The contribution made by the Vienna Circle to ethics and the philosophy of action is increasingly being recognized. Here two previously unpublished pieces by Moritz Schlick and his pupil Josef Schachter set the scene, showing how ethics is not dependent on metaphysics but does require a sensitivity to strata of language other than that of science. Schachter (author of Prolegomena to a Critical Grammar, also in the VCC, and now doyen of educational philosophers in Israel) further develops this ethical theme in a too little known study of pessimistic dicta that he published in 1938. He succeeds...