The pleasure of thinking: A glimpse into Karl Bühler’s life

Karl Buhler can be seen as one of the thinkers in psychology whose work was of profound programmatic value for other disciplines–linguistics and philosophy of language in his case. Furthermore, his direct role in the introspectionist research on thinking has been glossed over–not surprisingly, as the methodological credo of introspectionism was socially discredited in psychology. Buhler was a medical doctor interested in philosophy, and through that entered psychology. The work in medicine was not of great intellectual pleasure for Buhler; he gravitated toward psychology. The Wurzburg School continued in a smaller version in Bonn, where Oswald Kulpe and Buhler moved in 1909. In 1913 Oswald Kulpe received the call to a professorship in Munich, and Buhler went with him. The salon of the Buhlers was an intellectual hub in Vienna, with foreign visitors coming for serious intellectual encounters. Buhler's organon model is the central concept of all of his language philosophy.