Was heißt das — die Bewandtnis?
pp. 127-136
in: Babette Babich (ed), Hermeneutic philosophy of science, van Gogh's eyes, and God, Berlin, Springer, 2002Abstract
Recent accounts of the historical genesis of logical positivism tie it to the genesis of the analytical-continental split in American philosophy in ways that begin to appreciate why and identify where the "hermeneutic supplement" of continental philosophy is "naturally" evoked in the more recent attempts in philosophy of science to "overcome" positivism. One such account concedes the "interpretative and hermeneutic shallowness of analytic philosophers" due to their "antihistorical approach."1 Another account, which traces the differing approaches toward "overcoming metaphysics" in Carnap and Heidegger back to their different neo-Kantian roots, couches its philosophical conclusions in a final political contrast, reminding us that neo-Kantianism as such was ultimately a philosophy of culture complete with a Kulturpolitik. Carnap's objectivist and universalist concept of philosophy via mathematical logic "best serves the socialist, internationalist, and anti-individualistic aims" of his espoused political philosophy, whereas Heidegger's "particularist, existential-historical conception of philosophy ... based on an explicit rejection of the centrality of logic . . . best serves the neo-conservative and avowedly German-nationalist cultural and political stance" of his would-be Nazism.2
