1 Carnapâs Family and Pietist Roots
Carnapâs forebears are rooted in the so-called Bergisches Land located east of Düsseldorf along the Rhine (Carus 2007, ch. 1). In the 18th century, this area, formerly the dukedom of Berg, belonged most of the time to the (catholic) Electorate Palatinate. From 1815/1822 to 1946 it was part of the Prussian province called Rhenish Prussia or Rhine Province. Today it is an area of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The inhabitants of this region were mainly Protestants of the Reformed Church, a denomination ultimately derived from the French/Swiss reformer Jean Calvin.
Carnap was born in the town of Ronsdorf that was founded by a group of Reformed Protestants from Elberfeld in the early 1740s with some of Carnapâs ancestors among them (Carnap 1957, A-5 f.; cp. Carus 2007, p. 48). They left Elberfeld, then the biggest town in the area, in the late 1730s in order to flee the sinful âBabelâ and to live together in the âNew Jerusalemâ as a religious and âcommunistâ unity of brethren. Their decision was also influenced by the wish to get rid of a suppressive and rigid religious (protestant) orthodoxy that rejected their views. Ronsdorf lies about five km to the south of Elberfeld, separated from it by a mountain. In 1929, both towns, as well as Barmen, eventually became absorbed in the city of Wuppertal, which was called the âGerman Manchesterâ because of the early and brutal industrial development in the area during the 19th century (Langewiesche 1863, p. 10).
The movement was led by a certain Elias Eller (1690â1750) and his second wife Anna Catharina vom Büchel (1698â1743), a bakerâs daughter, who had ecstatic visions, revelations and âinspirationsâ. (For the history of Ellerâs sect
The first preacher the sect called to Elberfeld in 1729 (and later to Ronsdorf in 1741) was the grandfather of the influential philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher.5 We will come back to him later in other contexts. Among the âimmigrantsâ from Elberfeld to Ronsdorf was a certain Wilhelm Caspar Carnap (1679â1749), great-great-great-grandfather of Rudolf Carnap, who, probably through the influence of Daniel Schleyermacher (1697â1765), moved to Ronsdorf in 1742 (Kaufmann 1974, pp. 114â118 & pp. 130â134; Carnap A. 1926, p. 8).
After the early death of the Zionsmutter (Zionâs mother) Büchel in 1743 Eller himself took over the leadership and the movement started slowly but steadily to disintegrate. Ronsdorf lived in constant and serious conflict with all neighbouring church congregations as well as with the authorities of the Reformed Church and suffered from internal disputes and fights. The
Another reason for the perseverance of the movement was economical. Eller had taken over the ribbon factory of his first wife and brought it to Ronsdorf where it flourished. It formed the core of a rapid and on the whole lasting economic upswing of the town. There were in 1819 1100 looms for the production of silk-bands in operation. Eventually, Schleyermacher broke with the Ellerians in 1749 when their relationship after the death of Büchel culminated in mutual estrangement. He was accused by Eller and the second preacher of being a sorcerer for which he was persecuted by state agencies and had to flee in a shambles (cp. Krafft 1890). The sect was eventually excluded from the general synod in 1752.
There are indications that Wilhelm Caspar Carnapâs descendants remained loyal followers of the sect for quite a time; the four younger of his six children were confirmed by Schleyermacher (before his breakup with the sect) and the step-son and successor of Eller, Johannes Bolckhaus, and his brother Jakob acted as godfathers of the great-grandfather of Carnap, Johannes Elias Carnap (1754); there is a high frequency of âEliasâ and âAnnaâ as first names among the Carnaps â Carnapâs grandfather (1789â1859) was called Elias Sebulon (Kaufmann 1974, p. 114 f.).
In 1768, after a painful process, the religious community of Ronsdorf was officially united again with the general synod of the Reformed Church of the area. The gulf between the Lutheran and the Reformed Church existing at the time (Langewiesche 1863, pp. 170â180, p. 199) slowly started to close when the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm iii united the two denominations by law in Prussia in 1817. Yet repeated attempts to implement this unification failed in Ronsdorf (and elsewhere), even until today.6 Max Goebel, one of the chroniclers of the history of the Ronsdorf sect, wrote in 1860: âThe
Carnapâs father Johannes Sebulon8 Carnap (1826â1898), born and deceased at Ronsdorf (as all of Carnapâs paternal forebears since the days of Eller), was a prosperous inkle-weaver with a âsmall but well-established ribbon factoryâ founded in 1861 (Carnap 1957, A-2; see also Carnap A. 1926, pp. 55â63). He had to quit school at the age of ten to work in the weaving business as did his forebears. He educated himself and became a highly respected personality with an independent mind. He held many important public and church offices in his community, among them Presbyter of the Reformed Congregation. In 1887 he entered a third marriage with Anna Dörpfeld. Carnap had an older sister (Agnes Kaufmann, 1890â1976, photograph in Kaufmann 1974, p. 128) and twelve half siblings of his fatherâs side of whom only six survived their father (Kaufmann 1974, p. 132).9
Carnapâs mother became a schoolteacher like her father. Sixteen-year-old Carnap wrote in his diary that his mother was philosophisch angelegt, âhad a disposition for philosophyâ (10. iii. 1908 = Carnap 2021, p. 70). She devoted her life to expounding the views of her father who had lived many years of his life in her household. In his Intellectual Autobiography (cp. Siegetsleitner 2019), Carnap further reported that when he was a child, âmy mother worked for years on a large book describing the life, work, and ideas of her late fatherâ (Carnap 1963, p. 3). The book came out in 1897 and contains many letters and
It is interesting to learn from this book that Dörpfeld (born in Wermelskirchen-Sellscheid, 10 km to the south of Ronsdorf) was tutored mainly by his grandparents. His maternal grandmother came from a pastorâs family and is reported to have formed his soul and emotional life. The maternal grandfather, hence, Carnapâs great-great-grandfather, was a siamose-weaver and simple peasant. (On the Dörpfeld family see also Kaufmann 1974a, pp. 157â176; Goebel 1995, p. 150.) He founded a circle of interested neighbours who came together during evenings to read and discuss philosophical, scientific, mathematical and geographical works âin sparse lamplight and doing ample justice to tobacco smokeâ. Young Friedrich Wilhelm was introduced to this circle from early on. It was here that a âsearching philosophical sense was awakened in the boyâ (Carnap A. 1903, pp. 16â18; see also p. 33 f.).
The Dörpfelds were Lutherans and therefore arguably not directly related to the Ronsdorf brand of Pietism. In a brief overview of the religious history of the Rhine Province, Dörpfeld later stressed the role of 18th century Pietism in revivifying the quarrelling, stiff and even, as he wrote, âdrowsyâ orthodoxy (Dörpfeld 1860). It is curious that he altogether ignored here the Zionite episode â also in other writings. Dörpfeld pointed out that towards the end of the century âRationalismâ started to gain a strong foothold in theology and Pietism withdrew from the scene. Only after the Napoleonic Wars (1800â1814), he wrote, a milder Pietism resurged in the area without however the liveliness of the earlier movement, remaining somewhat dull and often uninteresting (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 14 f.).
As an antidote, Dörpfeld propagated the âdeep mysticismâ of the religious writer and local hymnist Gerhard Tersteegen (1697â1769) and the âbiblical-theosophical profundityâ of the Swabian school of Pietism. He found an attractive reconciliation of these two traditions with each other in the teachings of the lay theologian and physician Samuel Collenbusch (1724â1803) â a local Pietist and harsh critique of Kantâs ethics and philosophy of religion (ibid. See also Carnap A. 1903, pp. 276â282, p. 287 f.). Yet, he never officially identified himself with Pietism of any form and refused a rigid definition of his own Protestant affiliation propagating an eclectic and independent approach instead (cp. Carnap A. 1903, pp. 276â282, p. 35). He characteristically said that âfreedom outranks âpure doctrineââ (Carnap A. 1903, p. 344).
From early on, Dörpfeld wanted to become a teacher and was soon assigned by his schoolteacher as an assistant for instructing the lower classes of the
The pedagogical movement of Herbartianism started as a reform programme around the middle of the 19th century and, at least until wwi, turned into a virtual mass movement among German teachers, which somewhat diminished after the turn of the century. (It also had many followers in the US, up until at least wwi.) It was directed against arbitrariness in teaching and mere rote learning in the schools. Scientific psychology was thought to furnish a scientific foundation for teaching. One of the leading American Herbartians, Charles de Garmo, aptly observed that the âburning questionsâ of Herbartianism pertain, âfirst, to the selection and sifting of suitable subject-matter in the various studies; then to its rational articulation or coördination; and finally, to the truest and best methods of teaching it to the childâ (De Garmo 1895, p. vi). This movement of âHerbartianismâ should be distinguished from Herbartian philosophy proper in a narrow sense and also from Herbart-inspired Völkerpsychologie (approximately: psychology of ethnic communities) â although there are some overlaps. These movements took up different elements of Herbartâs thought and were considerably heterogeneous for their part. All three Herbartian movements started to gain importance beyond local boundaries only after Herbartâs death.
In 1851 Dörpfeld married the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, Christine Keller (1824â1871), who bore to him six children â among them the son Wilhelm (1853â1940), hence Carnapâs uncle who studied architecture and later became
Dörpfeld stood out for the deep scientific interest in education and psychology. He had been a board member of the Association for Scientific Pedagogy since its foundation in 1868 and committed himself to many associations for teachers, regularly organizing local and regional conferences, also in bible study and religious instruction (Carnap A. 1903, p. 282 f.). His lecture and publication activities grew steadily. He was a typical Schulmann, as one said in the 19th century: a largely self-educated pedagogue and instructor emphatically raising his voice in the public on educational matters and being devoted heart and soul to his profession. He was called âking of principalsâ and âmaster of the art of teachingâ. People said that he could easily have filled a university chair for pedagogy.
In 1872, the new school-minister of Prussia under Bismarck, Adalbert Falk, initiated a wide-ranging school-reform (âDie allgemeinen Bestimmungenâ) to whose preparation committee in Berlin Dörpfeld was appointed as the only elementary school teacher (among many directors of seminaries and school inspectors).12 At this meeting, which lasted over a week, he strongly (but unsuccessfully) advocated the introduction of Gesellschaftslehre (civic studies, social teaching) as a new school subject (Goebel 1995, p. 267 f.). However, the committee was successful in introducing psychology as a subject in the formation of teachers and Dörpfeld subsequently gave several (mostly triennial) courses on Herbartian psychology on a regular basis attracting many teachers from near and afar. Incidentally, he dedicated the first year of the course to logic (Dörpfeld 1884, p. xxivâxxvi, Carnap A. 1903, p. 269). The fruit of these courses was a popular booklet on Thought and Memory, an introduction to Herbartian psychology especially for educators that built on a small pamphlet from 1866 and received fourteen editions until 1915 (Dörpfeld 1884)! The booklet includes a concise treatment of mathematics instruction, especially of the role of intuition and memorization in this field, with an interesting discussion of the nature of numbers as relational concepts (Dörpfeld 1884, pp. 145â151).
