In 1932, in one of the more infamous exchanges between what eventually came to be known as the “analytic” and “continental” schools, the Vienna Circle’s Rudolf Carnap delivered a withering critique of Martin Heidegger’s approach to philosophy. In “The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language,” Carnap charged that Heidegger’s profound-sounding statements about “the Nothing” were actually nonsense — confused attempts to use language in ways that did not actually convey any meaningful information.

Some view Carnap’s attacks on Heidegger as a symptom of the former’s narrow-mindedness or the poverty of his “logical positivist” conception of language and meaning; others view it as a more or less deserving critique of a writer who was more windbag than philosopher. But there is a political dimension to this episode too. Carnap, along with other members of the Vienna Circle, was a socialist who eventually fled Nazi Germany; Heidegger was a supporter and even briefly a member of the Nazi Party.

For some who side with Carnap in his hostility to Heidegger’s proclamations about nothingness, this is not just a coincidence. Heidegger’s sympathies with fascism, on this view, were essentially bound up with his foggy romantic philosophizing, while Carnap’s clear-headed, more science-friendly approach naturally goes hand in hand with a progressive political outlook. At least, this is a flattering story that analytic philosophers with left-wing sympathies, who think of themselves as intellectual descendants of Carnap, might tell themselves.