 was Čtení a psaní o poezii  (Reading and Writing about Poetry).The occupation of Czechoslovakia practically ended the existence of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Jakobson emigrated, Trubetskoy died in 1942 and Mathesius in 1945. In 1946 the remaining members, including Jakobson, attended the 6th International Linguistic Congress. After November 1989 the Prague Linguistic Circle was revived and its first chairman became Oldřich Leška. The term ‘Prague school’ remained very much alive. It can be found as a reference in The Encyclopaedia of Semiotic  by Ivo Osolsobě, published in the 1980s or, as ‘Prague Functionalism’ in a study by R.G. Winner, included in Vol 2 of the Handbook of Semiotics  published by Walter de Gruyter Publishing in 1997.

As to what had been initiated by the logical empirism, it may be said (with some degree of inexactitude) that the analytical philosophy now has its continuators in Tondl’s younger colleagues P. Kolář, P. Koťátko and also J. Peregrin.10)  Semiotics found a place in the semiotics groups under the Cybernetic Society which was founded in the 1970s by Otakar Zich, dissolved in 1977 in connection with the dissident Charter 77  and revived in 1990. It was the work of Ladislav Tondl in this group, including numerous publications, especially his Problems of Semantics,11)  that maintained the continuity. And there was also contact with the exiles like T.G. Winner, J. Veltruský, L. Matějka, B. Doležel, M. Grygar, I. Bystřina and K. Chvatík, which was to confirm the latent continuity of the development.12) New opportunities for publishing translations and editions of numerous work or anthologies, all of utmost importance, together with specialized monographs, conferences and congresses in the last ten years, confirm that the traditions of cooperation, especially those in Central Europe, had not died out. Remaining hidden for the forty years of adversity they are still alive and under the new conditions they may obviously be able to make in their field an important contribution to the unification of Europe.

 
References:

1)  L. Tondl, ‘Carnap und Prag’, in Wien-Berlin-Prag. Der Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie. (R. Carnap, H. Reichenbach, E. Zilsel: Verlag Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1993), 588–592.

2) See J. Fiala, ‘Pražský meziválečný strukturalismus  (Structuralism in Prague between the Wars), in Geometrie živého: Matematické modely morfogeneze  (The Geometry of Living: Mathematical Models of Form Generating), ZP ČSVTS at Fgu CSAV, (Prague, 1989), 79-–94.

3) See V. Mathesius, Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost  (Language, Culture and Literature). (Prague: Odeon. 1982); esp. see chapter entitled ‘Deset let Pražského lingvistického kroužku; (Ten Years of Prague Linguistic Circle), 439–448, Also, see The Prague School 1929-1946. ed. P. Steiner (University of Texas).

4) See S. Potter S. Our Language . (England-USA-Australia, 1950, Penguin Books).

5) See L. Tondl L. et al., Současná západní filosofie. (Contemporary Western Philosophy). (Prague. Orbis, 1958); see esp. the chapter entitled Novopositivismus  (Neo-positivism), 17–54.

6) R. Carnap, ‘Die Methode der logischen Analyse’, in Actes du 8e Congres International de Philosophie a Prague 1934 , (Prague, 1936, Orbis), 142-144. The others at the Congress were: K. Ajdukiewicz, C.G. Hempel, J. Lukasiewicz, C.W. Morris, O. Neurath, H. Reichenbach, M. Schlick, A. Tarski and Czech philosophers J.B. Kozák, J. Král; see also J. Mukařovsky, L’art comme fait sémiologique, 1065–1072.

7)  J. Vachek (ed.). Prague School Reader in Linguistics, (Bloomington, 1964); see also P.A. Luesdorff (ed.), The Prague School of Structural and Functional Linguistics.  (Amsterdam, J. Benjamin, 1994).

8) R. Carnap, Problémy jazyka vědy  (Problems of the Language of Science), eds. L. Tondl, K. Berka (Prague, Svoboda, 1968).

9) See ‘Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Magazine)’, 1990 (38), 3, 360–362.

10) P. Kolář, V. Svoboda, Logika a etika  (Logic and Ethics), (Prague, Filosofia, 1997); P. Koťátko, Význam a komunikace  (Meaning and Communications) (Prague, Filosofia, 1998); J. Peregrin, Úvod do analytické filosofie  (Introduction to Analytical Philosophy), (Prague, Hermann & synové, 1992), see also other works on semantics by this author, e.g. Úvod do teoretické sémantiky  (Introduction to Theoretical Semantics), (Brno, Masaryk University, 1994).

11) L. Tondl, Problémy sémantiky  (The Problems of Semantics), (Prague, Academia, 1966, the expanded edition – Boston, 1981); this expanded edition will be published by the Charles University Press)

12) See J. Doubravová, ‘Zur Lage der Semiotik in der damaligen Tschechoslowakei’, Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 1993, 16, 3-4, 353-61.