Unfortunately, Dörpfeld had to leave the profession already in 1880 for reasons of health after having spent 31 years as principal of a Lutheran school in Barmen-Wupperfeld in the area. An English Herbartian, Frank Herbert Hayward (1872â1954), who studied some time in Jena with the Herbartian Wilhelm Rein (and most probably had met Dörpfeld in person), called him âthe greatest and wisest of Herbartâs followersâ (Hayward 1904, p. 88; cp. also p. 57 and Hayward 1903, p. 35). Dörpfeldâs publications are collected in twelve volumes (1894â1911) and most have seen a second edition; two are on pedagogical psychology, three on special didactics, one comprises his addresses, three are on school organization, two on miscellaneous subjects and one volume on ethics that will occupy us in more detail below.
The foregoing account of the Pietist roots of Carnapâs family shows first that having been decisively marked by Pietism was not just an anecdotal and harmless side issue as it appears from Carnapâs Intellectual Autobiography â also not in a philosophical respect. And second, that for freeing himself from any irrational and anti-Enlightenment currents that must have affected him, and for striking out new paths in thought, Carnap could partly build on groundwork of members of his family, even though they were at the same time also (partially) transmitters of a problematic and sometimes even fanatical tradition.
2 The Philosophy of J.F. Herbart
herbart 1816, p. 402, § 198/1891, p. 154 f. The name of Fichte was inserted here by the translator
It was an error of idealism, violent in its creation, and adhered to with equal violence that the Ego opposes to itself a Non-ego (Fichte), as if the negation of the Ego were inherent in objects. In this way a thou or a he would never originate â another personality than oneâs own would never be recognized.
It holds true what George Santayana wrote in 1889 that â[t]o Herbart belongs the leadership of the reaction against the Hegelian idealismâ and we can add: against German idealism in general (Santayana 1889, p. 142).
After his studies in Jena, Herbart worked for some time in Switzerland as a private tutor for the children of a wealthy family. Mainly as a result of this experience and of shortly meeting the Swiss educational reformer Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746â1827), he developed a strong interest in pedagogical and educational matters. He became a Privatdocent and later professor for pedagogy at the University of Göttingen and began to devote himself to seriously working out an educational philosophical system. His fame spread and in 1809 he was offered the vacant chair of Immanuel Kant at the University of Königsberg with the new denomination of âphilosophy and pedagogyâ. He soon ventured there on the founding of a College or Seminar for the training of teachers. In 1833 he was called back to the University of Göttingen where he became one of the most popular and most respected professors. He died there at the age of 65 in 1841. During his lifetime, his philosophy did not radiate much beyond the local centres of his professional activity â but this changed, slowly but steadily. With the Austrian Thun-Hohenstein university reforms after 1848 mainly instigated by the philosopher Franz Serafin Exner (1802â1853), Herbartâs philosophy even came to dominate university philosophy in Austria for a long time, and Herbartianism became the âofficialâ orientation of the Austrian educational system (Heidelberger 2004, p. 64).
One of Herbartâs students in Göttingen, Karl Volkmar Stoy (1815â1885), founded a pedagogical seminary at Jena University in 1844, also with some kind of a lab or practice school associated with it. The Herbartian educator and university professor Wilhelm Rein (1847â1929) who was for a brief time a teacher at the school in Barmen where Dörpfeld was principal took over this institution in 1886. He developed it into a centre of worldwide reputation to which teachers flocked from all over the world, especially the United States,
2.1 Concepts and Ideas
According to Herbart, the task of philosophy is the reworking of concepts (Bearbeitung der Begriffe; Herbart 1813, p. 38 f., § 4; 1814, p. 324 and many other places), either their form or their content. Logic results from dealing with their form, metaphysics and aesthetics with their content. Metaphysics is the activity of correcting and extending concepts in order to avoid and dissolve inconsistencies. Aesthetics deals with the valuation of concepts, whether one approves or disapproves of them; it therefore includes also practical philosophy. In his metaphysics Herbart taught that the substrate of the world is constituted by so-called ârealsâ or âsimple beingsâ (einfache Wesen) of simple (and single) unchanging qualities â noumena or space- and timeless metaphysical atoms, in some respect resembling Leibnizâs monads. They have the capacity of self-preservation against annihilation with which other reals threaten them. The soul as a real is a noumenon experiencing phenomena. It should be recognized that Herbartâs view of the âsoulâ, notwithstanding the terminology he used, was anything but traditional. He did not mean by âsoulâ a substance in the sense of Leibniz and Christian Wolff or of the Aristotelian and Cartesian traditions. On the contrary, his view led to a questioning of traditional mind-body notions. If here and there he used âsubstanceâ for the soul, he simply meant this as an alternative expression for a ârealâ or âsimple beingâ.15
However, Herbart observed, most concepts that are inevitable for expressing experiences lead to inconsistencies. They result, at least partially, from the necessity to regard things (including minds) as unchangeable and yet simultaneously as changing, i.e., as assuming different states in the course of time. In order to avoid such contradictions, we must distinguish between two modes of existence of a thing: its existence as appearance for us and its existence independent of it. In order to explain change in a consistent manner we must assume that whatever exists behind the appearances must have a forever unchanging nature and that change has its source exclusively on the level of the appearances. It is the relation of reals to other reals that gives the impression that things undergo changes: Things have thus to be seen as a collection of reals, and properties of things are to be exclusively thought of as extrinsic properties of the reals in relation to other reals (Methode der Beziehungen). Therefore, in order to explain why a thing or soul changes, we must assume that it participates in some antagonism in which it tries to retain its identity. Self-preservation is thus the only true change that can be thought of without contradiction.
As soon as we try to describe the forms of our experience, Herbart argued, we again end up with conflicting concepts like the concept of matter: A material thing is a finite quantity of matter but at the same time a quantity of infinitely many parts that are themselves pieces of matter. Similarly, with the I: On the one hand the I or ego is something that remains identical in all its changing states of envisaged ideas. On the other hand, it is nothing but the sum of the different changing ideas that it knows as its own states. The I is thus both the entity that envisages ideas as well as the collection of ideas envisaged â a process that leads to an infinite regress.
If someone attempted to stand on my shoulders in order to see farther than I, he would at least not have to worry that the soil under my feet would collapse. For I do not stand on the sole peak of the ego (as one could believe on superficial examination [and as Fichte did]) but my basis is as broad as experience in its totality.
herbart 1824, p. x
Herbartâs psychology would perhaps not be so interesting and influential (apart from opening a new perspective on the mind-body problem) were it not for a concept that he placed at its centre, the concept of apperception. (For the history of this concept that was highly important for Herbartians see the work of the Herbartian Lange 1894/Lange 1906.) The concept goes of course back to Leibniz who thought that weak perceptions (petites perceptions), although playing a significant role especially for most of our actions, lack distinct consciousness and remembrance. Strong impressions, however, or large aggregates of weak perceptions become conscious and remain long in memory â they are called apperceptions. We must distinguish âPerception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, from Apperception as the consciousness (conscience) or the reflective cognition (connaissance réflexive) of that internal stateâ (Leibniz 1714, p. 156, § 4). Animals can have some kind of apperception according to Leibniz, but human beings alone are capable of a true reflexive capacity. In this way, Leibniz rejected Descartesâs opinion that every perceptio (perception) is a cogitatio (conscious thought), i.e., something âwhich we are aware of as happening within usâ (Descartes 1644, p. 7, § 9).19
While adopting this, Herbart went a decisive step further than Leibniz by asking (in an educationist manner) how impressions or ideas can be raised to higher consciousness and thus be strengthened in their apperception. In order to answer this, one has, according to Herbart, to investigate the empirical laws describing the behaviour of ideas in different situations. One has specially to consider how new ideas are affected by previous experience. Herbart thus stressed recognition and understanding resulting from memory over mere sense-perception. Apperception is for him the mental assimilation of new
Herbart is known for his claim that consciousness has a certain narrowness: From all the innumerable ideas that arise in experience only a limited number can be held in consciousness at a specific moment. Only those ideas remain in consciousness that are victorious in their struggle with other ideas. We must distinguish, he maintained, being in consciousness from being an object of consciousness: An idea can be in consciousness, yet at the same time remain under the threshold of being perceived. In this case it is not an object of consciousness (Cp. Herbart 1824, p. 218). One can nevertheless be affected by it as we often realize only after a suitable event has taken place. Herbart stressed the relevance of this for our actions: Very often we are not conscious of the real motive of our action which at best might dawn upon us only later.21
Herbartâs concept of apperception allows an empirical application of his psychology to teaching and instruction and can thus serve as a bridge between psychology and pedagogy. It opens the possibility to order the teaching content into phases such that each phase is the precondition in memory for improving the apperception in the following one. It can also provide guiding principles for finding the adequate method of a certain teaching phase and of implementing a teaching content in an economical and effective way in order to avoid redundancy but also overload of subjects. In this respect, space is too limited here to give a better impression of the sophisticated work that was done by Herbart and his followers.22
2.2 Logic
It is true that logic is concerned with representations [Vorstellungen]. But not with the act of representing: therefore, neither with the mode and the manner of how we get thereto [to this act] nor with the state of mind in which we thereby find ourselves. Rather only with that which is represented.
herbart 1808, p. 259; cp. bellucci 2015, p. 72 f.
And later he wrote that âall our thoughts can be regarded from two perspectives, partly as activities of our mind, partly with respect to what is thought through them.â The former perspective would be psychological, the latter logical. He also said that âin logic, it is necessary to ignore everything that is psychologicalâ and spoke of âthe indispensable elimination [Ausscheidung] of anything psychologicalâ from logic (Herbart 1813, p. 67 f., § 34. Cp. also Herbart 1814, p. 326 f., 1825, p. 118, § 119).23
Any thought (Jedes Gedachte) [â¦] is a concept in the logical sense. [â¦] The thinking subject [denkendes Subjekt] is irrelevant; one can apply concepts [to a thinking subject] only in a psychological sense whereas the concept of a human being, a triangle etc. does not properly belong to anybody. A concept in the logical sense generally exists only once. This could not be the case if the number of concepts would increase with the subjects envisaging them, or even with the different acts of thinking through which a concept is produced and aroused.
herbart 1825, p. 119, § 120
All our thoughts can be regarded from two sides; partly as activities of our mind, partly regarding what is thought through them. In the latter respect they are called concepts. This term, in signifying what is comprehended,
herbart 1813, p. 67, § 34demands an abstraction from the manner, in which we might receive thoughts, produce or reproduce them.
The subjectively-formal Logic24 â that which is promulgated by the schools of Kant and Herbart â puts the forms of thought out of all relation to the forms of existence. Metaphysical Logic, on the other hand, as Hegel constructed it, identifies the two kinds of forms [thought and existence], and thinks that it can recognise in the self-development of pure thought the self-production of existence.
ueberweg 1857, p. v/1871, p. xi
kant 1800, p. 4/1885, p. 3
Just because it abstracts altogether from objects [â¦] it cannot be an organon of the sciences. By an organon we mean an instruction how some particular branch of knowledge is to be attained. [â¦] Logic [â¦] cannot meddle with the sciences, and anticipate their matter, and is therefore only a universal Art of Reason.
