Abstract
Quine’s classic interpretation succinctly characterized Carnap’s Aufbau as an attempt “to account for the external world as a logical construct of sense-data ….” Consequently, “Russell” was characterized as the most important influence on the Aufbau. Those times have passed. Formulating a comprehensive and balanced interpretation of the Aufbau has turned out to be a difficult task and one that must take into account several disjointed sources.
My thesis is that the core of the Aufbau rested on a problem that had haunted German philosophy since the end of the nineteenth century. In terms fashionable at the time, this problem may be expressed as the polarity between Leben and Geist that characterized German philosophy during the years of the Weimar Republic. At that time, many philosophers, including Cassirer, Rickert and Vaihinger, were engaged in overcoming this polarity. As I will show, Carnap’s Aufbau joined the ranks of these projects. This suggests that Lebensphilosophie and Rickert’s System der Philosophie (1921) (henceforth System) exerted a strong influence on Carnap’s projects, an influence that is particularly conspicuous in his unpublished manuscript Vom Chaos zur Wirklichkeit (1922). Carnap himself asserted that this manuscript could be considered “the germ of the constitution theory” of the Aufbau. Reading Chaos also reveals another strong but neglected influence on the Aufbau, namely a specific version of neutral monism put forward by the philosopher and psychologist Theodor Ziehen before World War I. Ziehen’s work contributed much to the invention of the constitutional method of quasi-analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
A succinct presentation of the philosophical landscape in Germany in the 1920s can be found in Schnädelbach (1984).
- 2.
An impressive account of the fascination that Heidegger ’s lectures exerted on the German academic youth at that time is given by Hannah Arendt : “[His] name travelled all over Germany like the rumour of a secret king. […] The rumour that attracted [the students] first to Freiburg to the Privatdozent and somewhat later to Marburg, told that there was one who really achieved the thing that Husserl had proclaimed” (Arendt (1969, 893). The tone of many comments about Heidegger’s performance at the “Davoser Disputation“is similar. Many hailed him as the prophet of a new (philosophical) age. This prediction was fulfilled a few years later, but perhaps not in the way that many had hoped for (cf. Gordon (2011), Wolin (2001, 2006)).
- 3.
This claim may need some explanation. After all, the Aufbau was published in 1928, and one may assert that the story ends there. however, the tentative date of 1930 is given to assert that for a short time after 1928, the Aufbau was still a living option among the members of the Vienna Circle. Indeed, the Manifesto claimed that the Aufbau would play the role of a formal frame of Einheitswissenschaft to be carried out in the future (cf. Manifesto, Frank 1955).
- 4.
Ziehen was the psychiatrist who took care of Nietzsche after he had a mental breakdown in 1889 and was admitted to psychiatric care.
- 5.
Unwittingly, Carnap became a witness for the correctness of Cassirer ’s diagnosis as demonstrated by the fact that, some years later, Carnap published in the journal Natur und Geist (sic) the paper Theoretische Fragen und praktische Entscheidungen (Carnap 1934).
- 6.
Similar ideas also appeared in Husserl ’s lectures on Natur und Geist that he gave in 1919 and 1927.
- 7.
The full title of Rickert ’s book reads Die Philosophie des Lebens. Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströmungen unserer Zeit. This title sounds more dismissive with respect to Lebensphilosophie than the book really is. To a rather large extent, Rickert offered a knowledgeable and not unfair presentation of Lebensphilosophie.
- 8.
A similar argument – that an antagonistic clash between Leben and Geist as advocated by Klages and his partisans is inconsistent – can also be found in Cassirer (1995).
- 9.
Ironically, the living/dead distinction was given up in the Aufbau. Apparently, Carnap no longer considered it necessary to respond slavishly to all requirements of Lebensphilosophie.
- 10.
Das ist der Keim zur Konstitutionstheorie des “Log. Aufbau”!
- 11.
An exception is Tennant (1987), who quotes an entire passage from Chaos but without interpreting it.
- 12.
German original: „Dieser Wille zur Neuordnung, zur Beseitigung der großen Unstimmigkeiten ist es, der die erkenntnistheoretische Ueberlegung und die in ihr auftretenden Fiktionen vom Chaos als Ausgangspunkt und von den Ordnungsprinzipien, nach denen der Bau geschehen ist, geschieht, und geschehen soll, veranlasst.
Dieer Wille, die Unstimmigkeiten der Wirklichkeit durch Umbau der Wirklichkeit zu überwinden, ist auch der irrationale Ausgangspunkt unserer Theorie.“
- 13.
German original: „So ist mit dem Willen zur philosophischen Betrachtung der Welt der „Wille zum System“… notwendig verknüpft.“
- 14.
