Overcoming Metaphysics

With so much content available from free sources these days, I don't really use textbooks any more, instead providing my students with electronic copies of various readings that I've been able to locate in libraries or on the web.  Still, not quite everything I'd want is so easily available.  There is no copy of Carnap's "Overcoming Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language" on the web that I've been able to locate, so I wrote my own translation to use when I wished to assign it.  The link is here.

In addition to the desire to make a copy available to my students at a reasonable rate, I also wasn't entirely happy with the standard English translation (Arthur Pap's, in Logical Positivism).  My biggest disagreement is with the first word of the title (Pap has "Elimination" rather than "Overcoming;" Carnap surely used one of Nietzsche's favorite words on purpose), but there are a few other differences in my version.  One that may or may not be significant is that I have made certain to use "sense" or a word containing "sense" every time Carnap uses "Sinn" or a word containing "sinn", and similarly to always use "meaning" for "Bedeutung."  Carnap seems to consistently refer to the "Sinn" of sentences and the "Bedeutung" of individual nouns.  I'm not quite sure why he does this, but there may be some significance to it, perhaps connected to the Fregean distinction since Carnap was a student of Frege's.  Pap often uses "meaning" for "Sinn", though in fairness to Pap Carnap himself would frequently use "meaning" in similar contexts in his later English writings.

Updated; link fixed, and the comments now have a link to a copy of Pap's translation that turns out to be available online after all.

Comments

[Jim Farmelant]

Actually, I actually I found that Pap's translation of Carnap's essay is available on the Internet. For example, see:
http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?album=2043023&pid=16493265

However, it's to see an alternative translation that draws the connections between Carnap and Nietzsche even closer.

[Aaron Boyden]

I don't know if that wasn't up last time I searched, or if I just didn't search hard enough; I did my own translation a few years ago. For balance, I like to give my students both sides of the discussion, and at least give them access to the Heidegger essay Carnap criticizes. I have found translations of "What is Metaphysics?" online, but the only translation I've found which includes the postscript (http://www.wagner.edu/departments/psychology/sites/wagner.edu.departments.psychology/files/download/Martin%20Heidegger%20-%20What%20Is%20Metaphysics.pdf) obscures the fact that Heidegger was at least in part responding to Carnap (again a translator doesn't use "overcoming" for "ueberwindung"; Miles Groth uses "getting over" instead. Since the paragraph does contain a reference to "will to power," I guess at least the connection to Nietzsche isn't completely obscured in this case). Also, I don't know if I need to change my adobe PDF reader settings or if there's something wrong with the file, but the Greek words don't show up properly, though I guess that's a minor issue for me since I couldn't read them anyway. Not sure if I want to do my own translation of Heidegger.