CARNAP AND HEIDEGGER: POLITICAL ANTIMETAPHYSICS VERSUS METAPHYSICS AS METAPOLITICS

Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger shared with Max Weber the decisionist understanding of values as something that cannot be justified by scientists or philosophers. Although both accepted the challenge of modernity in this respect, they reacted in opposite ways. Carnap, along with the Vienna Circle, defended a scientific conception of the world in which science and instrumental rationality were to permeate all of life; Heidegger embarked on an understanding of metaphysics in which rationality and science were to be eliminated. Both strategies were deeply political, and both resulted from the split in the German youth and life reform movement that took place during and immediately after World War I. I discuss this image here in the context of dialectical theology, the Vienna Circle, and the Davos Disputation, with a sideways glance at Ernst Cassirer, and with a view to earlier interpretations by Michael Friedman and Gottfried Gabriel.


INTRODUCTION 1
The debate about the relationship between the philosophies of Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger, which has receded somewhat into the background over the last two decades after being reflected in a series of works by Michael Friedman (2000) and Gottfried Gabriel (2000) around the year 2000, is taken up again in this essay on the basis of developments that shed new light on the relationship between the two philosophers.On the one hand, newly discovered and re-evaluated historical sources such as Carnap's diaries, lectures and correspondence (CARNAP, 2022a(CARNAP, , 2022b) ) 2 and Heidegger's Schwarze Hefte (HEIDEGGER, 1975ff, vol. 94-102;HEINZ, KELLERER, 2016) suggest a changed assessment of their relationship.On the other hand, the overall picture of the two philosophers in the light of these sources has changed since then in that both are now understood more strongly as political thinkers and, in turn, completely apolitical interpretations have lost plausibility. 3This more contextualizing and cultural-historically accentuated view of the history of philosophy leads, as I will argue here, on the one hand to the identification of new points of contact: Roughly speaking, the philosophies of Carnap and Heidegger overlap in their existentialist-life-reformist intentions in a way that has not become clear in all implications in the interpretations of Friedman and Gabriel.On the other hand, the distance between these two key figures of 20th century philosophy becomes much clearer than in older interpretations due to the greater inclusion of political factors and the emphasis on their opposing attitudes to science and rationality.By emphasizing new similarities and new contrasts, the two thinkers become recognizable as two extremes of the relationship to modernity in the philosophy of the previous century.The option Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 of a middle way between the extremes, which Gabriel and Friedman still hinted at, thus loses plausibility.

COMMON EXISTENTIALIST BACKGROUND
Carnap's critical attitude towards metaphysics developed several years before his first relevant publications and lectures, in the early 1920s.Wilhelm Flitner, the important educator and friend of Carnap's from the Jena youth movement (WERNER, 2014), confronted him with the ideas of dialectical theology in the form of Friedrich Gogarten's writings, which Flitner followed with interest at this time (CARUS, 2007, p. 94-97).Dialectical theology saw itself as a counter-movement to the liberal theology of the 19th century.Liberal theology was based on the philology of written testimony, i.e. on positive knowledge, and was thus committed to the Enlightenment.Dialectical theology opposed this approach with a concept of absolute foundation, in a "religious vision" that was inaccessible to scientific analysis; an experience of God that could not be articulated rationally; the "subjugation of the restless ego to the situational reality", in a religion as a "total crisis" (GOERING, 2017b, p. 25), an existential, "uninterpretable" determination as a substitute for reason, which ultimately produces only lies and idols (GOERING, 2017a, p.18).This illiberal and Enlightenment-critical thinking was supported by a network of the youngest academic generation born around 1890, who had grown up with the German youth and life reform movement4 and included Gogarten and Flitner as well as Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Heidegger (FAYE, 2009, p. 24;GOERING, 2017a, p. 102, 105, 134, 157, 349).Carnap reacted critically to reading Gogarten's programmatic treatise The Religious Decision (GOGARTEN, 2021).
He did not believe, as he emphasized in a letter to Flitner, in the reality of events that did not "hang in threads upwards and downwards in history".
Carnap opposed this view to Gogarten's "religious vision" that ignored the causal events of empirical reality. 5The roots of anti-metaphysics were thus laid.
It was about the rejection of any form of knowledge that transcended the logically and empirically comprehensible.
