This paper argues for a ‘contextualist’ approach to teaching antisemitism in philosophy class. The traditional ‘systematic’ approach emphasizes recognizing and dismantling antisemitic aspects in canonical philosophical texts. The introduced contextualist approach broadens the perspective, treating philosophy as a continuous debate embedded in cultural realities. It focuses on historical controversies rather than isolated arguments, includes the voice and the perspectives of the oppressed, and so has the potential to broaden traditional philosophical canons. In the second half of (...) the paper, we provide a case study of the contextualist approach, applying it to the ‘Berlin antisemitism controversy’ of 1879/80. We argue that the contextualist approach is particularly valuable when dealing with antisemitism as it teaches students to analyze arguments within the socio-political landscape and to identify antisemitic elements. The students thereby acquire the skills to discern antisemitic argumentation in other contexts as well. We suggest that this approach could be used to teach other debates in the history of philosophy, especially those tackling race, sex, and gender issues. (shrink)

Histories of German philosophy in the nineteenth century typically focus on its first half--when Hegel, idealism, and Romanticism dominated. By contrast, the remainder of the century, after Hegel's death, has been relatively neglected because it has been seen as a period of stagnation and decline. But Frederick Beiser argues that the second half of the century was in fact one of the most revolutionary periods in modern philosophy because the nature of philosophy itself was up (...) for grabs and the very absence of certainty led to creativity and the start of a new era. In this innovative concise history of German philosophy from 1840 to 1900, Beiser focuses not on themes or individual thinkers but rather on the period's five great debates: the identity crisis of philosophy, the materialism controversy, the methods and limits of history, the pessimism controversy, and the Ignorabimusstreit. Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Dilthey play important roles in these controversies but so do many neglected figures, including Ludwig Büchner, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Fraunstaedt, Hermann Lotze, Adolf Trendelenburg, and two women, Agnes Taubert and Olga Pluemacher, who have been completely forgotten in histories of philosophy. The result is a wide-ranging, original, and surprising new account of German philosophy in the critical period between Hegel and the twentieth century. (shrink)

(2005). Hermann Cohen and the Renewal of Kantian philosophy2. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the german traditionissue editor: damian veal, pp. 95-108.

The review covers scholarly publications devoted to the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, the head of the Marburg School of Neo­Kantianism, written by Russ­ ian researchers in the period between 2000 and 2023. Although Cohen commanded unquestioned authorityamong Russian philosophers of his time — among them some followers and pupils — there was no systematic and substantive study of his work in pre­revolutionary Russia. The review below attempts to show the evidentgrowth of interest in Cohen’s philosophy in the (...) last quarter of the century. The teaching of the German philosopher who lived and worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still attracts lively in- terest among Russian philosophers today. Witness the multiple monographs, articles and reports focusing on Cohen’s theory of cognition, his ethics and aesthetics, the search for convergences between the Christian religion and the Judaic tradition, the concept of the philosophy of culture, the relationship between morality and law and many other issues. The review pays particular attention to the works on the reception of Cohen’s philosophy in Russia, as well as previously unpublished translations and archive materials which were part of the scholarly discourse of his time but remained unpublished and then forgotten. The interest of modern Russ­ ian scholars in the work of Cohen does not only point to his importance for the history of philosophy, but attests to the relevance of his ideas whose potential has yet to be fully revealed. The review may serve as a guide to the published literature on Cohen for the students of his philosophy and for all those interested in Neo­Kantianism in general, thereby contributing to the development of such a field in philosophy as Cohen studies. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz was a leading figure of nineteenth-century European intellectual life, remarkable even among the many scientists of the period for the range and depth of his interests. A pioneer of physiology and physics, he was also deeply concerned with the implications of science for philosophy and culture. From the 1850s to the 1890s, Helmholtz delivered more than two dozen popular lectures, seeking to educate the public and to enlighten the leaders of European society and governments (...) about the potential benefits of science and technology to a developing modern society. David Cahan has selected fifteen of these lectures, which reflect the wide range of topics of crucial importance to Helmholtz and his audiences. Among the subjects discussed are the origins of the planetary system, the relation of natural science to science in general, the aims and progress of the physical sciences, the problems of perception, and academic freedom in German universities. This collection also includes Helmholtz's fascinating lectures on the relation of optics to painting and the physiological causes of harmony in music, which provide insight into the relations between science and aesthetics. Science and Culture makes available again Helmholtz's eloquent arguments on the usefulness, benefits, and, intellectual pleasures of understanding the natural world. With Cahan's Introduction to set these essays in their broader context, this collection makes an important contribution to the philosophical and intellectual history of Europe at a time when science played an increasingly significant role in social, economic, and cultural life. (shrink)

The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. _The Neo-Kantian Reader_ is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, (...) philosophy of science, and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections, placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen on the Way to „Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism” Breslau Stop On the way leading Hermann Cohen from his family Coswig to Marburg and — later — to Berlin, from a Jewish province to a multicultural metropolis, Breslau is a special point. The future philosopher came here in 1857, hoping for the future of fice of the rabbi, to begin studies at the newly established Jewish Theological Seminary. Here too, four years (...) later, he enrolled at the university, opening up the prospect of an academic career. A special point, which allowed him to create in the next years an “impressive system” which is a bold attempt to present German and Judaism as identical or connected. Jewish and religious content was a permanent and constant component of Cohen’s works, and Religion of Reason and System of Philosophy form a whole. Already before the creation of works devoted to Kant, some features of Cohen’s philosophy of religion are revealed, which originated in his studies at Breslau, one of the most important Haskalah centers in the middle of the 19th century. Cohen found there an atmosphere conduciveto the later shaping of the science of the universal religion of reason. After many years, Cohen assessed the Jewish Theological Seminary as “the most important educational institution [of his] youth.”. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen’s 1871 classic, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, had a formative influence, not only on the Marburg school’s reading of Kant, but on their entire conception of philosophy. This influence was further magnified by the substantially revised and expanded second edition of 1885 and the yet further expanded third edition of 1918. Neo-Kantianism was the dominant philosophical movement in Germany in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which means that a work, ostensibly, of Kant scholarship had an (...) influence on the development of German philosophy that few works of secondary literature can claim. (shrink)

