Logica della struttura e metafisica in Richard Avenarius

The empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius is not only the starter of a philoso-phical current that ends in neopositivism, but offers an authentic theory of the constitution of the experience that moves according to a logic of the structure. This structural logic does not consider the specific contents of the empirical material systems (environment, organic systems, perceptual organizations, conceptual determinations, etc.), but points out, in a particular “genetic” sense, the relational aspects and their transformations as a result of the interactions between the systems. Any particular concept of “world”, even the different metaphysical conceptions, revealed itself as the product of this structural dynamics that finds its foundation in the “natural experience”, i.e. in the direct encounter with the many forms of ex-pression in which the “experience-data” occur. Metaphysics is thus not an illusion of philosophical thought, but a particular character of the experience, just as legitimate as the character that is expressed in scientific discourse. It becomes an illusion when it claims to act as an element, that is, as the effective and immediate component of an empirical “found” or “met” (Vorgefundenes, Angetroffenes) that corresponds to a physical-biological perceptual system.