122 67 30MB
English Pages [630] Year 2015
Violetta L. Waibel (ed.)
Detours Approaches to Immanuel Kant in Vienna, in Austria, and in Eastern Europe
In collaboration with Max Brinnich, Sophie Gerber, and Philipp Schaller
V& R unipress Vienna University Press
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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-8471-0481-0 ISBN 978-3-8470-0481-3 (E-Book) ISBN 978-3-7370-0481-7 (V& R eLibrary) You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our website: www.v-r.de Publications of Vienna University Press are published by V& R unipress GmbH. Printed with support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, the Department for Cultural Affairs of the City of Vienna (MA 7), ERSTE Foundation, the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the University of Vienna, Melk Abbey and the Vice Rectorate for Research and Career Development of the University of Vienna. Ó 2015, V& R unipress GmbH, Robert-Bosch-Breite 6, 37079 Göttingen, Germany / www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Cover image: Ó Sonja Priller Printed and bound by CPI buchbuecher.de GmbH, Zum Alten Berg 24, 96158 Birkach, Germany. Printed on aging-resistant paper.
Contents
Detours – Introduction to the Detours Reader by Violetta L. Waibel . . .
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Kant and Censorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Kant and “Austrian Philosophy” – An Introduction by Alexander Wilfing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Early Kant Reception in Austria – From Joseph II to Francis II by Alexander Wilfing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State Censorship of Kant – From Francis II to Count Thun by Alexander Wilfing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Herbartianism – Rembold, von Thun und Hohenstein, Exner, Zimmermann by Kurt Walter Zeidler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lazarus Bendavid – Teaching Kant’s Philosophy in Vienna by Olga Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reception and Criticism of Kant in Hungary at the End of the 18th Century – The Teaching Activity of Anton Kreil by Eszter Dek . . Anton Reyberger and the Reception of Kant at Melk Abbey by Jakob Deibl, Johannes Deibl and Bernadette Kalteis . . . . . . . . . Kant and the Principality of Salzburg by Werner Sauer . . . . . . . . . Kant and Pre-1848 Catholic Theology by Franz L. Fillafer . . . . . . . . Franz von Zeiller and Kantianism in Jurisprudence by Franz L. Fillafer Ernst Topitsch and Kant by Franz L. Fillafer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Right, History, Religion – A Report on Two International Kant Symposia in Vienna, 2004 and 2005 by Herta Nagl-Docekal . . . . . . .
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Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The First Kantian – Reinhold, a Citizen of Vienna by Philipp Schaller and Violetta L. Waibel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823) by Martin Bondeli . . . . . . . .
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Preludes for a Kantian-Reinholdian Philosophy in Vienna by Philipp Schaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Weimar Years 1784–1787 by Guido Naschert . Reinhold’s Letters on the Kantian Philosophy by Martin Bondeli . . . . Reinhold’s Correspondence with Kant by Martin Bondeli . . . . . . . . Reinhold as Mediator of Kantian Philosophy by Philipp Schaller . . . . Reinhold and the Reception of Kant among the Herbert Circle in Klagenfurt by Guido Naschert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elementary Philosophy – Reinhold as an Interpreter of Kant’s Critique of Reason and Forerunner of German Idealism by Martin Bondeli . . .
Kant and Eastern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Advent of Kant’s Philosophy in Eastern European Countries by Olga Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reform of the Teaching of Philosophy – The Transylvanian Paradigm by P¦ter Egyed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jûzsef Rozgonyi’s Critique of Kant by B¦la Mester . . . . . . . . . . . . Kroly Böhm – System Building and Value Theory by Imre Ungvri-Zrnyi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kroly Böhm’s and Bernt Alexander’s Hungarian Neo-Kantianism by Lszlû Perecz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reception of Kant by Sndor Tavaszy and the Klausenburg School by Mrton Tonk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reception of Kant in Romania (1818–1989) by Ma˘da˘lina Diaconu and Marin Diaconu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk’s Critical and Distant Engagement with Kant by Jan Zouhar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Intellectual Intuition – Kant as Interpreted by the Czech Philosopher Vladimr Hoppe by Jindrˇich Karsek . . . . . . . . . . . . Max Steiner – A Pugnacious “Old Kantian” from Prague by Jörg Krappmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kant in Slovenia by Jure Simoniti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Reaction to Kant in South-Slavic Countries by Jure Zovko . . . . . The Reception of Kant’s Philosophy in Poland by Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
118 127 130 139 147 158 165 177 177 182 191 202 206 212 217 224 230 237 242 249 257
Kant and his Poets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Kant and German Romanticism in the Eyes of Austrian 19th Century Writers by Alexander Wilfing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friedrich Schiller – A Congenial Reader of Kant by Violetta L. Waibel .
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Kant and the Vienna Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Franz Grillparzer – Approaches to Kant by Gabriele Geml . . . . . . Joseph Schreyvogel – Kantian Moral Philosophy as the Art of Living by Gabriele Geml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben – Kant and the Prehistory of Psychotherapy in Austria by Gabriele Geml . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friedrich Schlegel’s Reception of Kant During his Time in Vienna by Guido Naschert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adalbert Stifter and the Philosophy of Kant by Max Beck . . . . . . . Kant’s Literary Legacy in 20th Century Austria by Christoph Leschanz and Violetta L. Waibel . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kant and Karl Kraus by Max Beck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kant, Rilke and Spirits Always at the Ready by Christoph Leschanz and Philipp Schaller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Traces of Immanuel Kant in Friedell’s Work by Elisabeth Flucher . . Kant in the Work of Robert Musil by Christoph Leschanz . . . . . . . Franz Kafka – The Forgotten Peace by Caroline Scholzen . . . . . . . The “Decline” of the Prague Circle by Caroline Scholzen . . . . . . . Ingeborg Bachmann – The Language of the Heavenly Bodies by Caroline Scholzen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Bernhard’s Immanuel Kant by Sebastian Schneck . . . . . . Reception of Kant in Klagenfurt as Reflected in Two Contemporary Austrian Novels by Elisabeth Flucher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franz Schuh – Between Kantstraße and Hegelhof by Elisabeth Flucher Kehlmann’s Measuring the World – The Reinvention of an Era by Elisabeth Flucher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kant and the Vienna Circle – Who’s Afraid of the Synthetic A Priori? by Bastian Stoppelkamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moritz Schlick – A Critical Stance towards Kant by Olga Ring . . . . . Edgar Zilsel – Kant as an Ally by Olga Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Otto Neurath – Against Kant and the Special Path of German Philosophy by Bastian Stoppelkamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) by Bastian Stoppelkamp . . . . . . . . . . Kantianism in 20th Century Vienna by Kurt Walter Zeidler . . . . . . . Kant, Kelsen and the Vienna School of Legal Theory by Sophie Loidolt .
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Kant and Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Kant and Phenomenology in Austria by Max Brinnich and Georg Heller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Citations and Key to Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Register of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Franz Brentano (1838–1917) by Georg Heller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franz Brentano – Philosophy as an Exact Science by Georg Heller . . The Brentano School in Vienna and Graz by Kurt Walter Zeidler . . . Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) by Marek Bozˇuk . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mapping Out the Stages of Husserl’s Kantianism in Vienna by Marek Bozˇuk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heidegger’s Metaphysical Interpretation of Kant – Reason and the Hermeneutics of Facticity by Philipp Schmidt . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hönigswald’s Attitude to Kant and Phenomenology by Max Brinnich
Detours – Introduction to the Detours Reader by Violetta L. Waibel
To coincide with the 12th International Kant Congress, taking place at the University of Vienna from 21 to 25 September 2015 on the theme “nature and freedom”, the exhibition “Detours. Approaches to Immanuel Kant in Vienna, in Austria and in Eastern Europe” (“Umwege. Annäherungen an Immanuel Kant in Wien, in Österreich und in Osteuropa”) is being presented in the University library. The exhibition runs until the end of 2015. This reader, published in German and English, is designed to explore the exhibition themes in considerably greater detail than is possible in the exhibition itself. The exhibition and reader are focused on the reception of Kant in Vienna and Austria, and also in Eastern Europe, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some more recent perspectives on Kant research from the 20th and 21st centuries are also covered. The International Kant Congress coincides with the celebration of the 650th anniversary of the founding of the University of Vienna in 1365. This was one of the reasons prompting the decision to supplement the congress with a research project to investigate the history of the reception of Kant in Vienna, in Austria as a whole, and in Eastern Europe, given Vienna and Austria’s special links with this region on the basis of their geographical situation and the historical dual monarchy structure of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both the reader and the exhibition are structured around six thematic areas relevant to the history of philosophy and Kant’s reception in Vienna, Austria and Eastern Europe.
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Fig. 1: Map of Vienna (1798)
The Topics of the Reader and the Exhibition – – – – – –
Kant and Censorship Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold Kant and Eastern Europe Kant and his Poets Kant and the Vienna Circle Kant and Phenomenology
The “Kant and Censorship” theme reveals some of the tortuous “detours” travelled by Kant’s writings during the history of their reception in Vienna and Austria, under the shadow of censorship. Whereas intellectuals in the German states quickly engaged with Kant’s ideas and appreciated his significance, his reception in the Austria of the time was highly ambivalent. Censorship and at times sharp criticism of Kant contrasted with a real and lively “underground” interest in the new philosophy. This first chapter of the reader attempts to
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explore and explain this initial ambivalence towards Kant, and its ongoing consequences. The “Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold” theme is an important part of the reader, since Reinhold was actually born and raised in Vienna. This is a little known fact, even to many scholars closely involved in research on Reinhold, as one of the first significant Kantians and forerunner of post-Kant idealism in Germany. Reinhold’s most significant and lasting impact was as a professor in Jena and as a pioneer in the reception of Kant’s writings in Germany and Austria. While this reader is primarily focused on engagement with Kant in Vienna (and in Austria and Eastern Europe), we have also provided an appropriate forum for Reinhold in his capacity as a “Viennese citizen”, to enable researchers on Kant to discover the significance of Reinhold in this regard. Vienna’s geographical location and its status as the imperial capital of the Habsburg dual monarchy give the city a special significance within Eastern Europe. Vienna was, and to some extent still remains, the “gateway to the east”. It was therefore important for us to include “Kant and Eastern Europe” as one of the themes of the exhibition and this reader. Through its historical status and position, Vienna has always had cultural exchanges with Eastern European countries, of varying degrees of intensity. The research contributions in this chapter discuss the implications of these interactions for the reception of Kant. “Kant and his Poets” is one of the key themes of the congress, since as well as being a city associated with all musical genres, Vienna also boasts some of the leading venues for German-language theatre, along with many other forms of temple to the muses. It is therefore logical that the aesthetic domain should be strongly represented in the research conducted at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Vienna. In view of the long line of poets and writers, from Kant’s time to the present day, who have reflected on Kant’s aesthetics and teleology, moral philosophy and theory of cognition, and drawn on them in their works on various registers: now affirming, now critical, outbidding the ideas of the master, or changing them beyond recognition, this facet of research has been adopted as a theme of the 2015 Kant Congress, and forms a substantial chapter of this reader. Moreover, our project also addresses the theme of “Kant and the Vienna Circle”. The Vienna Circle, a philosophical and scholarly circle named after the city in which it was established, is now an important topic of philosophy research at the University of Vienna, as reflected in an institute devoted specifically to this area. Without Kant as an initial point of departure, without its engagement with critical philosophy, the philosophy of the Vienna Circle would never have come into existence. As well as being one of the specific topics covered in the congress, it is the subject of a detailed overview in this reader and in the exhibition. Another keynote theme of the congress is “Kant and Phenomenology”, and it
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too is covered in this reader and in the exhibition. Over a period of many decades, philosophy at the University of Vienna has had a distinct focus on phenomenology, a philosophical movement that turned towards concrete existence and phenomena as a way of escaping the distant abstract realms of Kant’s transcendental philosophy and returning to the solid fundament of fact. This philosophical tradition, particularly well established in Vienna, is further explored as a thematic area of the 2015 Kant Congress and the celebration of the 650th anniversary on the one hand, and in the research contributions in this chapter of Detours on the other. The exhibition and reader are intended not solely for Kant experts, but also for students of the humanities and social sciences, school pupils and the interested public, as a source of insights into the reception of one of the most important western philosophers, and the tracks and traces left by his writings in Vienna, Austria and Eastern Europe.
The “Detours” Project in the Making The idea of a Detours reader emerged in the context of a research seminar held in summer 2014 at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Vienna, attended by a group of highly motivated doctoral and master’s students, under the leadership of the editor of this volume. This initial nucleus of the project comprised Max Beck, Marek Bozˇuk, Max Brinnich, Elisabeth Flucher, Georg Heller, Christoph Leschanz, Olga Ring, Philipp Schaller, Caroline Scholzen, Bastian Stoppelkamp and Alexander Wilfing. There was no lack of interest among the participants, and proposals for research topics and articles had soon been received on almost all the themes to be covered, according to each person’s skills and areas of specialisation. The next step involved the group working closely together, reading each other’s ideas, making suggestions, selecting and progressively refining the approaches to be taken, and then working on the content, expression and proofreading of the articles themselves, still as a joint activity, with assistance willingly offered and accepted within the group. Thanks to the outstanding commitment displayed by the doctoral and master’s students involved we were able to cover many of the project themes. A few topics still remained, which we felt should ideally be included in order to create a wellrounded publication. Some ultimately had to be set aside, but for others guest contributions were sought from outside the group. In this way some of the gaps were successfully filled. For the “Kant and Censorship” theme, the team of Alexander Wilfing and Olga Ring (both of Vienna) was backed up by Franz Leander Fillafer (San Domenico di Fiesole) and Eszter Dek (Budapest). In spite of the prevailing cen-
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Fig. 2: Kant-frieze, main building of the University of Vienna
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sorship in Austria, for a time there was strong interest in Kant’s philosophy in the principality of Salzburg, and accordingly a significantly condensed version of an article by Werner Sauer has been included. Kant was also intensively studied at the Melk Abbey, in spite of the official line at the time, as described in a joint article by Bernadette Kalteis, Helmut Jakob Deibl and Johannes Deibl (all from Melk). And finally, contributions on this theme were also received from Herta Nagl-Docekal and Kurt Walter Zeidler (both of Vienna). The considerable attention paid to Reinhold in the volume – even though he lived in Vienna only in his younger years, before his maturity and greatest impact, as a professor in Jena, Germany (and subsequently also in Kiel, which at that time belonged to Denmark) – partly reflects his status as a “familiar stranger”. This part of the reader invites Kant researchers who in the past have paid little attention to Reinhold to take a closer look at his achievements. His importance would clearly not be adequately reflected by an examination limited to his early days in Vienna, as he was growing up. It was therefore decided, along with the contributions from Philipp Schaller (Vienna), to call on Martin Bondeli (Bern), as a leading expert on Reinhold and the editor of his works, who duly provided the bulk of the contributions on this topic. Further valuable insights on this theme have been provided by Guido Naschert (Weimar). For the “Kant in Eastern Europe” theme there was no-one with the required expertise to write these articles within the seminar group, or indeed at the University of Vienna Institute of Philosophy. Guest contributors from many Eastern European countries were therefore invited to write on the reception of Kant’s writings in their countries. The greater or lesser representation of individual countries, and in some cases the lack of any contributions, is mainly attributable to the interest shown by the researchers approached, and the time at their disposal. The very pleasing result of our quest for contributions from researchers in Eastern European countries can be found in these pages with the articles by Ma˘da˘lina Diaconu and Marin Diaconu (Bucharest) about Romania, Peter Egyed (Cluj-Napoca) about Hungary, Jindrˇich Karsek (Prague) about the Czech Republic, Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz (Warsaw) about Poland, Jörg Krappmann (Olomouc) about the Czech Republic, B¦la Mester and Lszlû Perecz (both Budapest) about Hungary, Jure Simoniti (Ljubljana) about Slovenia, Mrton Tonk and Imre Ungvri-Zrinyi (both Cluj-Napoca) about Hungary, Jan Zouhar (Brno) about the Czech Republic and Jure Zovko (Zagreb/Zadar) about Croatia. Since our guest contributors from Eastern European generally have neither German nor English as their first language, the students also had the task of closely editing and polishing these texts. Special thanks in this regard go to Philipp Schaller, and also Elisabeth Flucher. “Kant and his Poets” attracted particularly strong interest among the students, all the more so since in an earlier semester, in winter 2012/2013, an initial
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research seminar had been held on the subject of “writers as readers of Kant”, conducted by the editor of this volume. The members of the research seminar team working on this theme in the Detours project consisted of Max Beck, Elisabeth Flucher, Gabriele Geml, Christoph Leschanz, Philipp Schaller, Caroline Scholzen and Alexander Wilfing, with an additional contribution on Friedrich Schlegel’s time in Vienna from Guido Naschert (Weimar), and another from Sebastian Schneck (Vienna), who in the research seminar on Kant’s reception among writers had given an outstanding presentation on Thomas Bernhard’s Immanuel Kant. The considerable space devoted to Friedrich Schiller is based on the fact that, as an early Kant enthusiast and theoretician advocating a form of aesthetic education based on Kant’s ideas, he played a role of outstanding significance in establishing Kant as a subject of debate among poets and literary figures in Germany, and also in Austria. While Schiller is still considered as an important author, he does not have the same profile among researchers as was previously the case. Readers wishing to gain an initial understanding of Schiller’s role are invited to read the article by Violetta L. Waibel (Vienna), which explores some of the key elements of Schiller’s reception of Kant.