That means that logic is formal only for the general employment of the understanding, not for the special one (see Kantâs Critique of Pure Reason, B 76â79; MacFarlane 2002, esp. pp. 43â46; Heis 2012, pp. 98â100; Heinemann 2017, pp. 32â34). Herbart, however, as Ueberweg noted, âentirely separates from Logic, and refers to Metaphysics, the question of the significance of the forms of thought in knowledgeâ (Ueberweg 1857, p. 45 f./1871, p. 60)!25 Ueberweg meant here to say: in contrast to Kant who included it into his (transcendental) logic.
Consequently, there always remained doubts whether Kant had not thwarted his views on analytic formal logic by expanding it in the Critique of Pure Reason to a âtranscendentalâ and thus synthetic logic being anything but formal. Herbart characterised this kind of logic as âan attempt to show the completeness of the categories as alleged primary conceptions of the understanding â which belongs to psychologyâ and has thus to be rejected (Herbart 1843, p. 611 f.). He also wrote that âso-called transcendental logic pretending to prove originally innate concepts or forms of cognition is nothing else than a failed chapter of psychologyâ (Herbart 1831, p. 329 f., § 335). The Berlin philosopher Friedrich Harms (1819â1880), in his History of Logic, even dared to write in a similar spirit that it was âKant, who, by discovering [in transcendental logic] the source of ontological concepts in the forms of [synthetic a priori] cognition, became the founder of metaphysical logicâ (Harms 1881, p. 222).26
Compared to Kantâs view Herbartâs formalist position in logic was thoroughly unambiguous and straightforward and did not differentiate between
The dynamics in the later debate of the century on the âlogic questionâ was upheld by an almost steady generation of intermediate positions between Herbart and/or Kantâs general logic on the one side and Hegel or other metaphysical views on the other (on this debate see also Gabriel 2017, pp. 15â22). These positions tried to argue for some relevance of logic for reality (or of actual practice of thought for logic) without, on the one hand, falling prey to Hegelian exaggeration or Kantian transcendentalism or, on the other hand, to the complete neutrality of Herbartâs formalism for content.
In 1840, the philosopher Adolf Trendelenburg (1802â1872) proposed an attractive middle course that elegantly circumvented entrenched frontlines. In a clever move, he called none other than Aristotle to witness that logic serves (and has always served) as an organon of the sciences. He criticized thus both formal and Hegelian logic.27 Formal logic (both in Herbartâs and in Kantâs clothing), he held, is incapable of discovering the real and relevant forms of thought because it ignores any reference to the contents of thought. But then again Hegelian logic is unable to deduce reality and its development solely from the self-movement of thought. Whenever Hegel claimed to have achieved this in his writings, Trendelenburg argued, one can always find an illegitimate use of intuition (Anschauung). We must thus conclude, he claimed, that cognition is enabled by something that thought and reality have in common. He ultimately found this common element in Bewegung (motion, movement, change). Although only very few could follow him on this, his conception was seen as putting logic back into the realm of genuine Erkenntnistheorie or Theorie der Wissenschaft. The general employment of the understanding thus
Trendelenburgâs proposal has an air of tragedy around it because it was not at all intended as a backward-looking enterprise of revaluing Aristotle and thereby even more increasing the isolation of contemporary philosophy vis-Ã -vis the developing sciences. No, he wished for just the opposite, namely, to make formal logic (and thereby philosophy) more relevant for the sciences: âI had the wish in mind, to make logic, by taking full account of the individual sciences, in its reasons more experienced, more significant in itself and thereby more fruitful to the outsideâ (Trendelenburg 1840, i, p. viii). Whereas for Kant formal logic âhas been unable to take a single step forwardâ since the time of Aristotle (B viii), Trendelenburg conversely recommended Aristotle as someone who has taken the needed step forward already long ago, thus becoming logicâs reformer for the present and the future.
The Aristotelian apprehension âof the forms of thought [as seen by Schleiermacher and Trendelenburg] holds a middle place between the subjectively-formal and the metaphysical Logics. [â¦] Aristotle, equally far from both extremes, sees thinking to be the picture of existence, a picture which is different from its real correlate and yet related to it, which corresponds to it and yet is not identical with it.â
ueberweg 1857, p. v/1871, p. xi
Ueberweg himself had strong sympathies with Trendelenburgâs and especially with Schleiermacherâs views on logic and consequently propagated âgeneral Logic [â¦] as a theory of knowledge [ErkenntniÃlehre]â (Ueberweg 1857, p. viii/1871, p. xii). For the rest of the century, the discussion in Germany on logic mainly turned around the dichotomy between a purely formal logic
Trendelenburg complained in 1846 that his objections of 1840 to Herbartâs conception of logic had not met an answer yet (Trendelenburg 1846, p. 354). Another five years had to pass until the school of Herbart developed effective counterarguments. The Leipzig logician, mathematician and Herbartian philosopher Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802â1896) took the occasion of the second edition of his New Exposition of Logic to scrutinize and criticize, especially in the foreword, anti-formalist arguments in Trendelenburg and in general (Drobisch 1851. For Drobisch see Heinemann 2017, ch. 4; Vilkko 2002, pp. 39â49, pp. 74â78; Vilkko 2009, p. 207 f.; Heis 2019, pp. 44â52). Drobisch had already contributed before, especially through favourable reviews in journals, to promote Herbartâs philosophy and make it more widely known and acceptable. In the first edition of the New Exposition of 1836, Drobisch had vehemently supported Herbartâs formalist conception of logic: âLogic is indeed nothing else than pure formalism, it does not want to be and should not be anything elseâ (Drobisch 1836, vi). For his critique of formal logic, Trendelenburg had chosen Drobisch as one of two authors as targets (Trendelenburg 1840, i, p. 7).
It is not true Drobisch argued in 1851 that formal logic separates, as Trendelenburg claims, thinking from its subject-matter and thus inappropriately presupposes the existence of âpure thoughtâ. On the contrary, he said, logic does not know forms without content but only forms that are independent of any particular content that remains indeterminate and accidental for logic (Drobisch 1851, p. iv; see also p. 5 and later).28 This move, it seems, opened up new vistas for a discussion of the nature of mathematical entities and of their existence.
It is remarkable that Drobisch draws here an analogy between logic and geometry: Basic geometrical forms obtain by abstracting from the sensible properties of observable objects. Yet geometry does not content itself with these abstractions but arrives, through the âcombinationâ of basic forms, at âideal constructionsâ (ideelle Constructionen) that âpartly appear as aliens in
This also applies to logic, Drobisch maintained. Although pure logic âis certainly a demonstrative science, it has to draw its beginnings from empirical facts. Before it can proceed to progressively link concepts with each other, it has to regressively abstract the elements to be linked from these factsâ (p. viii). Logical truths, however, only depend on the âagreement of forms of thought with each other, of thought with its own principles. This agreement and nothing else is what we mean by logical truthâ (p. v). This view implies a subtle modification of the radical formalist outlook of the first edition and a sophisticated concession to the epistemological view of logic à la Trendelenburg, without, however, giving up the idea of the creative freedom of the mathematician or logician (it also clearly moves away from logical universalism, e.g. in the later sense of Bertrand Russell: namely logic as understood as maximally general truths, thus preparing the way for Wittgensteinâs view of logic as a system of tautologies).
The assessment of the material truth of what is given to thought [â¦] lies outside the scope of logic. Logic can stand up for nothing more than that, if the given has material truth, then also what is deduced from it has it. This fact, however, does not diminish the value and significance of logic, because it specifies the only secure way to indirectly reach true findings.
Drobisch 1851, p. 7
Drobischâs turn nevertheless remains a clear rebuff to any stronger claims of an epistemological (or metaphysical) conception of logic (in the sense of Trendelenburg, Ueberweg and others) and thus an effective defence of Herbartâs formalist outlook.
2.3 Aesthetics and Ethics
What remains to be discussed is Herbartâs conception of ethics. Herbart thought that ethics (including the theory of natural law in the legal sense) and aesthetics are based on âimmutable determinations of valueâ or âvalue assessmentsâ (Werthbestimmungen) (Herbart 1813, p. 44, § 4). The most general assessments are approval and disapproval, praise and blame. Since ethics and aesthetics are similar in this respect, they must be subsumed under a joint general category, which Herbart chose to call âaestheticsâ as well. They are also similar in their not judging objects or states of affairs individually but only relations among them. Perhaps because of his pedagogic practice and insight, Herbart thought that simple value assessments or âaesthetic judgmentsâ are based on original and intuitive evidence and cannot be derived from other judgments with non-aesthetic predicates. âIn the subject matters of logic, ethics and indeed the whole of aesthetics one has to deal with subjects that occur with an immediate evidence â a sort of evidence that is alien to the whole nature of metaphysics, in which knowledge can be acquired only through the elimination of errorâ (Herbart 1813, p. 221, § 131, note to 4th ed.).
Value judgments are of a twofold nature for Herbart: First, the subject of the judgment must be comprehended or recognized as such without any help or addition of elements of preference or rejection. This is called the âtheoretical ideaâ of the subject. Any value judgment presupposes such an independent idea. As soon as a predicate is added to this subject expressing approval or disapproval in an âimmediate and spontaneous wayâ a judgment of an aesthetic nature is formed (Herbart 1831, p. 80). It is hard to say whether Herbart wants the âtheoretical ideaâ to which a value is added to be a statement in its own right asserting the existence of a certain subject or whether he just wants to say that our idea of the subject must be clear and stand-alone without having the valuing predicate considered yet. In an early text, Herbart maintained that the difference between an Erkenntnis, i.e., a judgment of recognition, and a
Herbart admitted that there is the great danger of connotations or biased opinions interfering and thereby obscuring and distorting the immediate evidence of value and rendering it impure (Herbart 1813, pp. 105â109, § 72â76). Such interferences are one reason why aesthetic judgments are commonly thought to be wholly subjective and arbitrary. There is an important parallel to logic for Herbart in this respect: In the same way as logic must find its objective subject matter underneath a psychological jumble, so aesthetics has the task of identifying the simple reactions to the âbeautifulâ and âuglyâ (in the general sense that includes âgoodâ and âevilâ) among the admixtures of metaphysics and psychology. According to Herbart, the reason for the existence of objective ethical judgments not being as commonly accepted as the objectivity of the logic of judgments lies in the lower maturity in the current state of the philosophical discussion of aesthetic judgments compared to the one in logic. He thought that the scientific character of logic has already been accepted for a long time whereas the struggle for a scientific conception of ethics is only of recent origin and needs more persuasive philosophical effort.30
Another parallel between aesthetics and logic is for Herbart their extensionality: The value (whether aesthetic or logical) of a complex sentence depends only on the values of its simple ingredients. The immediate evidence, absolute validity and relentless rigidity of an aesthetic judgment that Herbart assumes only applies, however, to elementary judgments. Since works of art are highly composite, elementary aesthetic judgments fuse into indeterminate feelings. This leads also to the appearance of uncertainty, variability and subjectivity of aesthetic judgments and thus to the seeming difference from logical ones.
