Dr. Christian Damböck

Personal Infomation

Christian Damböck is project coordinator of the Rudolf Carnap Digital (RCD) edition project. His research and teaching focus primarily on the history of the philosophy of science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to developments in Central Europe and the United States. More specifically, his work examines the political and cultural-historical background of logical empiricism.

Resear Interests

Christian Damböck is currently working on several editions of Rudolf Carnap’s writings, including his diaries, his correspondence (for example, with Otto Neurath), and a new critical edition of the Aufbau. Another major focus of his research is the development of the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Carnap. He also has a strong interest in the digital humanities, within which he is developing the archive and edition management tool VALEP.

Selected Publications

• '"Caught in the Middle". Philosophy of Science between the Historical Turn and Formal Philosophy as Illustrated by the Program of "Kuhn Sneedified"', in: HOPOS 2014, 62–82.
  https://doi.org/10.1086/673297
• 〈Deutscher Empirismus〉. Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830-1930. Cham: Springer, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39619-4
• “What is Descriptive Psychology? Ebbinghaus’s 1896 Criticism of Dilthey Revisited”, in: HOPOS 10, 2020, 274–289. https://doi.org/10.1086/707838
• „Die Entwicklung von Carnaps Aufbau 1920–1928“, in: Christian Damböck und Gereon Wolters (eds.), Der junge Carnap in historischem Kontext 1918–1935, Cham: Springer, 2021, 19–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58251-7_2
• Rudolf Carnap: Tagebücher 1908-1935. Herausgegeben von Christian Damböck, unter Mitarbeit von Brigitta Arden, Roman Jordan, Brigitte Parakenings und Lois M. Rendl. Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 2022 (2 volumes).
  https://doi.org/10.48666/808482 / https://doi.org/10.48666/808483
• 'The politics of Carnap’s non-cognitivism and the scientific world-conception of left-wing logical empiricism', Perspectives on Science 30(4), 2022, 493-524. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00372.
• ‘Carnap und Heidegger’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 72(5), 2025, 656–671.
  https://doi.org/10.1515/dzph-2024-0048
  (English translation: ‘Carnap and Heidegger. Political Antimetaphysics Versus Metaphysics as Metapolitics‘, in: Geltung 2(2), 2024, 1-21.
  https://doi.org/10.23925/2764-0892.2024.v2.n2.e67407)
• ‘Carnap’s Scientific Humanism’, Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 13(3), 2025.
  https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v13i3.5752
• ‘Noncognitive Deliberation. The Political Legacy of Logical Empiricism’, Erkenntnis 91, 2026, 721–741. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00911-7