Der Band versammelt einen Großteil der Beiträge, die internationale Experten anlässlich der Tagung „Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei Hermann Cohen“ im November 2014 am Institut Wiener Kreis der Universität Wien präsentiert haben. Mit der Tagung zu Hermann Cohen, der zusammen mit Paul Natorp die Marburger Schule begründete, wurden zwei Ziele verfolgt: erstens die Aspekte in der Philosophie des Kantianers Cohen herauszuarbeiten, die an die Idee einer Einheitswissenschaft anknüpfen und zweitens Divergenzen und Übereinstimmungen Cohens mit der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, der Programmatik (...) des Wiener Kreises um Rudolf Carnap und Moritz Schlick zu identifizieren. Der Tagungsband ist in drei Teile gegliedert. Die Aufsätze im ersten Teil beschäftigen sich mit der Bedeutung von Erfahrung und Empirismus für das Philosophieverständnis Hermann Cohens. Im zweiten Teil gehen die Autoren der Frage nach, welche Rolle Theorien aus den Bereichen Mathematik, Naturwissenscha ften und Psychologie für Cohens Denken gespielt haben – unter anderem Hermann von Helmholtz‘ Theorie des Messens und die Bedeutung der Infinitesimalrechnung für die Philosophie der Marburger Schule. Die Beiträge im dritten Teil des Bandes stellen die Philosophie Cohens und der Marburger Schule den Vertretern des Wiener Kreises und der Berliner Gruppe um Hans Reichenbach gegenüber. Dabei wird Reichenbachs Rezeption der Relativitätstheorie in den Kontext einer Relativierung Kants bei Cohen und Ernst Cassirer gestellt und „versteckte Verwandtschaften“ zwischen Cohen und dem Logischen Empirismus aufgedeckt. Der Band richtet sich an Wissenschaftler auf dem Gebiet der Geschichte der Philosophie. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist PedagogyKelly J. WhitmerWhile the Franckesche Stiftungen (the Francke Foundations) of Halle/Saale are perhaps best known today as the institutional centre of German Pietism, throughout much of the eighteenth century they were widely regarded as a pedagogically innovative Schulstadt (or city of schools). The founder of this Schulstadt, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was many things to many people: Pietist, radical (...) Lutheran, theologian, pedagogue, professor of Greek and Oriental languages, preacher, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and proponent of a Protestant mission. Like most participants in what was initially a grassroots movement oriented around the personality of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a minister active in Frankfurt am Main around 1670 who sought to breathe new life into the Lutheran church,2 Francke rarely referred to himself as a Pietist. From his post at the University of Halle (founded in 1694), this Spenerian prote´gé set out to create a new "universal seminar" that would make the assimilation of many diverse points of view, identities, and competing strands of knowledge its [End Page 545] defining mandate. "My purpose," Francke wrote in a letter to a Pastor Ring from Grünebartau (October 29, 1712), "is to develop a universal institution, useful for bringing into a good and holy order all that is important for the Christianity of all orders of society and relates, in some way, to the healing power of the soul."3 His Schulstadt would "bring into order" a myriad of relationships around a single point and relied, quite deliberately I propose, on an eclectic methodology to do this.In recent years, the relationship of Francke's Schulstadt to the implementation of Brandenburg-Prussia's first compulsory schooling system and teacher training institutes has been better documented than in the past.4 Scholars of education have paid closer attention to the methodological innovations of Pietist pedagogy, and its points of convergence with the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) have become subjects of mounting interest.5 Francke's significance for the history of education has been assessed mainly in terms of his ability to realize the pedagogically inclined reform projects of seventeenth-century figures, such as Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670).6 We know that the thousands of children who participated in the life of the Schulstadt very often left Halle to become actively involved as teachers and ministers throughout the German states. Several played pivotal roles in the development of the late eighteenth-century educational reform movement known as Philanthropismus and its associated practices and institutions.7 [End Page 546]Perhaps the most striking feature of Francke's Schulstadt was its curriculum, which featured innovative training regimens in applied mathematics for children from diverse social backgrounds.8 The scale and rigor of these programs were to be found nowhere else at the time and can be linked to the overtly pedagogical mandate of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (f. 1701). These regimens deliberately juxtaposed artisanal and learned knowledge and stressed the importance of the eye as a conciliatory medium.9 Despite having acquired largely anti-empiricist reputations over the years due to their lingering interest in alchemy and their roles in securing the banishment of the "rationalist" mathematician and philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from their community in 1723, careful consideration of what Halle Pietists were teaching in their schools suggests a different view. These historical actors reconciled categories of knowledge production and transmission often framed as oppositional—despite what several scholars have recently shown to be their clear interconnectedness.10I argue here for the predominance of eclecticism in the Schulstadt, including a pronounced emphasis on the "middling" mathematical and mechanical sciences as tools of conciliation and self-improvement. I seek to illustrate how eclecticism was much more than a Philosophiebegriff that was well received by some Pietists, as Walter Sparn has argued, but that it is better understood as a set of conciliatory practices, traces of which resonate in Pietist lesson plans.11 Teachers in Francke's schools integrated experimental philosophy into an educational program that was introducing children to the exercises of... (shrink)

