Wittgenstein's Doctrine of Formal Concepts and Its Reinterpretation in Logical Empiricism

Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", one of the most influential books in twentieth-century philosophy, contains a paradox that outlines the problem of the logico-syntactic well-formedness of any categorial distinctions. It was not until most recently that the vie w that successfully handling this paradox is the key to a proper interpretation of the "Tractatus" has prevailed in discussions. Earlier, however, Rudolf Carnap, the prominent representative of logical empiricism, had already made an original and serious attempt at solving this paradox by means of his 'syntactical' method, based exactly on deploying some of Wittgenstein's fundamental ideas, especially those regarding the nature of the so-called formal concepts (paradigmatically logical categories). No det ailed studies have been realized so far on this systematically important development of ideas in the history of analytic philosophy as it could be discerned in the line from Frege and Russell, through Wittgenstein to Carnap. The goal of the research proj ect "Wittgenstein's Doctrine of Formal Concepts and Its Reinterpretation in Logical Empiricism" is to provide a detailed and comprehensive study of Carnap's reception (during his syntactical phase) of early Wittgenstein's basic conceptions with regard to the character of categorial distinctions. This project also aims at a systematic result that would consist of throwing a new light on the language of logical analysis by putting to use the history of its own thematization. These contributions to the histo rical and systematic investigation of early analytic philosophy would be made accessible through both the seminars and the publications planned in the research project.