Richard Wahle, the Austrian philosopher and psychologist, was born in Vienna. He was appointed Privatdozent in philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1885. A decade later he was called to a professorship in philosophy at the University of Czernowitz, where he taught until 1917. From 1919 to 1933 he again lectured at the University of Vienna. Possessed of originality and an unusually lively style, he published a number of books in the fields of psychology, general philosophy, and ethics.

Wahle is known especially for his relentlessly sharp critique of traditional philosophy, particularly of metaphysics, which he regarded as "one of the most dangerous breeding-places of empty phrases." An absolute, true knowledge, of the sort to which metaphysics aspires, cannot exist. For all knowledge consists in nothing more than that "an image (or idea) is given in dependence on the self"; a reality existing in itself can never...