Idea for a universal history with cosmopolitan intent / Immanuel Kant -- Philosophy of history / Johann Gottfried von Herder -- What is universal history and to what end does one study it? / Friedrich Schiller -- On the task of the historian / Wilhelm von Humboldt -- Idea of universal history / Johann Gottlieb Fichte -- World history / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel -- The ages of the world / Friedrich Wilhelm Josef Schelling -- On the epochos of (...) modern history / Leopold von Ranke -- Preface to first edition of histories on the Latin and Germanic nations / Leopold von Ranke -- Introduction to the history of the nineteenth century / Georg Gottfried Gervinus -- Outline of the principles of history / Johann Gustav Droysen -- The German ideology / Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels -- Speeches and essays / Theodor Mommsen -- Answer to the inaugural addresses / Theodor Mommsen -- On fortume and misfortune in history / Jakob Burckhardt -- Patterns and meaning in history / Wilhelm Dilthey -- The task of the historian / Heinrich von Treitschke -- The use and abuse of history / Friedrich Nietzsche -- Historism: the rise of the new historical outlook / Friedrich Meinecke -- The meaning of history / Karl Jaspers -- The problem of world history / Oswald Spengler. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen, as it is well known, criticised the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. And before him the Kantian thing-in-itself was criticised by Fichte and other German idealists. Probably for this reason, Hermann Cohen is sometimes regarded as a person who said things similar to Fichte. This gives a completely wrong perspective, making it impossible to understand the philosopher's ideas. The basis for his critique of the Kantian thing-in-itself is quite different from the motives, determining the criticism (...) of Kant in the classical German Idealism. Such interpretation does not allow to see close connection of Cohen's theoretical philosophy with revolution in physics which took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article explains how Cohen's demand that pure thinking must form its own content is connected with transformations taking place in physics and mathematics, and the peculiarity of Cohen's understanding of idealism is demonstrated: for him, correct idealism must realize that autonomous, free thinking should work seriously with sense data. The closeness of Cohen's ideas to the postpositivist thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation is explained. For Cohen, serious work with sense data is opposite to uncritical acceptance of them as given. The origin of scientific thinking is thinking itself. It responds to the challenge of sensory material by creating its own constructs. Mathematized natural science becomes for Cohen both an example and a confirmation of this thesis. For him, what is real is what is described in the language of mathematical analysis, i.e. continuous processes, in spite of the fact that any data are discrete. It is shown that the source of Cohen's assertions on this issue is in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely in the doctrine of the Principles of pure natural science and, more specifically, in the Anticipations of Perception. Cohen's conviction of the constructive character of the theories of mathematized natural science is confirmed in the article by references to the authority of A. Einstein. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition ed. by Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia NassarAlison StoneKristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar, editors. Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 336. Hardback, $99.00."How plausible, [Dalia Nassar and I] kept asking, is it that women published philosophy in the early modern period and then simply (...) ceased to think and publish philosophy in the nineteenth century?" remarked Kristin Gjesdal recently (interview with Richard Marshall, 3:16am [blog], https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/gadamer-herder-and-the-womenphilosophers-of-the-long-nineteen-cent ury?c=end-times-series). Not plausible at all—yet this is what historians of women in philosophy often seem to have assumed, judging by the remarkably small amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century women philosophers compared with those of the early modern period or the twentieth century. Eileen O'Neill, for instance, claims that it was "not a particularly friendly century for women philosophers" (1). In fact, as Gjesdal and Nassar observe, women were "significant contributors" to the "thriving intellectual cultures in German-speaking countries" at this time (1). Gjesdal and Nassar contrast Germanic countries to France and Britain in this regard, yet I would add that nineteenth-century Britain too had a vibrant print and periodical culture that created openings for women philosophers such as Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Frances Power Cobbe, and many others. The broader point remains: the nineteenth century has only seemed empty of women philosophers because we have not yet investigated the women thinkers of this period or challenged the canons and narratives from which they have been excluded.Recognizing German women philosophers is particularly important because the vast majority of scholarship on the nineteenth century focuses on the German tradition. Consequently, unless we recover the work of German-speaking women, we will never change the narrative about this period. This makes the present anthology invaluable for both teaching and research. Edited by Gjesdal and Nassar, it contains new translations, nearly all by Anna Ezekiel, of texts by historical German-speaking women philosophers.Regarding teaching, many courses on post-Kantian European philosophy include no women until Beauvoir or Arendt. Such courses typically cover Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. The editors have clearly designed this volume to enable instructors easily to bring women into such courses, by providing extracts—of suitable lengths for teaching—from women affiliated respectively with German idealism and Romanticism (Germaine de Staël, Karoline von Günderrode, and Bettina von Arnim), Marxism (Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg), Nietzscheanism (Hedwig Dohm, Lou Salomé), and phenomenology (Edith Stein, Gerda Walther). Some of these women are already well-known as political activists, as with Luxemburg and Zetkin, or under the elastic heading of "writers," as with Staël and von Arnim. But this collection presents these women's writings in a new light, showcasing their philosophical side. After all, we have learned to read Marx and Nietzsche philosophically: why not extend the same courtesy to Staël or Luxemburg?For researchers, this collection will likewise be invaluable. Post-Kantian European philosophy has been slow to respond to the wider questioning and broadening of the traditional philosophical canon. It remains sadly common for narratives of nineteenth-century German philosophy to discuss men only—a position that this book makes untenable. [End Page 336] Hopefully it will galvanize philosophers to integrate these women into the historiography of the post-Kantian tradition at last.In the introduction, the editors helpfully contextualize the selected writings, arguing that these women's exclusion from academic institutions led them to philosophize in ways that spoke to general audiences, connected with lived experience, and addressed practical and political concerns. In short, these women did a type of philosophy that was not purified but socially engaged, and can be a model for us today. Thereafter the book consists of sections on nine women philosophers, ordered chronologically. Each section begins with an editorial introduction to the philosopher and her interests, ideas, writings, and interlocutors.The writings included from Staël—whose work spans the period from the French Revolution into Romanticism—are "On Women Writers" from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 239 die Herausgeber nicht mit, von wem. Jedem Dialog geht eine Gliederung voran; jeder Band ist mit einer recht brauchbaren Bibliographie versehen. Es ist erstaunlich zu erfahren, dass der erste Band, erstmalig in 1957 erschienen, in 1963 eine Auflage von 78000 erreicht hat; bleiben auch die Auflageziffern der fibrigen B~inde dahinter zurfick, so sind sie doch genfigend eindrucksvoll. Man wfinscht, der Verlag m6chte doch, durch diesen Erfolg (...) ermutigt, das nach Obgesagtem noch Fehlende--und dazu noch Platons Gedichte--in einem Erg~inzungsband bringen, wie immer man fiber die Echtheit der Stficke denkt. Der stilistische Unterschied zwischen den ~bersetzungen von Schleiermacher (erstmalig: 1804-1810) und von H. und F. H. Mfiller ist ausserordentlich. Dies ist nicht etwa auf die gr6ssere Sprachmeisterschaff Schleiermachers zurfickfiihren. Vielmehr liegt seiner Obersetzungsmethode eine h6chst interessante Theorie zugrunde (die F. A. Wolff, der Schleiermachers ~bersetzung verhShnt und Wilamowitz, der sie als ungeniessbar bezeichnet hatte, offenbar unbekannt war). Dieser Theorie zufolge ist es die Aufgabe des ~2bersetzers, den Leser besffindig daran zu erinnern, dass er nur eine l~bersetzung vor sich hat. Einem ~bersetzer, der sich brfistet, dass sich sein Text so liest, wie ihn der Autor geschrieben h~itte, wenn er in der Sprache des ~bersetzers und seines Publikums gedacht h~itte, sollte erwidert werden "Daffir bin ich dir so dankbar, wie ich es w~ire, wenn du mir das Bild eines Mannes zeigtest und sagtest--So wiirde er ausgesehen haben, wenn ihn mit seiner Mutter ein anderer Vater gezeugt h~tte." In anderen Worten: da sich Inhalt und Ausdruck nicht abtrennen lassen, sollte der f2bersetzer, start das Original seiner Sprache anzueignen, vielmehr--wir gebrauchen hier den bekannten Brechtschen Begriff--im Leser einen Verfremdungseffekt erzeugen. Wie man sieht, ist Schleiermachers ~3bersetzungstheorie jeder "rationalistischen " strikte entgegengesetzt; ja, man k6nnte sagen, dass sie das ganze Wesen des Romantisch-Irrationalen eben auf ein Einzelproblem, das des l~bersetzens angewendet, aufs beste ausdrfickt. Und Schleiermachers f2bersetzungspraxis entspricht genau seiner Theorie. Dies ist ihre Eigentfimlichkeit. Und ich denke, dass diese Theorie mehr Au{merksamkeit verdient, als ihr in den nie endenden Diskussionen darfiber, welchen Prinzipien der Obersetzer folgen sollte, geschenkt wird. PHILIP MERLAN Scripps College, Claremont, Calif. Platon der Erzieher. Von Julius Stenzel. Mit einer Einffihrung von Konrad Gaiser. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1961. Pp. xxx + 337. DM 26.) Platon der Erzieher was first published in 1927. The present edition, with 240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the exception of the preface by Gaiser, is an exact reproduction of the earlier one. As a reviewer of the reissue, I feel myself obligated to formulate what seems to me relevant today. I remember that, when I read the first edition about the time of its appearance, I was full of admiration and felt myself indebted to the book for many years. Today it seems to me more dated than most writings on Plato of that period, including various publications of Stenzel. Criticizing Platon der Erzieher, I criticize what I once read differently. Julius Stenzel had earlier established his reputation as a Platonic scholar with his Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates zu Aristoteles (1917). This book as well as most of Stenzel's later investigations have exercised a considerable influence on international Platonic scholarship. In Germany it prefaced a new approach to ancient and especially to Platonic philosophy. In spite of the spadework done by German scholars in the nineteenth century and still by men like Apelt, Constantin Ritter and Theodor Gomperz, Plato's image in German thought about the end of the First World War was mainly determined by three sources: the neo-Kantian interpretation and Natorp's monograph in particular ; the highly original but very personal and philosophically naive "biography" of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff; and the vision of the Plato gestalt by the George circle. Stenzel dedicated the Studien to Wilamowitz and, while paying his respect to Natorp, stated that in contrast to the philosophical Plato interpretation of the Marburg school, he had chosen a philological and historical approach. As for the George circle, he did not acknowledge its significance, though I believe that at least in his later works he was indirectly influenced by it. In the years following World War I, it became important that Stenzel and... (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the development of Jewish studies in Germany since reunification. After a brief historical review of the subject in the nineteenth century with the development of modern Reform Judaism and the science of Judaism created by Jewish religious and secular scholars, it focuses on the development of the past thirty years, in which not only the Jewish community but also Jewish studies have increased in importance. The growth of the Jewish community was largely due (...) to immigration from the Soviet Union, but also partly to young Israelis who moved to Berlin. In line with these different backgrounds, a new interest in diaspora research emerged. The paper also deals with the difference between German Jewish studies and those of most other countries, where Jewish studies are mainly designed by Jewish scholars. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz has been widely acknowledged as one of the forerunners of contemporary theories of measurement. However, his conception of measurement differs from later, representational conceptions in two main respects. Firstly, Helmholtz advocated an empiricist philosophy of arithmetic as grounded in some psychological facts concerning quantification. Secondly, his theory implies that mathematical structures are common to both subjective experiences and objective ones. My suggestion is that both of these differences depend on a classical approach to measurement, according (...) to which the arithmetic laws of addition define what is measurable as a particular domain for their application, and, at the same time, the extensibility of these laws to all known physical processes works as a heuristic principle for empirical research. Such an approach is worth reconsidering, not only because it lends plausibility to some of the controversial aspects of Helmholtz’s theory, but also because it offers a philosophical perspective on quantification problems that originated in the nineteenth-century.This paper draws insights on Helmholtz’s philosophical views from his engagement with the measurability of sensations via Fechner’s psychophysical law. This seems to be in contrast with the fact that the reception of Helmholtz’s theory culminated with the formulation of the theory of extensive measurement. I will contend that Helmholtz reached a no less important standpoint in the nineteenth-century debate on whether sensations are different (i.e., intensive) kinds of magnitudes and on how, if at all, they can be measured. (shrink)

