Cercle de Vienne exhibition

The Vienna Circle was a group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who founded one of the most influential schools of thought in twentieth-century Vienna between the wars. Centred around the philosopher Moritz Schlick, this constellation of intellectuals had a considerable influence on the development and promotion of logical empiricism and the contemporary engineering sciences.

The exhibition illustrates the history and crucial contributions of this circle of scholarly sociability. It traces the destinies of its protagonists, who fell victim to the ravages of the rise of populism and the anti-Semitic persecution that struck "Red Vienna" in the 1930s.

The result of a partnership between Université Paris Cité and Universität Wien, both members of the Circle U. European alliance, the exhibition "The Vienna Circle. Exact thinking in demented times" was designed by Karl Sigmund and Friedrich Stadler, researchers at the University of Vienna (Universität Wien, Austria). It is travelling across Europe thanks to the network of member institutions of the Circle U alliance. A version of the exhibition, in German and English, has already been presented in Vienna in 2015, in Belgrade in 2022 and in Berlin in early 2023. Université Paris Cité then exhibited a version translated into French and English at the Bibliothèque des Grands Moulins in September 2023. It is this exhibition that the Bibliothèque de philosophie is hosting until the end of February 2025.