Carnap vs Heidegger - 19th and 20th Century Philosophy

The Showdown of the Century!

A discussion of
Martin Heidegger, "What is Metaphysics?"
Rudolf Carnap, "The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language"

Heavily influenced by Andreas Vrahimis, Encounters between Analytic and Continental Philosophy
Abraham Stone, "Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics"

[obakengafrica]

The most instructive part of this video for me is your demonstration of the overlap between Heidegger and Carnap's project. My preference to Heidegger's project makes it difficult for me to fairly assess Carnap's critique of him. You've convinced me that I must give Carnap more of my attention.

[nickn]

1929 and thereabouts seemed to have been a good year for philosophical connections and communications, what with the Davos event, and philosophers as diverse and Heidegger, Voegelin, Carnap, Cassirer, and others met and talked across lines that have since been erected.

[tinabeanajustabean]

Thank you so much for sharing this publicly. I am struggling in my Philo 101 course because of a misalignment with my professor's communication style, so this was a life saver.

[pichirisu]

This was a really fucking good watch. Great video.

[Brunofromaraguari]

Thank you for the video. New subscriber from Brazil

[bcmcnally]

Nice exposition - I think Heidegger is getting at "what must be admitted" - in a language of things and actions (time and space) we struggle to grasp what must not be - Nothing. But when we say "not a thing" it becomes a thing. Mytho poetic expressions we face the limit of our activity of siendes (beings) as the lesser - grasp - point toward the limit of our beings toward Being without falling into the Platonic quagmire. Heidegger in this way is inspirational to me.

[DavidJackson-sufu]

Thank you for the summary - it is quite insightful. As for their political orientations' influence on their metaphysics, I'd imagine both Heidegger and Carnap would welcome such a treatment, but only in song. (-:

[concernedpersoninmexico]

Just discovered your channel. FANTASTIC, SUPERB thank you.

[maxfernandezdecastro]

Very interesting. For me, it was difficult to think of Carnap and Heidegger sharing a common ground in which their views could be compared.

[jonathansurovell]

According to Galison's excellent article, "Aufbau/Bauhaus, " a major motivation for Carnap's rejection of metaphysics, in those early days, was that it was part of an attack on the cultural/intellectual underpinnings of the fascistic concept of the Volk that was on the rise in Europe at the time. Carnap thought that fascism was based on mysticism and couldn't thrive in a society where science and reason were properly understood. With that context, might their opposing views on Nazism have contributed to their philosophical differences on logic and science?

[FIDELOROZCO]

Big to me to know with your video that Heidegger was influenced by Fredge, and was to close to the ideas that will be come the Analytical philosophy.

[mohdhelmibinmohdsobri]

I wonder why did you seem to give the impression that Husserl was a neo-Kantian. Yes, in terms of philosophical training Heidegger was brought up in a Neo-Kantian environment. But his Neo-Kantian mentor was Heinrich Rickert, one of the leaders of the South-West/Baden Neo-Kantianism, not Husserl. Only after sometime that he met Husserl and his phenomenological project.

[johnsimmons]

I wonder if you could speak to the contention that Wittgenstein dissolved the whole matter in his point they were thinking about it wrong in the first place. In his own attempt to take the fly out of the fly bottle

[neygrant]

Anyone else tripped out that this guy looks like he could be heidegger's grandson? 😂 Anyways, thanks for a good video!

[natanaellizama]

Art and Philosophy both start from the intuitive. Art, to me, wishes to express sensitive intuitions, intuitions obtained through the senses but that are not contained within the senses. The senses reflect an underlying transcendental essence intuited and art is the quest to reflect such an essence through a similar medium, the senses.
Philosophy wishes to make sense of rational intuitions, intuitions obtained through reasoning(sometimes through the senses as well, but other times outside the senses).

But this is an oversimplification, for in truth there is philosophy in art and art in philosophy, as both reflect the human in its path. In our path, we seek reflection, meaning and expression, and we reflect on the meaning and the expression and we express our meanings and find meaning in our expressions. We also operate in passive and active ways. At times, we think about stuff and derive meaning in an active mode; but at others, meaning is just manifest in itself. I don't have to think about suffering to know what suffering is, suffering manifests itself in itself and at times in ways that are neither chosen nor known to me. This is the revealing aspect of nature.