Ethics differs from aesthetics (in the narrow sense) by its subject matter: it judges the quality of volitions (or rather of relations between them). Yet it does not judge them according to their capacity to fulfil certain goals (especially not the goal of happiness or welfare), but rather according to the different relations into which wanting beings can enter with each other. Both ethics and aesthetics are disinterested â in this rejection of eudemonism Herbart shared Kantâs view. For this reason, âbeautifulâ is for Herbart not to be confused with âpleasantâ or âusefulâ: these are properties relating to our emotions but not to intrinsic qualities of volition.
Herbartâs ethics is thus of a non-cognitive nature because value judgments cannot be reduced to factual judgments and hence are not empirically verifiable as they are. Yet it also has a sort of a cognitive character since elementary value judgments can be correct or incorrect, at least as a matter of principle. Their ethical form, so to speak, must be detected in a laborious process of going beyond any psychological or metaphysical deformation and disguise on the surface. To detect the ethical form resembles the process of finding the logical form of a judgment below its immediate appearance, except that it is much more difficult and contested as in the case of logic. One can see here the educator at work: It would be a complete failure of education to teach children only the non-cognitive side of ethics. Note that Herbart does not invoke any supernatural foundation for ethical insight. Moral education, or indeed education as such, is for him the development of the power of ethical judgment and orientation. In this he also differs from Kantian ethics.
The most important aspect of Herbartâs ethics, however, both from a systematic and an historical viewpoint, is its rejection of Kantâs metaphysics of free will. For Herbart it is deeply inadequate and completely meaningless to regard, as Kant does, human beings as belonging to two separate realms, the sensual realm of experience and the intelligible realm of things in themselves, and to locate free self-determination of humans only in the latter. From the beginning of his philosophical career Herbart was convinced that education is impossible if one takes Kantian ethics in this sense seriously. Kant is for him a fatalist because his conception makes formation of character through
3 Dörpfeldâs Herbartian Philosophy and Religious Outlook
There were two relatives, both highly revered by my mother, whom I regarded from childhood as models of men, admirable for the fact that in their scholarly field they did not simply follow traditional ways but searched for their own new paths. One was my maternal grandfather, the other my uncle [Wilhelm].
carnap 1957, A-7
He explicitly related central features of his own philosophy to his motherâs influence and thereby to the influence of his grandfather, especially his ideas on tolerance, humanism and ethical non-cognitivism (Carnap 1957, A8-A15). He read the Dörpfeld biography at least in 1922 with his mother, as his diary testifies (September 12, Carnap 2022), but we can undoubtedly assume that he was familiar with it already much earlier. The biography was a sort of a life project for his mother occupying and dominating her thoughts until her death in 1924. The book contains a wealth of material on Dörpfeldâs Herbartianism and Pietism, although the Zionite episode (of which Carnap was aware as already reported above) is once again strangely absent.31
We will now turn in detail to the book âOn Ethicsâ (Dörpfeld 1895) that among Dörpfeldâs writings arguably exerted the most important influence on Carnap. A leading question will be how Dörpfeld combined Herbartianism with his religious orientation. Carnap reported that his mother had already read this book to him and his sister when he was still a child. He admitted that he is ânot sure whether we children quite understood these ideasâ (Carnap
âOn Ethicsâ is the writing of Dörpfeld that stands out most for its philosophical orientation â perhaps it is even the most philosophical one of them.33 Dörpfeld himself attributed to it a scientific character (Dörpfeld 1895, p. xii) and judged it as the âmost revolutionaryâ of his writings: âThere is arguably no part of theology that is not unsettled by it,â he said (Carnap A. 1903, p. 560). He worked on it for 30 years and attached great importance to it (Carnap A. 1903, p. 443).
The text was planned as a large-scale treatise but was never finished. A large part of it was published posthumously in 1895 by Dörpfeldâs son-in-law, the clergyman Gustav von Rohden (1855â1942) who married a younger sister of Anna and Wilhelm, Agnes (1858â1907). The final intended structure of the book is not entirely clear. It seems that the part entitled âThe Secret Shackles of Scientific and Practical Theology: A Contribution to Apologeticsâ (Dörpfeld 1895, pp. 1â183) presents the main argument, as also the editor assumes (ibid. p. xviii). It comprises three chapters: âThe evidence of ethicsâ (philosophically speaking the most important part), âThe significance of ethics for religion and theologyâ and âThe mixing of ethics and dogmatics, or: the false dogma of the moral and obligatory nature of faith.â During the last years of his life, Dörpfeld gave a précis of these chapters in more colloquial terms in a lengthy letter to his son Wilhelm that is reprinted in the biography (Carnap A. 1903, pp. 444â465; see also pp. 396â399 and p. 558 f.). It is unknown whether Dörpfeld collaborated with anyone in working on his book. Apart from Herbart, hardly any other author is mentioned in the text. It is probable, however, that there was one or the other academic among his circle of acquaintances who gave him advice.
The central claim of the work is that ethics and not religious belief forms the basis both of theology and of religion and that ethics is independent of religion or any Weltanschauung (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 51, p. xxviii). Ethics neither flows from the doctrinal part of theology, i.e., from dogmatics, nor from the bible or from the concept of God, but the other way around: dogmatics crucially depends on ethics (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 47, also p. 50 f.). Dörpfeld basically put forth two arguments to support this view: First, in following Herbart, he maintained that
Dörpfeld contended further that received theology does not think this way and relies instead on the âscholastic methodâ or the âmethod of authorityâ in its understanding of ethics as an outgrowth of the bible, of theology or of tradition. He thought that theology places itself into fetters by following these methods. â[E]thics and not dogmatics is the fundamental discipline of theology. From this it follows further that ethics must be developed and taught [â¦] in a rational way as deriving from its own source of knowledgeâ (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 50; cp. also p. xxvi). The ârationalâ and âgeneticâ method (which he also thought characterizes logic) is the only reasonable one for ethics, Dörpfeld argued, also for a scientific pedagogy.35 Dörpfeld emphatically invoked the name of Herbart in all this and regarded him as the first to have shown the possibility of a fully elaborated rational science of ethics â âscienceâ in the same sense as logic is a science (Dörpfeld 1895, p. xxxi).36
In addition, he thought, one must realize that the scholastic approach bears an eminent risk: If someone has doubts about an article of religious faith and cannot but reject it, this will, under the premises of the scholastic method, inevitably result in a loss of trust in religious authority. But when trust is lost and ethics is believed to be dependent on authority, not only dogmatics is abandoned in the end but also ethics. This is the reason, according to Dörpfeld, why so many educated people turn their back on religion and neglect ethics in the way as it is taught by the church (Dörpfeld 1895, p. xxvii). If, however, ethics is
Acknowledging an autonomous ethics also means acknowledging the existence of sin. Admitting the latter inevitably leads to a moral dilemma. As a result, Dörpfeld thinks, a yearning for liberation from inner conflict develops in people and the conviction arises that redemption cannot come from the individual alone, but only from an outside authority. Expressed in religious terms, this amounts to an âinner revelation of Godâ, even if the person in conflict is not aware of a divine inspiration (Carnap A. 1903, p. 445). At this point theology has a chance to win back the religious sceptics without patronizing them or instigating fear in them or the like. Religious âdogmaticsâ can now come into play in a much less doctrinaire way, as knowledge of the âouter revelation of Godâ in creation and in salvation. This is not a revelation of âdoctrines, theorems, wordsâ but of âdeeds, works, eventsâ (p. 446).37 It must be really called tragic for Dörpfeld that his grandson Rudolf would not develop an inner conflict in Dörpfeldâs sense, or if he did, he did not resolve it in the way Dörpfeld had predicted.
Her father had always strongly emphasized that in the education of a childâs character, the moral principles should be based only on the childâs own conscience and not on Godâs will. He criticized the church severely for making ethics dependent upon theology, because once young people would begin to doubt the dogmas they would also be in danger of losing their moral ground.
carnap 1957, A-8 f.
dörpfeld 1895, p. 2
the axioms used by mathematics come from logic, and their whole deduction is based on the theorems that logic has established about concepts, judgments, inferences. The evidence of mathematics thus depends on the evidence of logic, and mathematics can be evident only if logic is. From this it further follows that, if we rank the sciences according to the degree of their evidence, then it is not mathematics that deserves the highest place, but logic.
This is a short, but nevertheless full-fledged statement of logicism, perhaps somewhat clumsily formulated (compared to later standards) and rather sweeping, yet clear enough, at least for Dörpfeldâs purposes.
It is the task of logic to find the forms of correct thinking, i.e., the formal marks of the correct concepts, correct judgments, correct inferences etc. In other words, it must find the formal characteristics, which thought-structures [Denkgebilde] of all realms of knowledge carry with them when they are convincing for anybody.
dörpfeld 1895, p. 2
It is quite natural that the concepts from which mathematics starts are originally abstracted from experience, but then they are ideally [ideell] conceived. That means one refrains from asking whether they can be so perfectly represented in reality. This is the reason why mathematics always says: if such and such a concept (e.g., a triangle) is dealt with, then etc.
dörpfeld 1895, fn. on p. 241
Dörpfeldâs characterization of mathematics and its relation to logic sounds very modern indeed and one must search for long among his contemporaries, even among professional mathematicians, to find a voice talking in a comparable way. In addition, it is also original since no-one at the time, as far as I know, seems to have tried to argue for logicism by means of the concept of evidence. And hardly anyone discussed the role of logic within the total system of knowledge including its application in non-logical fields.
This is not yet all what Dörpfeld had to say about logic because all he has shown so far is that the evidence of mathematics is grounded in the evidence of logic. But what is the evidence of logic and where does it come from? It starts, according to Dörpfeld, as all search for truth does, with naturally occurring
This is the place where one has to look. From then on logical research took the route that all empirical sciences [â¦] had to take, namely of comparing and abstracting and the subsequent examining of new examples, in short of induction.
dörpfeld 1895, p. 3 f.
We can summarise Dörpfeldâs vision of the founding of logic in five steps:
- 1.Conviction through evidence: occurrence of a âsubjective feeling of logical satisfaction or beliefâ (p. 5) accompanying certain thought (argument)
- 2.search for an objective factor that is common to all the cases where the same feeling or belief occurred: âcomparing and abstractingâ
- 3.setting up a hypothesis as to the âobjective marks of the correct formations of thoughtâ
- 4.examination of this hypothesis through further examples: âputting it to the testâ
- 5.
transmission of evidence from the belief to the mark of the detected truth: âThe fact of being convinced [of the theorems of logic] has impressed on them the seal of evidenceâ (p. 5).
Recent psychology, at least the one of Herbart, can provide exact information how it is possible and how it works that natural thought [being ignorant of the explicit theorems of logic] can be successful [in its logic], provided that the relevant illustrative material [Anschauungsmaterial] is unmistakably and clearly presented.
dörpfeld 1895, p. 6
It is the aim of pedagogy to develop didactical methods and to provide visual aids that enable a child to find by herself or himself the objective characteristics of a belief as quickly as possible and to eliminate faulty ones.
