Wilhelm Dilthey and Rudolf Carnap. A Historical and Systematic Study

The project is concerned with the philosophy of science in Wilhelm Dilthey`s Introduction to the Human Sciences and Rudolf Carnap`s The Logical Structure of the World. Though Carnap and Dilthey, at a first glance, represent rather different traditions in philosophy - Dilthey representing the tradition of human sciences ("Geisteswissenschaften") that is committed to a descriptive method of understanding, and Carnap representing the tradition of logical empiricism and philosophy of science as based on the normative method of formal logic - there are surprising common points that suggest a comparative study of these two philosophers. These common points can be identified in a rather systematic way, on the basis of the main works of these two philosophers, but there is also the historical fact that Carnap`s early work developed in the context of a discussion group that mainly comprised people from the Dilthey school: Herman Nohl (Carnap`s teacher in Jena, along with Gottlob Frege and Bruno Bauch) and his students Wilhelm Flitner, Hans Freyer and Franz Roh. On the backdrop of these common points, the project develops two independent case studies on the philosophies of Dilthey and Carnap, which culminate into a comparative part in which both the divergences and convergences between these two philosophers are re-examined. Thus, the project is an attempt to show that the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap is compatible and complementary to that of Wilhelm Dilthey in some respects. Insofar, the project is also an attempt to counteract the received dichotomy of analytic and continental philosophy, understood as two incompatible intellectual traditions. On the other hand, it is by far not the only purpose of the project to directly compare the philosophies of Carnap and Dilthey. In contrast, the direct comparison between the philosophies of Carnap and Dilthey is merely the final goal of this project, whereas its main part is intended as the development of two large historical and systematic case studies, one on Dilthey`s Einleitung and one on Carnap`s Aufbau. These two case studies shall be developed more or less isolated on the secure basis of the respective research literature and with the inclusion of the available archival resources. Moreover, it also has to be noted that purely systematic aspects will play an important role in the project, especially, in the context of an investigation of recent formal and philosophical perspectives for an Aufbau-like program.

The project was concerned with philosophy (of science) in the German philosophical tradition between approx. 1830 and 1930. Its main working hypothesis was that there is a genuinely German variety of empiricism, i.e., a family of empiricist conceptions that mainly can be found in the context of (university) philosophy in the German speaking world in the period in question. I illustrated this firstly on a more general historical and sociological level, by means of a study on certain schools and currents in German university philosophy; secondly (and mainly) by means of three historical case studies, namely, the philosophies of Wilhelm Dilthey, Hermann Cohen, and the early Rudolf Carnap, who all provide interesting examples of German empiricist positions of the form described here. These three case studies were carried out on the basis of three international conferences on Dilthey, Carnap, and Cohen. The main result of my work was a monograph entitled Deutscher Empirismus. Studien zur empiristischen Tradition im deutschen Sprachraum 1830-1930 [German Empiricism. Studies on the Empiricist Tradition in the German Speaking World 1830-1930] which was submitted for habilitation to the Faculty for Philosophy and Education, University of Vienna, in December 2014. Other important aspects of the project were a research stay as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, in spring term 2015, the publication of six articles in international peer reviewed journals, three articles in international peer reviewed anthologies, one book chapter, as well as the edition of three anthologies. The project seamlessly transited to another research project as funded by the FWF (stand alone project P27733, Early Carnap in Context. Three Case Studies and the Diaries). The latter project will run from April 2015 until March 2018; one of its aims will be the development of a historical-critical edition of early Carnaps diaries (1908-1935).