“In his ‘Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache’ (1931), Carnap chooses, as examples of metaphysical nonsense, certain sentences from Heidegger’s Was ist Metaphysik? (Heidegger, 1969). This has not normally been taken as a serious encounter with Heidegger’s thought. I wish to argue, on the contrary, that Carnap indeed has a serious understanding and criticism of Heidegger. To this end I will show, first, that both Heidegger and Carnap are reacting against Husserl’s philosophical system, in similar ways and for similar reasons. And I will claim, furthermore, that Carnap understands this, and that he therefore criticizes Heidegger for carrying out their common project incorrectly.”
“Husserl solves certain problems in Kant’s theoretical philosophy by in effect reconstituting pre-Kantian metaphysics within the framework of Kantian epistemology. This horrified them, and for exactly the reason it would have horrified Kant: because, namely, it meant shoring up the theoretical philosophy’s demonstration of the possibility of science at the expense of the practical philosophy’s demonstration of the possibility of freedom. Each, in response, put forward a new and improved version of the original Kantian strategy: a new explanation of how science is possible which would once and for all rule out the return of traditional metaphysics, and thereby once and for all protect the possibility of ethics.”
“Metaphysics is, in a sense, simply the special science of the most prior sphere—i.e., ‘first philosophy’.” “Metaphysical knowledge, finally, because it is transcendental knowledge, is also knowledge of the possibility of science: of each special science individually, and of science in general as a unified whole.”
“Kant, as is well known, comes to this traditional system as an all-destroyer. The objects of our knowledge, he says, must be given to us in intuition. But we human beings have only sensible, not intellectual, intuition. Hence the objects of theoretical knowledge may be physical (objects of outer sense) or psychological (objects of inner sense), but they cannot be noumenal (purely intelligible).”
“Phenomenal beings, in other words, are transcendentally ideal: the form of our cognitive faculties is for them the principle and cause of being as such. Thus we can have the part of metaphysics which concerns itself with nature (with the metaphysical principles and causes—Anfangsgründe— of natural science). But this metaphysics is based, ultimately, on showing the possibility of an objective consciousness (of an object for us), rather than the possibility of an object per se (an sich), and it therefore is not based on and does not form a part of a more general discipline which could claim the proud name of an ontology—a discipline which would know the first principles and causes of all beings in general.”
“human freedom (…) is at least thinkable without contradiction.”
“We can take Kant’s procedure as paradigmatic of what it means to ‘overcome’ metaphysics.”
“Kant’s successors, however, mostly agreed that his solution leaves something to be desired, in two respects. First, the idea of an in-principle unknowable realm of Dinge an sich seemed to them absurd. Second, metaphysics of nature is allegedly possible for us because it is concerned merely with the form of our own cognitive faculties. But what are these ‘faculties’, and why doesn’t our knowledge of them itself require justification?
Husserl is one of many philosophers who face this post-Kantian problem situation. Like many of them, he tries to solve both the above problems at once by in some way identifying our knowledge about our own faculties with our understanding of the way appearances depend on Dinge an sich. His strategy is distinctive, however, in that he literally restores a sphere of necessary, supersensible being as the subject matter of first philosophy.” “It follows that the principles and causes of all beings as such are the states of pure consciousness (Erlebnisse) in which such intentional interpretations take place. Phenomenology, the science of essence in the region of pure consciousness, is therefore the one science by which all special sciences are unified and by which their possibility is absolutely demonstrated, i.e. by which they are ‘absolutely grounded’.”
“Husserl, 1956 (Erste Philosophie) is based on the manuscript of Husserl’s lectures in Freiburg during the Winter semester of 1923/24 (see the editor’s introduction, p. xii). It was published only posthumously, but it is very likely that Carnap was exposed to some of it, since he was living near Freiburg at the time and attended Husserl’s advanced seminars on phenomenology there during 1924 and 1925 (Schuhmann, 1977, 281). Heidegger at this time was already in Marburg, but was still in close contact with Husserl and presumably also familiar with his ongoing projects.”