Heidegger's nimbus as the "hidden king [...] in the realm of thought" (ARENDT, 1969, p. 895), which Flitner conveyed to Carnap, had been established since the early 1920s, i.e. even before the publication of his main work Being and Time (HEIDEGGER, 1986(HEIDEGGER, [1927]]).According to Ulrich Sieg's (2013) diagnosis, the generation that had been partially united by the experience of the First World War was already drifting apart around 1916, a process that was then intensified by the revolution of 1918/19.This process, which essentially took place before the 1920s brought about the fundamental parting of the ways that by 1929 had long since hardened into irreconcilable positions. 6arts of the generation were moving toward democracy, science, and liberalism, and parts were moving in exactly the opposite direction.From the beginning, Heidegger and Gogarten were the pioneers of that part of the youth movement generation that opted for the second strategy.The hope that was placed in them by theology consisted of a new and original experience of God beyond all rational constraints.On the part of philosophy, the aim was to counter Kant's science-oriented philosophy, which was continued in neo-Kantianism, with something fundamentally different and original, corresponding to dialectical theology.
The hoped-for new originality was to be a response to the "disenchantment of the world" proclaimed by Max Weber (1994) to the youth movement, 7 which formed the starting point for the intellectual crisis in the 1920s.For Weber, the disenchantment of the world initially meant a restriction of the competence of Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 science, which lost all authority to justify values and political world views that guided action.Those who gave the appearance of justifying such values were exposed as charlatans and "academic prophets" (Ibid., p. 21).Nevertheless, Weber saw a central role for science in value debates due to its instrumental rationality.Although values were a question of individual attitudes, thinking about values could benefit from science in three ways: Science provides us with the means to achieve certain goals; it informs us about the expected consequences and side effects of a course of action (which consequences are desirable, which side effects are acceptable?); and it allows us to explore logical connections (which values can be derived from a certain basic attitude?)(Ibid.,p. 19).Weber thus saw disenchantment as the exact opposite of a weakening of science and rationality.By virtue of instrumental rationality, Weber was convinced that science had to play a binding role in value debates.Individual attitudes, guided by rational discussion, should lead to political decisions in a democratic process with universal suffrage (Ibid., p. 14).
While democracy and the instrumental rationality of science as Weberian messages only reached the liberal part of the youth movement generation, the following point struck a chord with the movement across ideological boundaries.Our actions are not something that we can learn in a sterile laboratory or at a dusty lecture hall catheter -the academic prophets are passébut are a question of individual decision that must arise from the reality of life as a whole (Ibid.).Ethics and politics were thus taken out of the lecture halls and laboratories and into the real world, a phenomenon that was already characteristic of the youth movement before 1914 (DAMBÖCK, 2022a, p. 166-168).Like Carnap and Hans Reichenbach on the side of the later logical empiricists (Ibid.,,Heidegger -once close to the academic Freischar Marburg (LAQUEUR, 1962, p. 252) -was also influenced by the world view of the life reform and youth movement.The fascination that emanated from Heidegger from the early 1920s onwards lay, in keeping with these youth movement roots, in the fact that "academic teaching [...] was continued and Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 reinforced by a certain lifestyle: Ski hikes, night vigils, communal hut stays, etc." (FAYE, 2016, p. 107).And in this place of the existential, where philosophy leaves the lecture hall, in this "aura of youth movement, of Eros" (Ibid.),borne by the idea of a fundamental life reform, lie, as Gabriel (2000, p. 488) has already emphasized, also the overlaps between Heidegger's philosophy and that of the Vienna Circle, especially Carnap.
