Abstract
Richard Creath (2007, 332) claimed earlier that “Quine did arrive in Vienna in 1932, but intellectually, at least, he never left. […] Vienna remained the city of Quine’s dreams; it was the home of his concerns, the source of his arguments, and the lodestar of his aspirations.” If Vienna was the city of Quine’s dreams, then it was indeed the city of Rudolf Carnap.
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- 1.
Carnap to Reichenbach , March 10, 1925. ASP RC 102-64-11. All translations are mine.
- 2.
The term is from Carnap’s letter to his father-in-law. It is dated just after Carnap went back to Wiesneck after his visit to Vienna, November 2, 1925. ASP RC 102-23-01.
- 3.
As many scholars argue, even from a philosophical point of view, Vienna could not cover the whole interest of Carnap due to the anti-Kantian tendencies of Austrian philosophy. In 1933 Carnap wrote a short intellectual autobiography to Marcel Boll, in which he said: “It is characteristic of the recent German philosophical situation that as a German of the Reich [Reichsdeutscher] I found my field of activity [Tätigkeitsfeld] not in Germany but in Vienna and Prague […].” ASP RC 091-20-09. One could interpret this passage as Carnap tries to give voice to his dissatisfaction that he had to leave Germany (even though he has found himself in a fruitful and cooperative atmosphere among logical empiricist outside of Germany).
- 4.
Translated by Jacques Bouveresse (2012, 56).
- 5.
Another participant was Hans Reichenbach with a delegation of the Freistudenten [Free Students] from Berlin. Earlier Reichenbach was also a member of the Wandervogel movement and later took an active part in the Freie Studentenschaft. See the memoir of Carl Landauer (1978). Reichenbach’s experiences in the GYM had a similar effect on his thought as on Carnap’s. Kamlah (2013) provides a detailed analysis of Reichenbach’s volitional conception of ethics and decisions regarding both philosophy and science. I am indebted to Thomas Uebel for calling my attention to the case of Reichenbach.
- 6.
- 7.
As Laquer (1962, 15–16) said “[…] the early Wandervogel put itself into deliberate opposition to a society whose interest in nature was by and large limited to yearly visits to mountain or seaside resorts, with all their modern comforts. There was more to it, too. It was, or at any rate became, a somewhat inchoate revolt against authority.”
- 8.
Didereichs was an important figure later too: as a publisher he published the books of Franz Roh , Wilhelm Flitner and Walter Fränzel, who were close collaborators of Carnap in the early 1920s.
- 9.
Carnap, 1957, [UCLA], Box 2, CM3, MA-5, p. B31–B32.
- 10.
See for example his letter to Brian McGuinnes, November 27, 1969. ASP RC 027-33-14.
- 11.
According to Tamás Demeter (2012, 49), worldviews could be approached as a form of Kantian conditions of possibility, especially like the forms of intuition. Neither of them have a conceptual character, they do not mean knowledge, they do not possess a propositional structure but they still make possible knowledge in a broader sense: “[w]e could say in the Kantian idiom, Weltanschauung is empirically real but transcendentally ideal: works of cultural production are impossible independently of a worldview, but a worldview cannot be known independently of the works of cultural production.”
- 12.
Actually Carnap received two letters from Martha Hörmann, a former member of the Serakreis, in 1964. She told Carnap about the 1963 meeting at the Hohe Meißner, and how it revived her feelings and memories from the formative years in Jena. See ASP AC 027-29-26 and ASP RC 027-29-27.
- 13.
About Dilthey’s indirect influence on Carnap’s thought see Gabriel (2004); Damböck (2012); Tuboly (forthcoming).
- 14.
Freyer and Flitner were also members of the GYM and while Carnap’s friendship with Freyer broke in the early 1930s when Freyer moved to the political right, Flitner , Roh and Carnap were life-long friends. About the Buchenbach-conference see Dahms (2016), about Flitner’s recollection see Flitner (1986).
- 15.
Carnap used these words when he introduced his principle of tolerance in the discussions of the Circle in 1933. See ASP RC 110-07-22.
- 16.
It seems, in fact, that the Schilpp volume, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, did not appear in 1963. Carnap wrote to Robert Mathers on 20 November, 1963 that “I hear that the Schilpp volume is to appear by Dec. 31; but there have been so many delays that this date cannot be counted on” (ASP RC 088-62-09). Still on 5 April, 1964, Carnap told to Albert Blumberg that “Unfortunately I am not able to send you a copy of my autobiography. In the mistaken trust that the Schilpp-volume was going to appear in 1963 I seem to have given away all my copies” (ASP RC 088-06-04).
- 17.
Carnap to Hempel and Feigl , ASP CH 11-02-10. The letter is dated in Carnap’s Nachlass as November 18, 1956 (ASP RC 091-20-18), but it was received by Hempel on December 5.