Fig. 3: Karl Goetz, Immanuel Kant, silver medal commemorating Immanuel Kant’s 200th birthday with sailing ship on globe garlanded with clouds
The theme of “Kant and the Vienna Circle” was mainly addressed with articles by Olga Ring and Bastian Stoppelkamp (both from Vienna), backed up by Sophie Loidolt and Kurt Walter Zeidler (also both from Vienna). The Vienna Circle is the subject of an intensive research project in its own right at the University of Vienna Institute of Philosophy, which is to be presented in this 650th anniversary year in independent events and exhibitions. There is little or no mention of Kant in this context – a gap which is duly filled with the articles in this reader. The research seminar team addressing the “Kant and Phenomenology” area, which is so important to the University of Vienna Institute of Philosophy, comprised Max Brinnich, Marek Bozˇuk, Georg Heller (all from Vienna), with
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support from colleagues at the institute, namely Sophie Loidolt, Philipp Schmidt and Kurt Walter Zeidler. The coverage of the phenomenology theme was supplemented with an overview article on the reception of Kant by Martin Heidegger (by Philipp Schmidt). This offers some initial insights for readers not familiar with this area; while Heidegger had only marginal connections with Vienna or Austria, he played a highly significant role for the phenomenology movement in Austria. Warm thanks go to all contributors to this reader. As the idea of presenting all participants in the International Kant Congress with a copy of Detours to take home with them began to take shape, we had to find a team of translators and proofreaders to translate into English the main bulk of contributions that were not originally written in English or translated by their authors. So many thanks to Susanne Costa-Krivdic (Innsbruck) and her outstanding international team of translators and proofreaders, including Dalbert Hallenstein (Verona), John Jamieson (Wellington), Linda Cassells (Auckland), Ren¦e von Paschen (Vienna), Katharina Walter (Innsbruck) and Peter Waugh (Vienna). Their tireless efforts have made an invaluable contribution to this project, and are most sincerely appreciated. It should be noted that gender-explicit forms are not exhaustively used in the text of the reader, so nouns and pronouns are not to be understood in an exclusive sense in this regard. Special thanks for their outstanding efforts and contributions to the production of both volumes go to Max Brinnich (for his own articles and translations of some texts and for the final editing of the German and English volumes), Sophie Gerber (for coordinating all the contacts with the publisher, authors, sponsors and funders, along with personal meetings, and her help with publication editing) and Philipp Schaller (for his own articles and translation of some article texts and for close editing). And finally, our grateful thanks to Sarah Caroline Jakobsohn, Florian Kolowrat and Artemis Linhart for the help they have provided in preparing the volumes for publication. Aurelia Littig and Thamara Thiel provided valuable support with finding images for the publication and exhibition project. Without the outstanding effort and commitment displayed by everyone involved in this project, these volumes could not have been produced. We are also most grateful for the help and support received from the University Library Vienna, especially Alexandra Matz and Pamela Stückler and all the archives, libraries and institutions which provided us with pictorial material (see the register of illustrations). The project has also received generous and enthusiastic support from funders and sponsors. This ambitious undertaking could not have been brought to a
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successful conclusion without financial support for the reader and exhibition project from a range of institutions and funders. Our thanks go to – the Advisory Board for “Reinhold’s Collected Works” at the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, – the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, – the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, – the Department for Cultural Affairs of the City of Vienna (MA 7), Promotion of Science and Research, – ERSTE Foundation, DIE ERSTE österreichische Spar-Casse Privatstiftung, – the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the University of Vienna, – Melk Abbey, – the “Philosophy and Arts in Dialogue” Association, and – the Vice Rectorate for Research and Career Development of the University of Vienna. We are also most grateful to Vienna University Press for agreeing to include these volumes in its publication programme. Violetta L. Waibel, Vienna, July 2015
Kant and Censorship
Kant and “Austrian Philosophy” – An Introduction by Alexander Wilfing Is there a specific “Austrian philosophy” that can be distinguished from that of neighbouring Germany as an independent thinking tradition? This question, which apart from its historical relevance probably also highlights a need for national self-assertion,1 has never really been resolved up to this day. The recently deceased philosopher Rudolf Haller, who recurrently addressed this complex topic, summarised the basal criteria for a genuine Austrian philosophy as follows: The positives he emphasized were a “demand for the scientific character of philosophy” and, consequently, a “research ideal grounded in the natural sciences”, an empirical methodology and a critical take on language; these positions were promoted by analytical philosophy from Bernard Bolzano to Ludwig Wittgenstein.2 The negative features, or, in other words, the characteristics that allow us to differentiate between Germany and Austria, can be summed up even more concisely : Apparently, Austria has firmly rejected Kant’s teachings and German idealism, thus founding an autochthonous philosophical tradition.3 Otto Neurath, who, together with Rudolf Carnap and Hans Hahn wrote the manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis [The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle], already held this position. This book already began to historically anchor logical positivism.4 In Neurath’s essay, Die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises [The Development of the Vienna Circle], the hypothesis of Austrian anti-Kantianism, which is still in effect, is made explicit: “Austria has forgone the interlude with Kant.”5 Neurath argues for a sociological disposition to justify the features of Austrian national philosophy he has identified, which anticipate Haller’s thesis of an “empiricist”, “positivist” and “anti-metaphysical” orientation of Austrian philosophy.6 While Roman Catholicism and its “strongly theologically imbued philosophy” both decidedly promote the abstract analysis of “logical operations”, German Prot-
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estantism has suspended Catholic orthodoxy and thereby foreclosed the assumption of a shared foundation for all future philosophical questions. Thus, German Protestantism has preserved “half-metaphysical, quarter-metaphysical phrases as relics of an incompletely suppressed theology.”7 According to Neurath, German idealism therefore has to continually sound out a new positive foundation for its speculative thoughts, while Catholic dogmatism, “unclouded by metaphysical details”, enables a well-founded establishment of logical analysis: “The likes of Bolzano, Herbart and Brentano represented a logicising tradition, which never ceased to oppose Kantianism and German idealist philosophy.”8 Roger Bauer was one legacy from this historical construction, which designates the “grande narration” of a uniform Austrian philosophy and which therefore has to be treated with the utmost care.9 Bauer’s thesis, which comes very close to Neurath’s contributions to the sociological explanation of religion,10 also seeks to prove that Kant’s teachings were barely known in the Hapsburg domain, so that “the intellectual development that begins with Kant’s writings is practically non-existent in Austria.”11 The tenor of Bauer’s thinking thus takes us back directly to Rudolf Haller, who described the independent development and autonomous characteristics of Austrian philosophy in terms of those aforementioned features, which in turn prevented “that Kant and Hegel, the thinker from Königsberg and the Prussian state philosopher, would get strong resonance within the k.u.k. Monarchy.”12 Both Bauer and Haller were reproached for being highly selective in their choice of textual evidence. Neurath, however, who proceeded in a non-empirical and thus highly speculative manner, can safely be overlooked in this context.13 Concerning Bauer’s book, Werner Sauer spoke with good reason of a “little satisfactory publication”, which clearly falsifies the overall initial acceptance of critical philosophy and which effectuates a more or less conscious “distortion of the historical situation for the sake of presenting an explanatory hypothesis”, leading to an unsatisfactory simplification of complex issues.14 Barbara Otto, who heartily endorsed Sauer’s verdict, also made clear that Bauer’s monograph (as well as the writings of Robert Mühlher15 and Herbert Seidler16) was primarily characterized by an outdated methodology grounded in the history of ideas, which entails an “inevitable disdain for a social history of philosophy” and a “chronic disinterest in the environment of cultural institutions for this discipline.”17 Although there may be some legitimacy in this reclamation, it has to be said that Haller’s studies recurrently stressed the enormous relevance of (national) institutions: Any philosophy that sought to achieve supra-regional status, according to Haller, would have to rely on support from the public, from organizations or from universities. This would help to initiate a substantial secondary education, which in turn would require the
Kant and “Austrian Philosophy” – An Introduction
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Fig. 1: Max Pollak, View of ‘Universitätsplatz’ [University Square] with the Academy of Sciences and the University Church (around 1910)
implementation of a set of political and ideological preconditions that would grant the overall acceptance of certain philosophical conceptions at a given time and in a given place: “Knowledge and science rely on traditions and conventions since all learning builds on previously produced knowledge.”18 This dictum was endorsed by Werner Sauer, who also pointed to the fact that even philosophical movements required “an institutional frame, provided by universities, academies or even […] public institutions in order to enable the formation of traditions and, in turn, to facilitate their development and decay.”19 At that point, Sauer’s and Haller’s paths diverge again, since the former clearly demonstrates that Haller’s universal criteria for “Austrian philosophy” cannot be applied consistently to the individual exponents of this supposedly uniform orientation.20 This refers not just to the fundamental philosophical differences in epistemology, aesthetics, logic, etc., from Bernard Bolzano via Franz Brentano to the Vienna Circle, which are hardly surprising. In addition, Sauer’s argument also considers the individual relationships between these diverse positions and Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]. Sauer illustrates his point with the aid of Brentano’s four phases of the rise and decline of philosophy. Furthermore, he also uses individual representatives of logical empiricism (Reichenbach and Carnap) to substantiate his argument: Brentano views Kant’s teachings as the first manifestations of the decline of philosophy in the fourth phase (mysticism and enthusiasm). Thereby Brentano makes clear that he
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considers precritical philosophy, by which he actually means pre-decadent philosophy (Leibnitz and Wolff), as superior.21 The representatives of the Vienna Circle, by contrast, regard Kant’s First Critique as an important climax of a paradigm that is outdated but towards whose scientific disposition they nevertheless feel obliged: “Kant’s theoretical philosophy thus appears as a related but, due to progress made in the natural sciences, outdated programme of a scientifically based philosophy.”22 Haller’s response in his essay Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie? [Is there an Austrian Philosophy?], which is based on the relatively weak maxim that “what is unimportant does not warrant mentioning”, seems unsatisfactory right from the start.23 “I have not concealed those examples because I wanted to close my eyes to unwanted instances of refutation, but because those omissions that are mentioned or could be mentioned are simply unimportant.”24 This distinction between “important” and “unimportant” examples is supposed to justify Haller’s intentional omissions in the continuous development of “Austrian philosophy” – Haller mentions the likes of Rudolf Kassner, Robert Reiniger, Carl Siegel and Othmar Spann. Nevertheless, Haller’s distinction is based on a subjective construction. Firstly, some problematic writers, who do not meet or only partially meet the criteria specified at the start, are overlooked as purportedly insignificant. Secondly, the divergences between conceptually irreconcilable philosophers made plausible by Haller’s criteria are simply flattened by interpretive intervention in order to retain the larger historical narrative. Both methods inevitably result in a hermeneutic circle, which does not dispel but in fact reinforce Sauer’s doubts. However, Sauer himself emphasizes that in the Hapsburg domain a free dissemination of Kant’s teachings was never really possible. He speaks of the “indisputable fact” that “in Austrian philosophy a Kantian […] tradition has never formed.”25 Although he has unquestionably proved that in the beginning the engagement with Kantian philosophy was intense, Sauer also highlights the ways in which an initially fruitful reception of Kant was impeded by the intervention of the state.26 According to Sauer, one can certainly find individual exponents of Kantian philosophy within the “Austrian thinking tradition”, but the formation of an actual school never occurred, which ultimately also answers the question of whether an Austrian Neo-Kantianism exists.27 This clearly shows that the problem arises not just from an unsatisfactory review of the extant source material but also from its interpretation, which always includes speculative moments as soon as particular analyses are abandoned for the sake of drawing the “big picture” of scientific cognitive interest. Sepp Domandl also demonstrates this. He offers a different interpretation of the source material used by Sauer : Austria was “so open” to Kant’s teachings “that the government had to opt for a complicated official intervention against them.”28 According to Domandl’s
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a priori designed interpretive framework, all authors who do not explicitly oppose critical philosophy thus become secret Kantians, who keep their sympathies hidden just because of pressure from the state.
Fig. 2: Auditorium of the old University of Vienna, nowadays Academy of Sciences
Johannes Feichtinger has recently shown that the largely unresolved problem of the Austrian Kant reception in the 19th century is also saturated with political motivation.29 Before him, Werner Sauer had already stressed the importance of this dimension in the belated construction of “national identity.”30 Feichtinger especially accentuates the celebration of the centenary of Kant’s death, which has led to two completely disparate verdicts on this particular topic. In 1904, Max Ortner presents numerous instructive documents which draw attention to an enormous scepticism towards Kant’s teachings among Austrian writers, philosophers and politicians. Ortner concludes succinctly : “Austrian politics under Francis II was anti-Kantian right to the core.”31 Karl Wotke was the first to publish the relevant official documents from Rottenhan’s commission, the immediate results of which were to suppress critical philosophy at Austrian universities. Wotke drew very different conclusions: “This should once and for all
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silence claims that in our circles Kantian philosophy met with outright hostility and opposition.”32 Wotke supports his claim with the at best half-hearted attempts of a few individual contributors to integrate Kantian philosophy in university curricula “some time later.” At the same time, Wotke overlooks the fact that a positive result of this questionable endeavour was illusory right from the beginning due to an intervention from the Emperor. Like in many other cases, the truth was certainly located somewhere in between the extreme opinions that the examined documents outlined so onesidedly. The fact that these interpretative oppositions formed in the first place can probably be attributed to the political importance of Kantian philosophy or of its artificially constructed explosive force, which turned it into the “paradigmatic deputy medium for political disputes”: In the 1850s, the retrograde rulers in Austria accused an apparently overpowering Kantian enlightenment tradition of social sedition. Their liberal opponents in turn objected that due to the massive smear campaign against Kantian thinking such a tradition did not exist during the pre-March era and could not develop as Kant’s teachings continued to be suppressed.33
Count Thun, the non-liberal architect of the post-revolutionary Ministry for Education, consciously exaggerated the actual impact of Kantian philosophy in the Hapsburg domain. In doing so, he “at once associated enlightenment with revolution” in order to ultimately abolish the “‘rotten’ education system from the pre-March era.” However, his opponents put no less effort into defending the “liberal narrative.”34 Georg Jellinek portrayed Austrian philosophy as a scholastic relic, as “doctrines approved by the Church”, since “narrow-minded, shortsighted cabinet politics in conjunction with a shrewd, considerate priesthood” had suppressed the idealist development in Germany at nationally controlled chairs at Austrian universities and was supposed to never admit the movement in the first place.35 Alfred Wieser already proved that Jellinek rhetorically exaggerated in his description of the situation. Wieser found evidence of no more than 50 lectures about Kant’s Critiques from 1848 until 1938, followed by Schopenhauer in second place with 29 and Aristotle in third place with 20 lectures.36 However, there was a gap of about ten years (1852–1861) under Count Thun.37 The situation with regard to dissertations submitted at that time is similar : Kant leads with 39 theses in Wieser’s overview, followed by Schopenhauer with 17, Herbart with 13, Spinoza with 12, Nietzsche and Leibnitz with 11 each and Plato with 10 projects. The remaining philosophers are registered with fewer than 10 submissions.38 As a result, Johannes Feichtinger rightly concludes: “As part of an invention of tradition, traditions were invented by way of exaggerations; the eminently political purpose associated with their realization, however, was overlooked.”39
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Fig. 3: University of Vienna (2015)