The common denominator between Carnap and Heidegger was that they conceived of the moral decision in Weberian terms, as arising from the totality of existence and not as something that could be determined in a scientific ivory tower.Just as Heidegger (1986Heidegger ( [1927]], Zweiter Abschnitt) proclaimed "decisiveness" in Being and Time as an action arising from the reality of existence, which was closely related to the existential originality of dialectical theology, Carnap, together with Otto Neurath, postulated a "scientific world conception" that saw itself as a comprehensive life reform: "The scientific world conception serves life and life embraces it."(VEREIN ERNST MACH, 2012[1929], p. 30) In this conception, science was no longer the isolated affair of a detached academic elite, but an attitude to life: the "call for clarity, for metaphysics-free science" (CARNAP, 1967(CARNAP, [1928]], XV) was to permeate the entire population and all areas of life via popular education.This explains both the agreement with Heidegger in the common agenda of an existentialism that emerged from the youth movement and the incompatibility of these two philosophical concepts in their opposing attitudes towards reason, science and ultimately, as will be shown, politics.This difference became clear as early as the beginning of the 1920s.In Heidegger's ski lodge, a decisionism was practiced that not only unfolded from the originality of existence, but also understood itself as an antithesis to the instrumental rationality of science as a whole, as a determined grasp of a possibility beyond the dictates of reason.In this project, Being and Time functioned as a Wittgensteinian ladder (WITTGENSTEIN, 2001, p. 6-54), which the author discarded even before writing the announced but never completed Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 second part of this book and replaced with a more radical agenda.While the original determination in Being and Time was still articulated rationally and logically in itself, in the classical style of a scientific treatise, the proclaimed overcoming of instrumental rationality inevitably had to go beyond itself and cancel itself out, going beyond rational argumentation and science as a whole. 8he end result was a "seinsgeschichtliche thinking", which was articulated above all in the notes of the Schwarze Hefte and to which milestones such as the Kant book (HEIDEGGER, (1991(HEIDEGGER, ( [1929]])9 and the Freiburg inaugural lecture "What is Metaphysics" (HEIDEGGER, 1929) led.
No less consistent than Heidegger's rejection was Carnap's affirmation of Weber's original strategy of instrumental rationality, liberalism and democracy, as impressively documented in the programmatic lecture "Science and Life", which Carnap gave at the Bauhaus in 1929: "Rational thinking", according to Carnap's diagnosis, is indeed not a guide in life, but a signpost: it does not determine the direction of action (this is done by irrational instincts), but only gives information about the expected consequences, i.e. instructs about the means to an intended end.(CARNAP, 1929, p. 4) The difference between Heidegger and Carnap lies in the fact that the rational scientificity that Heidegger banishes from thinking is elevated by Carnap to a world conception.What Carnap slightly misleadingly calls "irrational instincts" in the Bauhaus lecture are, in the case of the scientific world conception, those "emotional needs" that are directed towards "clarity of concepts, precision of methods, responsible theses, achievement through cooperation in which each individual plays his part" (CARNAP, 1998(CARNAP, [1928]], XV).
Where the scientific world conception wants to permeate everything with rationality, Heidegger's philosophy wants to entirely exclude rationality from life.Carnap and Heidegger thus represent the two extremes of the attitude towards modernity in 20 th century philosophy (DAMBÖCK, 2022b, p. 24-30), if modernity is understood to mean the disenchantment of the world that Weber characterizes.Carnap and Heidegger accept the challenge of modernity, but with opposing conclusions: Carnap by consistently continuing along the path of the Enlightenment, Heidegger by radically turning away from it.

CARNAP AND HEIDEGGER IN DAVOS
Against this background, Carnap traveled to the Davoser Hochschultage in 1929 to attend the announced confrontation between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. 10Cassirer, who was close to the scientific world conception, still represented a generation of professorial detachment uninfluenced by the existentialism of the youth movement: as Carnap (2022b, p. 396) noted in his diary, he spoke "well, but somewhat pastorally".Heidegger, on the other hand, "serious and sachlich, as a person very attractive" (Ibid.),proved to be the opponent who needed to be confronted.