At first sight it might seem that Dörpfeldâs view does not allow for a difference in the way logic and the empirical sciences proceed. There is, however, one circumstance that makes it impossible for the empirical sciences to reach the fifth step above (we could call it the stage of âcompleteâ evidence) namely lacking direct evidence in certain cases. To show this, Dörpfeld introduces the distinction between âexplaining sciencesâ (erklärende Wissenschaften: his term for empirical sciences) investigating the causal relations of the phenomena and ânorm-seeking sciencesâ (normsuchende Wissenschaften: logic, aesthetics and ethics) looking for the norms of ideal objects (p. 10 f.). Both types of sciences try to reach evidence for their results; they both look for Erklärungsgründe (reasons of explanation) by referring to basic matters of fact.43 The two types of sciences differ in the end, Dörpfeld maintains, in the type or strength of evidence that is available for their objects: The objects of the norm-seeking sciences are, as just explained, directly evident (because directly given in experience), whereas the objects of the explaining sciences like âforce, matter,
As a result, empirical sciences can only show that the entities they postulate can serve as logically possible explanations for the phenomena, but they can never claim evidence for them, as the norm-seeking sciences can (mind you: âevidenceâ in the special sense of Dörpfeld!). This means that, at a certain point, âexperience and with it induction run outâ for the empirical sciences, as Dörpfeld says, but not for the norm-seeking ones. Dörpfeldâs view must thus arguably be seen as a case of Metaphysical Antirealism combined with Scientific Realism (for a successful treatment of this combination see Alai 2023).
After the deliberation of the sciences in general and their basic differences, Dörpfeld subsequently analyses, in so many words, the theological and other consequences of his views. I think we can opt out here from the rest of Dörpfeldâs discussion and try to assess the general nature of his outlook in his work on ethics. The first question, which arises is whether Dörpfeld, by seeing logic as being âgroundedâ in (psychological) evidence, in the peculiar way explained, commits himself to psychologism. I think definitely not and in order to substantiate this I will fall back on Lewis Carrollâs âWhat the Tortoise Said to Achillesâ â incidentally also from 1895 (Carroll 1895). In this article, Carroll showed that nobody can be forced by reason alone to accept a valid logical inference.45 Dörpfeld can now be interpreted as saying that in order for logic to work, i.e., to move the mind of a reasoner (or, in Carrollâs terms, for Achilles to force the Tortoise to accept a valid argument), there must be at least some occasion where the Tortoise has encountered evidence of validity, i.e. has (psychologically) experienced an inference before as valid, which Achilles can appeal to. We could say that the reasoner (or the Tortoise) must be converted by an evidential involvement to a practice. I hold that this argument touches neither the objectivity of logical relations nor their being based on meanings nor on empirical-psychological facts. The argument says that logical rules alone are of no significance â but people must make them their own (must
What goes for logic also goes for ethics and gives all of Dörpfeldâs Herbartian ânorm-seeking sciencesâ an unmistakable âPietisticâ touch! For Pietism doctrines alone do not count but innere Gesinnung (pious attitude, inner spirit, authentic conviction, true affection), or, more precisely, doctrines only count as far as they are filled with life as they undergo a commitment and show themselves in âdeeds, works, eventsâ. One must be committed to logic as well as ethics in order to be able to apply it to anything. âThe ethical is a property of the mind, or, more closely, of Gesinnung, of the willâ and manifests itself in action (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 13); cp. also the statement that âmorality is the doctrine of the correct Gesinnungâ (Dörpfeld 1884, p. 168).
My dear Herr Professor!
Hope rejoices the heart. I do not sell my hope for a thousand tons of gold. My creed has astonishingly high hopes of God. [â¦] This hope rejoices my heart.
This summer I had your moral and religious writings several times read to me, and I cannot convince myself that you are serious about what you have written there. This is a faith free from all hope and a morality purified from all love â this is a strange phenomenon in the republic of letters.
The final aim to write something like this is perhaps the pleasure to delight oneself; in the inclination of people who are in the habit of being amazed by anything strange. I myself keep with a hopeful faith that is active through love bettering oneself or oneâs next one. [â¦]
It is impossible that my reason [Vernunft] and my will can exchange this promising [hoffnungsreich] faith with a faith that is purified from all hope.
I am sorry that I. Kant does not augur well from God, neither in this nor in the coming world, I expect a great deal from God. I wish you the same state of mind [Gesinnung] and remain in high esteem and love for you your friend and servant
Samuel Collenbusch
collenbusch 1795, pp. 28â3046
Kant did not respond to this letter. Collenbusch was born in the same year as Kant and died one year before Kant.
Note that, when logic, ethics and aesthetics share the same status of a norm-seeking science with one another, as Dörpfeld claimed, their degree of evidence is ipso facto the same! Dörpfeld titles one chapter as âOf the evidence of ethics standing on the same level as the evidence of logicâ and writes that âindeed also aesthetics stands on the same highest level of certainty [as do logic and ethics]â (p. 11 f.). Dörpfeld followed again Herbart in this respect who claimed, as we have seen above, that to disagree on ethical and aesthetic principles is mainly the result of misplaced psychological and metaphysical interferences that must be surmounted.
After the treatment of ethics, I want to introduce here still another text by Dörpfeld, this time dealing with concept formation. In 1866 Dörpfeld wrote an article on the âAppropriate Formation of Conceptsâ that later turned into a separate booklet (Dörpfeld 1894; 9th ed. 1917) â a âlogico-psychological- pedagogical investigationâ (p. 27), as he put it. He obviously attempted to translate and systematize Herbartâs sparse and scarce comments on concept formation (and to some extent apperception) into a more modern language and a more compact form so that teachers can apply it easily. The investigation is âpsychologicalâ, he says, as far as the natural formation of concepts in children is discussed, i.e., the way concepts develop without a methodological or reflected intervention by parents or teachers and the effect such intervention has. It is âlogicalâ or âscientificâ (wissenschaftlich) as far as it deals with the rules or norms that must be followed when the concepts are âproperly or proficiently formedâ (p. 11; cp. also p. 3). And it is also pedagogical in that it concentrates on the most advantageous implementation of proper concept formation in schools. School instruction can help children; first, to become conscious of proper concept formation, that is to acquire âclear and scientifically valid
4 Traces of Herbartâs Philosophy and of Pietism in Carnapâs Work
We now come to the question where to find the vestiges of the young Carnapâs critical engagement with the philosophy of his grandfather. I suppose readers who have some familiarity with Carnapâs philosophy have already found here and there in the foregoing exposition surprising and unexpected matches with Dörpfeldâs thought. Influence of Dörpfeld on Carnap is hypothetical and tentative because there is little or no direct evidence for it available. Perhaps the publication of Carnapâs correspondence with his mother will change this situation one day. Yet as contemporary Scientific Realism insists on the admissibility of employing inferences to the best explanation when theoretical entities in science are at stake, we are entitled to do something similar in respect to philosophy and its history and infer an influence of Dörpfeld on his grandson from available evidence.
While I grew up, my mother often explained to me that the essential point in religion was not to believe certain things, but to live the right life. And for the decision in all moral questions regarding right and wrong, she referred not to any authority, either the parents or the word of God, but rather to oneâs own moral insight, the âvoice of conscienceâ. This was one of the cornerstones of her brand of Lutheran Protestantism.
carnap 1957, A-8
These words make the brand of Anna Carnapâs faith also decidedly pietistic: the conduct of life is more important than any doctrine, and the voice of conscience serves as the highest authority. Note, however, that what is expressed
In a talk Carnap gave to the Freischar on âReligion and the Churchâ in 1911/12 he saw religion, like in the autobiography some 50 years later, as âsomething universal to humans, which depends neither on belief in a god [â¦] nor on any particular sort of ideal.â Religion is rather determined by the Gesinnung â the fundamental attitude, the âstance of heartâ of someone âto whatever is highestâ to the believer. In this way also patriotism and the like can be a religion (Carnap 2018, p. 476). Similarly to his grandfather, Carnap vehemently rejected the view that religion is defined by any Lehrsätze, by teachings or confessions of faith. âReligion not only does not consist in these [doctrines â¦] but can neither be supported nor undermined by them, as it has no connection with them whateverâ (p. 477).
The proclamation of this view foreshadows his later take on philosophical problems when he distinguishes between âknowledge statementsâ and âfaith statementsâ, that is, between statements âabout things that can be grasped by the understandingâ and statements that express our âstanceâ towards these things and therefore only depend âon an insight of the conscience.â He drew a parallel here to the distinction of Heinrich Rickert, one of his professors in Freiburg at the time, between âstatements of existenceâ and âstatements of valueâ (p. 477).
We find Carnapâs view again in 1935 in a first canonical formulation of his non-cognitivism: â[A] value statement is nothing else than a command in a misleading grammatical form. [â¦] The propositions of normative ethics, whether they have the form of rules or the form of value statements, have no theoretical sense, are not scientific propositions. [⦠They] have, here as elsewhere, no theoretical sense. Therefore, we assign them to the realm of metaphysicsâ (Carnap 1935, pp. 24â26), which means to the realm of the senseless (this did not mean that there cannot be a descriptive ethics as part of psychology or sociology. Its propositions are empirical and true or false and therefore of a cognitive nature).
André Carus claims that Carnapâs ethical non-cognitivism has a religious origin (Carus 2022). This is true if by âoriginâ the context is meant in which the concept arose for Carnap. It is, however, not the whole truth. We have seen that there is also a heavy Herbartian strain in the type of non-cognitivism that has come down to Carnap. This context is neither religious nor theological. To understand this fully, it is helpful to distinguish two theses in non-cognitivism (using a terminology that comes close to that used by Herbart and Dörpfeld): 1. Elementary aesthetic judgments (with âgoodâ or âbeautifulâ or their contraries as basic predicates) cannot be derived from any non-aesthetic factual judgment; 2. Elementary aesthetic judgments possess a normative (non-descriptive) character. It is clear that Herbart understood ethics as consisting of âvalue judgmentsâ that are primal and cannot be derived from anything else (unambiguously in Herbart 1813, p. 105, § 72, but also in many other places). Whether Herbart really shared the second thesis is not so clear (though probable; see above). It is obvious, however, that Dörpfeld did so when he established the difference between âexplaining sciencesâ dealing with the empirical realm and the ânorm-seeking sciencesâ treating the norms of an ideal. Since he explicitly claimed that an ethical concept involves an âoughtâ (Sollen), it can only belong to the latter realm. The former is reserved for concepts involving an âisâ (Sein) (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 44 f. For Herbartâs rejection of deriving an âoughtâ from an âisâ see Herbart 1825, p. 118, § 119 and Herbart 1828, p. 167, § 96). So, in the end the main difference in ethics between Carnap and Dörpfeld is Carnapâs insistence that âvalue judgmentsâ are not judgments at all because they are not scientific propositions. Dörpfeld (and Herbart) could have responded to Carnap that he thereby illegitimately gives way to psychologism in relation to
Coming back to the theological context, Carnapâs view in his 1911/12 talk (and to some extent also Dörpfeldâs view) is not so much different from liberal protestant theology as it existed since about the start of the 19th century. In surveying the role of ethics in different religions, Carnap brings up Friedrich Schleiermacher, one of the important founders of this modern movement, and notes that he is âfully in accordanceâ with his own conception: âfor him religion consists not in knowledge statements, but [â¦] in a personâs stance toward that which is the highest for himâ (Carnap 2018, p. 480 f.). Schleiermacher in fact tried to mediate between Pietism (which he was fraught with through his grandfather, as we have seen, as well as through his father) and Enlightenment rationalism and saw religion as characterized by an immediacy of âfeelingâ or awareness of âabsolute dependenceâ (Gefühl schlechthinniger Abhängigkeit). In this he opposed Hegel who insisted on reason as the organ of religion. In addition, he thought and taught that a religion without a personal god is perfectly conceivable.
