JODL, FRIEDRICH. - Positivist philosopher, b. 23 Aug. 1849 in Monaco, d. 26 Jan. 1914 in Vienna. He taught in Praga and Vienna.
He was particularly concerned with the moral problem, and to him is owed a Geschichte der Ethik (2 vols., Stoccarda 1888-89, 3rd ed. ibid. 1920), as well as a Lehrbuch der Psychologie (ibid. 1897, 4th ed. ibid. 1916) and a mediocre Kritik d. Idealismus (Lipsia 1920, posthumous). Close to Comte, he does not accept the cult of humanity and replaces it with “moral faith”: “The ideal within us and faith in its progressive realization through us: this is the formula of the new religion of humanity” (Gesch. der Eth., p. 494). His metaphysics is a superficial materialistic monism: thought is a function of organic substance, and matter and spirit coincide in a rather imaginary “psychic atom.”