In recent years the philosophy of the Vienna Circle has garnered more and more attention in France, and in this context interest has come to focus on the historical reception of the Vienna Circle during the 1920s and 1930s. Although nearly all important French representatives attended the Circle’s two Parisian congresses (in 1935 and 1937 respectively), contemporary response to the Circle’s ideas among French thinkers appears to have been by and large negative. The philosophical traditions, it seems, were too incompatible, preventing reception of the Circle’s contributions in French intellectual circles. Personalities also played a role, though here it’s worth mentioning that the literature to date has focused almost exclusively on Louis Rougier; to this day, Rougier is regarded as the first and most important “ambassador” of the Vienna Circle in France. As it happened, Rougier was not only a philosopher, but was also politician. And, in contrast to many members of the Vienna Circle, Rougier’s political allegiances belong to the right, later to the radical right.
In my presentation I intend to challenge the current state of scholarship on the Vienna Circle in France in several respects. These new aspects have emerged from my study of an entirely new strand of reception. My line of analysis does not emerge from academic philosophy, but rather surprisingly from the classic, organized positivism of Auguste Comte. As it happens, the first thinker to import the Vienna Circle to France was not Rougier, but rather a physicist and organized positivist named Marcel Boll. Promoting the Vienna Circle in a variety of publications, Boll regarded the new scientific philosophy as the best, most modern continuation of Comte’s ideas.
