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The Aesthetic Turn MARK C. TAYLOR The aesthetic turn his paper considers alternative styles of philoso- because it suggests that there is nothing outside or phy, based on art or science, through an investi- beyond style. Art and style, in turn, are inseparable – Tgation of Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger. there is no art without style and no style without art. Carnap’s criticism of Heidegger’s account of das Nichts The distinction, I am suggesting, is not hard-and-fast. is analysed in relation to Immanuel Kant’s theory of Just as there is a religious dimension to all culture, so the imagination. Heidegger’s account of the work of there is an artistic dimension to all creative thinking; art demonstrates philosophies that take science as and just as religion is often most significant where it is their model, over-emphasize cognition, and do not ad- least obvious, so style is often most influential where equately consider the importance of apprehension. it remains unnoticed, and often denied. The choice, then, is not between style and non-style but between a style that represses its artistic and aesthetic aspects, In 1946, Paul Tillich published a seminal essay and a style that explicitly expresses them. In order to entitled ‘The two types of philosophy of religion’ in explore the differences between these two alterna- which he maintained that every philosophy of reli- tives, I begin by examining the debate between two gion developed in the Christian tradition takes one philosophers whose work has played a crucial role of two forms. While Alfred North Whitehead once in framing the debate for almost a century: Rudolf suggested that everyone is born either a Platonist or Carnap and Martin Heidegger. an Aristotelian, Tillich argues that every philosophy In 1929, Heidegger and Carnap published brief of religion is either Augustinian or Thomistic – the texts that proved decisive for later twentieth-century former he labels the ontological type, the latter the philosophy. Carnap and his colleagues Hans Hahn cosmological type. The distinction between the two and Otto Neurath issued a document that is widely types of philosophy of religion is based on the dif- acknowledged to be the manifesto of the Vienna ferences between the two classical arguments for the Circle, entitled ‘The scientific conception of the existence of God; that is to say, the ontological and world: the Vienna Circle’, and Heidegger delivered cosmological arguments. his inaugural lecture at the University of Freiburg – While the details of Tillich’s argument need not ‘What is metaphysics?’ Both Carnap and Heidegger concern us here, it is instructive to note that the dif- called for the overcoming of metaphysics, but their ference between the ontological and cosmologic al reasons and their intentions could not have been types roughly corresponds to the conventional dis- more different. For Carnap, the abstractions and com- tinction between continental and analytic phil osophy plexities of speculative metaphysics were vacuous as respectively. Instead of recycling the tired distinction well as socio-politically suspect. He insisted that clar- between Anglo-American and continental philoso- ity and simplicity are the necessary characteristics phy, it is more helpful to contrast two styles of phi- of truth. Philosophy can only enter the modern era losophising: one that models itself on art and one by appropriating what he described as a scientific that models itself on an interpretation of science. This method of investigation and empirical procedures way of posing the issue is deliberately provocative, for verification. For Heidegger, by contrast, modern 6 Approaching Religion • Vol. 6, No. 2 • December 2016 science and technology, which are the culmination Heidegger argues, is to turn towards a no less dis- of what he labels the western ‘ontotheological trad- turbing abyss that is buried deep in the ever-receding ition’, pose a threat to human life as well as the future past. He devotes his entire philosophical enterprise of the planet. The only way to avert impending dis- to questioning what science forgets, ignores or even aster is to develop a thoroughgoing critique of their represses. He names this elusive remainder das Nichts pernicious effects by recovering philosophy’s orig- (the) nothing. While science is preoccupied solely inal relationship to art. Three years after Heidegger’s with ‘beings and beyond that – nothing’, Heidegger lecture, Carnap responded in an article entitled ‘The asks, ‘What about this nothing?’ elimination of metaphysics through logical analysis What precisely ‘is’ this nothing? This question of language’. The significance of these two essays far obviously negates itself in its very formulation. One surpasses the initial exchange. Heidegger and Carnap cannot say what nothing is without making it some- present contrasting positions that have implicitly and thing. That is why Heidegger never asks the ques- explicitly shaped philosophical debate for decades. tion directly; rather, he asks indirectly, ‘How is it Heidegger approaches his questioning of meta- with nothing?’ Nothing cannot be objectified, rep- physics from an unexpected direction by discussing resented or manipulated; it is never given yet always the role of science in shaping the modern university: gives whatever is and is not. Nothing is apprehended, ‘What happens to us, essentially, in the grounds of our which is not to say comprehended (I will return to existence, when science becomes our passion?’ Far this distinction in what follows), in moods like dis- from a method of disinterested investigation cap able traction, boredom and above all anxiety. While fear of establishing objective truth, science, Heidegger always has a specific object, anxiety reveals noth- maintains, is a product of the western metaphysic al ing ‘in the slipping away of beings… We “hover” in tradition that has been characterized by a perni- anxiety. More precisely, anxiety leaves us hanging cious ‘forgetting of being’. He argues, ‘Today only because it induces the slipping away of beings as a the technical organization of universities and facul- whole’ (Heidegger 1977: 103). This void in the midst ties consolidates this burgeoning multiplicity of dis- of whatever appears to be present renders all beings ciplines; practical establishment of goals by each dis- uncanny and undercuts the very possibility of com- cipline provides the only meaningful source of unity. plete knowledge and reasonable control. Where sci- Nonetheless, the rootedness of the sciences in their ence sees causes that ground determinate entities, essential ground has atrophied’ (Heidegger 1977: 96). Heidegger glimpses the groundless ground – der For Heidegger, the ‘essential ground’ science forgets is Abgrund – from which everything emerges and to being itself. Rather than disinterested, science’s pre- which all returns through a process he labels ‘nihil- occupation with beings is an extension of Nietzsche’s ation’. From Heidegger’s point of view, the entities will to power in ‘the will to mastery’ through which that science investigates and technology manipulates ‘man’ (sic) seeks to ‘secure to himself what is most are neither self-contained nor self-grounded; to the properly his’. Within this scheme, the scientific attitude contrary, they emerge from nothing, which, while rests on two basic principles: representation and utili- never present, is not absent. Nihilating nothing clears tarianism. When truth collapses into certainty with the space that allows differences to be articulated Descartes’s turn to the subject, everything becomes a and identities to be established even if never secured. ‘standing-reserve’, or resource, programmed to serve Truth, Heidegger maintains, does not involve the human ends, and through his domination man finally correspondence between word and thing, idea and seems to be at home in a world where everything is object, representation and fact or signifier and signi- manageable. But at precisely this moment of appar- fied; it is the primordial opening (Aletheia) between ent triumph, humankind’s fortunes are reversed. and among beings and entities that is the condition Through an unexpected turn, the exercise of the will of the possibility of all forms of correspondence. As to power unleashes what Hegel, describing the reign such, truth can be neither represented nor compre- of terror following the French Revolution, had called hended clearly and precisely, but is revealed in the ‘the fury of destruction’, which ultimately destroys the elusive ambiguity of art. world and with it humanity. Carnap confidently declares all such speculation The most effective way to avoid the all-consum- meaningless nonsense. The goal of the Vienna Circle ing abyss opened by modern science and technology, was ‘to set philosophy upon the sure path to science’. Approaching Religion • Vol. 6, No. 2 • December 2016 7 Logical positivism rests on two fundamental prin- 5. Rigorous analysis reduces complexity to simplic- ciples: 1) the strict adherence to the scientific method, ity. This method of analysis privileges simplic- which entails a rigorous empiricism; 2) the insistence ity over complexity; more precisely, critical that all problems can be solved by logical and linguis- analysis reduces complex phenomena to their tic analysis. Absolutely convinced of the validity of simple parts. For Carnap and those who share their method, Carnap and his colleagues go so far as his faith, the task of philosophy at the end of to proclaim, ‘The scientific
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