Modernism and the Vienna Circle's critique of Heidegger
2012; Wiley; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/criq.12005
ISSN1467-8705
Autores Tópico(s)Critical Theory and Philosophy
ResumoCritical QuarterlyVolume 54, Issue 3 p. 61-83 CRITICISM Modernism and the Vienna Circle's critique of Heidegger Andreas Vrahimis, Andreas VrahimisSearch for more papers by this author Andreas Vrahimis, Andreas VrahimisSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 October 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12005Citations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Notes 1 Martin Heidegger, ' What Is Metaphysics?' in Pathmarks, ed. William A. MacNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 82–97 (p. 90). Note that MacNeil's translation uses the more apt English term 'nihilates', rather than other translations which render 'nichtet' as either 'nothings' or 'noths'. The latter, which are rather less charitable towards Heidegger, seem to emphasise that Heidegger is here employing a neologism. Google Scholar 2See John McCumber, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001); Google Scholar George A. Reisch, How the Cold War transformed Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 10.1017/CBO9780511610318 Google Scholar 3Neurath and Horkheimer had, around 1936, projected a collaboration between the two movements, qua leftist intellectuals. Apparently Horkheimer is to blame for its failure. In 1937, Horkheimer published 'The Latest Attack on Metaphysics', which attributed to positivistic thought (and its attack on metaphysics) a responsibility for the rise of Nazism that it supposedly shared with metaphysicians like Heidegger. When Neurath submitted a reply to Horkheimer's attack, for publication in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Horkheimer, acting as editor, refused to publish it. See John O'Neil and Thomas Uebel, 'Horkheimer and Neurath: Restarting a Disrupted Debate', European Journal of Philosophy, 12:1 (2004), 75– 105. 10.1111/j.0966-8373.2004.00199.x Web of Science®Google Scholar 4The work which introduced the cultural backdrop of Viennese philosophy to the Anglophone world is Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973). Google Scholar Peter Galison's later 'Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism', Critical Inquiry, 16:4, (1990), 709–752, introduced the connections between the Vienna Circle and the Dessau Bauhaus in particular. 10.1086/448557 Web of Science®Google Scholar 5 Galison, ' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 710. Google Scholar 6Ibid., 710. Google Scholar 7 Hans J. Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit in the Architecture and Philosophy of the 1920s', in Carnap Brought Home: The View from Jena, ed. Steve Awodey and Carsten Klein (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), 357–376. Google Scholar 8 Galison, ' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 711. Google Scholar 9Ibid. Google Scholar 10See also Antonia Soulez, Au fil du motif: autour de Wittgenstein et la musique (Paris: Delatour, 2012). Google Scholar 11 Janik and Toulmin, who focus in Wittgenstein's Vienna on Wittgenstein's influence by the 'Moderne', also point to such developments as Mach and Avenarius', empiriocriticism in the philosophy of science, Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard's Viennese revival, Bolzmann's contributions to physics, and Mauthner's views of language (especially influential on the young Wittgenstein). Google Scholar 12Janik and Tulmin see Wittgenstein's pessimistic worldview as a derivative of the pre-war 'Moderne', and sharply distinguish this from the more optimistic misinterpretation of the Tractatus by the Vienna Circle. Later, Allan Janik, in Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 197–211, distinguishes the Vienna Circle's 'classical modernist faith in progress' from Wittgenstein's 'critical modernism' as two ways of responding to the cultural context of Vienna's 'Moderne'. Google Scholar 13 Galison, ' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 710. Google Scholar 14Spengler, along with a list of other German thinkers that includes Jünger and Heidegger (though the latter had himself criticised Lebensphilosophie and the former two) have been thought of as 'reactionary modernists'; see Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Of course, particular forms of modernism (from the Italian futurists to Ezra Pound) were continuous with fascism, and Roger Griffin goes as far as to argue that fascism was the political form of modernism; see Web of Science®Google Scholar Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (New York: Palgrave, 2007). 