Georg Henrik von Wright (ˈjeːɔrj ˈhɛnːrɪk fɔnˈvrɪkːt, 14 June 1916, Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

 – 16 June 2003) was a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 philosopher, who succeeded Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

 as professor at the University of Cambridge

Faculty of philosophy cambridge

The University of Cambridge was the birthplace of the 'analytical' school of philosophy in the early 20th century.Today it is still a centre for philosophy. The most recent Research Assessment Exercise gave Cambridge the highest possible score...

. He published in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, and in Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

. Belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, von Wright also had Finnish and 17th-century Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 ancestors.

Von Wright's writings come under two broad categories. The first is analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...

 and philosophical logic

Philosophical logic

Philosophical logic is a term introduced by Bertrand Russell to represent his idea that the workings of natural language and thought can only be adequately represented by an artificial language; essentially it was his formalization program for the natural language...

 in the Anglo-American vein. His 1951 books, An Essay in Modal Logic

Modal logic

Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...

and Deontic Logic, were landmarks in the postwar rise of formal modal logic and its deontic

Deontic logic

Deontic logic is the field of logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. Alternatively, a deontic logic is a formal system that attempts to capture the essential logical features of these concepts...

 version. He was an authority on Wittgenstein, editing his later works. He was the leading figure in the Finnish philosophy of his time, specializing in philosophical logic

Philosophical logic

Philosophical logic is a term introduced by Bertrand Russell to represent his idea that the workings of natural language and thought can only be adequately represented by an artificial language; essentially it was his formalization program for the natural language...

, philosophical analysis, philosophy of action, philosophy of language

Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...

, philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

, and the close study of Charles Sanders Peirce.

The other vein in von Wright's writings is moralist and pessimist. During the last twenty years of his life, under the influence of Oswald Spengler

Oswald Spengler

Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...

, Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

 and the Frankfurt school

Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

's reflections about modern Rationality

Rationality

In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...

, he wrote prolifically. His best known article from this period is entitled The Myth of Progress, and it questions whether our apparent material and technological progress can really be considered "progress".

In the last year of his life, among his other honorary degrees, he held an honorary degree

Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

 at the University of Bergen

University of Bergen

The University of Bergen is located in Bergen, Norway. Although founded as late as 1946, academic activity had taken place at Bergen Museum as far back as 1825. The university today serves more than 14,500 students...

.

Works

• The Logical Problem of Induction, PhD thesis, 31 May 1941
• Den logiska empirismen (Logical Empirism), in Swedish, 1945
• Über Wahrscheinlichkeit (On Chance), in German, 1945
• An Essay in Modal Logic, 1951
• A Treatise on Induction and Probability, 1951
• Deontic Logic, 1951
• Tanke och förkunnelse (Thought and Preaching), in Swedish, 1955
• Logical Studies, 1957
• Logik, filosofi och språk (Logic, philosophy and language), in Swedish, 1957
• The Varieties of Goodness, 1963. (1958-60 Gifford Lectures
  Gifford Lectures
  The Gifford Lectures were established by the will of Adam Lord Gifford . They were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term — in other words, the knowledge of God." The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported...
  
   in the University of St. Andrews, online) He considered this his best and most personal work.
• Norm and Action, 1963 (1958-60 Gifford Lectures, St. Andrews, online)
• The Logic of Preference, 1963
• Essay om naturen, människan och den vetenskaplig-tekniska revolutionen (Essay on Nature, Man and the Scientific-Technological Revolution), in Swedish, 1963
• An Essay in Deontic Logic, 1968
• Time, Change and Contradiction, 1969
• Tieteen filosofian kaksi perinnettä (The Two Traditions of the Philosophy of Science), in Finnish, 1970
• Explanation and Understanding, 1971
• Causality and Determinism, 1974
• Handlung, Norm und Intention (Action, Norm and Intention), in German, 1977
• Humanismen som livshållning (Humanism as an approach to Life), in Swedish, 1978
• Freedom and Determination, 1980
• Wittgenstein, 1982
• Philosophical Papers I-III, 1983–1984
• Filosofisia tutkielmia (Philosophical Dissertations), in Finnish, 1985
• Vetenskapen och förnuftet (Science and Reason), in Swedish, 1986
• Minervan Pöllö (The Owl of Minerva), in Finnish, 1991
• Myten om framsteget (The Myth of Progress), in Swedish, 1993
• The Tree of Knowledge, 1993
• Att förstå sin samtid (To Understand one's own Time), in Swedish, 1994
• Six Essays in Philosophical Logic, 1996
• Viimeisistä ajoista. Ajatusleikki (On the End Times. A Thought Experiment.), in Finnish, 1997
• Logiikka ja humanismi (Logic and Humanism), in Finnish, 1998
• In the Shadow of Descartes, 1998
• Mitt liv som jag minns det (My Life as I Remember it), in Swedish, 2001

Von Wright edited posthumous publications by Wittgenstein, which were published by Blackwell (unless otherwise stated):

• 1961. Notebooks 1914-1916.
• 1967. Zettel (Translated into English as Culture and Value).
• 1969. On Certainty.
• 1971. ProtoTractatus—An Early Version of Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus. Cornell University Press.
• 1973. Letters to C.K. Ogden with Comments on the English Translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
• 1974. Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore.
• 1978 (1956). Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
• 1980. Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Vols 1,2.
• 1980. Culture and Value (English translation of Zettel).
• 1982. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1. Vol. 2, 1992.