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(2018) The worlds of positivism, Dordrecht, Springer.
Dilthey and Carnap
the feeling of life, the scientific worldview, and the elimination of metaphysics
Eric Sean Nelson
pp. 321-346
In this chapter the author examines how Dilthey's philosophy formed part of the background of the Vienna Circle's project of eliminating metaphysics and justifying a scientific life-stance (Lebenshaltung). Dilthey had promoted empirical scientific inquiry and critiqued metaphysics as an indemonstrable attitude rooted in a "feeling of life" (Lebensgefühl) and articulated as a "worldview." Concepts of the feeling of life, worldview, and life-stance were mobilized to confront traditional authority while emphasizing the priority of experience and a more critical and experimental scientific and artistic spirit. Carnap adopted elements from Dilthey's critique and sensitivity to the possibility of a logic of the singular and the historical. Carnap's early project can be interpreted as a logical empiricist hermeneutics promoting the task of pragmatic formation, cultivation, and education (Bildung) that furthers life by elucidating it.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-65762-2_12
Full citation:
Nelson, E.S. (2018)., Dilthey and Carnap: the feeling of life, the scientific worldview, and the elimination of metaphysics, in J. Feichtinger, F. L. Fillafer & J. Surman (eds.), The worlds of positivism, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 321-346.
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