German supporters of the Kantian philosophy in the late 19th century took one of two forks in the road: the fork leading to Baden, and the Southwest School of neo-Kantian philosophy, and the fork leading to Marburg, and the Marburg School, founded by Hermann Cohen. Between 1876, when Cohen came to Marburg, and 1918, the year of Cohen's death, Cohen, with his Marburg School, had a profound influence on German academia.

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag rekonstruiert erstmals den 1869 erschienenen Aufsatz »Die dichterische Phantasie und der Mechanismus des Bewußtseins« des Neukantianers Hermann Cohen. Der in der Fachgeschichte der Literaturwissenschaft unbekannte Text stammt aus Cohens vor-neukantianischer Phase und orientiert sich an der Philosophie Johann Friedrich Herbarts. Unter Rückgriff auf Herbarts Apperzeptionsbegriff, die Mythentheorie Jacob Grimms und das völkerpsychologische Konzept der ›Verdichtung‹ entwirft Cohen mit Blick auf die »formalen Elemente«, die der Mythos in der Moderne freisetzt, ein Wissenschaftsprogramm der Literaturwissenschaft, das sich von der (...) philologisch, nationalliterarisch und geistesgeschichtlich orientierten Germanistik des 19. Jahrhunderts distanziert – was den Text in die Genealogie der formalistischen Grundorientierungen des 20. Jahrhunderts einreiht.The article reconstructs for the first time the essay »Die dichterische Phantasie und der Mechanismus des Bewußtseins« by the Neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen, published in 1869. The text, unknown in the history of literary studies, belongs to Cohen’s pre-neo-Kantian phase and is oriented on the philosophy of Johann Friedrich Herbart. With recourse to Herbart’s notion of apperception, Jacob Grimm’s theory of myth and Moritz Lazarus’ folk psychological concept of ›Verdichtung‹, Cohen creates with regard to the »formal elements«, released by myth in modernity, a scientific program of literary studies which differs from the philological, national literary and ›Geistesgeschichte‹-based Germanistik of the 19th century. This places the text in the genealogy of the basic formalist orientations of the 20th century. (shrink)

How did the Bhagavadgãtà first become an object of German philosophical and philological inquiry? How were its foundational concepts initially interpreted within German intellectual circles, and what does this episode in the history of cross-cultural encounter teach us about the status of comparative philosophy today? This book addresses these questions through a careful study of the figures who read, translated and interpreted the Bhagavadgãtà around the turn of the nineteenth century in Germany: J.G. Herder, F. Majer, (...) F. Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, and G.W.F. Hegel. Methodologically, the study attends to the intellectual contexts and prejudices that framed the early reception of the text. But it also delves deeper by investigating the way these frameworks inflected the construction of the Bhagavadgãtà and its foundational concepts through the scholarly acts of excerpting, anthologization, and translation. Overall, the project contributes to the pluralization of Western philosophy and its history while simultaneously arguing for a continued critical alertness in cross-cultural comparison of philosophical and religious worldviews. (shrink)

Edvard August Vainio was a world-renowned Finnish lichenologist. In Finland, however, he was a controversial person due to his strong pro-Finnish political views. Equally disputed was his opinion that systematics should be based on evolutionary theory and phylogenetic thinking. Vainio was familiar with the ideas of the early German phylogeneticists—especially those of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli – and, applying them, aimed to create an exact method for building a natural classification of lichens already at the end of the (...) class='Hi'>nineteenth century. In this respect, Vainio was a true pioneer, as no actual phylogenetic method had yet been developed. In the general spirit of the time, Vainio focused on finding the ancestors of species and other taxa by comparing primitive and derived features of homologous characters. However, Vainio already understood the concept of sister groups in 1880, the identification of which is the basis of all modern phylogenetic research. Nevertheless, the distinctive method developed by Vainio was not so much focused on the construction of a phylogenetic tree, but on revealing the origin of species through the differentiation and fixation of their polymorphic variation. Indeed, Vainio’s species concept is surprisingly similar to the phylogenetic species concepts presented a hundred years later. Although in many ways progressive, Vainio’s views did not influence the development of phylogenetics more widely, but his discussions are nevertheless a valuable source to understanding the early development of phylogenetic theory. (shrink)

