AVENARIUS, RICHARD. — Philosopher and physicist, born in Paris in 1845, died in Zurich in 1896. He taught philosophy at the University of Zurich. His principal work is Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (2 vols., 1888–1890), in which he expounds his philosophical system, which came to be known as “empirio-criticism.”
According to A., both a priori reasoning and practical life influence and alter the correct interpretation of the datum of experience; it is therefore necessary, through systematic criticism, to purify this datum in order to base our knowledge on pure experience, both in the physical and the psychic sphere. His system thus consists in an extreme positivism. In applying it to psychic phenomena, A. advocates a theory that may be called biological-materialistic, insofar as he regards them as dependent on wholly material factors—namely, on the intensity of the excitation produced insofar as the external world is concerned, and on nutrition with regard to the individual, that is, to his nervous system: the tone of psychic life would depend on the relationship between these two factors. A.’s materialism and positivism exerted considerable influence only on certain contemporary materialist tendencies.