A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger

Whilst aware of Carnap and Heidegger I had not come across Cassirer (mea culpa?). I enjoyed Freidman's landing on this debate as a turning point in European philosophy, and if maybe it is not a turning point, perhaps it is a holographic point at which a number of elements are highlighted in a clearer way. The reflections on the Neo-Kantian dialogues was very useful and for those, such as myself, whose exposure was mainly to the original texts of Kant (well in English anyway) the descriptions of the Marburg and SouthWest schools was very instructive. The description of Heidegger's basic elements in the context of the day was also helpful to me. The political contextualisation that the book provides offers some explanation of Heidegger's European domination. Cassirer emerges as a pleasing consideration between the Continental Scylla and the Analytic Charybdis- if only it were so simple.

Friedman's account of the historical divide between Analytic (as represented by Carnap) and Continental (as represented by Heidegger) philosophies, with their different approaches to the systems proposed by Kant as they central divergent points. Friedman's prose is sparse and a bit dry, which made the explications of Heidegger more difficult than it could have been, but this is still a compelling volume.

This is a rather technical but accessible case study of the split between "continental" and "analytic" philosophy. Friedman focuses on 3 disparate figures; the analytic philosopher Rudolph Carnap, the seminal continental philosopher Martin Heidegger, and the the influential neo-Kantian philosopher and historian Ernst Cassirer. As Friedman demonstrates, these men had a common intellectual heritage in the Neo-Kantian revival that occurred at the end of 19th century. This heritage provided something of a common vocabulary and also resulted in the identification of common philosophic problems, notably aspects of dualities in Kants' epistemology. The specific roles of logic, mathematics, and scientific thought as forms of knowledge were also points of contention. Friedman provides a concise but detailed discussion of the Neo-Kantian background, emphasizing its diversity, with Heidegger emerging from one strand of the Neo-Kantian background, and Cassirer as he final flower of another strand. These 3 philosophers are presented as responding to the common set of problems in Neo-Kantianism in markedly different ways. Carnap pursues a reconstruction of epistemology inspired by newer developments in mathematical logic. Heidegger undertakes perhaps the most radical transformation with an effort to strike out in a new direction which appears (to me, at any rate) as a wholesale rejection of the previously crucial role of logic and scientific knowledge. Both of these thinkers drew on important new developments in philosophy; Carnap on Frege and Heidegger on Husserl's phenomenology. Friedman has a very sympathetic discussion of Cassirer's thought, which he sees as something of an effort to respond to concerns that motivated both Carnap and Heidegger, resulting in a body of thought that occupies something of middle way between Carnap and Heidegger.Friedman, then, stresses the common heritage of "analytic" and "continental" philosophy and suggests that the split is not as great as conventionally portrayed. He suggests also that the split is partly the contingent result of the success of Nazism. Carnap, Cassirer, and most other analytically oriented philosophers had to leave Germany, eiher because of ethnicity or because of their political views. Heidegger, who later embraced Nazism, was left as the only great philosopher in Germany, and possibly in continental Europe. Friedman points out that Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger had very collegial relations prior to the Nazi seizure of power. The implication is that preservation of routine academic life in Germany would have resulted in more interaction and cross-fertilization. I'm not sure that Friedman is entirely convincing on this point. Its clear from his account that Carnap and Heidegger produced radically different and quite irreconcilable responses to what appears to have been a set of common problems. Friedman argues well for Cassirer's distinctive contribution but Cassirer's continued emphasis on the importance of science, mathematics, and logic places him much closer to Carnap in some crucial respects. It really appears that despite a common heritage, there really was a great split.It also has to be commented that the claim of contintental philosophy to be more oriented to human concerns, as opposed to the technical preoccupations of analytic philosophy, is belied by the fact that in fundamental matters of ethics, it was people like Carnap and Cassirer who got it right.

The history of early 20th century philosophy is woefully little known these days, even by philosophers. Friedman provides an extremely detailed and well-documented account of the early evolutions of the views of probably the two most influential German philosophers of the century, Carnap and Heidegger. He pays attention to the connections both philosophers saw between their philosophies and both politics and everyday life, connections of which most admirers of Carnap are unaware, and connections which most admirers of Heidegger would prefer to ignore. Cassirer is of course not as influential a figure as either Carnap or Heidegger, but reconciliation projects are generally viewed as less exciting, and Friedman makes a plausible case that Cassirer's position sought to navigate a middle ground between the then rising Positivist and Existentialist movements.Cassirer is also important to the overall picture because he is the most avowedly Kantian of the three philosophers Friedman examines, though another valuable contribution of this work is to highlight the heavy influence of the early 20th century German neo-Kantian schools on both Carnap and Heidegger (the Kantian influence on Carnap is also discussed in Friedman's book on Logical Positivism).Friedman himself seems to hope to encourage more modern dialogue between the analytic and the continental traditions which are the heirs of Carnap and Heidegger respectively. This is of course no easy task, but while as an analytic partisan myself my response to the discussion of Heidegger's views tended to be along the lines of "so that's why the continentals have gone so horribly wrong," (not because of Friedman's presentation, I think; he presents all three philosophers he discusses quite favorably), greater mutual understanding is surely a necessary beginning, even if prospects for any kind of agreement are far off.

出版の順序は逆になりましたが、まずフランスにおけるスピノザ主義とダヴォス討論が関係があることを知り、次にゴードンやスキデルスキーのダヴォス討論関係の本を読んで、この本に出会いました。1920年代から学ぶものは多いと改めて感じます。