Cohen, Buber, and Rosenzweig were eminent figures in what Buber called a “Jewish renaissance.” I will limit myself to their relation to two basic Jewish concepts: teaching, i.e., the theoretical, theological part of the tradition, and law, i.e., the practical part. Historically, my focus is on those approximately 20 years between Cohen’s 1904 essay on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion in their Interrelation, and Rosenzweig’s 1923 essay The Builders, i.e., his response to Buber’s newly published Speeches on Judaism. (...) Almost all of the main philosophical works of our three authors fall into this period: Cohen’s System of Philosophy (1902-1912), his Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919), Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption (1921), and Buber’s I and Thou (1923). To think, to feel and to do one’s own authentically without excluding oneself from the general culture, or more strongly: to accomplish the general, even the most general at all, precisely in the realization of one’s own, is for all three philosophers the high demand of their Jewish self-interpretation. None of them has devoted his life’s work exclusively to “Jewish” issues, least of all Hermann Cohen. But each of them is under the question of how it is possible to write in German about the general human and just in this to be unambiguously Jewish. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I present Hermann Cohen's foundation for the history and philosophy of science. My investigation begins with Cohen's formulation of a neo-Kantian epistemology. I analyze Cohen's early work, especially his contributions to 19th century debates about the theory of knowledge. I conclude by examining Cohen's mature theory of science in two works, The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and its History of 1883, and Cohen's extensive 1914 Introduction to Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. In the former, (...) Cohen gives an historical and philosophical analysis of the foundations of the infinitesimal method in mathematics. In the latter, Cohen presents a detailed account of Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics of 1894. Hertz considers a series of possible foundations for mechanics, in the interest of finding a secure conceptual basis for mechanical theories. Cohen argues that Hertz's analysis can be completed, and his goal achieved, by means of a philosophical examination of the role of mathematical principles and fundamental concepts in scientific theories. (shrink)

The present article examines the material, epistemological, and social dimensions of late nineteenth-century anti-cholera serum controversies that unfolded in Tokyo and Berlin. It seeks to shed light on the conflicting values embedded in the construction of scientific evidence during the transnational exploration of bacteriology as an effective response to controlling epidemics. Driven by Japanese health authorities’ initiatives, Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo participated in the elaboration of bacteriological research oriented toward therapeutic application during his stay in Berlin. This (...) work coincided with the rise of a controversy over anti-cholera serum in relation to the animal experiments conducted by Richard Pfeiffer, a German bacteriologist. After presenting a series of animal experiments and certain clinical cases conducted in Germany, France, and Egypt in the context of the controversies, the article analyzes a therapeutic trial conducted by Kitasato in Japan during an 1895 cholera epidemic. His strategy, bringing new data to the transnational debate through an intensive investment of resources in the trial, provoked criticism from his Japanese and German colleagues. These critics questioned Kitasato’s method and pointed out the low social value of this experimental serum therapy, performed in highly equipped conditions. Through this case study, the present article highlights: a) a strong tension between transnational research interactions among bacteriologists and local medical practices during public health campaigns against epidemics at the turn of the twentieth century; b) the importance of analyzing the interconnected effects of local, national and transnational frameworks of medical science when examining the increasingly intertwined relationships between laboratory science and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Few texts summarize and at the same time compound the challenges of their author's philosophy so sharply as Hermann Cohen's Das Prinzip der Infinitesimalmethode und seine Geschichte . The book's meaning and style are greatly illuminated by placing it in the scientific, political, and academic context of late-nineteenth century Germany. As this context changed, so did both the reception of the philosophy of the infinitesimal and of the Marburg school more generally. A study of this transformation (...) casts significant light on the political relevance of the philosophy of science in theWilhelmine era. As a means of following this development across time, Cohen's text is read through its changing reception in the philosophy of his closest disciple, Ernst Cassirer. (shrink)

The article attempts to raise a question and give an answer to it regarding the evaluation of the philosophical creativity of Hermann Cohen, the German-Jewish thinker of the late XIX - early XX century. Moreover, following the philosophical style of Cohen himself, the question posed and discussed in the article is not idle, but it contains a hypothesis that forms our answer in a certain way. It is important to identify the difficulties and intellectual determinants that prevent the (...) formation of a clear and unambiguous answer. At the same time these difficulties contain an initiating moment for opening a philosophical debate. The historical and philosophical reasons that make the very beginning of the discussion of the question more complex, are considered. The article, of course, cannot claim to be an exhaustive answer on such a fundamental topic, which is contained in the designated question. But the article itself, and the articles following it in the section devoted to the work of Herman Cohen, may be indicate that the time for this discussion has come. (shrink)

The article brings to light the idea that Russian Neo-Kantians were among the first in the history of European philosophy to recognize the significance and originality of Hermann Cohen’s philosophical system. In particular, they identified two related points that revealed the ingenuity of the great Marburg thinker: the creation of a new philosophical system and the synthesis of Kant and Hegel within that system. The article also discusses the particular focus on the part of Russian philosophers at the (...) turn of the twentieth century on Cohen’s ethical theories. It is argued that the full value of the German-Jewish thinker’s work for Russian philosophy is only starting to be appreciated, and that the work of Russian Neo-Kantians will be a great help in this endeavor. (shrink)

Between the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 and Husserl’s Ideas in 1913, the nineteenth century was a pivotal period in the philosophy of mind, witnessing the emergence of the phenomenological and analytical traditions that continue to shape philosophical debate in fundamental ways. The nineteenth century also challenged many prevailing assumptions about the transparency of the mind, particularly in the ideas of Nietzsche and Freud, whilst at the same time witnessing the birth of modern (...) psychology in the work of William James. -/- Covering the main figures of German idealism to the birth of the phenomenological movement under Brentano and Husserl, Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century provides an outstanding survey to these new directions in philosophy of mind. -/- Following an introduction by Sandra Lapointe, fourteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: -/- German idealism, Bolzano, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Ernst Mach, Helmholtz, Nietzsche, William James, Sigmund Freud, Brentano’s early philosophy of mind, Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Husserl, and Natorp. -/- Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, continental philosophy, and the history of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, and literature. (shrink)

Lange vergriffen ' jetzt als Neuausgabe:Heinrich Barths Philosophie der Praktischen VernunftHeinrich Barths Philosophie der Praktischen Vernunft ist zugleich eine gründliche Analyse von Immanuel Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft und die Grundlegung einer eigenständigen Philosophie der existentiell begründeten Vernunft. Ausgehend von den Marburger Philosophen Hermann Cohen und Paul Natorp, vertieft Barth deren transzendentalen Systemgedanken zu einem radikalen Prinzip, das die Wirklichkeitsfrage neu aufwirft. Letztere wird zwar auch in Kants zweiter Kritik gestellt, doch nicht im Sinne einer Handlungstheorie, sondern mit (...) der Absicht aufzuweisen, dass es so etwas wie praktische Vernunft überhaupt «gibt». Genau darin aber erkennt Barth den Kern der Philosophie der Existenz, wodurch sich seine Philosophie der Praktischen Vernunft ' wie Sein und Zeit 1927 erschienen ' in einer noch zu erhellenden Verwandtschaft zu Martin Heidegger befindet. Dennoch könnte die Ausgangslage beider Philosophen verschiedener nicht sein. Weder Sein noch Tod geben die Leitlinien von Barths Interpretation vor, vielmehr die transzendental verstandene Vernunft und der Mensch, der wesensmässig vom Anspruch praktischer Verwirklichung herausgefordert ist. Grundsätzlicher als ethische Normen und Regeln werden hier die Grundlagen der praktischen Vernunft erachtet, die im Horizont von Platons «Idee des Guten» und Kants Begriff der «Pflicht» eine eigenständige Wirklichkeit beansprucht. Dass der Philosoph Barth auch offen ist für die Dimension der Glaubenswahrheiten zeigte sich schon bei seiner Mitarbeit an der «Dialektischen Theologie» in den frühen Zwanzigerjahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

