\brief{Ernest Nagel an Rudolf Carnap und Ina Carnap, 16. März 1935}{März 1935}

%American Express Company

%Rome, Italy. March 16, 1935.

%\{38 Piazza di Spagna\}

\anrede{Dear Professor and Mrs. Carnap,}

\haupttext{I am very grieved to read from your letter how much ill fortune both of you have been experiencing. One never values
health until one has lost it; and I hope that by the time you receive thus you will once more regard good health as a
matter of course. I hope too that you are both under excellent medical care and that you follow your physician's
recommendations with scrupulous care. I shall feel very much relieved when you write me that Professor Carnap\IN{\carnap} has
regained his strength and that Mrs. Carnap\IN{\ina} has regained the use of her thumb. Please let me know when you get a chance.

I read with amazement and a sinking heart that the lecture tour will not be possible. I feel too sad about it myself to
be able to console you. I have been hoping against hope that you would be in the U.S. next year, and now feel as if I
were being deprived of something which is rightfully mine. I wish I had the power to be of some assistance to you; but
alas! influence of any sort is the last thing I possess.

The invitation from Harvard University\II{\harvard} is something of a consolation, and I am very happy that you have been so signally
honored. It certainly indicates that Professor Lewis\IN{\lewis} is interested in your work, and your visit may be, as you suggest,
the beginning of other things. However, having been disappointed before, I will not count the chickens before they are
hatched, especially when I remember the financial difficulties of some of the universities. I am enclosing a letter of
acceptance to Harvard\II{\harvard}. I do not know whether you want to send it off as it is; if you want to make some changes or
perhaps write an altogether different sort of letter and should want to have it overhauled for the English, please send it on
to me. I am a little puzzled by the fact that an invitation should be sent out so early for an event that will not take
place until 1936. Is it just possible that there is an error somewhere, and that the date is 1935?

I am very glad to be able to write you that Dr. Rosinger\IN{\rosinger} is \uline{not} the translator of Fraenkel's\IN{\fraenkelabraham} book\IW{} I told you
about. \uline{His} name is Katz\IN{}. I know Rosinger\IN{\rosinger} fairly well. He had done a great deal of work with Huntington\IN{\huntington}, has
published a long paper on the separation of points jointly with him, and last year he was writing a book on number theory\IW{}
(theory of primes, congruences, residues, etc.) with another well-known American mathematician by the name of Brinkman\IN{}.
Rosinger\IN{\rosinger} is an Austrian by birth (I think Viennese) and probably knows German very well; I am not sure about this point
because I never had the occasion to find out. Rosinger\IN{\rosinger} is one of the many unfortunate young men I know who have their
doctorate but are without a position. He has an insignificant, insecure and not very-well paying teaching job in the
mathematics department at Columbia\II{\columbiauniversity} at present. I imagine he hopes to earn something by translation work, and think he is
the sort of person who is very conscientious in the things he undertakes.

I know both the books\IW{} \IW{} which the Jour[nal] of Phil[osophy]\II{} sent to Erkenntnis\II{\erkenntnis} as well as their authors. The books\IW{} \IW{} are dissertations
for the doctorate \neueseite{} at Columbia\II{\columbiauniversity}. I was present at the examination of the two candidates. The Husserl\IN{\husserl} book\IW{} is an
unimaginative exposition, with no critical Standpunkt of his own; I was never convinced that Mr. Osborn\IN{} knew what
Husserl's\IN{\husserl} philosophy was about. The book by Mr. Mins\IN{} was provoked by the philosophic vagaries of Eddington\IN{\eddingtonarthur} and others
like him; I think many of the points Mins\IN{} makes are sound, but as I remember them they were not worked out with
sufficient clarity.

Rome is a very pleasant city, and although I have not been seeing very much of it, (Edith\IN{\nagelfrau} is doing the sight-seeing for
the present) I enjoy the sense of the past one gets here. I have met Professor Enriques\IN{\enriques}, a very jovial man, who as you
know is interested in the philosophy as well as the history of science. He has a refreshing dislike of scholasticism, but
believes that formalism (e.\,g. logistics) is an easy gateway to it. He is professor of geometry at the University\II{\universitaetrom} here,
and is interested in certain kinds of foundation problems; but on the whole the present Grundlagenstreit doesn't hold his
interest. I have also met a retired American philosopher, by the name of George Santayana\IN{\santayana}. I do not remember whether I
ever spoke to you about him. Er treibt keine Wissenschaftliche Philosophie, but he has always held my imagination and
admiration by the poignancy of his thought and the beauty of his English. It has been something of an experience for
me to see him -- I have the sense that I have met a creature from another world. I shall always remember Prague and Rome
for the people I met there.

I spend the rest of my leisure doing a little reading, and bemoaning my fate, that I get so little work done that I have
so little intelligence to do it with. But that is an old story with me now, and by this time I should be resigned to what
the gods have handed out to me.

Our final plans for the summer are not yet made. I hope it will be possible for us to meet you before we sail. I would
leave Europe with a sad heart if I thought that when I left you in Prague it was not Auf Wiedersehen. We both send you
our warmest regards and esteem.}

\grussformel{Yours always,\\
Ernest Nagel}

\ebericht{Brief, msl., 2 Seiten, \href{https://doi.org/10.48666/870403}{RC 029-05-12}; Briefkopf: msl. \original{American Express Company \,/\, Rome, Italy. March\,16, 1935}, hsl. \original{38 Piazza di Spagna}.}