A longer comment is necessary here.A personal meeting between Carnap and Heidegger in Davos, first claimed by Michael Friedman (2000, p. 7), then also circulated by Peter Gordon (2010, p. 98) and other authors, never took place.It was derived from an incorrect transcription of Carnap's diaries. 11The person named "H." in the diary, who was mistaken for Heidegger, was in fact the journalist Hermann Herrigel.It was Herrigel, and not Heidegger, who "essentially agreed" with Carnap's remarks on physicalism (CARNAP, 2022b, p. 399;DAMBÖCK, 2022d, p. 770).In reality, Heidegger and Carnap had long been on philosophically irreconcilable paths at this point.Carnap decided not to Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 talk to Heidegger as he was "told that he very much disliked discussing with people who thought differently" (Rudolf to Elisabeth Carnap, April 2, 1929, quoted from DAMBÖCK, 2022b, p. 37).At this time, he was a real hothead and decided to agitate against Heidegger behind the scenes, as he reported to Maue Gramm: You know that we in Vienna don't regard [Heidegger's philosophy] as science, but as poetry.[...] I've [...] come out a little [with it] a few times now in smaller circles.The reaction has been astonishment, contempt, indignation and heated discussion.I'll be glad when I come out of this with my head intact [mit unzerschlagenem Schädel].(Carnap to Maue Gramm, March 24, 1929, quoted from DAMBÖCK, 2022b, p. 37) Peter Gordon reports on one of these fierce interventions by Carnap, in the memory of the theologian Ernst Benz: [In] the afternoon following one of Heidegger's lectures, a handful of the guests decided to take in the local scenery by riding the cable car that ascended from the valley of Davosplatz to the high, snow-covered peak of the Jakobshorn.Pressed together in the cabin and swaying slightly as it rose were a number of professors and students, including both Cassirer and Carnap.Cassirer turned to his neighbor: 'Herr Kollege,' he asked, 'How would you express the content of today's lecture by Herr Heidegger in the language of mathematical logic?And Carnap responded: 'Quite simple: Biba-bum!' (GORDON, 2010, p. 327) Carnap traveled to Davos as an emissary of the Vienna Circle, which was looking incognito for levers to combat Heidegger's philosophy, which was identified as a counter-program to the scientific world conception.Cassirer, a kindred spirit, could be of little help here; his attempt to meet Heidegger on an equal footing was doomed to failure from the outset.For Heidegger, as John Michael Krois convincingly argues, the Davos Disputation was nothing more than a propaganda coup (KROIS, 2002).The cards were on the table : Heidegger (1991: Heidegger ( [1929]], p. 279) wanted to interpret Kant purely metaphysically, leaving aside the "non-essential" scientific, mathematical and ethical aspects, and Cassirer tried to question this: "Does Heidegger want to renounce all this Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 objectivity, this form of absoluteness that Kant has in the ethical, theoretical and in the Critique of Judgment?"(Ibid., p. 278), to which Heidegger (Ibid.,p. 291) replied: philosophy has "the task [...] of throwing man back, so to speak, from the lazy aspect of a man who merely uses the works of the spirit, into the harshness of his destiny."-The "lazy man", i.e. the "foreigner" Cassirer, as Othmar Spann put it even more blatantly three weeks before Davos in the presence of Hitler (KROIS, 2002, p. 239), was overwhelmed by Heidegger's hardness, the Jewish by the German, reason by determination.Simon Truwant's (2022) recent attempt to read the Davos Disputation as a purely philosophical debate without the slightest political reference,12 seems out of date not only in view of the findings on Heidegger's metapolitics (see below).An apolitical reading must also be rejected with regard to Cassirer's philosophy, since Cassirer, together with Hermann Cohen and the Marburg school tradition, was always aware of the political character of a thinking of the "unity of cultural consciousness". 13Thus, Cassirer was able to grasp Heidegger's propagandistic ulterior motive more than all those involved.However, Cassirer, like his mentor Cohen, was not willing to understand philosophy in terms of the intensification of decisionist determinations, because he never gave up hope for a spirit anchored in the transcendental and thus for that idealism whose disenchantment both Heidegger and Carnap had accepted early on.
Weber's decisionism and the resulting existentialism, in short: modernism, the starting point of both Heidegger's and Carnap's thinking, and Cassirer's idealism were incommensurable.

CARNAP'S CRITIQUE OF HEIDEGGER IN "OVERCOMING OF METAPHYSICS"
Back in Vienna, Heidegger was discussed in the Gomperz Circle, one of the numerous offshoots of the Vienna Circle (CARNAP, 2022b, p. 472), and after reading "What is Metaphysics?",Carnap (1932) wrote his famous essay "Overcoming of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language" in April 1930, at the heart of which is a critique of passages from Heidegger's lecture.In retrospect, this text-related criticism itself proves to be rather toothless, as it is partly on a strict version of the verificationist criterion of meaning, which Carnap himself later relativized, and the assumption, also later weakened by him, that existence cannot occur as a predicate (and thus "nothing" cannot occur as a noun).It is true that Heidegger's statement "Nothingness itself negates [Das Nichts selbst nichtet]" thus appeared to be doubly meaningless, in that negation functions impermissibly as a predicate and as a noun, but with the retrospective reservation that Carnap himself would not have articulated this criticism in this form later on.
