This open access volume is based on the 'Early Carnap in Context' workshop that took place in Konstanz in 2017 and looks at Rudolf Carnap's philosophy, documented in his recently released diaries, from a combination of historical, cultural and philosophical perspectives. It enables further evaluation of the diaries and traces newly found interrelationships and their systematic definition. From a cultural and historical point of view, Logical Empiricism and Carnap's pivotal opus, The Logical Structure of the World, did not evolve in a vacuum. This applies equally in a history of philosophy context as well as under consideration of contemporary historical and cultural influences such as the socio-cultural setting in Vienna and Prague, the correlation between Logical Empiricism and Bauhaus modernism, the connection to the Life Reform Movement or the Youth Movement with its own life philosophy. Pursuing Carnap's progression on a micro level of history and referring the results back to Carnap's philosophy is now facilitated by recent access to his Diaries from 1908-1935. These shorthand records, reading lists, travel reports and notes constitute a valuable source for the research of networks and social movements which left their mark on him.

Christian Damböck is Privatdozent at the Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna. He is recently working on an edition of Rudolf Carnap's diaries and scientific correspondence (FWF research grant P31716). His research interests are philosophy of science and the humanities in the 19th and 20th century in central Europe and the US; moral non-cognitivism and theories of democracy; philosophy of logic; the philosophies of Wilhelm Dilthey, Hermann Cohen, Chaim H. Steinthal, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Thomas Kuhn, and Wolfgang Stegmüller. Gereon Wolters is professor emeritus of philosophy and history of science at the University of Konstanz and director of the Philosophical Archive. He is a member of the German National Academy of Science - Leopoldina and of the Academia Europea. His most recent publication that deals with Carnap is: "' Wrongful Life ' Reloaded: Logico-Empiricism's Philosophy of Biology 1934/36 (Prague/Paris/Copenhagen) - With Historico-Political Intermezzos", in: Michel Bourdeau/Gerhard Heinzmann/Pierre Wagner (eds.), Sur la philosophie scientifique et l'unité de la science. Le congrès de Paris 1935 et son héritage. Actes du colloque de Cerisy, Philosophia Scientiæ 22(3) 2018 (special issue), 233-255".