How did the _Bhagavadgãtà_ first become an object of German philosophical and philological inquiry? How were its foundational concepts initially interpreted within German intellectual circles, and what does this episode in the history of cross-cultural encounter teach us about the status of comparative philosophy today? This book addresses these questions through a careful study of the figures who read, translated and interpreted the _Bhagavadgãtà_ around the turn of the nineteenth century in Germany: J.G. Herder, F. Majer, (...) F. Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, and G.W.F. Hegel. Methodologically, the study attends to the intellectual contexts and prejudices that framed the early reception of the text. But it also delves deeper by investigating the way these frameworks inflected the construction of the _Bhagavadgãtà_ and its foundational concepts through the scholarly acts of excerpting, anthologization, and translation. Overall, the project contributes to the pluralization of Western philosophy and its history while simultaneously arguing for a continued critical alertness in cross-cultural comparison of philosophical and religious worldviews. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen and the Other: The Triumph and Fall of “Pure Reason”The article poses the question of the contemporary validity and meaning of Hermann Cohen’s philosophical thought. It is argued that in order to understand its phenomenon one has to go beyond the epistemological and methodological perspectives in which Cohen’s work has usually been analyzed and probe into the philosopher’s deepest spiritual and intellectual formation — that of Judaism. The author claims that Cohen, otherwise a celebrated academic scholar, (...) was first of all a rabbi, i.e. a teacher in the Judaist tradition. This is the context in which we can weigh his friendship with young Franz Rosenzweig — it was Rosenzweig who first recognized the revolutionary significance of Cohen’s philosophy of religion and utilized the latter in his seminal work The Star of Redemption Der Stern der Erlosung where he emphasized the late stage of Cohen’s intellectual evolution, especially the one associated with Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums 1919. This book is viewed as essentially a reinterpretation of Kant’s moral theory and philosophy of religion in terms of Judaism and the Bible, which in itself marks Cohen’s departure from critical idealism and his shift towards the dialogic philosophy. In this context one can see Cohen as a teacher of the German nation, someone who could accurately examine the dangers of the Romantic theory of the nation as well as the Romantic especially Fichtean version of Kant’s moral theory, dangers corroborated by 20th-century history. While stressing Cohen’s positive contribution to our understanding of the contemporary world, it should be added that the philosopher’s belief in the liberating potential of “pure reason” was heavily damaged in the face of the totalitarian ideas in modern Europe. It does not mean, however, that his thought has lost its potency. On the contrary, in the age of the crisis of rationality Cohen’s work may be seen as a vital testament. Its effectiveness, though, lies not in the power of “pure reason” but in the power of dialogue and the imperative to love one’s neighbor, a rational and free act which surpasses all religious and speculative constraints. Accordingly, the article concludes by pointing to the timeliness and validity of Cohen’s spiritual and intellectual legacy. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), the author of Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, is the pivotal figure of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Jewish philosophy and theology. The Jewish thinkers influenced by him include Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Emmanuel Levinas. A thoroughgoing rationalist, Cohen was an opponent of mythology and mysticism, which he viewed as cheapening and corrupting religion. Cohen summoned Jews back to the truths of reason, the centrality of (...) ethics, the primacy of humanity in theology, and the moral law as the essence of religious life and thought. What is essential to Cohen is the notion that God can be discovered by the processes of reason itself. It is not necessary to "believe" in God. God can be known through the exercise of reason and the pursuit of the ethical life. In this important study, Rabbi Jehuda Melber presents a comprehensive reformulation, analysis, and interpretation of Cohen's philosophy of Judaism for the contemporary reader. Book jacket. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century European thought, especially in Germany, was increasingly dominated by a new historicist impulse to situate every event, person, or text in its particular context. At odds with the transcendent claims of philosophy and--more significantly--theology, historicism came to be attacked by its critics for reducing human experience to a series of disconnected moments, each of which was the product of decidedly mundane, rather than sacred, origins. By the late nineteenth century and into the Weimar period, historicism was (...) seen by many as a grinding force that corroded social values and was emblematic of modern society's gravest ills. Resisting History examines the backlash against historicism, focusing on four major Jewish thinkers. David Myers situates these thinkers in proximity to leading Protestant thinkers of the time, but argues that German Jews and Christians shared a complex cultural and discursive world best understood in terms of exchange and adaptation rather than influence.After examining the growing dominance of the new historicist thinking in the nineteenth century, the book analyzes the critical responses of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer. For this fascinating and diverse quartet of thinkers, historicism posed a stark challenge to the ongoing vitality of Judaism in the modern world. And yet, as they set out to dilute or eliminate its destructive tendencies, these thinkers often made recourse to the very tools and methods of historicism. In doing so, they demonstrated the utter inescapability of historicism in modern culture, whether approached from a Christian or Jewish perspective. (shrink)

Adolf Deißmann (1866–1937), New Testament scholar in Heidelberg and Berlin as well as one of the most important figures in the ecumenical movement after World War I, studied with the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen (1844–1918) in Marburg and felt a lifelong debt to him. Documents presented here from Deißmann's literary estate not only convey insight into the personal relationship between Deißmann and Cohen, but also show the connections between Cohen's philosophy and Deißmann's engagement in Friedrich Naumann's National Social (...) Union as well as his research on the New Testament. The edition thus serves at the same time as a contribution to the controversial matter of the relationship between Kulturprotestantismus and liberal Judaism around 1900. (shrink)

This paper traces the ancestry of a familiar historiographical narrative, according to which early modern philosophy was marked by the development of empiricism, rationalism, and their synthesis by Immanuel Kant. It is often claimed that this narrative became standard in the nineteenth century, due to the influence of Thomas Reid, Kant and his disciples, or German Hegelians and British Idealists. The paper argues that the narrative became standard only at the turn of the twentieth century. This was (...) not due to the influence of Reid, German Hegelians, or British Idealists as they did not endorse the narrative, although Thomas Hill Green may have facilitated its uptake. The narrative is based on Kant’s historiographical sketches, as corrected and integrated by Karl Leonhard Reinhold. It was first fleshed out into full-fledged histories by two Kantians, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann and Johann Gottlieb Buhle. Numerous historians, several of whom were not Kantians, spread it in the English-speaking world. They include Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Richard Falckenberg, and Wilhelm Windelband. However, the wide availability of their works did not suffice to make the narrative standard because, until the 1890s, the Hegelian account was at least as popular as theirs. Among the factors that allowed the narrative to become standard are its aptness to be adopted by philosophers of the most diverse persuasions, its simplicity and suitability for teaching. (shrink)