“As Kant himself would have predicted, however, this solution to the problems in his theoretical philosophy plays havoc with the basis of the practical philosophy. Husserl does allow for an objective science of ethics: just as mere things (bloße Sachen) gain objective existence by being rationally posited on the basis of an interpretation of sense data, so too can things be objectively valuable, or actions objectively desirable, insofar as they are rationally so posited on the basis of emotional and volitional data (§85, p. 173; §117, p. 244). By this very analogy, however, it is clear that ethics so understood is just another special science, albeit of spirit (Geist), rather than of nature. By means of this science I can understand human beings (including my own self when I regard myself as a human being) as subject to duties which possibly go against their inclinations. But human beings are not thereby free in the strict Kantian sense of being autonomous.”
NÃO DIFERE MUITO DE FICHTE: “the pure ego occupies the place reserved for God in traditional metaphysics, its freedom is divine, rather than human; its motives (if any) cannot be on a par with human inclinations or ethical principles.”
“Husserl’s system, in other words, saves the theoretical philosophy (and thus heads off the threat of theoretical skepticism) only by giving up on what Kant thought of as its primary purpose: namely, to show that the possibility of science does not contradict the possibility of freedom. From a Kantian point of view, then, the emergence of Husserl’s system is a sign that metaphysics must still be overcome.”
“what constitutes a responsible and therefore clear and significant use of language?” “Their obscurity, in other words, is largely essential to their positions.”
“At this point we may feel a tendency to giggle. The transition either from ‘Nothing grounds and unifies the sciences’ or from ‘Science studies beings, and beyond that nothing’ to ‘How stands it with this nothing?’ sounds suspiciously like a joke. It sounds, in fact, like a particular kind of joke—a pun, or a related type of wordplay.”
“Heidegger’s method, even if it succeeds, doesn’t lead to a relaxed sense of being once again at home with our own language, but rather produces (as, in a way, does a pun) a sense of our alienation from it (of our distance from its true meaning).”
“What threatens, in Angst, to sink into insignificance, is not any particular being or region of beings, but all beings as a whole. And it is this general threat of insignificance which makes science possible: without it, there could not be the ‘beyond that, nothing’ of the theoretical attitude, by which a being is encountered merely as itself, rather than as valuable or significant for us”
“Whereas for Kant, in other words, the limitation of metaphysics was at the same time a limitation of science, for Heidegger, metaphysics is limited, but science is not. Science will answer every question we have about beings. It follows that we were wrong to think of metaphysics as a kind of science or theoretical discipline which is ‘about’ nothing in the sense of having nothing as its subject matter. Since the nothing is not a being, metaphysics, which is about nothing, is not a science.”
“In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger seems so clearly, and at such length, to treat of practical issues, that that book has often been mistaken for a moralizing book of (‘existentialist’) ethics. Here in Was ist Metaphysik? he is much briefer, but the nature and standpoint of the ethical concern is clearer. The overcoming of metaphysics is necessary to establish the very possibility of freedom, thus of morality, for a being like us”
“Sichhineinhalten is a (very unusual) verb which means literally ‘to hold oneself out into’.”
(com-)portar-se (dentro do = no) exterior
alienar-se é ser
“That metaphysics is about nothing means: that the possibility and unity of science is demonstrated only in Dasein’s encounter with its own un-faculty [inessencialidade], with its own possible inability to take up a Haltung [o ser-aí não pode jogar-se para for a de si] (in which, as Heidegger puts it, it finds that it sich an nichts halten kann): that is, with its own possible insignificance to itself. But to know oneself as possibly insignificant to oneself is at the same time to know oneself as ultimately responsible for one’s own significance. Knowing ourselves as finite, as beings among beings, we also know ourselves as having a finite interest, in pursuit of which we have already spoken carelessly (have taken no responsibility for our word).” “What metaphysics offers is not a theory, but a demand, and the demand itself is the demonstration of our freedom” “our own language, our own self-legislation as rational (i.e., speaking) beings; to abide by ourselves out into the nothing; to comply with our own finite nature.”
I’m o(w)n my (o)w(n).
I am an owl.
I, a man, oh!
Se Nietzsche é metafísico, Husserl parece um escritor de fábulas (o estereótipo do filósofo sistemático elevado à última potência).
“Is our knowledge of space analytic, synthetic a priori, or empirical? Carnap answers, in effect: it depends on what you mean by ‘space’.”