A philosophy can be of active seeking through what is built upon, or active seeking upon that which is manifest in the intuitive(more like reflection/meditation). At times, this method of reflection can bring about truths that are revealed as truths but they weren't actively reasoned as truths. This is a non-issue. At times, it is good to restrict our meaning to what has been actively build upon(this is the more practical), at times it is best to be open to self-revealing meaning and then build upon that(this is the more meaningful).

Who was right about language? i think both: while it is true that our active construction of concepts in language can be without meaning(or with little meaning) it is also true that language is meant to reflect our intuitions and through examining language we can examine our collective intuitions. There is no pre-fixed method, both are possible inquiries through different methods. This is known to many of us where by meditating upon reality and language we realize a hidden layer of meaning in language, even at times at odds with the current use of language.

It is also important to ponder: meaningful in WHICH sense? Meaning is relational and so when asked about the relations of meaning we are already framing them within given contexts. The religious aims at finding meaning in the supreme sense, devoid of transcendental contexts and so it's aimed at engaging with meaning in the most transcendental sense. Other kinds of senses are also meaningful, in different senses. To constrain meaning to particular frame and exclude it as meaningless in itself is to make your frame total, and those that don't recognize the religiosity of this move are being shallow in their approach to meaning and reality. If I postulate that only that which is given to my senses, for example, is meaningful, I am saying that that the meaning of my senses is total and transcends all contexts, which is patently untrue. It is better to say: "I am interested in these kinds of meaning, or these aspects of meaning, and so everything that is outside it, I am not interested in", rather than making everything outside it meaning-less. But in truth, there is nothing absolutely meaningless, for even meaningless things can be made sense of within certain contexts. The most paradoxical is: they can be made sense of as meaningless things. That's why "Nothing" must be understood properly as a category of meaning, of certain kinds of things with meaning. In the contextual sense, as the negation of another context, and in the absolute sense as that whose only meaning we can make of is whose meaning transcends our tools of meaning(which is why we can talk of it, but we cannot make sense of it; there is something that is meaningful but it is not meaningful to us, to us it seems meaningless, but I can understand its lack of meaning as well as it possessing some kind of meaning).

[johncalligeros]

Musicians are metaphysicians with metaphysical ability

[realdeal]

You miss the important point that Heidegger rejected rational metaphysics for a more mystical classical metaphysics where being stands above even the Platonic ideas. He is a mystic and a critic of Western rationalism ...AKA a Nazi

[saimbhat]

"The nothing nothings", no wonder his political affiliations were the way they were. I mean in some sense it is not even that different from likes of neitzshe. It is just a deep leap into subjective emotions and drives aka moods. I mean I seriously sometimes wonder that very recent philosophers, well not philosophers exactly, but public intellectuals like jordan peterson, zizek, dawkins etc. get so much following for either going back to reviving old christian metaphysics in some weird pseudoscientific psychoanalytic manner or by revamping old wishful idealism or by just out of thin air generating metaphysics out of science, these people really generate huge non-political followings. While as it was clear as early as Wittgenstein that every idea/belief if not a statement about material facts is then just a dogma and an abstract one at that, then where are the real philosophers of the west ? Is west so deep in nihilism that inspite of killing religious dogmas, non-religious dogmatic tribes are roaming free.

But if deprived of all dogmas, will the human existence remain meaningful? What is the purpose of human existence sans dogma ? just keep on earth populated ? just like the bacteria? or just live lives happily ?
BTW any answer to any of the above questions will also be a dogma. LOL
Human existence is an enigma.

[pavelnovikov]

The grain of Carnap's claim seems to be healthy but the way he describes metaphysics as a form of underachieving music is kind of invasive, by this he denies a right of a philosopher to express his deepest intuitions about life in a form of direct language, or to be more accurate denying the gradualilty or interconnections between analytical functions of language and figurative/poetic ones.

[daquidi]

heidegger was a proto-heideggerian? you can t jump from kant to heidegger on the basis of neo kantian reading of heidegger. the language is not paradoxical, just because it looks to language and its conditions of meaning in a different way than the neo kantian analytical tradition... you overemphasize fear and anxiety to a point where i am wondering if you actually read being and time...