Carnap read Heidegger’s Nothingness lecture as proof metaphysics is meaningless

Evidence

In his inaugural lecture, Heidegger had found an approach to the question of Nothingness which seemed partly contrived and partly fanciful, and which built on word-play, examples of which Rudolf Carnap, the best known of the Vienna Circle neo-positivists, used as evidence of the meaninglessness of metaphysical questions. The lecture presented human beings as more or less vulnerable to attack. Freed from everything which might have been sacred to reason, they must be prepared to sacrifice themselves for something of which nothing more was known than that it demanded severity and privationand how this was known remained unexplained. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the Frankfurt School’s critique of Heidegger’s irrationalism and to the Vienna Circle’s positivist dispute, both central threads in this book. — connects to: Vienna Circle positivists used Heidegger’s lecture as proof that metaphysics is meaningless. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 415
• DEFINE: The Heidegger-Carnap controversy over metaphysical meaning is a standard reference point in analytic-continental divides.

Broader Connections

• Vienna Circle positivists used Heidegger’s lecture as proof that metaphysics is meaningless. #corroborates (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 415