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Logical Positivism and Existentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Walter Cerf*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College

Extract

The two most antagonistic schools in contemporary Western philosophy are Existentialism and Logical Positivism. They have nothing in common but the name of philosophy, and even that they deny each other. There is some kind of discussion going on between even such distant schools as Pragmatism and neo-Thomism; Existentialists and Logical Positivists have nothing but sarcasms for each other. To philosophers familiar only with the Anglo-Saxon scene Existentialism must appear negligible. In the Mediterranean countries, on the other hand, where philosophy is a much more popular pastime, Existentialism has an unparalleled vogue and Logical Positivism is considered a horrible aberration from the naturally speculative course of philosophy. In South America whose philosophical life we are apt to underrate Logical Positivism seems to be known to almost nobody, whereas Existentialism, mostly in its German and anti-religious shape, has become, quite paradoxically, the rallying point of “Liberalism,” liberalism, in Spanish countries, being above all anti-catholicism. Although, ironically enough, both Logical Positivism and modern Existentialism originated in German speaking countries, the split between the two goes vaguely parallel with, and may have found some ready echo in, the different cultural inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races. Hence, the subject of this paper would seem far-fetched to those steeped in their own national tradition. There is, however, a growing consciousness of the “one world” function of philosophy, particularly with regard to Eastern and Western philosophy (Northrop, Burtt, Conger, etc.). Would it not be a prerequisite of this more ambitious enterprise to gain a clear conception about the most radical split in our own contemporary Western philosophy, the split between Logical Positivism and Existentialism? This paper is an attempt to establish a perspective permitting a just evaluation of the two philosophies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1951, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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Footnotes

A first version of this paper was read at The First National Congress of Philosophy, Mendoza, Argentina and published in the Actas of This Congress, vol. 2, pp. 900–908.

References

1 Ayer; “Language, Truth and Logic”; p. 133.

2 Existentials, in Heidegger's terminology are the “categories” into which existential analysis articulates the modus of Being that man is.

3 Heidegger; Platon's Lehre von der Wahrheit; p. 50.

4 As to essence as horizon forming a condition of human behavior, cf. the author's Ueber die Farbe, das Farbige und das Sehen, Wuerzburg 1933.

5 From impressions gained at the first National Congress of Philosophy at Mendoza, Argentina, I would say that Heidegger's German followers, less voluble than his enormous Mediterranean and South American clientèle and wanting to eat the cake and have it too, are now trying somehow to return from the unspeakable Being and their resolute “holding themselves into Nothing” to more speakable subjects without losing the transmetaphysical depth of their experience of Being.

6 I have stated in the introduction to this paper what was pointed out to me by an Argentinian authority whose name, for obvious reasons, had better remain unmentioned, namely that Existentialism in South America and particularly in Argentina is identified, because of what is assumed to be its anti-religious character, with liberal and progressive thinking, whereas catholic philosophy or, in any case, a goodly number of catholic philosophera, Thomists, neo-Thomists, Jesuits, etc., are pretty close to the Peròn regime. I daresay that this is an unfortunate constellation for everybody concerned. To see Existentialism, particularly in its new orphic shape, as the protagonist of progressive Liberalism makes one rather apprehensive of the fate of liberalism in these countries.