Nevertheless, even if current research can overcome the political limitations clearly manifest in the abovementioned elaborations by Ortner and Wotke respectively, it is very difficult to give a clear answer to the questions posed in this essay. This is because an understanding of Kant’s impact on Austrian intellectual history is usually framed by an unsatisfactory hypothesis of a “national philosophy.” Against its original intentions, this notion of “national philosophy” clouds, rather than enables, a balanced representation of historical events. Besides, more detailed examinations in other intellectual disciplines from legal history via the natural sciences to psychology, biology, medicine, etc., are required in order to round off the so far rudimentary image of the Austrian reception of Kant. This would help to offer a more objective answer, unmarred by the baggage of political theory. It remains uncertain whether a homogeneous impression of the Austrian relationship with Kant’s critical philosophy can be distilled from any future individual analyses. However, we may ask whether such a diversified set of problems can be analysed meaningfully by giving an abstract overview without generalising. A largely unmediated representation of at times
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disparate areas of influence for Kantian philosophy can perhaps offer more useful approaches than a smoothened out bird’s eye view of “the” Austrian Kant reception. Translated by Katharina Walter
Fig. 4: Decree that condemns and prohibits the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1827)
The Early Kant Reception in Austria – From Joseph II to Francis II by Alexander Wilfing The history of the Austrian Kant reception is closely connected with the official education policies in the Hapsburg Empire from Joseph II to Franz Joseph I. It remains highly controversial to what extent censorship, prohibitions and regulations really led to a distillation of a persistent anti-Kantianism as a core feature of Austrian philosophical history.40 This is not only due to the fact that some essential documents have not been found yet, so that we do not know, for
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instance, which of Kant’s writings from the 18th century were really censored. According to Johann Adolf Goldfriedrich’s Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels [History of the German Book Trade, 4 vols., Leipzig 1908–1913], Kant’s writings were generally banned in 1798. According to Werner Sauer, however, the ban was limited to Kant’s writings in religious theory and state philosophy, which would mean that Kant’s Kritiken (Critiques) would not have been affected.41 Perhaps the problem also arises from the fact that the manifest results of the Austrian education policies, which were officially clearly anti-Kantian, had completely different effects across the diverse disciplinary areas and at different times. Bernard Bolzano, a priest, philosopher and mathematician from Prague, was removed from his theological chair in December 1810 due to the unfounded accusation42 of “dangerous” Kantianism.43 At the same time, Kant’s writings were particularly popular among Austrian writers. Although the individual consequences of the official ban of Kant’s work in 1798 have scarcely been analysed, Werner Sauer has clearly proved that the early reception of Kant’s teachings was overwhelmingly positive. Two of Empress Maria Theresa’s education reforms (1752/1774) paved the way for a philosophical discourse that led to a gradual abandonment of Austria’s Catholic ties and to a national organization of universities, which had previously been led by the Jesuits.44 Orthodox Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy – the so-called “schlendrianum scholasticum” (Abbot Alexander Fixelmüller)45 – was replaced with Wolff ’s and Leibniz’s “popular” philosophy,46 which was to dominate universities in the Hapsburg Empire for some decades – called “popular” because rational metaphysics was removed from its earlier central position by posing psychological questions.47 The coronation of Joseph II (1780) and the concurrent onset of “enlightened absolutism”, which promoted the political education of the middle classes with the aim of modernising the state,48 became extremely relevant for Austrian Kantianism. This is because Joseph’s state system enabled at least a temporary implementation of Kant’s teachings in the Hapsburg domain. Gottfried van Swieten, who presided over the imperial study commission from 1781 to 1791, was also entrusted with the national censorship department from 1782 onwards.49 This led to a noticeable liberalisation of the relevant regulations.50 The principles of university education had previously been extremely pragmatic, which had rendered university education into mere professional training. These principles underwent substantial revision and were subordinated to the values of tolerant enlightenment. Thus, university education was to harmonise with national interests, while nevertheless educating mature citizens.51 Van Swieten and the similarly inclined Joseph von Sonnenfels did not propagate an unreserved enlightenment ideal as adult citizens were to subordinate themselves to a just
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monarchy based on common sense.52 However, these thinkers were the first to permit a deviation from the strictly standardised textbooks used for university teaching.53
Fig. 5: Franz Anton Zauner, Joseph II., Josefsplatz, Vienna (1807)
In 1783, van Swieten drafted a concrete reform plan, which was designed to gradually change philosophical education at school level. Furthermore, the reforms were supposed to create some freedom in terms of content for didactic teaching, so that “young people would not just learn about philosophy, but also learn to philosophise” and so that they would “get used to independent thinking.”54 Apart from these direct incentives, van Swieten’s position became relevant for Austrian Kantianism in so far as van Swieten officially approved Anton Kreil’s professorship at the University of Pest in 1785 and personally pressed ahead with his risky appointment.55 Due to his sympathies for Kant, Kreil also soon began to publicly teach Kant’s Critiques, in particular his Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason].56 Kreil himself, who was a member of the
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Masonic Lodge “True Harmony”, had stepped forward earlier with seven contributions for the Journal der Freymaurer [Journal of Freemasons], in which he praises Kant’s teachings, particularly the critical limitations Kant imposes on rationalist conceptions of reason. Furthermore, Kreil published a Handbuch der Logik [Handbook of Logic] in 1789, which clearly seems to be inspired by Kant.57 Johann Nepomuk Delling, the most famous victim of the Bavarian persecution of the illuminates, who was appointed at the same time by van Swieten to the Hungarian University of P¦cs (Fünfkirchen), also taught according to Kantian principles.58 This initially liberal attitude towards critical philosophy was even introduced into Catholic moral theology, which, due to Augustin Zippe’s efforts, Anton Reyberger taught partly following Kantian principles.59
Fig. 6: Kaspar Clemens Eduard Zumbusch, Franz Joseph I., University of Vienna (1886)
The real Austrian Kantianism, however, was located in the personal domain. That was also true of scientific inquiries, which were strictly separated from the dogmatic teaching operations and which had to be conducted privately ; science
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was often furthered by educated civil servants.60 At the time, Austria rigorously separated between the humanities and the natural sciences. The latter were regarded as relatively value-neutral and practically applicable areas of study. Philosophical disciplines, by contrast, were viewed as potentially dangerous. Later, they were replaced by a “blissful darkness” that elevated the status quo to a “positive norm”.61 Consequently, apart from Karl Leonhard Reinhold many other intellectually interested citizens also left the Hapsburg domain from time to time in order to seek personal contact with Kant or to visit his stronghold in Jena (Johann Benjamin Erhard, Leopold Ritter Meißel, Count Wenzel Gottfried von Purgstall, Joseph Schreyvogel, Cajetan Tschink etc.). As Werner Sauer succinctly stated, “The camp of critical Josephines, which held on to the enlightenment and, in the course of its politicization, moved towards early liberalism” was “the main basis for the reception of Kantian philosophy.”62 Someone who gained particular significance in this context was Franz Paul von Herbert, a factory owner from Klagenfurt who founded a Kantian reading group and consequently ended up being prosecuted by the police.63 Hungarian philosophy from the early 19th century also clearly manifests Kantian influences. This is the case in several progressive textbooks from the 1790s and in Stephan Tichy’s anonymous request for Kant’s system to be integrated into university education (Philosophische Bemerkungen über das Studienwesen in Ungarn [Philosophical Remarks about the System of Study in Hungary], 1792).64 Even the enlightened clergy received Kant’s teachings very positively as the case of the Viennese Bishop Matthias Steindl demonstrates. Steindl did not hesitate to recommend Kant’s writings to his students.65 No later than 1786, five years after its first publication, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his other publications were available in most Viennese bookshops, even though twelve months earlier it was almost impossible to find them at all.66 In June 1788 Paul Pepermann spoke to Karl Leonhard Reinhold of a literal flooding with Kant-related publications, which one could obtain without any problems (Pepermann to Reinhold, 18 June 1788).67 The climax of this shorttermed enthusiasm for Kant was probably reached around the mid-1790s, when a reprint of Kant’s writings (1795–1797) was published in Graz.68 This edition marks a turning point in the initially favourable reception of Kant’s work.69 Political events, the French Revolution and the assassination of Louis XVI (1793) had caught up with Kant’s readers. These incidents strongly influenced the dissemination of Kant’s teachings: Francis II, who had been Emperor of Austria since 1792 and who under no circumstances wanted to import the political situation from revolutionary France, launched a reactionary counter-initiative. He wanted to suppress enlightened tendencies, of which Kant’s system was considered to be part. This development manifested itself, for instance, in Lazarus Bendavid’s lec-
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Fig. 7: Pompeo Marchesi, Emperor Franz II./ I., Hofburg, Vienna (1846)
tures about Kantian philosophy (Vienna 1793), which were attended by so many people that even the large lecturing theatre in the old Viennese university (which now serves as the historical banquet hall for the “Austrian Academy of Science”) could not hold them. Due to the evident curiosity about Kant’s teachings, Bendavid’s highly popular talks had to be hosted in the much larger Palais Harrach.70 However, despite – or, rather, because of – this incredible surge, which even enabled a circle of lay people to familiarise themselves with Kant’s thinking, Bendavid’s lectures were banned by the state half-way through a cycle of talks. Furthermore, the philosopher from Berlin was forced to leave the imperial residential city in 1797.71 That was when the Hapsburg dynasty broke with its initially fairly liberal attitude towards Kant’s philosophy. The Hapsburgs then officially began to follow a “special course” in Austria, which prevented the development of Kantian schooling on a long-term basis.72 Translated by Katharina Walter
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Fig. 8: Lazarus Bendavid, Lectures on the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
State Censorship of Kant – From Francis II to Count Thun by Alexander Wilfing Most people consider it a fact that the previously liberal attitude of Austrian education policies did not change until the reign of Francis II. Nevertheless, Maria Theresa’s perhaps more pragmatic disposition, as well as that of her temporary co-regents and that of her direct successor, Joseph II, was probably less tolerant than is widely suspected.73 Metternich and Emperor Francis have recurrently been held responsible for implementing an increasingly more authoritarian style of leadership and, ultimately, creating a veritable police state.74 However, censorship facilities that would continue to exist until the revolution of 1848 and beyond were already established during Maria Theresa’s time.75 The “System Metternich”, a catchphrase that characterises the pre-March era in Austria, was already created under Joseph II, so that Emperor Francis only had to ensure the perfection of its application.76 The “secret service” (founded in 1786),
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which would continue to exist until the First Republic, and the centralised police force under Count Pergen (1789) were the result of some of Joseph II’s restorative measures. Evidently, Joseph II quickly abandoned his initial reform plan.77 This backtracking from civil freedoms that he had previously willingly granted was a consequence of the revolutionary developments in France, where Kant’s teachings had apparently come to exert significant influence.78 But why were Kant’s works, which can hardly be accused of glorifying the French Revolution, that suspicious for the educational policies of the Austrian empire? This judgment on critical philosophy was primarily based on Kant’s critique of reason, which dissociated various politically relevant areas – religion, moral, state, etc. – from the absolutist codex of norms and was thus able to develop a high critical potential. For this reason, the Austrian Restoration “rightly” opposed Kant’s a-priori constructivism, which enabled a gradual emancipation of the bourgeoisie through critical reflection. In addition, with his risky “quid juris” question Kant posed a serious threat to the established order, which would now have to persist in light of human reason and its laws, which are in no way determined by the social order.79 Peter Miotti, for instance, shared these political reservations and wanted to prohibit Kant’s teachings for good. He wanted only those thinkers to be accepted who “would design their philosophy to fit the existing world, rather than the other way round.”80 Otherwise, Kant’s thinking, which had come to be seen as inacceptable in the absolutist Corporate State, could have been used to theoretically substantiate social upheaval. This was particularly significant as Kant’s teaching was regarded as the epitome of political philosophy, the dissemination of which would have to be prevented at any cost. Werner Sauer argues: Kant’s philosophy was regarded as the philosophy of political progress par excellence, as the undoubtedly most profound contribution to the self-conception of the bourgeois emancipation process. This emancipation process began with enlightenment and culminated in the Great Revolution. In a system whose very ratio essendi was based on the obstruction and suppression of this process, Kant’s philosophy had to meet with resistance, at least when its political dimension became apparent.81
This tendency also manifested itself in the controversial ban on Freemasonry in 1797.82 This ban deprived the Austrian enlightenment of its most central forum for the free exchange of ideas. In fact, the first measures towards its implementation date back to the patent on Freemasonry issued by the police in 1785,83 which led to rigorous interventions in the previously unrestricted organisation.84 Masonic Lodges had been prohibited temporarily under Empress Maria Theresa (1765–1780), but flourished under Joseph II. in a way nobody could have foreseen, because he recruited his direct advisors from these enlightened circles. The different attitude changed this radically. Reactionary
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Fig. 9: Peter Miotti, On the Falsehood and Impiety of the Kantian System With a Response to A. Kreil’s Remarks on the Latest Paper of Mr. Miotti
journalists like Alois Leopold Hoffmann (Wiener Zeitschrift [Viennese Journal]) or Felix Franz Hofstätter (Magazin der Kunst und Literatur [Magazine of Art and Literature]) thought that the French Revolution originated in a conspiracy of Freemasons, whose seemingly perverted idea of freedom was also manifest in Kant’s writings.85 This harmed Austrian Kantianism as Kant’s teachings were in fact popular among Freemasons in Austria. Seven articles Anton Kreil wrote for the Journal der Freimaurer [Journal of Freemasons] give evidence of that. On top of the bargain, Kreil was a member of the Viennese Free Masonic lodge “True Harmony.”86 This climate, which de facto regarded the enlightenment, Freemasonry, the French Revolution and Kantian philosophy as synonymous, culminated in the persecution of Jacobites by the state (1794), which was followed
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by the forced retirement of Anton Kreil, ordered by the Emperor. Furthermore, the situation also entailed numerous imprisonments, denunciations and executions, some of which even affected former members of Leopold II’s government.87 Anton Kreil and Johann Nepomuk Delling were both dismissed for the obvious “reason” that “lecturing critical philosophy leads to atheism.”88 More active Enlightenment philosophers were now called “mangy sheep” (quoting Francis II).89 This aggressive attitude also turned against Kant as a person, who traded under the name “Grandpa of Murderous Philosophy”90 in the popular satire magazine Eipeldauerbriefe [Eipeldauer Letters],91 which the police supported with development funds. Apart from Benedikt Sattler’s Anti-Kant, this criticism of Kant was particularly reinforced by Peter Miotti’s polemics (Über die Nichtigkeit der Kantischen Grundsätze in der Philosophie [About the Voidness of Kant’s Principles in Philosophy], Vienna 1798; Über die Falschheit und Gottlosigkeit des Kantischen Systems [About the Falseness and Godlessness of Kant’s System], Augsburg 1802). To the great delight of Severoli, the Viennese nuncio, those writings emphatically fought the “perverse principles of the materialist Kant.”92 In his Kantische Grundsätze [Kant’s Principles], Miotti also demanded the complete suppression of Kant’s philosophy, which through its heretical apriorisms attempted to thoughtlessly undermine ecclesiastical truth and national order. Once more, Miotti’s critique did not just aim at the content of Kant’s work, but also at his methodological approach, which clearly contradicted the idea of a positive orientation of Austrian education policies as Kant did not acknowledge the objective conditions of state authorities to be beyond doubt: today’s Jacobins, how did they forge their concepts of equality and liberty, of tyrants and tyranny? By contemplating this world? O! Certainly not; in this world you cannot find a trace of the kinds of liberty, equality and tyranny they brag about; they gained their high insights a priori; they took them from the world they created from their imaginations, according to their own ideas. If so much damage has been done by arbitrary, a-priori insights, what can be expected of a system that deals with nothing but transcendental concepts, or, in other words, a-priori insights?93
Although Kant’s teachings could not be permitted freely anymore, many of those involved in the planning of education in the Hapsburg Empire still had considerable doubts about the official prohibition of Kant’s works, which had damaged “Austria’s reputation in the educated world” and had ultimately increased the existing interest.94 However, due to the enormous resonance and supposed danger of Kant’s philosophy, it was necessary to implement at least an indirect restriction, which preceded the prohibition of Kantian thinking by the Vatican (1827). In 1795, Anton Pergen, the organizer of the police, encouraged a reformed study commission to “undo the damage that the Enlightenment had
