Avenarius, Richard

AVENARIUS, RICHARD. - Philosopher and physicist, b. in Paris in 1845, d. in Zurich in 1896. He taught philosophy at the University of Zurich. His principal work is the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (2 vols., 1888-1890), in which he sets out his philosophical system, which has taken the name of "empirio-criticism."

According to A., the correct interpretation of the datum of experience is influenced, and altered, both by a priori reasoning and by practical life; it is therefore necessary, by means of a systematic critique, to purify this datum in order to ground our knowledge on pure experience, both in the physical and in the psychic field. His system thus consists in an extreme positivism. In applying it to psychic phenomena, moreover, A. maintains a theory that may be called biological-materialistic, inasmuch as he considers them dependent on entirely material factors, namely on the intensity of the excitation produced with regard to the external world, and on nutrition with regard to the individual, that is, to his nervous system: the tone of psychic life would depend on the relation between these two factors. A.'s materialism and positivism had a notable influence only on certain materialist tendencies of today.