This biography of Emil du Bois-Reymond, the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century, received an Honorable Mention for History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the 2013 PROSE Awards, was shortlisted for the 2014 John Pickstone Prize (Britain's most prestigious award for the best scholarly book in the history of science), and was named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science as one of the Best Books of 2014. -/- In his own time (1818–1896) du (...) Bois-Reymond grew famous for his groundbreaking research in neuroscience and his provocative addresses on politics and culture. His discovery of the electrical transmission of nerve signals, his innovations in laboratory instrumentation, and his reductionist methodology all helped lay the foundations of modern neuroscience. -/- In addition to describing the pioneering experiments that earned du Bois-Reymond a seat in the Prussian Academy of Sciences and a professorship at the University of Berlin, this book also recounts du Bois-Reymond’s family origins, private life, public service, and lasting influence. In talks that touched on science, philosophy, history, and literature, du Bois-Reymond introduced Darwin to German students (triggering two days of debate in the Prussian parliament), asked on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War whether France had forfeited its right to exist, and proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, heralding the age of doubt. The first modern biography in any language, "Emil du Bois-Reymond" recovers an important chapter in the history of science, the history of ideas, and the history of Germany. (shrink)

This book is the culmination of Heinrich Meier's acclaimed analyses of the controversial thought of Carl Schmitt. Meier identifies the core of Schmitt's thought as political theology--that is, political theorizing that claims to have its ultimate ground in the revelation of a mysterious or supra-rational God. This radical, but half-hidden, theological foundation unifies the whole of Schmitt's often difficult and complex oeuvre, cutting through the intentional deceptions and unintentional obfuscations that have eluded previous commentators. Relating this religious dimension to (...) Schmitt's support for National Socialism and his continuing anti-Semitism, Meier compels the reader to come to terms with the irreconcilable differences between political theology and political philosophy. His book will give pause to those who have tended to gloss over the troubling aspects of some of Schmitt's ideas. With editions in German, French, Italian, and now English, Meier's two books on Schmitt have dramatically reoriented the international debate about Carl Schmitt and his significance for twentieth-century political thought. "Standing far above the rest . . . is Heinrich Meier's new study, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts , which covers all of Schmitt's writings. . . . Meier's work has forced everyone to take a second look at the assumptions underlying Schmitt's better-known writings and reconsider some that have been ignored."--Mark Lilla, reviewing the German edition in The New York Review of Books. (shrink)

Azarya Polikarov was born in Sofia on October 9, 1921. Through the many stages of politics, economy, and culture in Bulgaria, he maintained his rational humanity and scientific curiosity. He has been a splendid teacher and an accomplished critical philosopher exploring the conceptual and historical vicis situdes of physics in modern times and also the science policies that favor or threaten human life in these decades. Equally and easily at home both within the Eastern and Central European countries and within (...) the Western world. Polikarov is known as a collaborating genial colleague, a working scholar. not at all a visiting academic tourist. He understands the philosophy of science from within, in all its developments, from the classical beginnings through the great ages of Galilean, Newtonian. Maxwellian science. to the times of the stunning discoveries and imaginative theories of his beloved Einstein and Bohr of the twentieth century. Moreover, his understanding has come along with a deep knowledge of the scientific topics in themselves. Looking at our Appendix listing his principal publications, we see that Polikarov's public research career, after years of science teaching and popular science writing, began in the fifties in Bulgarian, Russian and German journals. (shrink)

This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the twentieth century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ regarding their conception of law, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg School’s view on socialism was a coherent school (...) of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time. (shrink)

Some commentators on Hermann Cohen have remarked on what they take to be a puzzle about the origins of his mature anti-psychologism. When Cohen was young, he studied a kind of psychology, the Völkerpsychologie of Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal, and wrote apparently psycholgistic accounts of knowledge almost up until the moment he first articulated his anti-psychologistic neo-Kantianism. To be sure, Cohen's mature anti psycholgism does constitute a rejection of certain central commitments of Völkerpsychologie. However, the relation between (...) Völkerpsychologie and Cohen's mature anti-psychologism is not one of straightforward opposition. This paper argues that Cohen had significantly less distance to travel than it appears to get from his early Völkerpsychologie to his mature anti-psychologism. In particular, this paper argues that Cohen always had an anti-psychologistic account of knowledge, even during the period when he was studying Völkerpsychologie, and further, that key features of his Völkerpsychologie partly shaped his mature account of knowledge. Finally, the paper identifies how Cohen’s views did change over the transition from his völkerpsychological period to his later anti-psychologism. It thus identifies what changes in Cohen’s views do need to be explained. (shrink)

The concept of a “scientific philosophy” first developed in the mid nineteenth century, as a reaction against what was viewed as the excessively speculative and metaphysical character of post-Kantian German idealism. One of the primary intellectual models of this movement was a celebrated address by Hermann von Helmholtz, “Über das Sehen des Menschen,” delivered at the dedication of a monument to Kant at Königsberg in 1855. Helmholtz begins by asking, on behalf of the audience, why a (...) natural scientist like himself is speaking in honor of a philosopher. This question only arises, he says, because of the current deplorable climate of enmity and mutual distrust between the two fields – a climate which is due, in Helmholtz’s opinion, to the entirely speculative system of Naturphilosophie that Schelling and Hegel have erected wholly independent of, and even in open hostility towards, the actual positive results of the natural sciences. What Helmholtz is now recommending, however, is a return to the close cooperation between the two fields exemplified in the work of Kant, who himself made significant contributions to natural science, and, in general, “stood in relation to the natural sciences together with the natural scientists on precisely the same fundamental principles.”1 And it was this recommendation that was enthusiastically embraced within the emerging “back to Kant!” movement, where it led to the idea that all metaphysics should be replaced by the new discipline of “epistemology” or “theory of knowledge”, so that philosophy itself would now become “scientific.”. (shrink)

When non-Euclidean geometry was developed in the nineteenth century, both scientists and philosophers addressed the question as to whether the Kantian theory of space ought to be refurbished or even rejected. The possibility of considering a variety of hypotheses regarding physical space appeared to contradict Kant’s supposition of Euclid’s geometry as a priori knowledge and suggested the view that the geometry of space is a matter for empirical investigation. In this article, I discuss two different attempts to defend the (...) Kantian theory of space against geometrical empiricism. Both Cohen and Riehl defended the apriority of geometrical axioms. Cohen pointed out that knowledge necessarily requires both sensibility and understanding. Therefore, he maintained that space can be proved to be a condition of experience without admitting that some statements about it are intrinsically necessary. By contrast, Riehl emphasized universality and necessity as intrinsic properties of a priori knowledge. He was one of the first philosophers to discuss the space problem in detail and to distinguish between a priori properties of space and empirical properties. Nevertheless, I suggest that Cohen developed a more plausible view because he was not committed to any spatial structure independently of empirical science. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the need to rethink the status of space and time which Kant considered to be a priori forms of sensibility was prompted by the emergence of new approaches to the methodology of scientific cognition. In neo-Kantian interpretation these cognitive forms acquire a special epistemological status, manifesting themselves in theoretical research as “pre-given” foundations of knowledge. It seems necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of two interconnected neo-Kantian concepts, of Hermann Cohen (...) and Ivan Lapshin. Studying Kant’s philosophy since his student days, Lapshin gradually came to the conclusion that the need to clarify and develop Kant’s transcendental method was dictated by the development of scientific knowledge. Indeed, the works of the Russian neo-Kantian contain echoes and polemical adjustments of Cohen’s spatio-temporal ideas. Our study has revealed common epistemological attitudes in Cohen and Lapshin: the wish to improve elements of Kantian philosophy, adjusting them to prove the possibility of scientific-theoretical cognition and of overcoming psychologism and developing the logicistic approach to the critique of cognition. Each of the two authors developed their own “mechanism” of reducing space and time to a range of intellectual procedures for the construction of the object of knowledge. In Cohen’s account space and time pre-establish the language of observation and found all scientific-theoretical work. Lapshin, on the other hand, in discussing the formal and substantive features of these categories (the introduction of “axioms” of time, the need to specify the concepts of time and space through other categories), notes that their use in scientific judgment implies an epistemological givenness of the concept of the object. This I see as a variant of solving one and the same epistemological task. I submit that Lapshin worked out an independent concept of space and time as cognitive forms that are congruent with the spirit of European neo-Kantianism and contemporary science. (shrink)

