Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics

Carnap’s famous demonstration of the “nonsensical” character of certain sentences from Heidegger’s Was ist Metaphysik? has generally not been read as a serious engagement with or criticism of Heidegger’s thought. I argue to the contrary. I show, first, that Heidegger and Carnap are both reacting against the same features of Husserl’s system, for the same reasons, and, second, that Carnap understood this. I conclude that Carnap is criticizing Heidegger for carrying out their common project incorrectly. 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.1 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. What Heidegger and Carnap both saw, correctly, is that 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. To see this in detail, I will begin with a brief look at traditional metaphysics, at Kant’s reasons for rejecting it, and at the way Husserlian phenomenology served to reverse and undermine Kant. 1. What is metaphysics (and why does it need overcoming)? Traditional ontology2 is a hierarchy, the elements of which are the highest genera of beings: the most universal kinds of beings whose members share, strictly speaking, a common essence. Among such highest genera, there are uberwindung.tex; 14/09/2005; 11:31; p.1