Carus would perhaps insist that Dörpfeldâs (and a fortiori Carnapâs) ethical non-cognitivism has a religious origin whose remnants were subsequently secularized by Carnap. I would in the first place rather allocate it to an emancipation from religion and thus to a strand of Enlightenment and not to religion itself. No wonder then, as Carus writes, âthat Carnapâs at first religiously motivated non-cognitivism survived its first big hurdleâ â the major change of his outlook during the war â and âremained entirely intact in spite of the loss of its former religious foundationâ (Carus 2022, p. 153). This is true, or so I claim, because it was not religious all along. In the hands of Dörpfeld, non-cognitivist tendencies were from the start oriented towards the liberation from, as we would express it today, an oppressive, destructive and authoritarian ideology. This is not to say at all that the Ronsdorf legacy has, so to speak, been magically overcome in all its dimensions by that move.
Despite all the praise of the emancipatory and liberating character of Carnapâs (and his forerunnersâ) views on ethics we should not overlook a fundamental limit of this ethical position. The central role that Gesinnung or attitude plays in Dörpfeldâs and Carnapâs ethics immediately reminds one of Max Weberâs (1864â1920) distinction between Gesinnungsethik (âethics of attitudeâ, sometimes also translated as âethics of ultimate endsâ) and Verantwortungsethik (âethics of responsibilityâ) that he formulated under the impression of the First World War: â[T]here is an abysmal contrastâ, Weber wrote, âbetween conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends â that is, in religious terms, âThe Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lordâ â and
It would, of course, be unjust to blame Carnap for not being a politician, but an ethics, which reduces moral conduct to (a seemingly correct) attitude and fails to contribute to the conciliation of the two maxims is, or so I want to insist, philosophically unsatisfactory. Consequently, one cannot really speak of a political orientation of the Vienna Circle (at least as far as it was dominated by Carnap), despite of the talk of a âleftâ or ârightâ wing of the Circle, to which we have accustomed ourselves for some time already. A theory of normative ethical propositions is not enough to build up an ethics in the full sense of the word. And expressions of sympathy with socialism do likewise not suffice to make Carnapâs agenda political in the true sense of the word. âAll of us in the [Vienna] Circle were strongly interested in social and political progress. Most of us, myself included, were socialistsâ (Carnap 1963, p. 23).
In a certain sense, Carnap realized this himself when he wrote in 1963 that before wwi âthe general trend of our [i.e., of his and his friendsâ] political thinking was pacifist, anti-militarist, anti-monarchist, perhaps also socialist. But we did not think much about the problem of how to implement these ideals by practical actionâ (p. 9). Apart perhaps from some texts written towards the end and shortly after the war, there has been little change in this, neither in Carnapâs philosophy itself nor in the view of philosophers in the wake of the Vienna Circle. Compared to Carnap, his grandfather was much more political in his writings, on the âsocial questionâ for example, and especially on the constitution of the schools.
After having taken note of Dörpfeldâs and Herbartâs influence on Carnap in ethics, one might be tempted to downplay its overall importance for Carnap: Since Carnapâs philosophical strength and prestige lies predominantly outside ethics, one could argue that Dörpfeldâs influence (and Herbartâs with it) on him is just a limited nostalgic reminiscent of his youthful idealism and
We have seen that for Herbart philosophy starts with concepts: philosophy has the task of reworking them. Logic aims to render concepts clear (klar) and distinct (deutlich): they must be distinguishable from other concepts and have differentiable characteristics. Logic also investigates the different relations in which concepts can stand to each other. The simplest case is the connection of concepts in a judgment as subject and predicate, but also hierarchical subordination and the like. And finally, logic has of course to deal with inferences.
herbart 1813, p. 147, § 96
âWe will seeâ, Herbart wrote, âthat these concepts, while being forced upon us through experience, cannot really be thought; that we cannot retain the given as the given in the way it is presented to us and that, as a result of it, we have to rework it in thought and submit it to a necessary adjustmentâ.
All concepts related to the world of experience can arise in a natural way [naturwüchsig], without intention and without instruction. Their development gets easily stuck half-way or even earlier. The result is confusion or obscurity if not downright falsity. [â¦] Concepts that have naturally arisen and thus are half-baked are called âpsychologicalâ; the completed ones that are formed in a workmanlike or appropriate way are called âlogicalâ or âscientificâ.
dörpfeld 1894, p. 11
The last sentence already quite clearly points to the transformation of the programme in the hands of his grandson: concepts do not have to be entrusted to metaphysics in order to be âcompletedâ, but to be fitted into the edifice of unified science. The aim is âto establish a âconstructional systemâ [Konstitutionssystem], that is, an epistemic-logical system of objects or conceptsâ (Carnap 1928, p. 1, § 1/2005, p. 5).
Maybe Dörpfeld and Carnap would not agree with Herbart that our everyday concepts are as inconsistent as he feared they are, but they would all three share the conviction that philosophy is tantamount to a reform of inherited concepts â especially concepts directly based on experience. This characteristic is already enough to speak of a unified philosophical tradition from Herbart to Carnap that is sufficiently set apart from other ones. In the final chapter of his book on Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, Carus aptly referred to the idea of the coupure épistémologique of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard as a simile for Carnapâs distinction between âinformalâ and âformalâ languages (Carus 2007, p. 274): There is an âepistemological discontinuity or
The main problem [treated in the book] concerns the possibility of the rational reconstruction of the concepts of all fields of knowledge on the basis of concepts that refer to the immediately given. By rational reconstruction is here meant the searching out of new definitions for old concepts. The old concepts did not ordinarily originate by way of deliberate formulation, but in more or less unreflected and spontaneous development. The new definition should be superior to the old in clarity and exactness, and, above all, should fit into a systematic structure of concepts. Such a clarification of concepts, nowadays frequently called âexplicationâ, still seems to me one of the most important tasks of philosophy.
carnap 1928, p. x/2005, p. iv
This quotation also hints, somewhat covertly, at the differences that can exist in the choice of the âsystematic structure of conceptsâ (systematisches Begriffsgebäude) in executing the programme. And indeed, Herbart, Carnap and Dörpfeld differ in this respect even if they agree to the systematic reform of concepts and its dependence on a special system! Herbart intended to incorporate the reformed concepts into a structure of metaphysics (in his special sense), but at the same time also into a psychological and pedagogical one (keyword âapperceptionâ). This idea was continued by Dörpfeld who aimed for a more integrated approach to logic, psychology and pedagogy (taking precautions not to fall into the traps neither of psychologism nor of the excesses of Herbartian metaphysics). Carnapâs project finally was to order all concepts of a unified science in such a way that certain concepts expressing the given are taken as basic or primal and all remaining concepts are shown to be explicitly definable by them, with âdefinitionâ in the sense of the new logic of Bertrand Russell and Alfred N. Whitehead.
It might be objected that to squeeze Herbart and Dörpfeld with Carnap into one and the same philosophical programme is inappropriate and illegitimate and does not do justice to Carnapâs seminal break with metaphysics and the philosophical tradition. But surely, one cannot infer from Herbartâs use of the term âmetaphysicsâ that he necessarily meant by this the same thing as Carnap does. Carnap once made a distinction between âall those propositions which
According to this distinction, Herbartian âmetaphysicsâ constitutes a very daring system, or comes very close, if you insist, to a sort of metaphysics in Carnapâs sense. But in order to really do justice to it, one has to investigate the motives that impelled Herbart to turn to metaphysics. It is definitely not the mindless continuation of a tradition that originated âin confusions due to languages our species has evolved over millenniaâ. Leitgeb and Carus (from which this is taken) recently also wrote that â[l]anguage choice, for Carnap, was not an end in itself but was rather in the service of freeing ourselves from the distorted perspective on the world imposed on us by our inherited natural languagesâ (Leitgeb 2020, sects. 1.4 & 1.1). Herbartâs choice of âmetaphysicalâ language was a choice faute de mieux for exactly the same liberation: He did not see a better alternative for a reform of our language in the desired way than by letting in some well-dosed metaphysics that could make sense of our experience (i.e., could remove the inconsistencies of our natural language) and serve as a rational basis for our educational system, nay, for our culture in general! Metaphysics is for Herbart the minimal set of propositions over and beyond experience that is absolutely necessary for creating a âwell-ordered systemâ in the sense of Carnap. The Herbartians themselves were the first to criticise the concrete choice of this set undertaken by Herbart and to lively discuss alternatives. Seen from this vantage point, Carnapâs move is the proposal of an inner-Herbartian reform: in order to free us from the distorted perspective of the world, Carnap said to his Herbartian fellows, it is enough to use the language of science and no metaphysics is needed.
It is not surprising that a further unifying feature of the Herbart-Dörpfeld-Carnap-programme is the particular role logic plays in it. For Herbart and the Herbartians, the formal conception of logic primarily provided a means to keep any ideological noise at bay: the noise of half-baked psychology, but especially of German Idealism and also of large portions of Kantian philosophy. For Dörpfeld it was above all an effective instrument for wresting ethics from the reach of theology and the church. And for Carnap, of course, it became a weapon against any metaphysical tendencies (now in his sense), especially those coming from the philosophical tradition itself. He strongly expected that philosophers would eventually ânot be able to avoid using this penetrating and efficient method [of the new logic] for the clarification of concepts and
Some of Dörpfeldâs ideas carry with them a baffling and almost naïve simplicity, yet at the same time a certain noblesse and breath-taking foresight: I am thinking especially of Dörpfeldâs logicism. It is of course possible that he learned about it by reading Gottlob Fregeâs Grundlagen der Arithmetik of 1884 (§ 87) or by some kind of an intermediary between Frege (1848â1925) and him (one could perhaps think of a Herbartian mathematics teacher with a certain philosophical streak like Leo Sachse; see Gabriel 2017, pp. 54â58). Both possibilities do not seem very probable because of the different vocabulary used by Dörpfeld and Frege and by the different scope they see for logic: whereas for Frege only arithmetic can be reduced to logic, Dörpfeld (and later Carnap) extends this without further ado to the whole of mathematics. In addition, Dörpfeldâs defence of logicism is embedded in and dependent on his discussion of evidence â a topic entirely alien to Fregeâs text. Finally, Frege was a Platonist for mathematics which implies the rejection of a mere if-thenism. At any rate, we must assume that Carnap first learned about logicism through his grandfather before he encountered Fregeâs work.