W. E. B. Du Bois never felt so at home as when he was a student at the University of Berlin. But Du Bois was also American to his core, scarred but not crippled by the racial humiliations of his homeland. In Lines of Descent, Kwame Anthony Appiah traces the twin lineages of Du Bois' American experience and German apprenticeship, showing how they shaped the great African-American scholar's ideas of race and social identity. At Harvard, Du Bois studied (...) with such luminaries as William James and George Santayana, scholars whose contributions were largely intellectual. But arriving in Berlin in 1892, Du Bois came under the tutelage of academics who were also public men. The economist Adolf Wagner had been an advisor to Otto von Bismarck. Heinrich von Treitschke, the historian, served in the Reichstag, and the economist Gustav von Schmoller was a member of the Prussian state council. These scholars united the rigorous study of history with political activism and represented a model of real-world engagement that would strongly influence Du Bois in the years to come. With its romantic notions of human brotherhood and self-realization, German culture held a potent allure for Du Bois. Germany, he said, was the first place white people had treated him as an equal. But the prevalence of anti-Semitism allowed Du Bois no illusions that the Kaiserreich was free of racism. His challenge, says Appiah, was to take the best of German intellectual life without its parochialism--to steal the fire without getting burned. (shrink)

The question that is posed regarding the Jewish response to Hegel’s philosophy forces us to question the meaning of the adjective ‘Jewish’, and whether it points to some peculiar and distinct path and way of interpretation. I would say that in response to Hegel’s philosophy three distinguished thinkers, Samuel Hirsch, Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig, responded to Hegel’s attitude toward religion and to the principles of his logic which underlie his concept of religion. Their response cannot be (...) divorced from their commitment to both an ethical and eschatological Judaism. Philosophical thinking shares religious and nonreligious categories and attitudes with theological and religious traditions, but does not employ these in similar ways. What is philosophical thinking is not necessarily theological. Although they do not necessarily relate to each other, they are not oblivious to the influence and force they have on one another. We would venture to say that in reference to Hirsch, Cohen and Rosenzweig, there was a distinct and clear attempt to confront the truth of Christianity with a truth that was believed to be superior. The first half of the nineteenth century gave us four significant Jewish thinkers who were eager and firm in their attempt to focus upon the differences in these two religions. In addition to Hirsch, they were Joseph Salvador, Salomon Formstecher, and Ludwig Steinheim. This paper, however, deals only with Hirsch and Cohen. (shrink)

English summary: 'Metamorphoses of the holy' denotes the changing aesthetic presentation of the sacred which is connected to the creation and institutionalization of religion as art. The focus of the essays in this volume is the structure and dynamic of this process, something which affects all art genres. The sacralization of aesthetic subjectivity is prerequisite to religion as art as evidenced by the belief in the partaking of the sacred through aesthetic experience. On the basis of aesthetic subjectivity's sacralization, it (...) becomes possible to interpret its various forms of expression as witnesses to the holy and award them a fitting reception. These contributions dedicate themselves to an interdisciplinary scrutiny of religion as art and its cross-points of reference with political and civil religion. German description: 'Metamorphosen des Heiligen' bezeichnen hier den Gestaltwandel asthetischer Vergegenwartigung des Heiligen, der sich mit der Entstehung und Institutionalisierung von Kunstreligion verbindet. Im Zentrum der Beitrage des Bandes stehen Struktur und Dynamik dieses Gestaltwandels, der alle Kunstgattungen betrifft. Kunstreligion hat die Sakralisierung der asthetischen Subjektivitat zur Voraussetzung, erkennbar an der Uberzeugung, der Mensch konne durch das Vermogen asthetischer Erfahrung Anteil am Heiligen haben. Auf der Grundlage der Sakralisierung asthetischer Subjektivitat wird es moglich, auch deren verschiedene Ausdrucksformen als Zeugnisse des Heiligen zu deuten und eine entsprechende Rezeption dieser Zeugnisse anzusinnen. Die Beitrage widmen sich der Kunstreligion sowie ihren Interferenzen mit der politischen Religion und der Zivilreligion in interdisziplinarer Perspektive. Mit Beitragen von: Stefan Alkier, Bernd Auerochs, Manuel Bauer, Wolfgang Braungart, Reinhard Brandt, Heinrich Detering, Hermann Deuser, Carola Groppe, Gunter Hantzschel, Joachim Jacob, Markus Kleinert, Dietrich Korsch, Volkhard Krech, Johann Kreuzer, Dorit Messlin, Jurgen Oelkers, Bernhard Schafers, Magnus Schlette, Peter Steinacker. (shrink)

English summary: With his research on early Greek philosophy, Hermann Diels created the definitive works of his era, and his Fragments of the Presocratics remains the standard work on the topic. However, the scholar never published a panorama of his unmatched knowledge. For the first time, a transcript of the lecture in which Diels represented his vision of Hellenic thought is now available. The script from the 1897/98 winter semester documents the oratory and pedagogy of the great Hellenist (...) and was provided by one of his exceptional students, the Munich-based Egyptologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Diels proved himself as a clear-headed thinker discussing the historical course of early proverbial wisdom, the natural and political theory of Plato, and the conceptual precision of Aristotle. Central figures such as Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Democritus are concisely drawn and colored. Thus the text offers an absorbing picture of the origins of theoretical consciousness in Europe. German text. German description: Mit seinen Forschungen zur fruehgriechischen Philosophie hat Hermann Diels Epoche gemacht; seine aFragmente der Vorsokratiker sind weiterhin das Standardwerk zum Thema. Nie jedoch hat der Gelehrte ein Panorama seines unerreichten Wissens veroffentlicht. Erstmals wird nun eine Mitschrift jener Vorlesung zuganglich, in der Diels seine Sicht des hellenischen Denkens darstellte. Das Skript aus dem Wintersemester 1897/98 dokumentiert vorzueglich Sprachkraft und Padagogik des grossen Grazisten; es stammt von einem Ausnahme-Studenten, dem spateren Muenchner Agyptologen Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing.Im historischen Gang von frueher Spruchweisheit bis zur Natur- und Staatslehre Platons und der begrifflichen Prazisionsarbeit des Aristoteles hebt Diels besonders das Fortwirken grosser Denkmuster hervor. Zentrale Gestalten wie Anaximander, Heraklit, Parmenides oder Demokrit sind pragnant und farbig gezeichnet. So bietet der Text ueber seinen fachhistorischen Wert hinaus ein fesselndes Bild der Urspruenge theoretischen Bewusstseins in Europa. (shrink)