Grice: The Nothing noths -- The implicatures

Speranza

ii. Das Nichts nichtet.
i. The nothing noths.

Barrett once wrote:

"A great deal  of this 'obscurity' is a matter of translation, and disappears when Heidegger is  read in German. To be sure, his German is at times a very highly  individualized vehicle of expression: Heidegger does coin his own terms when he  has to, and usually these are coinings that stick very close to the etymological  roots of German. Heidegger thinks very much within the matrix of the German  language, and his expressions hugs the particularity of this language to its  bosom.  All of this makes for difficulty in translation."

Still, Grice went on to call Heidegger, 'the greatest living philosopher'.

 

Jürgen Ludwig Scherb attempts an elucidation of the implicature of (i) and (ii) above in his brilliant essay, "Nichtet das Nichts wirklich nicht? Analyse und Explikation: oder: eine deutsche Vorkriegsdebatte europäisch belichtet," Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 115.

Scherb writes:

"The agenda of the ... explication project is set by a German pre-war debate between Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger about allegedly meaningless metaphysical statements such as "The Nothing noths" ("Das Nichts nichtet")."

 

Grice followed suit when he called Heidegger, not Carnap, "the greatest living philosopher" in 1967.

 

Scherb goes on:

"Within the mainstream of 20th century analytical philosophy this statement, "The Nothing noths" [Note that it's MANDATORY to capitalize "Nichts" in German, and merely stylistic in modern English, "Nothing" -- it was mandatory in older English: "The Nothing noths" vs. "The nothing noths"] has come to be regarded as obvious metaphysical nonsense."

Scherb:

 

"As we all know, this led to an unfortunate confrontation between analytical and continental philosophy."

"Despite the fact that this former judgement had been corrected in a short remark by the Mancunian philosopher Desmond Paul Henry [whom we love -- Speranza] in the 1960s, which he repeated more explicitly in the 1980s, this unnecessary conflict still seems to exist."

"Unfortunately Henry's remark didn't find its way to a greater audience, perhaps because Henry didn't prove his claim in a canonical way, perhaps because it contains an ambiguity, which may give rise to criticism."

"However, the required disambiguation together with the missing proofs can and will be given here within Lesniewski's ontology."

"Following Ludger Honnefelder we can call the Lesniewski systems, which were developed roughly at the same time (1913-1939), the third beginning of metaphysics."

"They will provide the still missing bridge between Carnap and Heidegger, which can be regarded as an ontological supplement to and a partial correction of Michael Friedman's brilliant background study on Heidegger, Carnap and Cassirer" -- and why not Grice? (Answer: Because Friedman's references to Grice are scarce -- hey, but this is the Grice Club!).

Scherb: "The hermeneutical conclusion to be drawn is that reconciliation between the two types of philosophy is not only possible along Cassirer's ideas, but also along the lines of broadly logical form."

 "In other words: I propose a more fundamental way for reconciliation."

 "The hermeneutical outcome is as follows: one can make use of precise logic tools in a more general way than Carnap himself without declaring at least some central statements of Heidegger's Fundamentalontologie to be pure nonsense."