Von Wright's writings come under two broad categories. The first is
analytic philosophy and
philosophical logic in the Anglo-American vein. His 1951 texts An Essay in Modal Logic and "Deontic Logic" were landmarks in the postwar rise of formal modal logic and its
deontic 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 analysis,
philosophy of action,
philosophy of language,
epistemology, 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,
Jürgen Habermas and the
Frankfurt School's reflections about modern
rationality, he wrote prolifically. His best known article from this period is entitled "The Myth of Progress" (1993), and it questions whether our apparent material and technological progress can really be considered "
progress" (see
Myth of Progress).
Den logiska empirismen (Logical Empirism), in Swedish, 1945
Über Wahrscheinlichkeit (On Chance), in German, 1945
An Essay in Modal Logic, (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics: Volume V),
L.E.J. Brouwer,
E.W. Beth, and
A. Heyting (eds.), Amsterdam: North-Holland,1951
Essay om naturen, människan och den vetenskaplig-tekniska revolutionen (Essay on Nature, Man and the Scientific-Technological Revolution), in Swedish, 1963
Time, Change and Contradiction, (The Twenty-Second
Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture Delivered at Cambridge University 1 November 1968) Cambridge University Press. 1969
Tieteen filosofian kaksi perinnettä (The Two Traditions of the Philosophy of Science), in Finnish, 1970
^His obituarist in The Times claims that von Wright "used to tell British friends that the anglophone pronunciation was correct, since the name derived from a Scotsman" i.e. as rhyming with "bright" not “tricked.”[1] The
Institute for the Languages of Finland does however promote the rendering of the
Von Wright surname as "fånvrikt".[2]
^An explanation of the
von Wright name is given in
"Georg Henrik von Wright: Intellectual Autobiography" (in: Schilpp, 1989): "Around the year 1650, the earliest known members of my family had to leave Scotland because, it is said, they had sided with King Charles against Cromwell. They settled in Narva in Estonia, which was then a province under Swedish rule.
Georg(e) Wright there begat
Henrik Wright, who fought in the armies of
Charles XII and after a long and eventful life died in his home in Finland, another part of the old Swedish realm. Henrik Wright's son Georg Henrik was, together with his three other sons, raised to noble rank after the royal coup d'etat of 1772. This was how the odd combination of 'von' and 'Wright' originated."
^"Georg Wrightin jälkeläisiä"(PDF) (in Finnish). Suomen Sukututkimusseura. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2009.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link)
^Finlands ridderskaps och adels kalender 1992, p. 670, 672. Esbo 1991.
ISBN951-9417-26-5
^"Nytt om navn". Aftenposten (in Norwegian). 17 January 2002. p. 14.
^Wright, Georg Henrik von. The logical problem of induction.Acta philosophica fennica, vol. 3. Societas Philosophica, Helsinki (Helsingfors) 1941. [second revised edition, 1957]
Meggle, Georg; Vilkko, Risto, eds. (2016). Georg Henrik von Wright's Book of Friends. Acta philosophica Fennica, 92. Helsinki: Societas philosophica Fennica.
ISBN978-951-9264-83-7.
ISSN0355-1792.