10.1057/9780230596122 Web of Science®Google Scholar 15Van der Rohe, who took over the Dessau Bauhaus's directorship from Hannes Meyer, was responsible for breaking the Vienna Circle's ties with the Bauhaus; see Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 371. Google Scholar 16Quoted in Otto Neurath, 'Anti-Spengler', in Empiricism and Sociology, ed. Otto Neurath, Marie Neurath, Robert S. Cohen (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973), 159–213 (p. 199). Google Scholar 17 Neurath, ' Anti-Spengler', 199. Google Scholar 18Ibid., 197. Google Scholar 19Ibid., 202. Google Scholar 20Ibid., 203. Google Scholar 21Ibid. Google Scholar 22Ibid. Google Scholar 23Ibid., 160. Google Scholar 24Ibid., 158. Google Scholar 25Ibid., 160. Google Scholar 26'Nature is to be handled scientifically, History poetically. Everything else is an impure solution' (quoted in Neurath, ' Anti-Spengler', 160). Google Scholar 27Ibid., 160. Google Scholar 28On Neurath's differences with Carnap on the matter of philosophy's relation to politics, see Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), 15–16. Google Scholar 29See Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas Uebel, Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 60. Google Scholar 30See Janik and Tulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna, 241. Google Scholar 31Ibid. Google Scholar 32Ibid., 61. Google Scholar 33It is also notable that the architect Joseph Frank, whose brother Philipp Frank was a member of the Vienna Circle, had been one of the leading figures associated with the housing movement. Google Scholar 34See Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934 (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1999), 484. Google Scholar 35See Cartwright et al., Otto Neurath, 65. Google Scholar 36As Galison (' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 717) points out, Mayer had thought the task of the architect was not that of an artist (as it had traditionally been conceived) but that of a specialist in organisation. According to Mayer 'building is only organization: social, technical, economic, mental organization' (quoted in 'Aufbau/Bauhaus', 717), and the particulars in each of these fields are to be left to the experts. Mayer's views found Neurath in full agreement. Google Scholar 37Quoted in Friedman, Parting of the Ways, 18; Google Scholarsee also ibid., 17. Google Scholar 38 Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 365–366. Google Scholar 39 R. Carnap, ' The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language', trans. A. Pap, in Logical Positivism, ed. A. J. Ayer (Glencoe IL: Free Press, 1959), 80. Google Scholar 40Ibid. Google Scholar 41Ibid. Google Scholar 42See Gottfried Gabriel, ' Carnap's "Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language": A Retrospective Consideration of the Relationship between Continental and Analytic Philosophy', in Logical Empiricism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Paolo Parrini, Wesley C. Salmon, Merrilee H. Salmon (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 30–42. Web of Science®Google Scholar 43 Carnap, ' Elimination of Metaphysics', 78. Google Scholar 44Ibid., 79. Google Scholar 45Ibid., 80. Google Scholar 46Ibid. Google Scholar 47See also Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 370. Google Scholar 48Quoted in Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 370. Google Scholar 49 Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 369. Google Scholar 50See Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2010). Google Scholar 51Among the thinkers exemplary of his contemporary situation, Heidegger also considers the mystical philosopher Ludwig Klages, whom coincidentally Carnap also criticised in his presentation at Dessau; see Dahms, ' Neue Sachlichkeit', 368. Google Scholar 52A lot of the ideas presented here, most of which were shared with Neurath, are mirrored in the Circle's manifesto, drafted by Neurath, Carnap, and Hans Hahn in September 1929. Google Scholar 53Carnap here follows Neurath, who had also seen architecture as foremost in the modernist shaping of future forms of life; see Galison, ' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 716. Google Scholar 54 Janek Wasserman's 'Black Vienna, Red Vienna: The Struggle for Intellectual and Political Hegemony in Interwar Vienna, 1918–1938' (PhD Dissertation, Washington University, St Louis MO, 2010) shows that almost all of the early Vienna Circle members had actively participated in Austria's adult education centres (pp. 126–52). Google Scholar 55Quoted in Friedman, ' Parting of the Ways', 17. Google Scholar 56It might be