“Our knowledge of ‘formal space’, Carnap says, is analytic, i.e. derives from ‘formal ontology in Husserl’s sense’, but our knowledge of the ‘intuitive space’ in which sensible objects are necessarily found is synthetic a priori, i.e. material-essential (and here again he mentions Husserl explicitly)”
“Carnap’s initial realm of the ‘autopsychological’ clearly corresponds (as he explicitly points out, 1974, §64, p. 86) to Husserl’s region of pure consciousness” Então pra que se dar ao trabalho? ‘O conceito não é meu, mas estou dando um novo nome…’ Tsc.
the objectification of thi(n)g(h)s
“Theoretically speaking, although every level of the constitutional system defines a new type of object (in Russell’s sense), these types are equivalent to Husserl’s formal (syntactic) categories” Russell é o homônimo mais idiota de todos os tempos – ou o idiota mais homônimo de todos os tempos (e ESPAÇOS)?
“Logic is therefore a dangerous ally for Carnap, as it is for Heidegger. Unless he is careful, an appeal to logic may end up being an appeal to Husserlian phenomenology, after all—or rather: constitution theory, which is supposed to use logic to demonstrate the unity of the sciences, may itself end up being (a branch of) phenomenology.”
“Logical analysis, according to him, can only be a project of translating one language into another one: into a logically correct language, which, though stricter, is not deeper (or more ‘primordial’: cf. Der Raum, 65). Thus logical analysis can purify our language of (practical) error, but it can never reveal more about its structure than does ordinary (‘surface’) grammar. This will be important to keep in mind in what follows (and may also help throw light on the differences between Carnap and Wittgenstein).”
“Dörpfeld [avô de Carnap], a follower of Herbart (i.e., a certain kind of quasi-Kantian), claimed that both orthodox and liberal theology had made the same mistake, thanks to lingering Scholasticism and ‘Spinozan-Schellingian-Hegelian metaphysics’: the mistake of subordinating ethics to dogmatics (see his 1895).” Uau. Finalmente algo de valia.
“Carnap’s statement that ‘the future belongs to our attitude’, similarly, is ‘outside the borders of theory’: it is no theoretical prediction, but a choice of fundamental deportment, or, to say it carefully, a statement of Kantian rational faith. Even more carefully: of Nietzschean rational faith. For the point is that we, we scientific philosophers, are philosophers of the future. That Nietzsche’s ambiguous talk about ‘philosophers of the future’ is aimed at securing our (untimely) autonomy in the present is most explicit in its earliest form (see Nietzsche, 1981, 226–7), but it is clear enough in later versions, as well. (The general idea is: we give ourselves a law by assigning to ourselves the task of producing our own masters.)”
“Whatever else one may say about Quine’s understanding, or lack thereof, of Carnap, he seems to have understood very well what was, for Carnap, the most important point: that language is both an ordinary empirical object and the object of autonomous choice.”
“Language is indeed flexible; linguistic innovation is indeed possible. If we knew nothing about Heidegger’s linguistic methods, it would certainly be hard to rule out that that is what he intends here, and if we supposed that Carnap knows nothing about those methods, then it would be hard to defend him against the charge that he is reading Heidegger ‘uncharitably’. In reality, however, nothing could be more uncharitable than to defend Heidegger’s use of ‘nothing’ here as a linguistic innovation. [Ora, o nada só pode significar nada neste contexto, não existe sinônimo ou substituto.] As we have seen, Heidegger’s method rests precisely on showing us what our language already says. So, whatever role there might be for linguistic innovation in philosophy generally, Carnap and Heidegger are (rightly or wrongly) in agreement that it does not crop up here.”
“[Heidegger] implicit point is that Husserl goes astray by using the term [phenomenology] without accountability to those original Greek meanings—i.e., by using it in a linguistically innovative manner; by taking advantage of the fact that language, in the mouth of das Man, so easily accommodates new terms and definitions.”
“like it or not, Heidegger has in fact placed a limit on the reach of science: he has himself ‘come to the determination that his questions and answers are not unitable with the mode of thinking of science’ (Carnap, 1931, 232). And it is due to that mistake that he remains, as Carnap says, merely one of ‘the numerous metaphysicians of the present or the past’ (229 n. 1)—rather, that is, than becoming, as he might have, a rare philosopher of the future.”
“First, it is a criticism to which, as I understand it, Heidegger seriously and repeatedly responded. Second, it is a criticism which finds echoes in later members of Heidegger’s own, Continental, philosophical tradition (e.g. in Levinas). This, I think, is enough to establish what I set out to here: not an attack on or defense of either Carnap or Heidegger, but simply a case for taking the one as a serious reader of the other.”
Seclusão Anagógica 