---
title: "Paul Feyerabend"
chunk: 5/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:42.054365+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Feyerabend had become more and more aware of the limitation of theories – no matter how well conceived – compared with the detailed, idiosyncratic issues encountered in the course of scientific practice. The "poverty of abstract philosophical reasoning" became one of the "feelings" that motivated him to pull together the collage of observations and ideas that he had conceived for the project with Imre Lakatos, whose first edition was published in 1975 as Against Method. Feyerabend added to it some outrageous passages and terms, including about an 'anarchistic theory of knowledge', for the sake of provocation and in memory of Imre. He mostly wanted to encourage attention to scientific practice and common sense rather than to the empty 'clarifications' of logicians, but his views were not appreciated by the intellectuals who were then directing traffic in the philosophical community, who tended to isolate him.  Against Method also suggested that "approaches not tied to scientific institutions" may have value, and that scientists should work under the control of the larger public-- views not appreciated by all scientists either. Some gave him the dubious fame of 'worst enemy of science'. Moreover, Feyerabend was aware that "scientific jargon" – read literally, world for word, could reveal not only "nonsense", as found out by John Austin, "but also inhumanity.  With the Dadaists Feyerabend realized that "the language of philosophers, politicians, theologians" had similarities with "brute in-articulations".  He exposed that by "avoiding scholarly ways of presenting a view" and using "common locutions and the language of show business and pulp instead".   
In his autobiography, Feyerabend describes how the community of 'intellectuals' seemed to "...take a slight interest in me, lift me up to his own eye level, took a brief look at me, and drop me again. After making me appear more important than I ever thought I was, it enumerated my shortcomings and put me back on my place." This treatment left him all but indifferent. During the years following the publication of Against Method and the critical reviews that followed – some of which as scathing as superficial – he suffered from bouts of ill health and depression. While medical doctors could not do anything for him, some help came from alternative therapies (e.g., Chinese herbal medicines, acupuncture, diet, massage). He also kept moving among academic appointments (Auckland, Brighton, Kassel).   
Towards the end of the 1970s, Feyerabend was assigned a position as Professor of Philosophy at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. There, he ran well attended lectures, including on the Theaetetus, Timeaus, and Aristotle's physics as well as public debates and seminars for the non-academic public. Through the 1980s, he enjoyed alternating between posts at ETH Zurich and UC Berkeley. In 1983, he also met Grazia Borrini, who would become his fourth and final wife. She heard of Feyerabend from train passengers in Europe and attended his seminar in Berkeley. They were married in 1989, when they both decided to try to have children, for which they needed medical assistance due to Feyerabend's war injury. Feyerabend claims that he finally understood the meaning of love because of Grazia. This had a dramatic impact on his worldview ("Today it seems to me that love and friendship play a central role and that without them even the noblest achievements and the most fundamental principles remain pale, empty and dangerous"). It is also in those years that he developed what he describes as "...a trace of a moral character". 

“...a moral character cannot be created by argument, 'education' or an act of will. It cannot be created by any kind of planned action, whether scientific, political, moral or religious. Like true love, it is a gift, not an achievement. It depends on accidents, such as parental affection, some kind of stability, friendship, and-- following therefrom--  on a delicate balance between self-confidence  and concern for others. We can create conditions that favor the balance; we cannot create the balance itself. Guilt, responsibility, obligation-- these ideas make sense when the balance is given. They are empty words, even obstacles, when it is lacking.” 

In 1989, Feyerabend voluntarily left Berkeley for good. After his mandatory retirement also from Zurich, in 1990, he continued to give lectures, including often in Italy, published papers and book reviews for Common Knowledge, and worked on his posthumously released Conquest of Abundance and on his autobiography-- the volumes for which writing became for him "a 'pleasurable activity', almost like composing a work of art".  He remained based in Meilen, in Switzerland, but often spent time with his wife in Rome. After a short period of suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, he died in 1994 at the Genolier Clinic, overlooking Lake Geneva, Switzerland.  He had just turned 70.  He is buried in his family grave, in Vienna.

== Thought ==

=== Philosophy of science ===