WAHLE, RICHARD

WAHLE, RICHARD (1857–1935), Austrian philosopher and psychologist. He was professor at Czernowitz and then at Vienna. He was a critic of traditional metaphysics, insisting that all that is knowable are "occurrences," but not their causes. Philosophically he was a skeptical agnostic about the possibility of knowing reality. In psychology he rejected any theory concerning psychic entities or powers. He also wrote on the philosophy of culture and history and on Spinoza. His major writings include Gehirn und Bewusstsein (1884); Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende (1894, 18962); Ueber den Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens (1906); and Die Tragikomoedie der Weisheit (1915, 19252). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Flinker, Die Zerstoerung des Ich; eine kritische Darlegung der Lehre Richard Wahles (1927); S. Hochfeld, Die Philosophie Richard Wahles und Johannes Rehmkes Grundwissenschaft (1926); F. Austeda, in: Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 (1967), 275–6, incl. bibl. (Richard H. Popkin)