In the final section of his essay, however, Carnap brings up an aspect of his critique that would outlast later modifications.In principle, Carnap would have no objection to Heidegger pursuing metaphysics again if he did not mix the metaphysical point of view with science.For Carnap, legitimate metaphysics serves the "expression of the feeling of life" and is therefore a domain of art and poetry, as can be found in Friedrich Nietzsche's metaphysical novels and poems, for example (GABRIEL, 2000, p. 493).Heidegger's metaphysics should only be rejected because it denies its poetic character and appears "in the guise of a theory" (CARNAP, 1932, p. 237-241).
Carnap's criticism did not go unanswered.As late as 1964, Heidegger characterized "today's 'philosophy' from its outermost counter-positions (Carnap ----> Heidegger)", which are characterized by Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 abysmally different tasks.The first position wants to bring all thinking and speaking, including that of philosophy, under the control of a technically and logically constructible system of signs, i.e. to establish it as an instrument of science.The other position arises from the question of what is to be experienced as the thing itself for the thinking of philosophy and how this thing (being as being) is to be said.(HEIDEGGER, 1978, p. 70) And as early as 1935, Heidegger had explicitly commented on Carnap's essay in his lecture Introduction to Metaphysics.In Carnap's remarks, Heidegger said at the time, the most extreme flattening out and uprooting of the traditional theory of judgment is accomplished under the semblance of mathematical science.
Here the last consequences of a mode of thinking which began with Descartes are brought to a conclusion [...].The conception of truth as the securing thought led to the definitive profaning of the world.The supposed 'philosophical' tendency of mathematical-physical positivism wishes to supply the grounding of this position.It is no accident that this kind of 'philosophy' wishes to supply the foundations of modern physics, in which all relations to nature are in fact destroyed.It is also no accident that this kind of 'philosophy' stands in internal and external connection with Russian communism.And it is no coincidence, moreover, that this kind of thinking celebrates its triumph in America.(HEIDEGGER, 1975ff, vol. 40, p. 228, translation from FRIEDMAN, 2000, p. 22).

ANTIMETAPHYSICS AND METAPOLITICS
Heidegger's philosophy after Being and Time fuses poetic expression with the form of a theory in the way criticized by Carnap, in that it increasingly excludes the rational form of argumentation.It seems plausible that this linguistic form almost inevitably arises when thinking rejects rationality, but at the same time, in "beckonings [Winke]", "considerations [Überlegungen]" and "instructions [Anweisungen]" (HEIDEGGER, 2014), retains the form of the postulate, the theorem, just as it is logical that such thinking loses all coherence and semantically approaches the nursery rhyme "Bi-ba-bum".The only question is what the motives were that drove the 'king in the realm of thought' to this development, which seems so strange from a distance, away from the rational and thus also somehow away from thinking and towards mere postulating or Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 'saying being as being'.Classical interpretations suggest that this was exclusively the result of a mere Denkbewegung. 14In recent decades, however, the view has increasingly come to the fore that Heidegger deliberately used metaphysics and the associated "bending of language" (FAYE, 2016, p. 121) or "deliberately indirect language" (KELLERER, 2015, p. 943) in order to propagandistically market National Socialist politics: "metaphysics as metapolitics" (HEIDEGGER, 2014, p. 116) is aimed at emotional overpowering without recourse to instrumental rationality.Philosophy becomes a propagandistic tool by defending political content not via causal perspectives of relevant options for action -we demand X because it leads to Y! -but directly by postulating or foisting X and not only ignoring the consequences, but virtually hiding them behind the rhetoric of overpowering.In Heidegger himself, this anti-rational meta-politics as propaganda is linked to his National Socialism and anti-Semitism (KELLERER, 2015, p. 950-953), but this does not mean that one necessarily abandons Heidegger's worldview as soon as one distances oneself from National Socialism and anti-Semitism, because what is at stake here is the contrast between the democratic, liberal and scientifically oriented worldview represented by Carnap and the anti-democratic, illiberal and antiscientific one represented by Heidegger.The examples of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and many other thinkers of French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism show impressively that schools of thought oriented towards Heidegger often share elements of his anti-rational worldview, even if they see themselves as decidedly left-wing and/or democratic.