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done to the heads of the Austrian people.”95 Under Minister Heinrich Rottenhan, the study commission was to renovate the Austrian education system in the spirit of Francis’s style of leadership. School was supposed to only serve restorative goals. Consequently, it had to be freed from all scientific nonconformity towards state and church. Furthermore, the profoundness of school education had to be carefully limited, as “the danger for the current order emanating from philosophy” had been caused by a “political realisation of the mode of thinking propagated in the humanities.”96 Rottenhan’s programme, which was particularly sceptical in regard to the “studium generale”, the general introduction to philosophy at universities, was conceived according to the following criteria: the study of maths and physics, as well as the positive sciences [ought to] outstrip the so-called rational and speculative sciences […] in order to place restrictions on scepticism and political and philosophical freethinking, which have recently so divided the spirit of erudition from sheer common sense.97
A meeting was organised on 4 July 1798 concerning the necessary reorganisation of philosophical curricula, which Count Rottenhan regarded as “the most important of all […] tasks.”98 Those present decided on how to proceed with Kant’s teachings, which overtly opposed the official political orientation in Austria.99 Independent experts’ reports were commissioned for this politically contentious decision, the aim of which was to thoroughly understand the socio-political impact of critical philosophy : Über kantische Philosophie mit Gutachten in Hinsicht auf erbländische Universitäten [About Kantian Philosophy with Experts’ Reports Concerning Universities on the Hereditary Lands, anonymous author] and Gedanken über das einstweilige ratsamste Verhalten der Lehrer auf österreichischen Schulen in Anschauung der kantischen Philosophie [Thoughts about the Advisable Behaviour for Teachers at Austrian Schools Regarding Kantian Philosophy, Samuel Karpe].100 However, both experts refused to recommend a firm ban on Kant’s works, agreeing on the fact that critical philosophy posed no direct threat either to the state or the church. The authors even demanded that long-serving professors should familiarise themselves with the transcendental methodology in order not to lose connection with developments in Germany once more. An integration of Kant’s teaching in general introductory classes on philosophy was ruled out categorically, however, as Kant’s complex argumentation would simply be too much for inexperienced adolescents. The unnamed expert, who has remained anonymous to this day, even pleaded against an explanation of the contents of Kantian philosophy, which should only be discussed in historical terms. These reports, however, were not immediately forwarded to the responsible commission. Instead, they were used by the censor, Franz Carl Hägelin, to draft his much more critical memorandum, Bemerkungen über die Gedanken, die
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kantische Philosophie betreffend [Remarks about Ideas Concerning Kantian Philosophy], which was subsequently put before the commissioners. Hägelin was also convinced that Kant’s teachings were not offending any religious opinions. Nevertheless, he emphasised grave political considerations: While, following the tradition of Leibniz and Wolff, the established philosophy apparently protected the political constitution, Kant’s thinking was disseminated by radical agitators, so that even regular participants of philosophical studies should only be exposed to it very cautiously and fleetingly, rather than examining critical philosophy in depth. At a secret meeting, those who led the discussion (von Hägelin, von Schilling, von Spendou and von Zippe)101 soon reached an agreement that propaedeutics in philosophy should continue to deal with dogmatic philosophy. Only von Zippe, who had formerly worked for Gottfried van Swieten, wanted to establish a designated lectureship in Kantian philosophy. Von Zippe wanted the appointee to offer optional courses that students would have been allowed to attend once they had finished their regular course of studies. However, the students themselves would have had to remunerate their professor, whose position was unsalaried. That would have ensured low student numbers, while at the same time keeping up the appearance of philosophical liberality.102 A provisional regulation was made for designated academic study courses in philosophy which would stay in place for approximately forty years: While in propaedeutics, Kant’s name should not be mentioned, he could be addressed in doctoral degree courses, but only polemically.103 This permanently determined the modus vivendi for the approach to Kant’s teachings, which were not officially but in fact indirectly banned. Chairs for Kantian philosophy, which were only envisaged half-heartedly for the University of Prague and for the Alma Mater Rudolfensis, were never approved.104 Instead, an additional professorship for dogmatic theology was established,105 for which the confessed anti-Kantian Jacob Frint (1804) was appointed.106 This prohibition lasted until 1860/61,107 when the fiercest Kant opponent in the Austrian Ministry for Education, Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein, finally had to resign. Together with Franz Exner and Hermann Bonitz, he had previously launched a step-by-step introduction of Humboldt’s education system at universities in the Hapsburg Empire.108 However, Thun-Hohenstein continued to exert control over the Hapsburgs’ universities through his appointment politics, which were critical of philosophy.109 When exactly the first ban of Kant occurred still seems controversial: While Domandl claims that it was issued as early as 1793,110 Werner Sauer refers to Johann Goldfriedrich’s Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels [History of the German Book Trade, 4 vols., Leipzig 1909–1913], which records a partial censorship of Kant’s, Fichte’s and Schellings’s writings in 1798.111 The reprint in Graz of Kant’s writings (1795/97) supports the dates recorded by Sauer. Despite Sepp Domandl’s statements, the
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reprint was not a “mistake in the perfectly, seamlessly working system” initiated by Francis II.112 Ernst Topitsch even considers the first censorship of Kant’s works to be as late as 1803, a year from which police documents about a confiscation were found.113
Fig. 10: Carl Kundmann, Franz Exner, Leopold Graf von Thun und Hohenstein, Hermann Bonitz, Arcade Court, University of Vienna (1893)
But even if the earlier dates suggested by Domandl were correct, we would still have to emphasise that Kant’s works were not part of popular literature, which censorship mainly aimed at. This makes Domandl’s reasoning seem highly unlikely. Besides, an all too radical control of scientific publications would have been difficult to reconcile with the predominantly pragmatic orientation of Hapsburg absolutism. Even the much stricter censorship laws from September 1819 continued to distinguish between “on the one hand, works whose content and treatment of subject is only for scholars and those whose lives are dedicated to the sciences, and, on the other hand, brochures, popular writings, books for entertainment and humorous writings.” The former were mainly excluded from state intervention.114 The extent to which the censorship of Francis, who reserved for himself the exclusive right to decide on this matter,115 was informed by the potential mass impact of suspicious literature, is shown by the fact that expensive books had fewer problems to pass the censorship laws than more popular and thus inexpensive writings.116 It seems likely, but is only an assumption, that Kant’s writings were part of the first category, which would mean
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that apart from his writings on the theory of religion and the philosophy of state117 they probably did not disappear completely from the public book trade. Translated by Katharina Walter
Herbartianism – Rembold, von Thun und Hohenstein, Exner, Zimmermann by Kurt Walter Zeidler On 24 May 1893, in an impressive inauguration ceremony, a group sculpture of Leopold Count of Thun und Hohenstein, Franz Exner and Hermann Bonitz was unveiled in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna.118 In the subjects of the sculpture – Bonitz, Exner and Thun-Hohenstein, the government minister who during his term of office in 1849–1860, in the words of the Latin inscription “Universitates et Gymnasia novis legibus institutisque feliciter reformavit” – the University of Vienna honoured the memory of three men who after the 1848 revolution had carried out the long-overdue reform of the education system,119 in the process installing Herbartianism120 as virtually the official “Austrian philosophy”. A glimpse of the background and origins of Herbartianism in this context can be gained from the memoirs of Ferdinand von Bauernfeld (1802–1890), who sketches a vivid picture of the circumstances and situation during his student days at the University of Vienna (1819–1825): “Our philosophy lectures were given in a former stable of the Jesuit fathers, metamorphosed into a barely tolerable condition […]. Only two of the professors made any impact on our youthful minds: Vincenz Weintridt and Leopold Rembold.”121 Vincenz Weintridt (1778–1849),122 who taught the subject of divinity, was a secular priest, but also a man of the world in the wider sense […], with an aesthetic rather than a scientific background; he often put the required dogmatic material to one side and gave free-ranging lectures, semi-extemporised. […] As early as November 1819 he told me that a denunciation had been laid against him, claiming that he took students to beer halls and sang scurrilous songs to them. It all sounded so ridiculous! But during the next winter Professor Bolzano in Prague was dismissed, specifically because of his ‘excessively free lectures’; Weintridt was threatened with a similar fate, which indeed overtook him soon after the first semester of 1820. His association with Bolzano was the main indictment raised against him.123
Ultimately Weintridt’s crime appears to have been to “play the master among his disciples”,124 since “from the records […] it can be seen that all the reprimanded professors were brought into contact with the student association movement”.125 His “association with Bolzano” is indicative of the significance of Prague, which in the mid-19th century was to become the centre around which Austrian Her-
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bartianism crystallised. This development was initiated by a professor of philosophy of south-west German origin, Leopold Rembold (1787–1844), “who, originally a follower of Jacobi, felt drawn towards Herbart’s mathematical psychology, and as the teacher of Franz Exner, whose attention he drew to these ideas, actually became the founder of the Herbartian school in Austria”.126 According to Bauernfeld’s memoirs, Rembold could at first glance be seen as the opposite of our refined divinity professor [Weintridt]. […] He formed a close personal bond only with the young Exner, otherwise he spoke only to the entire class, and kept strictly to the sequence of his lectures, without any substantial literary or aesthetic deviations. Logic and metaphysics, unfortunately taught in Latin, opened up completely new vistas for us […]. Speculation attracted little or no interest among us; of all the hundreds of philosophy students, Franz Exner (one year behind us) was probably the only one to derive any real benefit from Rembold’s teaching […]. When we got to moral philosophy, things seemed to improve. Rembold was really an eclectic, but he had great respect for Kant (even he attacked him at some points with Herbartian weapons), and so he managed to get us suitably excited by the ‘categorical imperative’.127
However in Metternich’s police state with widespread use of informers, such enthusiasm for Kant could not go unpunished, and a categorical imperative even stronger the Kant’s, the allpowerful police, had long been listening covertly to the professor’s sceptical words, and twisting them in secret into a deed of indictment. […] Professor Rembold was suddenly removed from his teaching position and pensioned off with a paltry four hundred guilders, and a priest was provisionally appointed as our teacher of philosophy. Notwithstanding the grumblings of us young philosophers, the strict rule was applied, and the student uproar that broke out on the matter was quickly snuffed out with the help of the police. […] If Weintridt’s fall from grace irritated us, the dismissal of Rembold brought our displeasure to a peak. So this is the Austrian system, we cried, as if with one voice. Hypocrisy, priests and brutality, joining forces against the world of thought!128
After the 1848 revolution had toppled the “Metternich system” and shaken the Austrian Empire to its core, making the need for reform dramatically obvious to the political actors, the hour of the educational reformers from the Herbartian school had come.
Leopold Count of Thun und Hohenstein (1811–1888) Leopold Count of Thun und Hohenstein was born on 7. 4. 1811 in De˘cˇn (Bohemia). After studying law (1827–31) at Prague University and after lengthy stays in London, Oxford and Paris, in 1836 he entered the civil service. At the end
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Fig. 11: Konrad Geyer, Johann Friedrich Herbart
of July 1849 he became Minister of Culture and Education, holding the portfolio through until October 1860. He died on 17. 12. 1888 in Vienna. Thun-Hohenstein’s name is associated with far-reaching reforms in the Austrian education and university system, although these had actually been set in train under his predecessors. During his brief term as Minister of Public Education, in March 1848 Franz Seraph von Sommaruga (1780–1860) made the following statement in the Aula of the old university : We mean to erect a permanent edifice like […] those flourishing universities in Germany, which we revere as exemplars of thorough scientific education and scholarship. It will be built upon a foundation of freedom of learning and teaching, bound by no other constraints than those of constitutional laws.129
Sommaruga was still in office in April 1848 when Franz Serafin Exner was appointed as scientific adviser (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat), and then transferred from Prague to Vienna as ministerial counsellor (Ministerialrat). It was thanks to the liberal guidelines and advanced preparatory work, as well as his academic reputation and skill, and not least his close personal relationship with ThunHohenstein as the minister130 that long-overdue reforms of the Austrian edu-
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cation and university system were carried out, which were not at all what the minister had expected. As a representative of political Catholicism and the Bohemian high aristocracy, Thun-Hohenstein was neither an admirer of the “flourishing universities of Germany” nor a pioneer of “freedom of learning and teaching”. For example, a memorandum published under his direct supervision in 1853 entitled Die Neuordnung der österreichischen Universitäten [The reorganisation of the Austrian universities] complained that “at the Protestant universities in Germany, scholarship has degenerated into the kind of monstrosities that provide horrific proof of the results arrived at by an intellect that is no longer guided by the facts of Revelation”, arguing that the “lofty goal” for the Austrian universities must therefore lie in the “nurturing of scholarship in accordance with the spirit of the Church and special respect for the State”.131
Fig. 12: Alois Flir, The Restructuring of Austrian Universities
Under such conditions the anaemic realism of Herbart’s philosophy offered itself as the least unacceptable option; it met – as Herbart himself amply demonstrated with his stance against the Göttingen Seven – the “post-revolutionary
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need for a scientifically credible philosophy that would at the same time exercise and propagate academic self-restraint”.132
Franz Serafin Exner (1802–1853) Franz Serafin Exner was born in Vienna on 28. 8. 1802, studying philosophy there from 1818 to 1821, and law from 1822. After a period of university study in Padua (1823) and taking his degree in Vienna (1827), he taught education and philosophy at the University of Vienna as a teaching assistant, replacing his former teacher, Leopold Rembold, following the latter’s dismissal in disgrace. He was appointed to an ordinary professorship of philosophy at Prague University in 1831, where he associated with leading Bohemian intellectuals (Bernard Bolzano, Christian Doppler, Johann August Zimmermann) and aristocrats, including the future minister Thun-Hohenstein. As from 1844 he was commissioned by the body responsible for educational institutions, the Studienhofkommission, to prepare expert opinions on the reorganisation of the education system. On being appointed by minister Sommaruga in April 1848 as a scientific adviser, and then transferred to Vienna as a ministerial counsellor, he and Hermann Bonitz (1811–1888), whom he had met in Berlin in 1842 through the Herbartian Gustav Hartenstein, jointly drew up the draft organisational structure for Austrian classical and modern secondary schools, which was duly implemented under minister Thun-Hohenstein in 1849, along with Exner’s proposals on the university reform. Exner was then put in charge of the reorganisation of education in Austria’s Italian provinces. He died in Padua on 21. 6. 1853. In the philosophical domain Exner made a name for himself primarily as a severe critic of the Hegelian school. He believed that Hegelianism was characterised by three main features: the “receipt of concepts from without, which are however passed off as self-generated; […] the arbitrary application of a method adopted as the one and only correct one”, and thirdly, “distortion of the concepts of experience to the point of unrecognisability”.133 And yet, if a single page of Herbart’s psychological works is correct, then the entire edifice of Hegelian psychology collapses into ruins. Even supporters of the Hegelian system state and admit that Herbart’s philosophy is most decidedly at odds with Hegel’s, and that at present in Germany it alone has the inner vitality required to stand as a cohesive force and equal opponent of Hegel’s system. It is too late to ignore it now.134
The opposition between Hegel and Herbart, which definitely defined philosophical debate in Germany through to the mid-19th century, was indeed difficult to ignore. But with the appointment of the philosophers Franz Karl Lott (Vienna
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1849), Robert Zimmermann (Olomouc 1849, Prague 1852, Vienna 1861), Wilhelm Volkmann (Prague 1860), Josef Wilhelm Nhlowsky (Graz 1862) and Josef Durdik (Prague 1874), and of the educationalists Theodor Vogt (Vienna 1871), Otto Willmann (Prague 1872) and Gustav Adolf Lindner (Prague 1878), Herbartianism gained the status of the state philosophy in Austria at a time when its star in Germany was already waning, and neo-Kantianism was becoming the leading philosophy in the universities. Austrian-born representatives of neoKantianism (Alois Riehl, Richard Hönigswald, Johannes Volkelt, Emil Lask) therefore made their careers in the German Reich, whereas in Vienna, Robert Zimmermann as the “last Herbartian” dictated the fortunes of philosophy over a period of more than three decades.
Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898) Robert Zimmermann was born in Prague on 2. 11. 1824, as the son of a classical secondary school teacher and later Studienhofkommission official, Johann August Zimmermann (1793–1869). While attending classical secondary school he also received private instruction in philosophy and mathematics from Bernard Bolzano, as a close friend of his father. He undertook university studies from 1840, including under Franz Serafin Exner, at Prague University, and from 1844 continued his studies (philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry and astronomy) in Vienna. After graduating (1846) he worked as an assistant at the university observatory (1847–49), and during the 1848 revolution he was a member of the Academic Legion. In 1849 he gained his Habilitation qualification and was appointed as Extraordinary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Olomouc, followed by an ordinary professorship at Charles University in Prague from 1852 to 1861, where he was Dean in 1860/61. From 1861 to 1896 he was a professor at the University of Vienna, where he was Dean in 1865/66 and 1876/77, and Rector in 1886/87. Following Franz Brentano’s resignation from his professorship (1874–1880), for 15 years Zimmermann was the only ordinary professor of philosophy. In 1889 he was a co-founder of the Grillparzer Society, which he chaired until his death. He was raised to the nobility on his 72nd birthday, and he died in Prague on 31. 8. 1898. As Bolzano’s favourite student, converted to Hebartianism under the influence of Exner, Zimmermann described his life journey and position as follows: It is well-known that at the end of the foreword to his ‘General Metaphysics’ published in 1828, Herbart described himself as a ‘Kantian of the year 1828’. If the writer of these lines, who owes his first stimulus to take up the study of philosophy to an opponent of Kant (the most illustrious thinker and endurer Bolzano, born exactly one hundred years ago, on 5 October 1781) and to a friend of Herbart’s (Franz Exner, the acute critic
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of Hegelian philosophy), was to be so bold today, when a full century has passed since the appearance of the Critique of pure reason, and more than half a century since that of the General Metaphysics, to call himself a ‘Herbartian of the year 1881’, he would see this as correctly reflecting his attitude to both Kant and Herbart.135
Fig. 13: August Steininger, Robert Zimmermann (before 1898)
This self-characterisation by Zimmermann is accurate to the extent that “his attitude to both Kant and Herbart” was determined by Bolzano. Zimmermann combines the pronounced anti-Kantianism of Bolzano (the “Bohemian Leibniz”) and the anti-idealistic “realism” of Herbart, in that he refers back to Leibniz. In his comparison of the monadologies of Leibniz and Herbart136 he makes Leibniz the mouthpiece of his Bolzano-inspired critique of Herbart, as follows:137 whereas the central point of Leibniz’s own monad theory lies “in the real world of the monads themselves, in the almighty and all-powerful Urmonas […] the central point of [Herbart’s] theory of the real is none other […] than our own ‘I’. […] Herbart therefore advances only a few steps further than Kant along this path”.138 In spite of reproving Herbart for his idealism and subjectivism, however,139 Zimmermann esteems him as a worthy “successor to Leibniz, whom he also highly esteemed”, with Herbart having “the merit of returning Leibniz’s investigative thinking, […] which since the appearance of Kant […] had pro-
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liferated beyond all bounds, back to within strict limits, indeed mathematical limits as the strictest of all”.140 This assessment of Herbart is not be seen merely as an “astounding about-face by Bolzano’s ‘favourite student’, forced to change sides in order to avoid ending up like Bolzano, in the academic wasteland.”141 Zimmermann is rather here following a dictum of Bolzano, who in § 21 of Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of science) himself placed his logical objectivism in the tradition of Herbart and Leibniz, because when Herbart requires that “the logical [be kept free] from any admixture of the psychological”, his intention was that “a judgment be regarded not as a phenomenon in the mind, but as something objective, consequently no different from how I […] wish the proposition in itself to be regarded”, just as “Leibniz […] presupposes that by ‘propositions’ he meant propositions in themselves”.142 Accordingly, in the foreword to the second edition of his Philosophische Propaedeutik (Introduction to philosophy), for decades the most widely-used textbook for the subject of philosophy at the classical secondary schools of the Danube monarchy, he highlighted the “difference so rightly emphasised by Herbart between ‘concept in the psychological sense’ and ‘concept in the logical sense’”, referring explicitly to this as being in agreement “with Bolzano’s theory of science”.143 It is also Bolzano’s logical objectivism that determines his critique of Kant, when he disposes in short order of the latter’s “mathematical prejudice” in favour of the synthetic character of mathematical judgements with the comment and/or admission that: I am unable to see how as a result of thinking the combination of ‘seven’ and ‘five’ in a sum total I do not yet think the ‘twelve’, which after all is nothing but the said sum total of seven and five expressed with its own name! […] The judgement 7+5=12 […] is therefore not just analytical, but even identical, since the predicate repeats the subject, only under a different name!144
Zimmermann’s most significant philosophical achievement is not however in the area of the theory of cognition or metaphysics, but in aesthetics,145 where again he modifies Herbartianism on the basis of the precepts of Bolzano.146 Viewed retrospectively in terms of the history of philosophy, Zimmermann’s real significance can be seen in his function as a bridge: by preserving Bolzano’s logical objectivism under a cloak of Herbartianism, and helping to arrange Brentano’s appointment in Vienna, he constructed a bridge between Bolzano and Brentano which – without his intention – became a critical juncture not only for the Brentano school, but also for the subsequent evolution of neo-positivism and analytical philosophy. Translated by John Jamieson
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Lazarus Bendavid – Teaching Kant’s Philosophy in Vienna by Olga Ring Lazarus Bendavid, who was born in Berlin on 18 October 1762 and died there on 28 March 1832, was a philosopher, mathematician, educator, journalist and an expert in Jewish history. He came from an educated, liberal Jewish family.147 His mother Eva Hirsch was a daughter of David Hirsch – the owner of the first velvet factory in Berlin. His father, David Lazarus, was from Brunswick. Both parents could speak and write Hebrew, German and French, and Bendavid himself was also fluent in these three languages.148 He had a traditional Jewish education in various Talmud schools and received extra private tuition in German, French, Latin, Greek and arithmetics. Furthermore he taught himself Arabic and Syrian grammar. “I read […] just about everything I came across: Abu’l-Fida and the Qur’an, the New Testament and Rousseau’s Êmile, Voltaire’s Pucelle and Th¦rÀse the Philosopher, the German poets and Wolf ’s metaphysics, books about the Kabbala and about medicine.“149 His early contact to the Enlightenment philosophers Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777), Moses Mendelssohn (1728–1786) and Markus Herz (1747–1803) was hugely important in the development of this self-educated man. After a brief and intensely religious period, Bendavid became increasingly sceptical about religion and from then onwards he assumed an unorthodox attitude towards faith. “Having given up all that was positive, I kept my faith in God, in immortality and in a better future; and I gave up saying my Jewish prayers – not gradually, but all of a sudden”.150 After his father’s death in 1789 he broke off all contact with the synagogue for good. At first Bendavid devoted himself to mathematics and the natural sciences, focusing mainly on astronomical studies with Johann Elert Bode (1747–1826) in the observatory in Berlin. His first scientific treatise on the theory of colours entitled Ob die sieben Hauptfarben schon die einfachsten sind? [Are the Seven Main Colours the Simplest Ones?] published in Berlinische Monatsschrift [Berlin Monthly] (1785) and his Theorie der Parallelen [Theory of Parallel Lines] published in the same year brought him “into contact with scientists in Berlin and in other regions, including Kaestner.“151 As the companion and mentor of a medical student he came to know the mathematician Abraham Gotthelf Kaestner (1719–1800) personally in Goettingen in 1790 and attended classes there including a physics lecture given by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799). After that he began a fruitful collaboration in Halle with Johann August Eberhard (1739–1809), who was a disciple of Wolff, but this came to an abrupt end since Bendavid became more and more involved in Kant’s philosophy. At the end of 1791 Bendavid took over a position as private tutor in Vienna, where he moved in the circles of Josephinian followers of the Enlightenment. He
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Fig. 14: Moses Samuel Lowe, Lazarus Bendavid (1806)
taught critical philosophy to Count Carl von Harrach and others. Count Harrach and Prince Lichnowsky gave him an introduction to the chief constable of the time, Count Franz Josef Saurau, who managed to obtain a permit allowing Bendavid to give public lectures on Kant’s philosophy. However, “the envy of some university professors […] led them to exploit the rising suspicion of the government, who – as he himself put it humorously – distrusted Bendavid due to all his attributes as a philosophical-Kantian-Protestant-Prussian Jew”. As a result he was banned from giving further public lectures at the university. Consequently, “Count von Harrach, with whom Bendavid was staying [opened] a spacious hall in his house, where the lectures continued for some time.”152 Bendavid’s books and private lessons continued to be still very much in demand in Vienna: “I had become fashionable, so to speak, and it was considered the epitome of good taste to be taught by me. So I had more requests for lessons than I was able – and wanted – to accept. I was never interested in making money and I loved my independence and my studies too much”153 During his time in Vienna Bendavid published Versuch über das Vergnügen [Essay on Pleasure] in two
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volumes (1794), Vorlesungen über die Critik der reinen Vernunft [Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason] (1795), Vorlesungen über die Critik der praktischen Vernunft [Lectures on the Critique of Practical Reason] (1796), Vorlesungen über die Critik der Urtheilskraft [Lectures on the Critique of Judgment] (1796), Beyträge zur Kritik des Geschmacks [Essays on the Critique of Taste] (1797). When Bendavid wrote his lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (based on the second edition), his intention was to present “Kant and only Kant as briefly, coherently and popularly as possible154 using concepts in common use, so as to engage readers, for whom my lectures are expressly written, in debates that they may not be familiar with.“155 Bendavid admits that he had ordered some proofs differently to Kant and had also “put the schematism at the end of the analytic of principles”,156 but otherwise his lectures follow the structure and contents of Kant’s text and are – as Werner Sauer puts it – “notably free of all the obscurity and confusion […] that have become notorious in Kantian literature.”157 Therefore “it is probably the principal merit of the Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason that they present the critical doctrine of the thing in itself or the noumenon with great clarity and that they therefore do not leave any space for the consequential dogmatic-ontological interpretation initiated by Jacobi and Reinhold that was a central problem in the early discussions about Kant.”158 In his Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason (1796) Bendavid obviously makes concessions to the era he was writing in […]. He says Kant teaches us ‘that if God had not shown us mercy and revealed his existence to us, our weak reasoning would not have enabled us to deduce it with complete certainty ; … that we … have to regard the Creator as the maker of moral laws.’ The first assertion is more in line with the philosophy of belief of Jacobi and Wizenmann than with Kant’s rational faith, and the second clearly contradicts the autonomy of Kant’s moral law, being made as it is without mentioning any further points to support it.159
Karl Rosenkranz describes Bendavid’s importance for the dissemination of Kant’s philosophy in Vienna as follows: It was Lazarus Bendavid who taught Kant’s philosophy to the Viennese, he was their Mendelssohn, who died in 1802. It is significant that he – as a Viennese philosopher – published two volumes on Pleasure. He was capable of dividing all of Kant’s Critiques into clear, elegant and well formulated paragraphs complete with highly commendable indices. […] – But in spite of Bendavid’s Lectures, critical philosophy never really took root in Vienna, let alone in other parts of Austria, except in a very cryptic form.160
In the end, the authorities ordered Bendavid to leave Vienna in 1797. He first went via Prague and Dresden to Berlin and tried shortly afterwards to return to Vienna, but was prevented from doing so by the police, who issued a residency ban against him. So Bendavid returned to Berlin at the end of 1797, where he engaged in commercial activities and later worked as a journalist. He also be-
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came a member of various Jewish associations in spite of his abandoning traditional Jewish religion: these were the “Gesellschaft der Freunde der Humanität” [Society of the Friends of Humanity] “Philomatische Gesellschaft” [Philomatic Society], “Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden” [Association for Jewish Culture and Science] and he was the head of the Jüdische Freischule [Jewish Free School] from 1806 until its closure in 1825. At first he continued his lectures in Berlin, but had to “abandon his talks because they infringed the rights of the newly founded university, in the very same year – as he used to say wryly – in which the introduction of economic freedom abolished the guild system.”161 During his time in Berlin he published several other philosophical writings: Vorlesungen über die metaphysischen Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [Lectures on the Metaphysical Bases of Science] (1798), Versuch einer Geschmackslehre [Essay on Taste] (1799), Philotheos, oder über den Ursprung unserer Erkenntniss [Philotheos or the Origins of our Cognition] (1802), Versuch einer Rechtslehre [Essay on Jurisprudence] (1802).162 He was even awarded a prize by the Berlin Academy of Sciences for his publication on the origins of our cognition. He no longer participated actively in the development of post-Kantian philosophy, because his literary and scientific work focused more and more on Jewish topics. After his death in Berlin on 28 March 1832 his friend Heinrich Heine wrote the following lines about him: He was a wise man imbued with antiquity, bathed in the sunlight of Greek serenity, a monument of true virtue and hardened by duty like the marble of his master Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Throughout his life Bendavid was the most dedicated follower of Kant’s philosophy. For this he suffered relentless persecution during his youth, but still he never wanted to separate from the old community of the Mosaic faith, and he never wanted to change the outward insignia of his belief. The mere suggestion of such denial filled him with repulsion and disgust.163
Bendavid’s heirs gave his writings to the Jewish philologist and educator Leopold Zunz. They were conserved in the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums [Higher Institute for Jewish Studies] in Berlin until 1939 and are now in Department A of the Leopold-Zunz-Archives in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Translated by Susanne Costa
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The Reception and Criticism of Kant in Hungary at the End of the 18th Century – The Teaching Activity of Anton Kreil by Eszter Deák At the end of the 18th century Kant’s philosophical writings began to spread more widely in Hungary through the reception of Kantian philosophy and through the controversies surrounding Kant’s teachings.164 The first stage of Kant’s reception occurred in the 1790s and began with the publication of the work of Jûzsef Rozgonyi (1756–1823). The philosophy professor from Srospatak, who later became a Protestant, first provided a critique of Kant in his journal Dubia de initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani. Ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold [Doubts about the elements of Kantian Transcendental Idealism: To the most distinguished men, Jacob and Reinhold] (Pest 1792). As an exceptionally highly educated scholar, he familiarised himself with the Kantian system of thought during his student years at Göttingen. After that, in Jena, he heard Carl Leonhard Reinhold, the Austrian philosopher of the German Enlightenment, whose Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy] (published in book form in 1790) contributed considerably to the popularisation of Kantianism. Rozgonyi’s work, which was dedicated to Reinhold, is a precise and measured critique of Kant. Rozgonyi knew Kant’s writings well and attempted to understand the essence of Kantian philosophy, although he himself preferred the philosophy of Hume.165 The year of 1792 also saw the publication of the work of Istvn Tichy, who was employed as a Catholic teacher in Kassa. In his Philosophischen Bemerkungen über das Studienwesen in Ungarn [Philosophical Considerations on the Education System in Hungary] (Pest-Kaschau, 1792) he argues the case for a critical engagement with the works of Kant.166 The most prominent proponent of Kantian philosophy in Hungary was Istvn Mrton (1760–1831), who taught philosophy in the Kantian spirit at the Protestant College of Ppa – which is how he came to be known as “the Kant of Ppa”. His major work, the textbook Kereszty¦n Theolûgiai Morl Vagy-Is Erkölcstudomny [Christian Theological Doctrine of Morals or Ethics] of 1796 attests to his thorough knowledge of the critical philosophy of Kant. Pl Srvri (1765–1846) was professor of philosophy at the Protestant College in Debrezin. He became familiar with the Kantian philosophy while studying in Göttingen under Friedrich Ludewig Bouterwek. Kant’s influence is noticeable in his dissertation as well as in his major published work, although he cannot be regarded as a true Kantian. Worth mentioning are the first part of his essay Moralis Philosophia [Moral Philosophy], Pest 1802, and its second part, Filozofusi Ethika [Philosophy of Ethics], Nagyvrad 1804. In his essay Moral Philosophy, in the fourth chapter (A Forms Eköltsi Princzipiumrûl [On the Formal Moral Principle], 124–212) he outlines Kant’s ethical system very thoroughly.167
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Two German professors are among the first proponents of Kantian philosophy in Hungary : Johann Delling (1764–1738) at the Academy in P¦cs (Fünfkirchen), and Anton Kreil (1757–1833) at the University of Pest, whose employment there quickly came to an end for political reasons. Kreil was born in Passau and was a leading member of the Illuminati in his homeland. When the [Illuminati] order he belonged to was forbidden in Bavaria, Kreil moved to Vienna, and was active in Ignaz Born’s Masonic lodge “Zur wahren Eintracht”. In his work for the lodge he presented the idea of a scientific approach to Freemasonry and became intensely interested in the traditions of ancient Egyptian and Greek culture. These interests are reflected in Kreil’s lectures on the Pythagorean Covenant and on the Eleusinian Mysteries.168 Kreil came to Pest in 1785 on the recommendation of Ignaz Born, and was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pest by Joseph II. He continued his Illuminati and Masonic activities in Hungary. He was the head and “Grand Master” of the Pest Lodge “Zur Großherzigkeit”. Several professors at Pest University were among his close friends, especially the Professor of Aesthetics Ludwig Schedius, as well as the historian Karl Koppi and the Professor of Philosophy Istvn Szu˝ ts. Ludwig Schedius (1768–1847) came from a Lutheran family from Györ and completed his studies in classical philology, theology, history and statistics at Göttingen University between 1788 and 1791. When he was appointed Professor of Aesthetics at Pest University in 1792 he was more than just an academic colleague of Anton Kreil. Both men moved in the same circles and together participated in the scientific and Masonic activities of the district of Buda-Pest. In his lectures and writings Kreil questioned the religious dogmas, which is why the authorities brought a charge against him in 1790 for promoting pantheistic doctrine, scepticism and the free thought movement. The official trial resulted in the accused being dismissed. In the 1790s Kreil was heavily involved in Hungary’s radical political circles and was in close contact with liberal-leaning Jacobite circles in Hungary. He is even attributed with translating the Marseillaise into German. A second trial was brought against the university professor in 1795 after the Hungarian Jacobite movement was uncovered. Schedius was himself ˝ z, but charged because of his close friendship with the executed Pest lawyer Pl O was later acquitted. As well as Kantianism, Kreil was also accused of promoting atheism and anti-monarchism. Following the trial against the Hungarian Jacobites, the pro-consulate undertook investigations against university academics who were sympathisers of the movement for democracy, since it deemed their radical political and anticlerical views to be harmful to young people. The authorities at this time even considered Kantian views to be politically suspicious. The historiographer Karl Koppi and Anton Kreil were sent into retirement and had to leave Buda-Pest for good. Kreil moved to Vienna, where he became involved with the bookshop of the
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Fig. 15: Stephan Tichy, Philosophical Remarks on the University System in Hungary
former Jacobite Alois Blumauer, and otherwise kept himself afloat by selling antiquarian books, including some from his own library. Kreil maintained a regular correspondence with his good friend and former Pest University colleague Schedius.169 And in this way he was able to stay in touch with Hungarian colleagues and scholars. Schedius facilitated the expansion of Kreil’s book business to Hungary, so that professors, teachers and academics from all faculties became the book buyers. The catalogue of books in Kreil’s letters contained new editions of ancient Greek and Latin authors, as well as works on philosophy and the natural sciences from the 17th and 18th centuries, and included a wide selection of the widely read Kantian writers of the time, such as Johann Nikolaus Tetens and Christoph Gottfried Bardili. The correspondence
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between Kreil and Schedius also documented the current political and social events in Vienna and Buda-Pest. Kreil’s letters of 1796 give some impression of the contemporary discussion on Kant’s works in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kreil also pursued his campaign against the anti-Kantians in Vienna. In his letters to Schedius he criticised the reception of Kant in Hungary, particularly the writings of the Piarist Joseph Grigely (De Concordia philosophiae cum religion [On the Unison of Philosophy and Religion] which was published in Ofen in 1796), whose unsubstantiated findings proved, in Kreil’s opinion, that the author could not have read one single work of Kant.170 Kreil, the rather combative supporter of Kant, wished to publish his critical judgment on this matter. In one of his letters he says that he would like to send his comments, with the help of Alxinger, to the editor of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [General Literary Journal] in order to clarify the misunderstandings about Kant’s theories that were so widespread among the government: For this reason and with these comments I will pass the essay over to Alxinger : so that the literary journal reveals these pathetic errors of fact (which act as guidelines for the chancellery and the court in forming their legislation), and so that perhaps, through this, some good may come about.171
However, in the years 1796, 1797 and 1798 there is nothing of Kreil’s reflections to be found in the General Literary Journal. Kreil also deliberates on the anti-Kantian attacks of the Hungarian Jesuit professor Janos Horvth (1732–1800), one of the best known philosophers in Hungary at the end of the century, whose mathematics and physics textbooks were very popular. In his work Declaratio infirmitatis fundamentorum operis Kantiani Critik der reinen Vernunft. In supplementum metaphysicae suae elaborate (Budae 1797) Horvth attacked Kant’s system and Kreil’s Handbuch der Logik [Handbook of Logic] (Vienna 1789) on the grounds of the theory of religion. He criticised Kant’s subjectivism and agnosticism and so determined the basic tone of the reception of Kant in Hungary. As is clear from his letters, Kreil had also argued with the Austrian theologian and philosopher Peter Miotti. This professor of logic and metaphysics was a fierce opponent of Kantian philosophy. He published his essay attacking Kant and Kreil in Vienna. It was entitled: Über die Nichtigkeit der Kantischen Grundsätze in der Philosophie nebst einer kurzen Rezension, der nach Kant geschriebenen Logik von Prof. Kreil. [On the Invalidity of Kantian Principles of Philosophy with a Short Review of Logic According to Kant by Prof. Kreil] The following year Kreil published his response to Miotti’s article: Bemerkungen über die jüngste Schrift des Herrn Miotti, nebst einer Vergleichung der Lockischen, Leibnitzischen und Kantischen Philosophie [Comments on the Latest Article by Mr Miotti, with a Comparison of the Philosophy of Locke, Leibniz and Kant] (Vienna 1799). Kreil’s defence of the Kantian system
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appeared in 1801, entitled Vindicae systematis Kantiani [Defence of the Kantian System]. Miotti then published his extensive book Über die Falschheit und Gottlosigkeit des Kantischen Systems, nebst einer Antwort auf A. Kreil’s Bemerkungen über die jüngste Schrift des Herrn Miotti [On the Falsehood and Impiety of the Kantian System, with a Response to A. Kreil’s comments on the Latest Article by Mr Miotti] (Vienna 1801). Miotti was an ex-Jesuit who had studied Kant thoroughly and who substantiated the argument of his thesis; he saw in Kantian philosophy a threat to the church. “Enlightenment philosophers”, “Kantians” and “Jacobites” were all one and the same, he argued – they were a threat to religion and the throne.172 Miotti can be regarded as the sole initiator of the Vatican’s anti-Kantianism. His assessment that Kant’s philosophy was “incomprehensible”, “dark”, “godless” and “poison to every good Catholic” was also taken up by the Viennese Court. In the year 1795, when the Hungarian Jacobite movement was discovered and the Hungarian Jacobites were beheaded, the chancellery, by a courtly decree of 23 June, forbade the teaching of Kantian philosophy in Catholic schools and by all professorial chairs. This political milieu facilitated the publication of a blatantly anti-Kantian pamphlet entitled Rosta [The Filter] (A Knt szer¦nt valû Filosûfinak Rostlgatsa Levelekbenn [Philosophy According to Kant Filtered through Letters]); its author, Ferenc Budai, invoked a higher political authority. This work curtailed the spread of Kantian philosophy in Hungary for many years. And one consequence was that Hungary’s most significant Kantian philosopher, Istvn Mrton, could not work until 1817.173 Translated by Linda Cassells
Anton Reyberger and the Reception of Kant at Melk Abbey by Jakob Deibl, Johannes Deibl and Bernadette Kalteis The records show that Kant’s works were read and studied from the 1780s at Melk Abbey, as at other Austrian monasteries and convents. This reception was related to the enlightened Josephinian ideas spreading in religious institutions at this time.174 The library at Melk Abbey has a considerable number of Kant’s works, in first and second editions. Among other periodicals, the library subscribed to Wieland’s Deutscher Merkur, in which Reinhold’s Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on Kant’s philosophy] were published, and Jenaer Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, a journal of great significance for the philosophical debates taking place at the time. The book purchasing decisions of librarians Gregor Mayer (1784–1786) and Benedikt Strattmann (1786–1793) were clearly
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attuned to the Enlightenment period. Strattmann is clearly assumed to be a reader of Kant’s works in a letter to Prior Ulrich Petrak of 2 April 1788: “And how is our dear P. librarian? How did he like Kant’s philosophy?”175 This probably refers to the second edition of Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of pure reason], purchased in 1788.