Dörpfeld also astonishes with the anticipation of the âproblem of theoretical termsâ as it is called â a problem that seems to have been fully realised by Carnap (and perhaps remembered by him that his grandfather had already treated this problem before) only around 1939 (at least in print). It is the problem that certain concepts of the advanced empirical sciences (the so-called theoretical ones) refer to entities that are not directly observable and thus are not reducible to the given. One is left with the dilemma either to reject these advanced sciences altogether or to weaken the criteria for the scientific character of an advanced theory.
Already in 1884, Dörpfeld used this insight for an ingenious defence of Herbartâs psychology that goes approximately like this (Dörpfeld 1884, pp. xviiiâxxiii): Herbartâs psychology is accused to be unscientific because it rests on a shaky and unscientific metaphysics. Yet metaphysics in the peculiar sense of Herbart (call it M1) must be distinguished from the fact that certain fundamental concepts in his theory refer to unobservable objects and are thus metaphysical in a second sense (M2). Now, Herbartâs psychology obviously fulfils its explanatory function quite well independently of M1. That is, one can adhere to Herbartâs psychology even if one rejects M1. So M1 does not put the scientific character of Herbartâs theory into doubt. The fact that the theory is metaphysical in the sense of M2 is also no reason to reject it as unscientific: Many other theories are empirically successful although they also work with hypothetical concepts in the sense of M2. They are regularly regarded as scientific, in the
In a final remark I want to point out that one can even find not only in Carnapâs ethical but also in his theoretical work a remnant of Dörpfeldâs peculiar theory of âevidenceâ and thus an almost faded trace of Pietism. I think that Dörpfeldâs âevidenceâ turns up again at least in Carnapâs view of âexplicationâ (Carnap 1950, ch. 1), but perhaps also in the Aufbau. An explication of a concept is roughly a process leading to the conceptâs replacement with a better or more precise one. Carnap calls the original concept that is to be replaced the âexplicandumâ and the replacement the âexplicatumâ. In a certain manner any purported reform of concepts and their replacement by better ones is an explication. In this sense, also Herbart and Dörpfeld take part in this Carnapian activity. In the Aufbau Carnap called this process a ârational reconstructionâ and wrote that â[t]he constructional system [as described in the Aufbau] is a rational reconstruction of the entire formation of reality, which, in cognition, is carried out for the most part intuitivelyâ (Carnap 1928, p. 139, § 100/2005, p. 158). In 1950 he spoke of the âtransformation of an inexact, prescientific conceptâ into a new, exact and scientific one. As Carus aptly describes in the chapter on âthe ideal of explicationâ of his book already referred to above, Carnap detected something like a âparadox of explicationâ (my expression, in analogy to the well-known âparadox of analysisâ formulated by G.E. Moore): How can we justify the introduction of a new concept to replace an old one? Obviously, the new concept must have a certain close relationship with the old one; otherwise, one could not say that it is better than the old one. At the same time, it must be different from the old one otherwise we would not gain anything new by its introduction. One can express this situation also in another way: The replacement of a concept X by another one Y can be neither an elimination of X nor an explicit definition of X through Y. In the first case, the replacement would be arbitrary because there is nothing left which Y could be compared with. In the second case, the replacement of X would be a pseudo-replacement because it would only be replaced by itself. Carnapâs solution to this is to say that the new concept should fit into a preconceived systematic structure of concepts narrowing down the possibilities of the replacement â at least in 1950 the system to achieve this is âscienceâ. We can then decide by comparison whether or not the new concept fits the system better than the old one.
Philosophers very frequently violate this requirement. They ask questions like: âWhat is causality?â, âWhat is life?â, âWhat is mind?â, âWhat is justice?â, etc. Then they often immediately start to look for an answer without first examining the tacit assumption that the terms of the question are at least practically clear enough to serve as a basis for an investigation, for an analysis or explication. Even though the terms in question are unsystematic, inexact terms, there are means for reaching a relatively good mutual understanding as to their intended meaning.
carnap 1950, p. 4. Cp. carus 2007, p. 278
This is exactly what Dörpfeld meant when he said that ultimately, even in formal logic, we must rely on âevidenceâ, on the âvoice of conscienceâ; that we must start with a creed, a feeling, a certain Gesinnung. This is what I see as (part of the) pietistic heritage of Carnapâs theoretical philosophy.
Let me summarise the most important aspects in which I see an influence of Herbartianism and Pietism on Carnap: First, the Herbart-Dörpfeld-Pietism ethics syndrome is non-cognitivist (in the current sense) as far as it sees âvalue determinationsâ devoid of theoretical and descriptive sense and resting on irreducible acts of valuation originating from Gesinnung, i.e., on immediate evidence of approval or disapproval. In this sense it allows for a clear
â¦
In this article I wanted to show that we can find traces of Carnapâs early philosophical heritage (before his Jena years) both in his practical as well as in his theoretical philosophy. I call this the âRonsdorf thesisâ because it was in Ronsdorf (and a little later in the nearby Barmen) that he was especially exposed to these influences. As I said at the beginning, I do not want to argue thereby for a certain dominating impact or superior position of one strain over another. All I wanted to say is that Pietism, Herbart, Dörpfeld: they all left their clear traces in Carnapâs work. I also did not wish to claim that these influences are acceptable without further ado by present-day standards or that they are consistent in themselves. But I wanted to show that one of the most âanalyticâ philosophers like Carnap, whatever that may mean, is deeply rooted in âcontinentalâ traditions, whatever that may mean â in this case at least in the philosophy of Herbart and Herbartianism and in a Pietistic orientation. History of philosophy is not a squiggled ornament around the real stuff, so to say, but a means to create and raise awareness that we are what we are because of our history. Only this insight can translate new thought into comprehensible terms and secure a place for it in tradition.
This view is shared by André Carus, e.g., in his 2022, and to some extent also by Gabriel.
Gabriel notes Dörpfeldâs Herbartian orientation and acknowledges Herbartianism as an important cultural element in Jena at the time but alludes only indirectly, via Gottlob Frege, to an influence of this on Carnap (Gabriel 2004, p. 18 f.; 2017, pp. 54â58).
The first Philadelphian Society was a theosophical sect in England founded in 1670 by the mystic Jane Leade (1623â1704) and some English adherents of Jakob Böhme (1575â1624). It claimed to be the New Philadelphia according to Rev. 3, 7â13. The Philadelphian movement regarded Christian âtrue beliefâ as beyond the confines of denominations and promoted apocalyptic and chiliastic ideas.
The movement arguably belonged to âRadical Pietismâ, which in comparison with âPietismâ (without epithet) supported âseparatismâ, i.e., the tendency to separate from and even to breach with the church. The important Herrnhut-Zinzendorf movement of Pietism had its heyday at about the same time as the Zionites. The term âPietismâ is often used in a non-specific, figurative and pejorative sense for a protestant attitude stressing mysticism, excessive piety, revivalism, exaggerated religious enthusiasm, puritanism, chiliasm, bigotry and anti-rationalism. Nevertheless, pietistic attitudes also played an important positive role during the enlightenment: A pietist resists patronisation in religious matters by official creeds. But, alas, it does not by itself protect her or him from sectarianism or superstition.
It was only in 1787 that Friedrichâs father Gottlieb informed his 19-year-old son in a letter of the involvement of his grandfather Daniel with the Ronsdorf sect and asked him not to talk to anyone about it except his uncle (Schleiermacher 1985, pp. 88â90). Friedrich Schleiermacher is reported to have said years after that Ronsdorf still haunts him (Krafft 1890, p. 481).
Ronsdorf is unique in still comprising two different religious communities as part of the official united Protestant Church of the Rhineland: a Reformed one and an âevangelicalâ (formerly âLutheranâ) one. Reformed Protestants differ from Lutherans mainly on theological issues like transubstantiation and predestination, among other things.
In 1839, the 18-year-old Friedrich Engels, native of Barmen (today Wuppertal), wrote the whole hatred off his chest against the vulgar Pietism of his hometown (and of his father) in his vivid Letters from the Wuppertal. They appeared in Karl Gutzkowâs Telegraph für Deutschland under a pseudonym and caused quite a stir (Engels 1839).
âSebulon and Josua, Esther and Rebecca, these are the names one still can find among people of Ronsdorf, even if they are today inhabitants of Wuppertalâ (Anonymous 1951). Cp. also Carnap A. 1926, p. 13.
Carnap himself counted 11 siblings (Carnap 1957, A-2) and Anna Carnap lists 14 (Carnap A. 1926, pp. ii, vii, viii). For Carnapâs family see also the introduction to Carnap 2021, pp. 31â37.
He later wrote: âFrom then on [i.e., the encounter with Mager] I became a grateful and faithful Herbartian and remained so to this dayâ (Dörpfeld 1884, p. xxiv). Gabriel (2004, p. 18 f.) erroneously claims that Dörpfeldâs âreligious pietism [â¦] estranged him from Herbartâs specifically religious ideas.â However, religion plays almost no role in Herbartâs work and is not pronounced at all. Some friends wanted Dörpfeld to distance himself from Herbart because of an alleged incompatibility of his ethics with religion. Dörpfeld countered that he felt on the contrary âfortifiedâ in his religious opinions by Herbartâs ethics (Carnap A. 1903, p. 341).
Rudolf Carnap visited him twice in Greece, in 1905 and 1910. Cp. Carnap 2021, pp. 34, 37, 75, 515 and ill. nr. 15.
His account of the meeting and other material related to it is reprinted in Carnap A. 1903, pp. 260â266.
Together with the Botanist Wilhelm Detmer of the University, Rein organised successful international summer schools for continuing education of teachers from 1889 on. The school of 1913 for example counted 866 participants; half of them came from abroad (Werner 2003, p. 53). Sullivan 2016 reports that Gottlob Frege gave a talk âOn the Concept of Numberâ in the 1890 session. On Herbartianism in the US see Graves 1914, pp. 207â220; Dunkel 1970; Cruikshank 1994.
Carus 2007, 45; Gabriel 2004, pp. 5, 9.
This is overlooked by Landerer & Huemer 2018. An early discussion and questioning of Herbartâs mind-body conception was given by the philosopher and physician Hermann Lotze (Lotze 1852, pp. 153â156).
On the general perspective on psychology at the time see Heidelberger 2004, passim. Herbartâs psychology is treated ibid., especially pp. 31â35, 41, 64 and elsewhere.
It is another question whether Herbart resolutely pursued this view and kept it up in all his pronouncements.
It is tempting to compare Herbartâs metaphysics to Ludwig Wittgensteinâs philosophy: Wittgenstein can be seen as someone who brushes away Herbartâs approach with one stroke already at the beginning of the Tractatus: âThe world is the totality of facts, not of thingsâ (1.1). In this way there cannot arise any contradictions with âthingsâ, neither with material objects nor âsoulsâ. Herbart could have responded (quite in the spirit of the later Wittgenstein) that we do use the thing-concept in our way of life and cannot avoid this manner of speaking. We should, therefore, try to make sense of it through metaphysics instead of putting ourselves outside of its use.
âCogitationis nomine, intelligo illa omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis fiunt, quatenùs eorum in nobis conscientia est.â
âAssimilationâ can be taken here quite in the sense of Jean Piagetâs âgenetic epistemologyâ, his theory of the cognitive stages of child development. Piaget studied Herbartâs theory extensively.