noted that the elements Carnap mentions here were combined in the cooperative housing movement's alliance with modernist architecture. Google Scholar 57Quoted in Friedman, ' Parting of the Ways', 21–22. Google Scholar 58Such reductions lead to 'a mode of thinking according to which truth is no longer disclosedness of what is and thus accommodation and grounding of Dasein in the disclosing being […] The conception of truth as the securing of thought led to the definitive profaning [Entgotterung] of the world' (quoted in Friedman, ' Parting of the Ways', 22). Google Scholar 59Quoted in Friedman, ' Parting of the Ways', 22 Google Scholar 60 Otto Pöggeler, ' Heidegger's Political Self-Understanding', in The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Wolin (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1991), 198–244 (pp. 218–19). Google Scholar 61 Friedman, ' Parting of the Ways', 22. Google Scholar 62 Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: From 'Being and Time' (1927) to 'The Task of Thinking' (1964) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 324. Google Scholar 63Ibid. Google Scholar 64See e.g. Rudolf Haller, Questions on Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 1988), 74–89. Google Scholar 65See Galison, ' Aufbau/Bauhaus', 725–731. Google Scholar 66 Ludwig Wittgenstein, ' On Heidegger on Being and Dread', in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. Michael Murray (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), 80–83 (p. 80). Google Scholar 67 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Waismann, Brian F. McGuinness, Ludwig Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis: Gespräche, aufgezeichnet von Friedrich Waismann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), 68. Google Scholar 68See Michael Murray, 'A Note on Wittgenstein and Heidegger', The Philosophical Review, 83:4 (1974), 501–503. 10.2307/2183917 Web of Science®Google Scholar 69 Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 275. Google Scholar 70See Jonathan Beale, ' Nonsense Par Excellence: Wittgenstein on the Question of Being', Proceedings of the Southeast Philosophy Congress, 3 (2010), 13–27. Google Scholar 71'From the beginning of 1929 on, Wittgenstein wished to meet only with Schlick and Waismann, no longer with me or Feigl, who had also become acquainted with him in the meantime, let alone with the Circle. Although the difference in our attitudes and personalities expressed itself only on certain occasions, I understood very well that Wittgenstein felt it all the time and, unlike me, was disturbed by it. He said to Schlick that he could talk only with somebody who "holds his hand"' (R. Carnap, ' Intellectual Autobiography', in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. P. A. Schilpp (La Salle IL: Open Court, 1963), 3–81 (p. 26)). Google Scholar 72According to Carnap, at some point during their meetings between 1927 and 1929, Wittgenstein had, to Carnap's surprise, defended a metaphysical statement by a 'classical philosopher' (possibly Schopenhauer) against criticisms by Schlick (Carnap, ' Intellectual Autobiography', 25–26). Google Scholar 73See J. Hintikka, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Half-truths and One-and-a-half-truths (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 131. 10.1007/978-1-4020-4109-9 Google Scholar 74 Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann, The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle, ed. Gordon P. Baker (London: Routledge, 2003), 69–77. Google Scholar 75Ibid., xvi. Google Scholar 76Ibid., 69–71. Google Scholar 77Ibid., 71. Google Scholar 78Ibid., 75. Google Scholar 79'But if our disquiet arises from some unclarity about grammatical relations in some domain of language, we will then, on the one hand, be tempted by force of habit to apply here the useless remedy of tracing things back to more fundamental propositions, and, on the other, we feel sure that we have no use for a foundation in the down-to-earth sense of the term' (ibid., 75). Google Scholar 80Ibid., 73. Google Scholar 81 Heidegger, ' What Is Metaphysics?' 84. Google Scholar 82 Wittgenstein and Waismann, Voices of Wittgenstein, ed. Baker, 75 and 77. Google Scholar 83I have adopted this view from Dennis McManus's hitherto unpublished paper titled 'The Unity of Being in General and the Being and Time Project', as presented on 9 December 2011 at the 'A Dangerous Liaison? The Analytic Engagement with Continental Philosophy' conference held at the University of York. Google Scholar Citing Literature Volume54, Issue3October 2012Pages 61-83 ReferencesRelatedInformation
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