THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS VOLUME XI

THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS VOLUME XI

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RUDOLF CARNAP

EDITED BY PAUL ARTHUR SCHILPP NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

LA SALLE, ILLINOIS ? OPEN COURT ? ESTABLISHED 1887

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF RUDOLF CARNAP

Open Court Publishing Company is a division of Carus Publishing Company.

Copyright ? 1963 by The Library of Living Philosophers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Open Court Publishing Company, 315 Fifth Street, P.O. Box 300, Peru, Illinois 61354-0300.

First printing 1963 Second (first paperback) printing 1991 Third printing 1997

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schilpp, Paul Arthur, 1897- ed.

The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. [ 1st ed] LaSalle,

Ill., Open Court [ 1963]

xvi, 1088 p. facsim., port. 25cm. (The Library of living philosophers, v. 11)

"Bibliography of the writings of Rudolph Carnap, compiled by Arthur L. Benson": P. [1015]-1070.

1. Carnap, Rudolf, 1891- I. Title. (Series)

B945.C16453 193 62-9577

Library of Congress [5]

The Library of Living Philosophers is published under the sponsorship of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION * TO "THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS"

According to the late F. C. S. Schiller, the greatest obstacle to fruitful discussion in philosophy is "the curious etiquette which apparently taboos the asking of questions about a philosopher's meaning while he is alive." The "interminable controversies which fill the histories of philosophy," he goes on to say, "could have been ended at once by asking the living philosophers a few searching questions."

The confident optimism of this last remark undoubtedly goes too far. Living thinkers have often been asked "a few searching questions," but their answers have not stopped "interminable controversies" about their real meaning. It is none the less true that there would be far greater clarity of understanding than is now often the case, if more such searching questions had been directed to great thinkers while they were still alive.

This, at any rate, is the basic thought behind the present undertaking. The volumes of The Library of Living Philosophers can in no sense take the place of the major writings of great and original thinkers. Students who would know the philosophies of such men as John Dewey, George Santayana, Alfred North Whitehead, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers, Rudolf Carnap, Martin Buber, et al., will still need to read the writings of these men. There is no substitute for first-hand contact with the original thought of the philosopher himself. Least of all does this Library pretend to be such a substitute. The Library in fact will spare neither effort nor expense in offering to the student the best possible guide to the published writings of a given thinker. We shall attempt to meet this aim by providing at the end of each volume in our series a complete bibliography of the published work of the philosopher in question. Nor should one overlook the fact that the essays in each volume cannot but finally lead to this same goal. The interpretative and critical discussions of the various phases of a great thinker's work and, most of all, the reply of the thinker himself, are bound to lead the reader to the works of the philosopher himself.

At the same time, there is no denying the fact that different experts find different ideas in the writings of the same philosopher. This is as true of the appreciative interpreter and grateful disciple as it is of the critical opponent. Nor can it be denied that such differences of reading and of interpretation on the part of other experts often leave the neo-

____________________ *This General Introduction, setting forth the underlying conception of this Library, is purposely reprinted in each volume (with only very minor changes).

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phyte aghast before the whole maze of widely varying and even opposing interpretations. Who is right and whose interpretation shall he accept? When the doctors disagree among themselves, what is the poor student to do? If, in desperation, he decides that all of the interpreters are probably wrong and that the only thing for him to do is to go back to the original writings of the philosopher himself and then make his own decision -uninfluenced (as if this were possible) by the interpretation of any one else -- the result is not that he has actually come to the meaning of the original philosopher himself, but rather that he has set up one more interpretation, which may differ to a greater or lesser degree from the interpretations already existing. It is clear that in this direction lies chaos, just the kind of chaos which Schiller has so graphically and inimitably described. 1

It is curious that until now no way of escaping this difficulty has been seriously considered. It has not occurred to students of philosophy that one effective way of meeting the problem at least partially is to put these varying interpretations and critiques before the philosopher while he is still alive and to ask him to act at one and the same time as both defendant and judge. If the world's great living philosophers can be induced to cooperate in an enterprise whereby their own work can, at least to some extent, be saved from becoming merely "desiccated lecture-fodder," which on the one hand "provides innocuous sustenance for ruminant professors," and, on the other hand, gives an opportunity to such ruminants and their understudies to "speculate safely, endlessly, and fruitlessly, about what a philosopher must have meant" ( Schiller), they will have taken a long step toward making their intentions clearly comprehensible.

With this in mind, The Library of Living Philosophers expects to publish at more or less regular intervals a volume on each of the greater among the world's living philosophers. In each case it will be the purpose of the editor of the Library to bring together in the volume the interpretations and criticisms of a wide range of that particular thinker's scholarly contemporaries, each of whom will be given a free hand to discuss the specific phase of the thinker's work which has been assigned to him. All contributed essays will finally be submitted to the philosopher with whose

work and thought they are concerned, for his careful perusal and reply. And, although it would be expecting too much to imagine that the philosopher's reply will be able to stop all differences of interpretation and of critique, this should at least serve the purpose of stopping certain of the grosser and more general kinds of misinterpretations. If no further gain than this were to come from the present

____________________ 1In his essay on Must Philosophers Disagree? in the volume by the same title Macmillan, London, 1934), from which the above quotations were taken.

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and projected volumes of this Library, it would seem to be fully justified.

In carrying out this principal purpose of the Library, the editor announces that (in so far as humanly possible) each volume will conform to the following pattern:

First, a series of expository and critical articles written by the leading exponents and opponents of the philosopher's thought;

Second, the reply to the critics and commentators by the philosopher himself;

Third, an intellectual autobiography of the thinker whenever this can be secured; in any case an authoritative and authorized biography; and

Fourth, a bibliography of writings of the philosopher to provide a ready instrument to give access to his writings and thought.

The editor has deemed it desirable to secure the services of an Advisory Board of philosophers to aid him in the selection of the subjects of future volumes. The names of the six prominent American philosophers who originally consented to serve appear below.* To each of them the editor expresses his sincere gratitude.

Future volumes in this series will appear in as rapid succession as is feasible in view of the scholarly nature of this Library. The next two volumes in this series will be those of Martin Buber and C. I. Lewis.

Through the generosity of the Edward C. Hegeler Foundation, the publication of each new volume of the Library is assured on completion of the manuscript. However, funds are still required for editorial purposes in order to place the entire project of The Library of Living Philosophers on a sound financial foundation. The Library would be deeply grateful, therefore, for gifts and donations. Moreover, since November 6th, 1947, any gifts or donations made to The Library of Living Philosophers, Inc., are

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