Fig. 16: Rosenstingl/Schmitner, Melk Abbey (1736/1750)
A leading figure in this context was Anton Reyberger (1757–1818), who was appointed by Gottfried van Swieten in 1786 as Professor of Pastoral Theology in Pest, and two years later to the chair of Moral Theology at the University of Vienna, where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Catholic Theology (1800/01) and Rector (1810/1811). From 1810 to 1818 he was Abbot at Melk Abbey.176 Sepp Domandl, in his study Die Kantrezeption in Österreich [Kant reception in Austria] describes him as the “leading clerical Kantian”177 of the time. On the basis of a directive of 1787 formulated by the Studienhofkommission (the authority responsible for university curricula) entitled Anleitung zur Verfassung eines zweckmäßigen Entwurfs der Moraltheologie für die öffentlichen theologischen Schulen in den k.k. Staaten [Directive on the drafting of a suitable plan of moral theology for public schools of theology in the Royal and Imperial states], reflecting a policy of “intellectual openness”,178 he wrote his own book of lectures for the subject of moral theology, which was published in 1794 under the title Systematische Anleitung zur christlichen Sittenlehre oder Moraltheologie [Systematic instruction in Christian morality or moral theology]. In 1805–1809, in
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line with the instruction to return to writing in Latin, he wrote Institutiones ethicae christianae seu theologiae moralis. Reyberger’s approach was a clear departure from the usual casuistry of the time, offering a systematic philosophical foundation for a moral theology. At the end of each chapter he provides an extensive list of further literature, comprising not only enlightened Catholic authors but also in particular contemporary Protestant and philosophical writers, including Immanuel Kant, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Erhard Schmid, Johann Heinrich Abicht and Augustin Schelle, and also the anti-Kantians Johann Georg Heinrich Feder und Christian Garve. The year of publication of the Systematische Anleitung coincides exactly with the time when the brief phase of greater openness had to give way to restoration impulses. While well received in enlightened circles, the work soon encountered resistance from the Church, with criticism levelled not least at the clear references to Kant. According to a report by Archbishop Migazzi in Vienna: A lack of clarity results from the philosophical language he uses, taken from texts by Kant. Anyone who has not studied Kant’s philosophy will have difficulty in understanding this language; and is it indeed advisable to encourage youth to read a philosophy such as Kant’s, which is opposed, disputed and regarded as harmful by many of the most learned and truest Catholics?179
In his speech in his own defence, Reyberger admits having read and studied Kant, although in another context he also clarifies some distinctions: In our own day, a new philosophical system has emerged, through Kant, which like all its predecessors has its own language and terminology. Whatever one may think regarding the validity or invalidity of this system, it is undeniably the case that for several years it has been imparting a very distinctive form and tone to the texts of learned scholars in all disciplines. Anyone today who is entirely unfamiliar with the spirit and language of this system will only half understand all recent scholarly writings.180
With regard to determination of the will solely for the sake of the moral law Reyberger distances himself from Kant: Man’s action is and must always be a striving for happiness; […] but it must also be in accordance with the acceptable demands of reason. […] Herewith there would originate from the general laws of reason and principle of happiness a composite supreme principle of morality which might be expressed as follows: Strive so for happiness that your maxim may deserve the approval of every reasonable being.181
Three of the four reports from faculty colleagues were favourable, and accordingly Reyberger’s books – notwithstanding recurring criticism and placement on the index by the Church (1820) – remained in use until the 1830s.182 Translated by John Jamieson
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Kant and the Principality of Salzburg by Werner Sauer183 Both politically and from the point of view of the history of ideas, the reception of Kant in the prince-archbishopric of Salzburg forms part of early Kantianism in southern Germany. Kant’s doctrine began to gain acceptance in southern Germany towards the end of the 1780s, above all at the universities of Bamberg, Mainz und Würzburg, but also in Benedictine monasteries.184 The pioneer of Kantianism in Bamberg was the philosopher Georg Eduard Daum (1752–1800), of whom it was later said that he was the first to give lectures that presented an impartial view of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [The Critique of Pure Reason] at a time when obscurantism must have sensed heresy and seduction in every syllable of Kant,185 which may well have been intended as a reference to Benedikt Stattler (1728–1797), the rabid Bavarian adversary of Kant, and his Anti-Kant (1788).186 At Mainz University it was the later Jacobins of Mainz, Anton Joseph Dorsch (1758–1819) and Felix Anton Blau (1754–1798), the former a philosopher, the latter a theologian, who helped Kant’s philosophy to achieve its breakthrough.187 In Würzburg it was represented by Maternus Reuß (1751–1798) from 1788 onwards. The great respect that Reuß enjoyed among supporters of Kant also contributed to the fact that, in 1792, he undertook a journey, accompanied by his fellow Benedictine monk, Conrad Stang (?–1827), to Königsberg to visit Kant, with the aid of a grant awarded by the Enlightenmentfriendly Prince-Archbishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal (1730–1795), whose sphere of jurisdiction included Bamberg. Reuß was also in contact with Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823).188 In 1789, Reuß energetically championed the acceptance of Kant at the Catholic universities in his essay Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären? [Should Kant’s Philosophy be Expounded at Catholic Universities?]. In it, he attempted to prove “that religion and ethics have enjoyed great advantages thanks to Kantian philosophy, and that they could not reproach it with any well-founded justification”.189 His intention is similar to that which Reinhold had pursued in his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, [Letters on Kantian Philosophy], a work to which Reuß also makes explicit reference in his essay.190 Kantian philosophy reveals the unshakeable ethical ground of religious knowledge in a practical rational belief in God and immortality, and in doing so purifies theology, since the latter “by denying rational theology the power to demonstrate the existence of God, a power which it claims is bad, assigns to that rational theology the great destiny of purging moral belief of both the coarse and the fine errors which have so far obscured it, and of preserving it from degeneration into superstition and unbelief for ever”.191 In order to avoid the danger that Catholic universities might become isolated from scientific developments, and also the not unproblematic situation of the unregulated study of Kant by the
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students, Reuß calls for a kind of private lecturer in Kantian philosophy at every Catholic university, which would serve the purpose of offering those students who have already completed a course in philosophy, and wish to study Kantian philosophy, a well-founded introduction to it: “Those […] who, having completed courses of philosophy, apply themselves to other disciplines, and in doing so, alongside their bread-and-butter studies, wish to become more familiar with the state of the new philosophy and to penetrate to the very core of the Kantian system […], should be able to find, at every well-organised university, a man who can explain to them the profundity of the Kantian system, at least in private lectures”.192 This essay was included in the first collection of materials on Kantian philosophy, Karl Gottlob Hausius’ (1754–1825) Materialien zur Geschichte der kritischen Philosophie (1793) [Materials on the History of Critical Philosophy]. Augustin Zippe’s (1747–1816) proposal to appoint private lecturers in Kantian philosophy at Austrian universities, which was made to (and rejected by) the Viennese Committee for the Revision of Studies in 1798, may have been influenced by Reuß’ essay.
The Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung Salzburg took its place on an equal footing with the other centres of early southern German Kantianism, and perhaps one must even grant the archbishopric a certain special status, on account of the very significant journalistic role played in propagating Kantian thought by the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung [‘Upper German General Literary Journal’], which was published there. The Salzburg reception of Kant constituted the climax and conclusion of the Salzburg Enlightenment, which began to emerge – as elsewhere in Catholic southern Germany and the Danube monarchy – around the middle of the century. At the Benedictine University in Salzburg, which was originally committed to a strict Thomism, the gradual change in orientation towards modern philosophy and science occurred in the decade between 1740 and 1750.193 At the same time as the decline of scholasticism, reformist Catholic movements began to assert themselves in the archbishopric.194 In 1772, the election of Count Hieronymus Colloredo (1732–1812) as archbishop brought about the final swing towards ecclesiastical and secular enlightenment in Josephinist style. The astonishingly relaxed approach of the censor, the training of many people in Salzburg at Protestant universities, and lastly even the reaction in Bavaria, which manifested spectacularly in the persecution of the Illuminati, all contributed to the rise of the Enlightenment in Salzburg. As a result of the Bavarian reaction,
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there came to Salzburg the ex-Jesuit Lorenz Hübner (1751–1807), who knew how to gather round him a circle of able assistants. In 1788, he started publishing the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung, at first together with Augustin Schelle (1742–1805), a Salzburg professor for world history and ethics, and then, from 1790 onwards, on his own. As a counterpart to Jena’s Allgemeine LiteraturZeitung [General Literary Journal], it became the most important organ of the southern German Enlightenment. Among its contributors were Blau, Dorsch, Erhard and others.195 As early as 1788, the magazine declared: “We would like to encourage people to take up the study of Kantian philosophy, which is still pursued too little in our parts”.196 It also published reviews of Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science] and the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason]. In discussing Kant’s major work of natural philosophy, the reviewer emphasised the fruitfulness of the attempt to read it, the value of which is revealed in seeing “how much can here be deducted a priori from one single given notion” – that of the movement, or of matter as the moveable in space – “in accordance with the laws of pure reason”.197 He sees in the work an important supplement to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], “since both the application of the transcendental principles of the Critique of Pure Reason to physical nature, and the manifold considerations which Mr. Kant makes here on his whole system almost at every step, as well as the elucidations which he has to give about them spread a light which these principles could not possibly have done when presented in their generality”.198 An extensive and enthusiastic review is given of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason], with which Kant “has provided a worthy counterpart to his Critique of Speculative Reason, and […] has crowned his efforts to reform philosophy”.199 In deference to a coarse, yet widespread misunderstanding, drastically expressed in Schiller’s well-known yet certainly not quite seriously intended distich about duty and inclination, the reviewer emphasises that “one of the main subjects of the Critique of Practical Reason is the principle not of discarding one’s own happiness, but rather of assigning it to its own true, inferior place”.200 After a lengthy listing of the contents, he finally comes to speak of the famous concluding section of the second Critique concerning the two subjects of respect, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Summarising the doctrine of this section, which is that only a strict method of reasoning can give adequate expression to the two subjects of respect, which otherwise simply lead to superstition and reverie, he writes, making a sharp dig at popular philosophy :
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Only a Kant […] was able to express so definitely, and at the same time so briefly, the rights and the uses of reason, even when pushed to the limits of investigating by those who so love to restrict it within arbitrarily placed constraints, and would like to gauge it after an all-too-hasty popularity ; which is why it is recommended, especially to all those expiating patrons of shallowness who require their measure of reason in order to prove that seeking a greater anywhere is both useless and unnecessary, to pay heed to these few words [.].201
The Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement] is received with the same applause, being just “as full of new, profound, fruitful and closely associated thoughts … as the previous writings by this new legislator of philosophy ; just as critically modest in resting on the narrow middle way between scepticism and dogmatism: these thoughts are presented in just as crowded and telescoped a way as in the previous writings, if not even more so”.202 After its review of Kant’s Kleine Schriften [Minor Writings] (1793), which was greeted with equally unanimous applause, the journal was faced with the apparently impossible task of taking up a position on Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone]. Even in 1793, the year of publication, the magazine published a review of Kant’s Religionsschrift [Essay on Religion], which in 1794 was followed by a second, by another reviewer, on account of the interest aroused by the first text. Although the first reviewer admits that in the general remarks on the second to fourth section of the work, about miracles, secrets and the means of grace “some claims are to be found which do not harmonise quite so well with the dogmas of some religious parties”, he does not try to hide his positive attitude to the work and closes with a committed acknowledgement: Incidentally, every reasonable worshipper of the Christian religion would warmly offer his gratitude to the venerable old man who, […] even in our days, sheds such a bright light on the unappreciated harmony between reason, religion and a certain faith. May the best German minds unite their powers with this man, inspect his ideas honestly and, if they then find them, as far as possible, to be true, then make them generally known!203
In the second half of the 1790s, the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung also contributed to the development of post-critical idealism and became affiliated with the ‘more modern’ Fichte. Yet Kant, too, continued to be discussed with great attention. The short essay Zum ewigen Frieden [On Eternal Peace] was greeted enthusiastically. The reviewer regarded its contents more or less as a criterion for correct philosophising, based on the criticist principles of legal philosophy, and opposed the opinion uttered even “by some critical philosophers, of whom one would not have presumed it”, namely “that everything, regardless of the profound insights and the original views which characterise
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this little work so completely, will remain but a philosophical wish”.204 Rather more distanced is the judgement passed on the Streit der Fakultäten [Dispute of the Faculties], above all on the famous thesis that the process of becoming conscious triggered by the French Revolution was proof of the progress of humanity.205 Finally, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective], which once again met with unanimous approval, is regarded as the conclusion of Kant’s life’s work, in which the “readers who have followed him in the course which has led from the beginnings to this latest product”, are once again led back “to the goal that was sketched out at the start”, in order to educate “themselves for their dealings with other human beings (i. e. with reasonable human beings)”.206 As in general, so also in the Oberdeutsche allgemeinen Literaturzeitung, Reinhold’s elementary philosophy formed the link between Kant and Fichte. Reinhold’s Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation] was greeted as a work which “must surely be epoch-making in the history of the latest speculative philosophy”.207 It was “the most important product of the new speculative philosophy since Kant’s reforms, nothing less than a commentary on the Critique of Reason, independent, yet forming a continuum with it in the greatest harmony”, whereby “the realm of philosophy has also expanded into an undisputed new province, the theory of the pure faculty of the representation” and to remedy “previous misunderstandings of Kantian Philosophy […] at least a few big strides have been taken in the process of convergence”.208 The enthusiasm for Reinhold was short-lived; in 1794, in its review of the second volume of the Beiträge, the journal no longer held out any hope that elementary philosophy could end the philosophical controversy.209 As a consequence of this, the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung also proceeded to transfer its allegiance to Fichte, whose theory of science was immediately received with approval. When Kant in 1799 distanced himself from the theory of science in a public declaration, the journal let it be known that it was siding with Fichte: without making any comment, they printed Kant’s declaration and then followed it with no less than two polemic counter-declarations at once, one of which was written by Schelling.210 In this year, the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung moved to Munich, where reactionism had come to an end upon the accession to power of Max Joseph I. Through its work over the course of a dozen years, the journal had made Salzburg an excellent centre for the propagation of Kant’s thought and that of his successors in the southern German area, und in so doing had created a worthy antithesis to the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung in Jena. It could therefore not be missing from the short report, probably written by Reuß about the reception of Kant in southern Germany, which Kant, without mentioning the author by name,
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Fig. 17: Matern Reuß, Should Catholic Universities Teach Kant’s Philosophy?
