Carnap's Non-Cognitivism and His Views on Religion, Against the Background of the Herbartian Philosophy of his Grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld

The pedagogue Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Rudolf Carnap’s grandfather, developed an interesting account of the relationship between science, religion, and ethics, which belongs to the tradition of Herbart and can be seen as a typical product of empirically minded philosophy in nineteenth-century Germany. This paper examines Dörpfeld’s philosophical views and compares them with Carnap’s non-cognitivism and his views on religion. It turns out that Carnap’s non-cognitivism can be seen as a secularized version of Dörpfeld’s views, while Carnap’s views on religion are obviously inspired by the enlightened Protestantism of his grandfather. These are the acknowledgements that should be shifted to the beginning of the essay (e.g. as a footnote to the title).