German Original: „Die Philosophie hat die Welt so zu denken, daß aus dem Chaos der Erlebnisse ein nach Prinzipien geordneter und gegliederter Kosmos entsteht.“
- 15.
Ziehen obtained a PhD in medicine (psychiatry) in 1885. Later he habilitated with Otto Binswanger and became his assistant at the psychiatric clinic in Jena. One of his patients there was Friedrich Nietzsche , after he had suffered a breakdown in Turin in 1889.
- 16.
Useful general information on Ziehen ’s life and work may be found on the website http://www.stork-herbstde/sides/_thziehen.html maintained by August Herbst . For some pertinent remarks on the relation of Ziehen’s Erkenntnistheorie and Carnap ’s Aufbau and Ziehen’s role in the then contemporary debates on the concept of „order“the reader may consult Paul Ziche ’s Theories of order in Carnap’s Aufbau (this volume). On the other hand, Carnap’s references in the Aufbau don’t shed much light on Ziehen’s role for his thought. Things become clearer if we have a closer look on Chaos.
- 17.
By contrast, Carnap , in the Aufbau, subscribed to a mixed pedigree of the basic ingredients of his constitutional system. According to him, the basic elements – Elementarerlebnisse – were contributed by positivism, and the basic relation – Ähnlichkeitserinnerung – was a contribution of “transcendental idealism” (cf. Aufbau § 75). For Ziehen , both the elements and the basic relation of similarity belong to the “given”.
- 18.
A similarity structure (S, ~) is given by a set S and a binary reflexive and symmetrical relation ~ on S, and a subset T ⊆ S is a maximal similarity class (or similarity circle) if and only if it satisfies the following requirements: ∀a, b, c (a, b ∈ T ⇒ a ~ b) & (a ∈ T ⇒ a ~ c) ⇒ c ∈ T)). Informally, T is a maximal similarity class if and only if all elements of T are similar to each other, and if there is an element that is similar to all elements of T, then it is already an element of T.
- 19.
Carnap was at pains to ensure that values could be constituted for all kinds of constitution systems, not only for autopsychological ones but also for physicalist ones. This demonstrates that at least until 1925, the constitution of values was very important to him,:
It could seem to be an open question whether in a constitutional system with physical basis there is room for the domain of values. This doubt, however, has been removed by Ostwald [Werte] with his derivation of values of several types upon a basis of energetics … From a philosophical standpoint, it must be admitted that there is a methodological justification and fruitfulness, not only for the experiential “phenomenological” but also for the energetistic derivation of values. (We shall employ the phenomenological method in the outline of our constitutional system, cf. § 152. The decision between the two is not a question of validity but one of system form; the difference lies merely in the way in which the problems are posed and the concepts constructed. Science as a whole needs both theories to exhibit both directions of logical reducibility, just as it needs a behavioristic as well as an introspective psychology; in general, it needs both an experiential and a materialistic derivation of all concepts. (Aufbau, §59).
This project of the constitution of values left no trace in Carnap ’s later work. This is not to say that the issues of values and valuations did not occupy him till the end of his career; see the discussions with Morris and Kaplan on this topics in Carnap (1963).
- 20.
Freyer suggested a close parallelism between Carnap ’s Aufbau of the objective world of physical objects and the constitution of the objective world of cultural objects constituted in the course of history. He considered his account, which he described as a systematic “Kulturphilosophie” as a kind of complement to Dilthey ’s Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften“ (Freyer (1923, 10, 11)). Freyer literally aimed at a “structural theory of the Aufbau of the cultural world”, i.e., a structural theory of the world of cultural objects (ibid.).
- 21.
Freyer moved politically to the extreme right in the immediate neighborhood of National Socialism (cf. Muller 1987).
- 22.
For the later Carnap ’s means of dealing with values see Carnap (1963), Kaplan (1963), and Mormann (2006).
- 23.
This is not to say that Carnap ’s account of values and valuations in the Aufbau were satisfying in any sense: A telling example is Ostwald ’s “energetic” constitution of values. Carnap mentioned Ostwald’s approach as a successful “physicalist” constitution, although Max Weber had already, in 1909, launched a devastating critique of Ostwald’s “energetic Kulturtheorie” (which included the theory of values) (cf. Weber (1909)). Similarly, Carnap’s meager remarks on a “phenomenology of various kinds of values” (Aufbau, §152) cannot be considered a full- blown theory of values and valuations. But, at least, these spurious remarks left open the possibility of further development.
- 24.
See, for instance, the approving quotation from the Tractatus on the last page of the Aufbau (§ 183): “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the answer. “(Tractatus, 6.52).
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Mormann, T. (2016). Carnap’s Aufbau in the Weimar Context. In: Damböck, C. (eds) Influences on the Aufbau. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21876-2_7
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