- 18.
The letter could be found also in Hempel ’s Nachlass, see ASP CH 11-02-07. “Mia” is Hans Reichenbach ’s wife, Maria Reichenbach.
- 19.
It would have been indeed optional for Carnap though given that Ayer’s collection of Logical Positivism was just on his way (it was published in 1959) and he provided some fresh remarks about his recently translated papers. The University of California Press editor Robert Y. Zachary asked Quine’s opinion about a possible translation of Carnap’s Aufbau in 1961 (see Creath 1990, 453–454). Given that, Carnap could have known that another important book of his will be available to the English speaking world. Later on the 10th of June, 1969 Carnap wrote to Ferenc Altrichter (who was editing the selected Hungarian translations of Carnap) that “I think it will not be necessary for me to write new comments on these papers indicating my present views and how they differ from the formulations in these old papers. I made such comments at an earlier time.” Listing these places Carnap did not mention his Schilpp volume. See ASP RC 027-22-01.
- 20.
Ina to Hempel, April 15, 1957. ASP RC 102-13-59.
- 21.
Since every other autobiography of the Schilpp volumes starts with the author’s childhood it would have been unreasonable to delete the relatively long passages about his childhood and his mother.
- 22.
Carnap to Feigl , June 14. 1954. ASP RC 102-08-43.
- 23.
Carnap to Vere Chapell, August 4, 1960. ASP RC 027-03-17.
- 24.
Carnap/Ina to Hempel , August 31, 1957. ASP RC 102-13-55. According to the unpublished parts of his autobiography Carnap started to work on the questions of probability between 1941 and 1944. See Carnap 1957, [UCLA] Box 2, CM3, folder M-A5, p. P20.
- 25.
See for example Carnap’s letter to Bochenski (October 30, 1963) where he was wondering about “how much time one has left […].” ASP RC 027-23-40.
- 26.
Carnap to Hempel and Feigl , November 28, 1956. ASP CH 11-02-10.
- 27.
Carnap to Richard Martin, May 1, 1958, ASP RC 081-12-13. Carnap wrote to Feigl already on the 4th of February, 1955 that “the Schilpp volume is taken far more of my time than I can spare from my work on probability […].” ASP RC 102-08-26. The same motive occurs in many other letters see e.g. ASP RC 102-08-01; ASP RC 102-07-39; but Carnap complained about it also to Hugues Leblanc, ASP RC 081-10-03.
- 28.
Carnap to Howard Stein, August 11, 1954. ASP RC 090-13-26.
- 29.
Carnap to Hempel, November 24, 1965, ASP RC 102-13-05. When Carnap wrote the preface to Logische Syntax der Sprache, Neurath helped him with some ‘nice’ formulations. See Neurath’s letter to Carnap, June, 10. 1934. ASP RC 029-10-65.
- 30.
Carnap to Feigl, November, 14. 1955. ASP RC 102-08-06. On Schilpp’s forceful letters see the correspondence of Carnap and Feigl, ASP RC 102-08-07 and ASP RC 102-08-09.
- 31.
In turn Ina replied that “[t]hough the chance of a longer stay there is very little, Carnap is glad that H. knows about him and is also grateful for the advice not to show apparently that he is a ‘Cultur Bolshevist’. But it seems not necessary to replace the lecture-title on the relation between contemporary philosophy and culture by an other, because Carnap may speak about anything under this vague title.” Carnap/Ina to Nagel , January 23, 1935. ASP RC 029-05-15. Hook had a quite complex relation to the logical empiricists, see Reisch (2005).
- 32.
In his personal correspondence Carnap complained a lot about the atmosphere and attitude both of his department at Chicago and about other philosophy departments in the U.S.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Christian Damböck and Thomas Uebel that they read the manuscript and provided helpful comments. I am indebted to the Carnap Archives at Los Angeles (Rudolf Carnap papers (Collection 1029). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library) and at Pittsburgh (Rudolf Carnap Papers, 1905–1970, ASP.1974.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh), and to the Hempel Archive also at Pittsburgh (Carl Gustav Hempel Papers, 1903–1997, ASP.1999.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.) for the permission to quote the archive materials. All rights reserved. I cite the Rudolf Carnap and Carl Hempel Archives from Pittsburgh as follows: ASP RC XX-YY-ZZ and ASP CH XX-YY-ZZ, where XX is the box number, YY the folder number, and ZZ the item number; the UCLA archive as Carnap 1957, [UCLA] followed by box, folder, and page numbers. Normal underlining in the quotations is made with pencil in the archive materials. The research was supported by the Hungarian National Grant of Excellence.
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Tuboly, A.T. (2017). Carnap’s Weltanschauung and the Jugendbewegung: The Story of an Omitted Chapter. In: Stadler, F. (eds) Integrated History and Philosophy of Science. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53258-5_10
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