sent to Borowski on 2 October 1793 with the request that he publish it in his biographical collection. The report closed with the words: “The Salzburg literary journal contributes greatly to further dissemination”.211
Kant in the Philosophy Education at the University of Salzburg At Salzburg University, Kant’s influence became tangible soon after 1790. Schelle, for instance, attempted to bring the old and the new moral philosophy closer together in his essay Über den Grund der Sittlichkeit [On the Foundations of Morals] (1791), which was accorded the honour of being included in Hausius’ collection. Schelle writes that, in the dispute of the parties
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I believe I am undertaking a useful […] task, if I juxtapose the two, certainly not completely opposing systems, in such a way that one can easily obtain an overview of each and notice the points in which they agree with each other, or diverge from each other […]. Perhaps in the end it will show that at least in the main principles of the two systems they could be taken together in their application. My intention in doing this is 1) to teach, as far as possible, those who have been discouraged by the special terminology and other difficulties in reading Kant’s writings, by giving them an adequate notion of the systems of Kantian moral doctrine, to facilitate their understanding of the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, and the Critique of Practical Reason, und to attract them to study these and other similar writings. 2) To bring the still prevailing and perhaps previously too heatedly conducted dispute a step nearer the goal, in that I occasion new elucidations and detailed determinations of some points. 3) To show how the Kantian doctrines, or at least a part of them, can already be used, and always will be able to be used, even if his system, taken as a whole, as it now lies before our eyes, might never become generally applicable.212
The essay is divided up, in accordance with these points, into three parts. The first, which presents an excerpt from the Analytics of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, was preceded by a few general remarks by Schelle on Kantian moral philosophy, the main point of which was to underline the unity of moral norm and driving force: according to Schelle, “Kant both wanted to and had to show that reason is not solely pure, that it can bring forth judgements and principles, independent of all experience, wholly a priori; but that it is also practical, i. e. that those principles that are brought forth a priori contain a determinant of the faculty of desire”.213 Around this connection between moral law and driving force circle Schelle’s critical statements in the second part, with the intention of giving it a eudemonistic twist. In the third part of the essay, Schelle outlines his conception of the ethics of felicitousness, which he had already comprehensively described in his two-volume textbook Praktische Philosophie zum Gebrauche akademischer Vorlesungen [Practical Philosophy for Use in Academic Lectures] (1785). In the essay under consideration here, dating from 1791, he lays claim to the characteristics of Kantianism as his highest moral principle, since they can be “presented purely and a priori, and dictated categorically”. This highest moral principle is the identity of felicitousness and perfection in the LeibnizianWolffian school: “The […] formula is this: always act in such a way that happiness is furthered the most, and is absolutely identical with the […]: always act in such a way that through your actions the efficacy of the powers as a whole are furthered more than hindered”.214 In the concluding comparison of the Kantian ethics of duty and the ethics of happiness, Schelle votes for the eclecticism of moral principles in practical application: “As far as the application is concerned, one sometimes finds this easier and sometimes that. The best thing to do, if one finds oneself in dubious situations, is to consult both the former and the latter”,
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after all, the categorical imperative and the formula for happiness and perfection “can explain each other alternately”.215 In the preamble to the second edition of his Praktische Philosophie [Practical Philosophy] (1792–1794), Schelle explains that “particularly in general practical philosophy, so many of the Kantian principles concerning practical reason have been listed, that this will enable one to form a correct notion of the moral system of this great philosopher. Incidentally, in this second edition, as in the first one, I have followed the principles of the system of felicitousness, which in my opinion is not far removed from the Kantian, as I have tried to prove in my treatment of the fundamentals of morality”.216 Occasionally, Kantian methods of thinking are used, for instance the subsumption of theoretical to practical reason, or Kantian doctrines referred to, as for example Kant’s notion of freedom and the formulations of the categorical imperative.217 Bernhard Stöger (1757–1815), was professor for logic and metaphysics at Salzburg University from 1785–1801, worked for the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung, and familiarised those students who attended his lectures with Kant’s theoretical philosophy, yet on the whole behaved towards him very disapprovingly. In particular, he sought to defend natural theology and rational psychology against the Kantian objections.218 Ämilian Miller (1763–1809) started his lectures in 1796 by speaking in favour of the Kantian moral principle and used for his lectures in practical philosophy Kant’s and Fichte’s legal and moral doctrines.219 Johann Evangelist Hofer (1757–1817), professor of Old and New Testament exegesis and oriental languages, intervened with his lecture De Kantiana interpretationis lege (1800) in the debate about Kant’s principle of moral interpretation of the Scriptures which had been going on in Protestant theology ever since the publication of Kant’s Religionsschrift. He confronted Kant’s principle of interpretation with the objections raised against it, of which he admitted as valid only the argument that it allows the arbitrary nature of the interpreter too much leeway, whereas he repudiated the others, for instance the claim that the principle represents a regression to the allegorical method.220 Cölestin Königsdorfer (1756–1840) was professor of physics from 1790–1794 and was just about to complete a commentary on the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science], when in 1794 he was elected abbot of his monastery and thereby was no longer able to finish his work.221 It would have been the first ever commentary on that particular work of Kant’s. Ulrich Peutinger (1751–1817) was professor for dogmatism from 1793–1804, made an attempt in his essay Religion, Offenbarung und Kirche [Religion, Revelation and the Church] (1795) to design a theory of reason, based on Kant and already displaying speculative and idealist traits, but transcending the limi-
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tations marked out by rational criticism, in order to use it to derive the a priori structures of the history of salvation.222
Kant and Theology at the University of Salzburg Peutinger credited Kant, “the philosopher of our century”, with having performed the “inestimable service to philosophy” of legitimising, after the scepticism of Hume, “all predicaments, or categories, including the conditions of sensibility, in the most correct order and in perfect systems”. However, Peutinger claimed that Kant had made the mistake of deriving these principles of experience “from the spontaneity of thinking, of thought forms, rather than from the faculty of representation itself”. This gap was noticed “very early on by the great thinker Karl Leonhard Reinhold” and “in his excellent theory concerning the faculty of representation he tried to fill it out as much as possible”. In particular, it would be the previously greatly misunderstood principle of consciousness for which Reinhold “can certainly expect an honourable share in the unwitherable garland with which posterity will recognise the reformer of the philosophy of Mr Kant”.223 However, Kant and Reinhold have only contributed building blocks to a more comprehensive theory of reason. Understanding and the faculty of representation have not been sufficiently analysed yet, and above all Reason as our primary unifying faculty has still has not been addressed at all. We do not know anything about even one of the ways in which it works: subordinate theoretical reason is dealt with in just three ideas, without in the least showing how it is connected to the faculty of knowledge, and interrelated to the other ideas, notions and beliefs. One must therefore admit that the human cognitive faculty is as good as completely undeveloped, and that we have only been led as far as the need for this development by Mr Kant, and only instructed about the methods of this development by Mr Reinhold (to both of whom we owe a debt of gratitude).224
Peutinger’s main criticism of the state of Kantian philosophy at the time ran along the lines that it had not yet dealt with the subject of reason as a whole, qua reason, but so far rather only as theoretical and practical, and that he himself hopes to be able to lay a new foundation for ethics and religion by closing of this gap. Peutinger’s essential idea is that the unity of reason, which in his opinion has been neglected by Kant, since he does not go beyond its differentiation into theoretical and practical knowledge, requires positing the ideal of God. This affords the real possibility of anchoring particularly religion and revelation – the concept of the church is only briefly treated – within this act of positing. One consequence of Peutinger’s theory of reason is that the abolition of the
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autonomy of a moral God and not, as is the case in Kant, the freedom of the moral subject is the ratio essendi of the moral law. Not only theoretical reason, but also practical reason can no longer draw its principles from itself, but it has to receive them from the highest unity of reason. However, its idiosyncrasy is precisely that it unites all ideas in the ideal of God as their objective correlation. In this way, its transaction is ended, and it can only still “recognise the purest, most holy will of God in legislative form. God is now the supreme legislator in the truest sense. Reason is and becomes that only by recognising this divine legislation, only insofar as it commands the human being: Obey the Holy!”.225 One encounters a Kantian of “strict observance” in Tiberius Sartori (1747–1798), who was professor of dogmatism and ecclesiastical history from 1790–1795.226 His essay Der Theolog nach dem Geiste der neuesten Literatur und den Bedürfnissen der gegenwärtigen Zeit (1796) [The Theologian in the Spirit of the Most Recent Writings and the Needs of the Present Time] is an appeal to upand-coming young priests to design their studies and their future work in the spirit of Kantian philosophy. The actual humanum lies in “the power of making the moral law the motive of one’s actions”,227 which is why “the greatest dignity of the human being lies in morality” and “the way of acting out of a sense of duty” possesses “an idiosyncratic, general, independent and absolutely necessary value”.228 To propagate ethics – and for Sartori it is only the ethics of duty that deserves this name, since everything else is for him simply calculated self-interest – “is the most essential matter of the whole priesthood. The unique and sole aim of the spiritual state is to dissipate religious and moral errors, to destroy the mist of superstition […], to spread the knowledge of the moral law and an altruistic respect for it in the universe, and to teach people that they should not just act in accordance with their feelings and self-interested rules of understanding, but according to the laws of pure reason, and can and should subordinate the urge for happiness to the striving for morality”.229 In order to be able to cope with this task, the priest must acquire a well-founded knowledge of both theology and philosophy. Sartori creates an effective antithesis between the older and the newer theology, which is influenced by the new philosophy. In the same way, he makes contrasts within philosophy. In the older philosophy, the schools of atheism and spiritualism, dogmatic scepticism and dogmatic theism were in a state of permanent dispute with one another, and in moral philosophy one believed, due to the lack of an ethical basis for knowledge, “that moral reason had to be a simple serving girl of self-love and the inclinations”.230 The cause of this confusion lay in the fact that the philosophical theories had been constructed without an explanation of their foundations; the philosophers wrote about moral philosophy “before they even knew what ethics and virtue were. They built metaphysical and religious systems before they even knew if metaphysics was possible, and what
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Fig. 18: Benedictine University in Salzburg (around 1912)
belonged to the concept of religion”.231 In contrast, “the better philosophy, which is becoming ever more widespread in our times” has basically overcome this anarchy “and brought reason back to a true self-recognition […]. The borders of our knowledge are now staked out, and beyond these we are not allowed to go, if we do not wish to err. In place of proud knowledge there has appeared a belief founded upon reason”.232 Sartori sees the greatest advantage of this new philosophy as being its anthropocentric, practice-oriented character. Circumscribing Kant’s famous three questions of what I can know, should do and might hope, he states that it investigates man’s “faculties of sensibility, understanding, reason, and the powers of feeling and will […], his relationship towards the world, his determination in the present and his expectations for his life in the future”.233
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It is necessary for the priests to thoroughly make this philosophy their own in order to fulfil their tasks in educating the population. As already seen in the case of theology, Sartori devotes most attention to the moral element. He eloquently describes the advantages of this philosophy in contrast to the previously widespread heteronomous moral systems, which “led more to self-interest and egoism, than to true morality” and “which produced the many moral master calculators, who first of all calculate their own interest before every action, even the lowest” and contributed to the “many sad stories of self-interest, and of injustice in both private and public life, where for example people were sold for money, like cattle”.234 It should therefore not be wondered “why the old moral systems collapsed so suddenly, when the hand of the master philosopher from Königsberg, Immanuel Kant, shook them. Yes! They fell, and from day to day more and more will fall, the more both critical philosophy and the purer philosophy that has emerged from it, become widespread”.235 At the end of his elaborations on philosophical ethics, Sartori once again emphasises with urgency the greatness and dignity of the task facing the future priests: “You, my young friends! For the sake of that pure virtue whose priests you are, therefore, have the sacred duty to thoroughly study the newer – purer – moral system, in order to make those unhappy children of the world, who have been deceived by the so-called system of felicitousness for so long, more familiar with it,”.236
Enthusiasm for Kant – The Brief Era of Fingerlos Sartori was not the only Salzburg teacher who made an effort to lead future priests to an understanding of their duties that would be characterised by a Kantian belief in reason. Matthäus Fingerlos (1748–1817) was dean of the Salzburg Seminary from 1788–1801, and introduced Kantian philoosphy there in 1793.237 He is said to have become a supporter of Kant through the exegete Alois Sandbichler (1751–1820), an Augustinian, who was an avid contributor to the Oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung and defended Kantian philosophy in it against the attacks of Benedict Stattler (1728–1797).238 In autumn 1787, Fingerlos travelled to Bamberg und Würzburg to get to know the clerical seminaries there, yet he certainly also made further contacts with Kant’s supporters; at any rate, he thereafter began corresponding with Reuß.239 Fingerlos recorded the sum of his views on true priesthood in the two-volume book Wozu sind Geistliche da? [‘What are Priests For?’] (1801). “The present book,” he writes in the preface, “comprises part of that spoken lecture which, ever since 1795, I have been giving to the whole assembly of pupils entrusted to me every year at the start of the academic year.”240 In these writings Fingerlos seeks to show that, beyond the views of unbelief, superstition and a con-
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servativism which has gone through the school of Enlightenment and now sees the priesthood as a useful instrument of power, there is a priestly class with a “quite different aim” and “an aim which is noble and sublime […] and is necessary to humanity itself”.241 This goal coincides with the actual determination of human beings. The highest objective “of human beings, of humanity, and of the universe”, as established by Christ and reason, “is morality”,242 which entails that the actual aim of priesthood lies not in the performance of ceremonies, in praying and such like, but rather in “the furtherance of good morals through the instruction of the people”.243 However, according to Fingerlos, the justification of this principle requires extensive explanation of its components, of which the concept of good morals appears to him to be the most essential and demands the most space in the explanation. According to Fingerlos, an action is morally good when it follows a general and necessary rule in accordance with its material, i. e. is an act in itself, through which an aim is achieved, as well as in accordance with its form, i. e. with regard to its motive.244 Both determinations are necessary conditions, and together they constitute a sufficient condition for ethical action: “The whole action is therefore good if it is constituted as it should be, in accordance not only with its material, but also with its form. If one thing or another is missing, then it ceases to be good. It is not good if its form is indeed good, but not its material; because the aim does not sanctify the means. Equally, it is not good if the action is good but the motive is evil”.245 The material goodness or legality is proven through adhering to “all the obligations towards oneself, towards ones neighbour, and towards God”.246 Here, Fingerlos apparently makes concessions to ecclesiastical doctrine, since Kant knows no obligations towards God.247 For a formal principle of ethics, Fingerlos establishes four criteria: “I. The motive of the actions must not lead to materially evil actions […]. II. It must not diminish the dignity of the human being among the animals […] III. It must be general […]. IV. It must be necessary, i. e. it must be based upon a moral necessity”.248 (I) should therefore guarantee legality, (II) is an emphatic expression of the demand that reason should be practical, (III) expresses the demand for generalisation of the categorical imperative and (IV) the compulsory nature of the moral law in contrast to the recommendatory nature of a hypothetical imperative. Fingerlos is convinced of the fact that there can be no heteronomic formal principle of morality, least of all on a eudemonistic basis. His rejection of the ethics of felicitousness is no less vehement than Sartori’s; happiness can not only deliver no moral justification, it is “rather created in such a way that, if it is made the highest goal, it must become the grave of all morality”.249 Only respect for the law as a driving force can itself deliver an adequate formal principle of ethics. The
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law itself which dictates the action, must be made the motive for the action. It is this motive alone which also makes an action good. One must act out of respect for the law if one wishes to act well morally. A law is namely a judgement, expressing the moral necessity of an action. The idea of this judgement produces a feeling. The feeling which arises from this idea is called respect for the law. This feeling, if it is elevated to a sufficient strength, then turns into a driving force, which causes actions to be performed in accordance with the law. This driving force therefore gains its power from the law. If behaviour really occurs in this way, then action is performed out of respect for the law. And it is this way of acting which alone produces good morals, including formally good morals; all other kinds of motives, by contrast, and all driving forces which are set in motion by something else, are incapable of producing formally good mortals.250
Moral action accordingly consists in the fact that consciousness of the obligations to oneself, to others and to God is the driving force behind obeying those obligations. Yet how can these obligations be recognised as such? In his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the Metaphyscs of Morals], Kant, by applying the categorical imperative in an exemplary way, had already attempted to establish a series of such obligations of the first two kinds, and the Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals] is to a considerable extent devoted to this task. Fingerlos only invokes the legislation of reason very generally here.251 Later, in the second volume of his writings, when he is no longer developing the purpose of the clergy in a Kantian train of thought, but rather is writing about Kantian philosophy itself, does it become clear that he agrees with Kant completely ; in the first volume he lays the foundations for the extension of the obligations to include those duties to God, as will be seen from the next paragraph. Since morality is the highest aim of humanity, and it is given to rational beings as duty whose fulfilment consists in endless progress in ethical action, the conditions must also be given, under which the fulfilment of this duty is possible: “Immortality and God. Immortality ; since only in this can actions be continued into infinity. God; since only a being such as the highest can guarantee success in achieving morality in a finite rational being”.252 In accordance with the Kantian doctrine of postulates, these principles do not mediate knowledge, since “knowledge only occurs where the object is produced by a sensual or intellectual perception”, but a belief, “accepting something as true for subjective reasons, which are nevertheless so strong that they can ensure something in a way that only constantly objective reasons of knowledge can ensure something”.253 However, quite the opposite to Kant, for Fingerlos, the principle of the existence of God is not only a postulate belonging to rational belief, but also involves the obligation of this belief. Whereas Kant emphasises that this belief is a need and therefore cannot be an obligation, Fingerlos says: “To have this belief