Herbartâs thought had a strong influence in this and in other respects on Sigmund Freud (cp. Hemecker 1991).
It is important to take notice of the fact that Charles Sanders Peirce was heavily influenced by Herbartâs theory of apperception from early on culminating in his The Law of Mind of 1892. Peirce also stressed the superiority of Herbartâs apperception over associationism. See the instructive article by Bellucci 2015, pp. 83â91.
Gabriel 2013 and 2017, pp. 54â71, 112 treats the influence of Herbartâs anti-psychologism on Hermann Lotze, the neo-Kantians (esp. Windelband) and on Gottlob Frege.
Ueberweg uses âsubjectively-formalâ and âobjectively-formalâ in the somewhat unhappy sense of: âwhat, in Hegelâs logic, would belong to âsubjectiveâ resp. to âobjective logicââ.
Heis 2019, p. 29 takes the same passage as evidence that there were practically no rivals to âKantâs schoolâ of logic at the time. This is true only if logic is taken as referring exclusively to the universal usage of the understanding in the sense of Kant. For Herbart, however, it crucially holds for any usage. This crucial difference was generally known at the time. So, it is at best misleading to readily count Herbart as belonging to âKantâs schoolâ as Heis does. Cp. also MacFarlane 2002, pp. 44â46.
See Harms 1876, pp. 169â171 for more details. Harms was very influential in this opinion for the South-West German Kantiansâ understanding of logic. Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask mistrusted Kantâs transcendental logic and his deduction of the categories. See especially e.g. Windelband 1884.
His criticism also implies an historical claim on Aristotle: Aristotle did not demarcate logic by its formality (Trendelenburg 1840, i, p. 18): âAristotle has nowhere expressed his intention to grasp the forms of thought from within themselves [aus sich selbst]. Such a separation is alien to Aristotle and only a newer inventionâ, namely an invention by Kant (as becomes clear from Trendelenburg 1840, i, pp. 4â8). Cp. MacFarlane 2002, pp. 45, 47, 56. Drobisch, however, rejected Trendelenburgâs claim that logic was not formal for Aristotle (Drobisch 1851, pp. ix-xii).
This shows that Drobischâs position does not coincide with that of neo-Leibnizians like Christian Wolff (1679â1754) and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714â1762) who maintained that logic abstracts from concrete objects but not from highly general and abstract ones. Cp. MacFarlane 2002, p. 45 f. â Drobischâs talk of abstraction and ideal construction is very similar to Richard Dedekindâs later views on abstraction and creation in mathematics, when he spoke of number as âfree creation of the human mindâ (i.e., free from any regard for empirical content except âdistinguishabilityâ), by only considering âthe relations [of the numbers] to one anotherâ (Dedekind 1888, pp. 360, § 73/1901, p. 68, § 73).
Drobisch does not mean by ideell something perfect (ideal) as opposed to something imperfect, but something fictional or inexistent (being actual only as a thought, as an idea) in contrast to something real! It is, however, neither arbitrary nor subjective, in the later sense of Gottlob Frege. It is composed of elementary forms of thinking that are, as in geometry, the result of elementary abstraction!
Herbart is thus someone like a âhyper-anti-psychologistâ: not only formal logic is anti-psychologistic for him, but also ethics (cp. Herbart 1825, p. 118, § 119)!
Anna Carnap briefly refers to it in an apologetic tone in Carnap A. 1926, pp. 5â7. She complains that Ellerâs movement was called a âsectâ and therefore disparaged. She also stresses the positive correlation of the âautonomous, authentic and vivid religious lifeâ of the Zionites with Ronsdorfâs âspiritual life and lifeâs outer [i.e., economic] relationsâ (p. 6 f.).
In a letter to her of February 20, 1920. Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh (rc 025-85-32).
Dörpfeldâs Denken und Gedächtnis (Dörpfeld 1884) can perhaps in this respect compete to some extent.
What Dörpfeld meant by this is that ethics is not based on outer facts like the natural sciences or on doctrines or revelations like theology. In this sense logic is also rational. And it is a science in being based on knowledge â in this case on knowledge of attitude (Gesinnung), i.e., on something spiritual (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 17).
âGeneticâ does not mean here that the natural psychological development is investigated, but the epistemic order of ethical expressions among one another, or âtheir order relative to epistemic primacyâ, as Carnap put it for the propositions of his constitutional system (Carnap 1928, p. 64, § 54/2005, p. 88). Dörpfeld does not relapse into psychologism here.
As it becomes apparent from a note in his estate, Dörpfeld planned to write a book dealing with all the objections against Herbartâs ethics and with all the defences of Herbart, as far as they were known from the literature (Dörpfeld 1895a, p. 90).
It should be noted that Dörpfeld did not only criticize traditional church ethics but also Eudemonism. One can admit, he said, that Eudemonistic Ethics applies the rational method, but its principles are derived from other doctrines so that it lacks an independent and thereby a scientific character. âThe theory of Eudemonism is no moral theoryâ because it is ânothing else but a doctrine of egoismâ and not of ethics (Dörpfeld 1895, p. 51; see also p. xxviii). Dörpfeld opposed Social Democracy because of its supposed proclamation of and adherence to Eudemonism (p. xxxii). Apart from that he resolutely fought for the solution of the âSocial Questionâ from early on (so the title of Dörpfeld 1866) and refined the social pedagogy of Karl Mager (see Rudloff 1922).
Evidenz in German is not quite the same thing as âevidenceâ in English. If a fact is (empirical) evidence for a proposition, i.e., support for its truth, this would be rendered as Beleg, Befund or Beweis in German, although one also increasingly finds Evidenz because of the growing influence of English on contemporary German. The German adjective evident is more akin to âimmediately apparentâ, âobviousâ, and âintuitiveâ or ânot in need of proofâ than to âsupported by evidenceâ. It describes more the psychological process of being (immediately) convinced of something. There is no grammatical analogue for the English âself-evidentâ in German (as e.g., selbstevident). Dörpfeld also uses evident in the sense of âcertainâ (gewiss). The term SelbstgewiÃheit exists in German, but normally only in the sense of âself-assuranceâ. Dörpfeld here redefines SelbstgewiÃheit for his purposes as a âbelief that intrudes with necessity against wish and willâ, whereby the necessity is the inevitability of natural law (1895, p. 7). So, some caution is required in reading Dörpfeldâs (and Herbartâs) texts in respect to âevidenceâ.
This term here correctly translates Dörpfeldâs use of selbstgewiÃ, literally âcertain in and for itselfâ.
Herbart also said that the difference between categorical and hypothetical judgments is only a matter of the linguistic form (Sprach-Form) (Herbart 1808, 264). Herbart noted later that Christian Wolff had a similar view in his Latin Logic (Herbart 1813, p. 80, § 53, in the 3rd and 4th ed. of 1834 and 1837). Cp. Wolff 1732, p. 229, § 226: âPropositiones categoricæ æquivalent hypotheticis et ad eas reduci possuntâ (categorical judgments are equivalent to hypothetical ones and can be reduced to them). Wolff also wrote (on the page following this) that if a subject is expressed without a particular conditional, a proposition has a âcategorical form even if it is in truth hypotheticalâ (Kant rejected this view explicitly in Kant 1800, p. 163, § 24). For Herbart, the copula acknowledges that the predicate B applies to the subject A. Since Frege, A and B are of course understood as predicates (functions) applied to objects (their arguments): âAll As are Bâ is thus to be read as âFor all objects x: if x is A, then it is Bâ. Cp. also Gabriel 2001, p. 157 f. For Drobischâs if-thenism cp. Drobisch 1836, pp. 25 and 52.
Dörpfeldâs use of âif-thenismâ is obviously related to Drobischâs view of mathematics as âideal constructionâ: The mathematician conceives of mathematical entities as abstract forms without being bothered by experience or intuition and looks for the consequences of postulating them. See above p. 39f.
In 1884, Dörpfeld invoked William Whewellâs History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) in this respect, available in German since 1840, and claimed to have combined inductive reasoning with Karl Magerâs âgeneticâ method (1884, p. xxiii). Inductive method is genetic in Dörpfeldâs sense, if it follows the actual historical path that the method has embarked upon originally (or the most probable one if the actual development is unknown) (ibid.).
It is possible that Dörpfeld took the distinction between the two groups of sciences from Drobisch who once praised Kant for agreeing with Herbart in assuming in his ethics that âpractical philosophy is neither a describing nor an explaining science but a norm prescribing one [⦠and that] the validity of these prescriptions is based exclusively [â¦] on their absolute [â¦] valueâ (Drobisch 1876, p. 25).
Dörpfeld expressed this view already in 1884, p. xix. He stated there that scientific concepts like âforceâ etc. are âa piece of genuine, true-hearted, i.e., natural metaphysics that is not yet philosophical, i.e., scientific.â
As a quick reminder, here is a short outline of Carrollâs argument: Achilles proposes a valid inference of premises A and B and conclusion Z (e.g. modus ponens). The Tortoise declares accepting A and B and invites Achilles to force him to accept Z. Achilles notices that if A and B are true then Z is true. The Tortoise calls this (complex) proposition C, accepts it, and asks Achilles again to force him to accept that if A and B and C are true then Z is true. And so on ad infinitum.
Collenbuschâs letter was reprinted in a collection of letters of German authors in Switzerland 1936. The letters were selected and edited by Walter Benjamin (yes, precisely him) under the pseudonym Detlef Holz. It is reported that Benjaminâs favourite letter of the collection was Collenbuschâs.
Ulrich Lins reports that, at least in 1908, Carnap met the Herbartian Otto Flügel (1842â1914), one of the most prolific writers on and enthusiastic followers of Herbartâs philosophy. Carnap seems to have taught Esperanto to Flügel who was well acquainted with Dörpfeld as well as with Carnapâs mother and sister (Lins 2022, p. 57. To Flügel and Carnap cp. also pp. 65, 74). (The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin keeps two letters of Dörpfeld to Flügel of 1884 and 1886.) From 1872 on Flügel was the co-editor of the most orthodox journal on Herbartâs philosophy, the Zeitschrift für exacte Philosophie (1861â1896) and, from its beginning, of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Pädagogik (1894â1914), which was in a way the successor of the former journal. After Kehrbachâs death he took over the editorship of the chronological edition of Herbartâs works with volume 11 in 1906. In 1909, Carnap received a booklet on logic as a gift, most probably from Flügel himself, edited and mostly written by Flügel, although it appeared under the name of Allihn (Allihn 1901) (Carnap 2021, p. 433). Friedrich Heinrich Theodor Allihn (1811â1885), Flügelâs father-in-law, was also a Herbartian of the first hour and for some time co-editor of the Zeitschrift für exacte Philosophie. According to Carnapâs reading list for 1908â1919 in Carnap 2021, pp. 432â482, this is the first book Carnap read on logic. The second one was: Fregeâs Begriffsschrift (1910/11) and the third Ernst Schröder, Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (1917) (Carnap 2021, pp. 143, 149, 436; 351, 465).
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Gottfried Gabriel, Hans-Joachim Dahms and Christian Damböck for valuable hints and comments, to Kenneth Caskie for many
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