Eino Kaila

Eino Sakari Kaila lived from August 8, 1890 to July 31, 1958 and was a Finnish philosopher, critic and teacher whose central work lay in logical empiricism and analytic philosophy. He founded the psychological laboratory at the University of Helsinki, helped establish its Faculty of Political Science, and introduced gestalt psychology to Finland, work that has led him to be regarded as a founder of Finnish psychology. Through the 1930s he kept close ties with the Vienna Circle, the movement that advanced logical positivism, while pursuing a more holistic, naturalist approach of his own; his 1934 book Persoonallisuus, Personality, examined psychological questions through a philosophical lens that emphasized their biological foundations. His most influential student was Georg Henrik von Wright, who went on to succeed Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge.