A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger

A

Parting of the Ways Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger MICHAEL FRIEDMAN

OPEN COURT Chicago and La Salle, Illinois

This book h"s been reproduccd in " print-on-dem"nd format from the 2000 Open Court printing.

To order books from Open Court, c,,11 toll free 1-800-815-2280 The photograph of Rudolf Carnap on the ti'ont co",:r come:s ti'om the Rudolf Carnap collection of the Archive: t()!· Scientitic Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and is use:d by courte:sy of the University of Pittsburgh libraric:s. Open Court Publishing Company is a division ofCarus Publishing Company. Copyright © 2000 by CU'us Publishing COlllpany First printing 2000 Ali rights reserved. No parr of this publication Illay be: re:produccd, stored in " retrieval syste:m, or transmitte:d, in any t(mll or by any means, de:ctronic, me:dJanical, photocopying, recording, or other",ise:, ",ithout the prior ",ritte:n pe:rmission of the: publishe:r, Open Court Publishing Company, a di"ision ofCarus Publishing Company, 315 Fiti:h Srree:t, P.O. Box 300, l'cru, Illinois 61354-0300. Printe:d and bound in the: United States of America

Libr"ry of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Friedman, j\lichacl, 1947A parting of rhe ",ays : Cm1.1p, C.1ssirer, and Hcide:gger / J'vlichacl Fric:dman. p. Clll. Indudes bibliographie.lI rdàellcc~ ,1I1d index. ISBN 0-8126-94244 (.llk. p"pcr). 1. Analysis (l'hilm"phy) 2. l'hilosophy, European-20rh Ct:ntury. 3. Carnap, Rudolt~ 1891-1970. 4. e,,,,irl'r, Ernst, 1874-1945. 5. Heidegger, lvlartin, 1889-1976. 1. Tille. B808.5 .F76 2000 193-,1.:21 00-06058

In memory of my friend

David Burton (1945-1975)

Contents

Preface A Note on Texts and Translations

1 Encounter at Davos

IX

xv

1

2 Overcoming Metaphysics: Carnap and Heidegger

Il

3 The Neo-Kantian Background

25

4 Heidegger

39

5 Carnap

63

6 Cassirer

87

7 Logic and Objectivity: Cassirer and Carnap

III

8 Before and after Davos: Cassirer and Heidegger

129

9 Analytic and Continental Traditions in Perspective

145

Bibliography

161

Index

169

Auch wir haben "Bedürfnisse des Gemuts" in der Philosophie; aber die gehen auf Klarheit der Begriffe, Sauberkeit der Methoden, Verantwortlichkeit der Thesen, Leistung durch Zusammenarbeit, in die das lnvidividuum sich einordnet. Rudolf Carnap Der logische Aufbau der Welt

Die Logik erfûllt die Welt; die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre Grenzen. Die Logik ist keine Lehre, sondern ein Spiegelbild der Welt. Die Logik ist transzendental. Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Preface

One of the central facts of twentieth-century intellectual life has been a fundamental divergence or split between the "analytic" philosophical tradition that has dominated the Englishspeaking world and the "continental" philosophical tradition that has dominated the European scene. The former tradition, in the eyes of many, appears to withdraw from the large spiritual problems that are the concern of every thinking personthe meaning of life, the nature of humanity, the character of a good society-in favor of an obsession with specifie technical problems in the logical or linguistic analysis of language. Here philosophy has taken on the trappings of a scientific discipline, characterized by clarity of method and cooperative cumulative progress in the formulation and assimilation of "results," but at the expense of ail contact with the central philosophical problems that are of truly general concern beyond a small circle of narrow specialists. An engagement with the traditionally central problems of philosophy has thus been left to the continental thinkers, but the works of the se thinkers, in the eyes of the more analytically inclined, appear to throw off ail concern with clarity of method and cooperative cumulative progress in favor of a deliberate and almost willful obscurity more characteristic of a poetic use of language than of ostensibly logical argumentative discourse. The divergence between the analytic and continental traditions has therefore been an expression within the world of profession al philosophy of the much more general split c.P. Snow famously identified between his opposing (and mutually uncomprehending) "two cultures"-that of the scientifically minded and that of the "literary intellectuals." In the early 1930s this fundamental intellectual divergence crystallized for a moment in a notorious polemical attack directed at "metaphysical pseudo-sentences" authored by

x

Preface

Rudolf Carnap, a leader of the Vienna Cirde of logical empiricists and one of the most militant advocates of a new scientific approach to philosophy explicirly intended as a quite radical break \Vith the great metaphysical tradition. In his paper "Overcoming Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language [ Über1l'indurtq der Metaphysi/l durch logische Analyse dC1' Spmche]," Carnap specitlcally singles out Martin Heidegger as a representative of contemporary metaphysics, and then concentrates on Heidegger's nororious proposition, "Nothingness itse\f nothings [Das Nichts sclbst niehtct]," taken as paradigmatic of a metaphysical pseudo-sentence. For Carnap, this typically Heideggerian proposition is cognitive\y meaningless precise\y because it violates the correctly understood logical structure of language. From Heidegger's own point of view, by contrast, such a diagnosis, arising from the misplaced obsession with logic characteristic ofwhat will huer become known as the analytic tradition, of course misses precise\y his point. The collision between Carnap and Heidegger over "Nothingness itse\f nothings" mOly now strike us as more than slighrly absurd: one party ponderously formulates deep sounding but bare\)' intelligible pronouncements, the other pedantically subjects such pronounccments to what appears to be entirely inappropriate logical scrutiny. It is very hard to see, therefore, how anything of importance could possibly hang on it. When 1 began \\'ork on the present essay in the early 1990s, however, 1 WolS surprised and t:lscinated to learn that Carnap's pole mi cal attack on Heidegger WolS intimate\y connected with a well-kno\Vn defining episode in early twentieth-cenrury philosophieal thought, the t:1l11OUS Davos disputation between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer in 1929. For, as it turns out, Carnap had attended the disputation between Heidegger and Cassirer, had met and talked \\'ith Heidegger Olt Davos, and had taken a very serious interest in Heidegger's philosophy when he returned to Vien na. Carnap then wrote, and de\ivered, earlier drafts of "Overcoming Metaphysics" directly in the wake of this experiencc, as he himse\f struggled to tlnd a professorship in Europe in the extraordinarily uneasy political dimate of the carly \