Although Carnap was unaware of the extent of Heidegger's anti-Semitism and his support for National Socialism, his critique of metaphysics comes surprisingly close to today's view of Heidegger's metaphysics as a propagandistic instrument of metapolitics.This political side of Carnap's criticism was not mentioned in "Overcoming of Metaphysics", probably in order not to jeopardize Carnap's prospects of a professorship in the German-speaking Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 world, which he still considered realistic at the time.Two years later, when the National Socialists and Austro Fascists were in power and thus his European career ambitions were destroyed, Carnap was able to make his position clear and did so in several essays and lectures in which he identified metaphysics as a "narcotic that damages reason" (CARNAP, 1934b, p. 176); as "opium for the educated" with the effect of "paralyzing the brains" (CARNAP, 1934a, p. 1); as an "ideological weapon" with which reactionary forces tried to "dissuade people from enlightenment, from rational-scientific analysis of the situation, from wanting change" (Ibid., p. 2)."In this way, the existing order is protected by obfuscation, concealment; linked with the feeling of the sacred, the higher, in order to generate awe, timidity" (Ibid.)."So, if you want change, beware of the traps of pseudo-science, whether in theological or philosophical guise.Whoever wants clarity must throw away the opium" (Ibid., p. 4).What Carnap criticizes here, in the sense of today's prevailing interpretation, was precisely the aim of Heidegger's metaphysics as metapolitics, which he clairvoyantly diagnosed, and which does not necessarily have to be right-wing extremist, totalitarian, or anti-Semitic, but which inevitably has to be anti-rational, illiberal, and propagandistic in its overpowering of the individual's own attitude through argument-free postulation.
Carnap's critical attitude towards metaphysics softened and liberalized during the period of emigration.He now accepted not only metaphysics as poetry, but also metaphysical debates against the background of his framework relativism, which in principle identifies any form of analytical metaphysics as permissible, as long as no cognitive claim to justification is made, for those elements of science and philosophy that Carnap was convinced were noncognitive and thus a question of attitude (BLATTI, LAPOINTE, 2016;CARNAP, 1950).Unsurprisingly, Carnap's criticism of Heidegger remained unaffected by the liberalization of his anti-metaphysics, as it did not refer to the analytical side of metaphysics, but to the anti-rational-metapolitical side promoted by Heidegger.As late as 1967, Carnap maintained the following verdict: "the core Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 of our earlier criticism of metaphysics remains.With regard to Martin Heidegger's remarks, for example, I would still say, as before, that we reject them as completely incomprehensible" (CARNAP und HOCHKEPPEL, 1967, p. 55).

CONCLUSIONS
Friedman's central thesis was that the polarization between analytic and continental philosophy after 1929 had led to extremes that were embodied in the later incompatible philosophies of Heidegger and Carnap, whereas in 1929 this incompatibility had not yet existed.Beyond unproductive polarization, Friedman (2000, p. 159) therefore sees Cassirer's mediating figure as a philosophical blueprint that, from today's perspective, can serve as the starting point for a rapprochement.There are two arguments against this.On the one hand, the break that Friedman only dates to the period after 1929 had already taken place earlier: in 1929, Carnap and Heidegger had long since ceased to have a common basis for discussion.Cassirer, on the other hand, can hardly serve as a starting point for a rapprochement between the philosophical traditions of the 20 th century, as he, unlike Carnap and Heidegger, does not accept the challenges of modernity articulated by Weber.Gabriel (2000, p. 497), on the other hand, bases his diagnosis on Heidegger's and Carnap's decisionist concepts and diagnoses a common basis for both philosophers in that they understand metaphysics as a worldview.This is correct, but from the perspective of this essay it does not lead to a rapprochement insofar as the world views represented by Carnap and Heidegger -the permeation of life with rationality and the banishment of rationality -represent two opposing approaches that were developed from a similar starting point in the philosophy of life.
To subsequently win over Heidegger's anti-rational philosophy for rational thinking seems at least as difficult to imagine as it hardly seems possible to Geltung, vol.2, n. 2, 2022 enrich Carnap's rational philosophy with irrational elements in the style of Heidegger without simultaneously abandoning the rational standpoint.
Nevertheless, a compromise between the two extremes of purely rational and purely irrational thinking is in sight.It lies precisely in Carnap's philosophy itself, which never abandons its lebens-philosophical basis and thus leaves the necessary space for personal attitude and action based on feeling.In its noncognitive foundation, Carnap's philosophy enables precisely the degree of intuition that a science-and rationality-oriented philosophy needs and can tolerate without having to abandon this orientation itself and thus modernity as a whole.