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is a duty for a rational being; since it is a duty imposed upon him to strive to attain the ideal of morality, it is also a duty to God to believe in the condition under which that is possible.”254 That is of course the consequence that Kant disputes; yet, in this, Fingerlos has created the basis for duties towards God. In the second volume of his writings, Fingerlos deals with the resources which the priest has to have at his disposal in order to fulfil his duties. These resources are science and good morals. In the process, he discards the idea of eclectic training and insists on the necessity of choosing a certain philosophical system; in accordance with the demand that “in choosing a philosophical system one should proceed according to the rule which says: ‘Choose that which furthers morality most’”,255 it is necessary to accept the system, “which critical philosophy provides. Since this alone is created in such a way that not only does it not hinder good morals, but it even promotes them. This alone has as its ultimate goal the promotion of good morals, or which […] is the same, the promotion of religion”.256 An acceptance of Kantian philosophy is therefore an obligation for the clergyman who wishes to understand his position correctly. Fingerlos emphatically summarises the result of his argumenatation in the following passage in the text, which can be regarded as the highlight of the whole book and which will also form the conclusion of this presentation: If there ever were a philosophical system which promoted good morals and religion, which itself consolidated the purpose of states, and which in this way was a most beneficial gift for humankind, if there ever were such a philosophical system, then it would be that of critical philosophy!257
Fingerlos’ advertising campaign for Kantian philosophy certainly did not remain without success. Some of his pupils will have followed the call to use it in their teachings. Thus in 1828 it was written disparagingly in the Salzburger Chronik that, under Fingerlos’ direction, the candidates for the priesthood had “been fobbed off with the study of Kantian philosophy” and that “they had then passed this on even in their public sermons from the pulpit, to the disgust of the congregation. This nonsense has, thank God, long since ceased”.258 Naturally Fingerlos’ name is not missing in the already mentioned report on the reception of Kant in southern Germany to be found in Borowski’s biography of Kant.259 Stang wrote a letter to Kant, dated 2. 10. 1796, that, in comparison to Austria, things in Salzburg “were already working better with critical philosophy : in particular, the honourable regent of the priests’ seminary in Salzburg is interceding on its behalf”.260 A very remarkable piece of news about the high esteem in which Fingerlos’ was held by Kant himself can be traced to Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche (1762–1842), the publisher of Kant’s lectures in logic, which are commonly cited as Logik-Jäsche, who was professor of philosophy at the University of Dorpat from 1802–1839. According to the records of a Kant colloqium
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chaired by Jäsche in Dorpat in the winter semester of 1817/1818, he was asked by his audience to comment on the influence of the philosophy of Kant in the ecclesiastical domain and to comment on the claim that only Fichte had understood Kant, but had misunderstood him. Jäsche thereupon stated that Kant had expressly told him that Fingerlos, the head of the priests’ seminary, had understood him correctly. This declaration had been made to him by Kant even before the publication of Fingerlos’ writings. Kant had followed the reception of his philosophy in Salzburg with a lively interest, since it had been his intention, through his philosophical doctrine of religion, to gain an influence on the academic training of the theologians. The same thing that was valid in Würzburg was also valid in Salzburg: Regiomontium in Borussia et Salisburgum per philosophiam unita.261 As a candidate for Kant’s informant, it is really only Reuß who comes into consideration. After this report by Jäsche, Kant saw in the work of Fingerlos a realisation of the proposal that he had made in his introduction to the first edition of his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone], namely, “that, after the completion of academic instruction in Biblical theology, there should at all times be a special lecture offered about the purely philosophical doctrine of religion […] corresponding to a guideline, such as the one running through this book, for example, […] that it is necessary for the complete preparation of the candidates”.262 The fact that Kant was impressed by Fingerlos’ work is easily understandable, since it seemed to be a sign that the religious princedom of Salzburg was becoming a reality after all, something which had become only wishful thinking in Protestant Prussia, ever since Wöllner’s religious edict, the disciplinary measure for the Religionsschrift [Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone] and the ban on using it as a text for university lectures in the mid-1790s. Finally, Stang writes in conclusion to the above-quoted passage of his letter that Colloredo has a “hobby-horse, namely to be called ‘enlightened’ abroad. This is the aegis of critical philosophy in Salzburg, which they will probably award him with at his death”.263 In actual fact, ever since Fingerlos had taken up his position as dean of the Seminary, he had faced very vociferous opposition which had demanded his removal, on account of his Kantianism. Colloredo’s flight in December 1800 was the beginning of the end for the Salzburg Enlightenment, although it went to ground not on account of an inner reaction, but due to the outer confusion and loss of political independence in Salzburg as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Translated by Peter Waugh
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Kant and Pre-1848 Catholic Theology by Franz L. Fillafer The development of science and scholarship in the Hapsburg monarchy in the period before 1848 has attracted little attention, but it reveals much about the history of the reception of Kant. This era is often portrayed in the most gloomy and sombre terms, supposedly being characterised by a rejection of all things foreign, with intellectual life paralysed by the Catholic Restoration. And the rejection of Kant seals the indictment. Kant’s works, we are told, could only be smuggled in by stealth to the Hapsburg territories, and censorship snuffed out any spark of intellectual development.264 Yet both these statements lack credibility. For too long the liberal historical narrative of the second half of the 19th century has been projected onto earlier decades, with analysis of only a very narrow segment of source material. The situation has been further compounded by the dominant position of research on Bernard Bolzano, who, paradoxically, was seen as an early liberal martyr of the police state, whose philosophy cost him his professorial chair, but at the same time as a Leibniz-Wolffian thinker espousing the philosophical tradition ostensibly supported by the government.265 This already indicates that insufficient care has been taken with the mapping of the tectonic landscape of science and intellectual activity.266 The Bolzano affair makes an ideal transition to the story of Kantianism in pre1848 theology. Bolzano, the professor of divinity in Prague, was accused of espousing Kantian philosophy, a charge that provided the pretext needed to remove him from office. His dismissal was probably due to the “persecution of demagogues” initiated following the Carlsbad decrees. The authorities were suspicious of the orations (”Erbauungsreden”) he was delivering to a growing student audience. The striking features of the Bolzano affair are the veiling of the true motives for his dismissal and the reversal of the burden of proof, as pointed out by a former Bolzano student, Robert Zimmermann, in an essay from the 1890s.267 So Bolzano was accused of being a Kantian, but behind this charge was displeasure at the fact that the content of his lectures was not based on the divinity textbook written by the Hofburg priest Jakob Frint.268 Frint was one of the architects of the Catholic Restoration, but the core tenets of his textbook were far more “Kantian” than Bolzano’s writings. Nor should this be a surprise, because Kant was one of the most read and most highly esteemed authors in the Hapsburg monarchy of the early 1800s, including amongst the Catholic theologians.269 Before examining the reception of Kant by pre-1848 theologians in greater detail, however, the first section of this paper will briefly outline the context of the historical argument: how did the thesis of a supposed “abstinence” from Kant impact on the matrix of the “Austrian philosophical tradition”, and how
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can this “tradition” now be critically examined in the light of Kantianism in the Hapsburg domains?
Genesis of a Tradition The history of Kantianism in Austria is closely tied to the autostereotypes formulated in the 19th century, particularly to the “Austrian philosophical tradition” that supposedly extends as a panlogistic-objectivistic continuity from Leibniz-Wolffian scholasticism via Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano to the Vienna Circle. In this “tradition”, the rejection of the Cartesian and Kantian separation (wyqisl|r) between the intelligible world and the sensual world led to the world being treated not as the basis for verification of possible experience, but as an enlightenment-yielding metaphysical and “univocal”, extrasensual “objective reality”.270 This realism of universals, which in the style of late scholasticism distinguished between mental or linguistic acts on the one hand and objective givens on the other, was based on a set of anti-voluntaristic and anti-nominalistic premises: objective truths would function in exactly the same way if God did not exist.271 From these backdrop elements there emerged the “tradition” of Austrian philosophy, which in the 19th and 20th centuries operated as a bulwark narrative: this sober, clear and universal Austrian objectivism, so the argument runs, immunised the intelligentsia in the Hapsburg empire against Kant and Hegel; together with its English counterpart, the Austrian tradition could boast of belonging to the “axis powers” of analytical world philosophy.272 According to Otto Neurath, this tradition developed from Bolzano via Herbart and Brentano to the Vienna Circle.273 Already in the early 20th century, Karl Wotke and Heinrich Gomperz raised some serious objections to this “genealogy” of the Vienna Circle, and Heinrich Neider, a former member of the Circle, retrospectively dismissed the genealogy constructed by Neurath as ”private amusement” on his part.274 Gomperz highlighted the fact that the youthful Ernst Mach read Kant’s Prolegomena zu jeder künftigen Metaphysik [Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics], noting that in his reading method Mach was a Kantian, “except that he replaced the question: how are synthetic a priori judgements possible? with the less ambitious but more general question: what are synthetic judgements?”275 And in his book on the Vienna archbishop and pedagogue Vinzenz Eduard Milde, Karl Wotke endeavoured to place the reception of Kant in the pre-1848 period in a new light.276 Any effort to situate the “philosophies” of the pre-1848 period with precision, rather than merely forcing them all into the standard mould of a “tradition” of preconceived content,277 reveals that the supposed cohesion of this “Austrian
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philosophy” was largely the product of a self-asserting genealogy developed by scholars and higher education politicians after 1848.278 At the time of the ThunHohenstein university reform, the agenda was to redefine Austria’s place in the wider German context, and to counter idealist system architectures with an autonomous alternative of equal standing. The circle around Minister of Education Leo Thun was looking to drain the springs of the revolution of 1848, which they saw as lying in “rationalistic” and “speculative” thought. They hoped to create a transpersonal, suprasubjective philosophy for a fatherland characterised by linguistic and religious diversity.279 The conservative opinion leaders around Thun blamed the presence of Kantianism in theology and jurisprudence for the intellectual failure of the monarchy and for the revolution, whereas for the liberals, the pre-1848 period was coded quite differently, as the essence of reaction. However these differences have been obscured by the modelling of an archetypical Austrian anti-speculative philosophical tradition. This “tradition” does not provide an adequate yardstick for measuring the quality and depth of the engagement with Kant before 1848. You have taken my one and all, and are cutting it up into little pieces! Where is the sublime nobility of Kant’s moral principle now? I have been thrown out of my father’s house, and where, oh where shall I now find a home?280 Lorenz Leopold Haschka to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, 24. 7. 1804
Kant Among Theologians Kant’s philosophy was the talk of the day in the years around 1800 in studies, reading rooms and coffee houses in the Hapsburg monarchy.281 The jurist Franz von Zeiller, author of the Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch [General Civil Code], referred to the autotelic definition of morality,282 while his contemporaries were discussing Kant’s concept of the experience-constituting intellect, the relationship between predicate and subject in a priori and a posteriori judgements and the construction of the world through empirically based hypothetical knowledge. Theologians and philosophers debated Kant’s postulates theory with its justified hope of a divine authority rewarding and punishing the immortal soul according to the person’s moral merits on this earth.283 Kant’s philosophical chiliasm of the perfectibility of the human race, his theses on original sin, felix peccatum, and his reformulation of the question of evil, no longer defined by privatio boni, but by a ‘real struggle’ (Realpugnanz) between good and evil, were the subject of critical reception and debate.284 And what of the theologians? Kant was one of the most-read authors in the monarchy’s seminaries, with the Vienna priests’ seminary in particular being regarded as a bastion of Kantianism.285 Josef Dobrovsky´, who taught as vice-
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rector at the general seminary in Olomouc, had familiarised his theology students with Kant’s philosophy. For many of his former students, Kant’s Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone] (1793) had the status of a “credo”.286 In the years around 1800 several of these young theologians were enthusiastic supporters of the French Revolution, and inspired by the works of Kant and Rousseau. In their manuscripts they argued that belief in God as an external entity was merely a projection. Anyone who shifted ultimate moral responsibility to this external entity was lost, they maintained: evading responsibility in this way sealed the individual’s departure from the moral law. Under Leopold II the general seminaries were abolished, but the engagement with Kant’s theories continued regardless. Franz Josef Hurdlek, for example, former Rector of the Prague general seminary and subsequently Bishop of Litomeˇrˇice – later to be dismissed from office in 1822 during the affair around the “league of virtue” of Bolzano student Michael Josef Fesl – recalled that his “main concern”, although one to be shared only with “friendly ears”, was “critical philosophy.287 An examination of the situation prior to 1848 also shows how misleading it is to use Kantian philosophy as some kind of hallmark of a diffuse “radicalism”, supposedly leading to “atheism” or “republicanism”. Such a prefabricated historical narrative is based on little more than manipulating a set of “isms” as children’s building blocks, and the illusion of Kantianism as a single, coherent, clearly defined entity fails to do justice to either the complexities of the reception of Kant’s works over time or the manner in which the impulses from his writings were processed and absorbed by the recipients. This kind of “Kantianism” founded on a petitio principii leads to a perception of “early liberalism” and the accreditation of a group of “true Kantians”, as opposed to those dismissed as obstructionists and mavericks who diluted or misunderstood Kant’s works, exploiting them for their own ends, misusing Kant as a supplier of basic categories, and concocting their own private potions. This simplistic concept of “liberal Kantianism” obscures the fact that Kant was an important reference author not just for German “enlightened Protestantism” of the pre-1848 period,288 such as Wilhelm T. Krug. We have already referred to Kant’s importance for Jacobin clerics in the Hapsburg domains around 1800, but he was equally as important for the theologians of the Catholic Restoration in the first quarter of the 19th century. To address the topic of Kant and the Restoration, it is useful to return to the figure of Bolzano’s opponent, Jakob Frint, and the circle around him. First let us consider the theologian Vinzenz Eduard Milde (1777–1853),289 the son of a Brno bookbinder, who became one of Frint’s close colleagues.290 He succeeded Hurdlek as Bishop of Litomeˇrˇice, and soon afterwards became the first appointee of bourgeois origin as a prince-bishop of Vienna. From 1806 to 1810 Milde had held
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the monarchy’s first professorial chair of education in Vienna, and between 1811 and 1813 he wrote the pedagogical textbook that remained the prescribed text in the universities of the empire up to 1848.291 Milde endorsed Kant’s psychology of faculties, and criticised Johann Friedrich Herbart’s “simple representations”, whose accumulation in the subconsciousness and combination into complex mental phenomena Herbart believed should sound the depths of psychology by means of controlled introspection. Milde also opposed Herbart’s attempt to derive the Kantian categories from simple concrete representations. According to Herbart, more complex processes of the consciousness could be broken down; in accordance with the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics, they could be analysed as the resultant of combinations of simple processes, and formulated as equations.292 Herbart developed a threshold theory of stimuli-activated representations, seen as vying for supremacy, with the non-dominant representations falling into a zone of latency from which they could then re-emerge. Milde wrote commentaries endorsing Kant’s aesthetics, according to which beauty was a state of pleasure of the subject, a relationship of harmony between the intelligence and the imagination – here again Milde made Kant’s theory of taste judgements his own, distancing himself from Herbart’s insistence on the objectbound character of the experience of beauty. Milde regarded as empirically proven the recognition that the goal of upbringing and education could only be morality in the Kantian sense; since directive education was impossible under the conditions of transcendental freedom, the principle of education must be to impart the faculty of self-education (“perfectible self-activity”).293 And what of the response to Kantian philosophy in the work of Jakob Frint (1766–1834), Hofburg priest and confessor to Emperor Kaiser Franz I, later Bishop of St. Pölten? Frint had written the textbook for the new compulsory subject of divinity created at his instigation in the universities of the Hapsburg monarchy in 1804,294 the subject Bolzano taught in Prague. In this Handbuch der Religionswissenschaft [Manual of divinity] Frint validated the truths of faith with Kantian safeguards: he insisted that the subject-matters of “natural religion”, that is to say “the existence of the deity, the immortality of the soul and free will”, could not be known by the path of reason, but should only be “believed on the basis of practical grounds.”295 “Redemption” was described by Frint as “a necessary postulate of practical reason”, since without it, “the moral world purpose would be impossible for man, yet it must be possible, since we receive it as an imperative from practical reason, which cannot enjoin anything that is impossible.”296 Frint endeavoured to formulate solutions for two problems in Kant’s philosophy. The first was the duplication of inviolable natural law in moral law, seen as prevailing universally and absolutely in the moral world. And secondly, Frint addressed the problem of mediation between the intelligible higher “I” and the empirical “I”, the problem of freedom: was there a link
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Fig. 19: Vinzenz Eduard Milde
between these two worlds whereby reason could be placed above inclinations, through the action of willpower and moral maxims? In this context Frint was bringing Kantian philosophy towards Spinozism. Frint’s concern was the absence of any causal relationship between the intelligible “I” and the empirical “I”; the pure will of the intelligible “I” was endangered by the sensual dispositions and inclinations, yet at the same time this will had to intervene in the sensual world in order to determine and refine thought and action. According to Frint, the “autonomy of the will”, released from the impulse towards happiness, could only be attributed “truth” in one respect; insofar as this autonomy “consists in independence from a substance of desire”, it has to be understood in the sense that “man’s happiness […] cannot be thought as that which comes first, as something unconditional, or as the principle of moral laws”. This representation of happiness must not exert “a coercive, pathologically defining force over the human will”, since otherwise “no further freedom or self-determination would be possible, and all autonomy would have to cease”.297 A similar line to Frint’s adaptation of Kant can be found in the philosophy textbooks of the Restoration, Elementa Philosophiae in usum Auditorum Philosophiae adumbrate by the Piarist Josef Calasanz Likawetz and Religionsunterricht für Kandidaten der Philosophie [Religious instruction for philosophy candidates] by Johann Michael Leonhard.298 For much of his work, Likawetz closely follows the theory of virtue from Wilhelm Traugott Krug’s System der praktischen Philosophie [System of practical philosophy].299 While for
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Likawetz and Krug philosophical morality “places an active and a passive obligation in one and the same subject”, it does this “in different ways”. To say that “the subject obligates itself” means that reason as a law-giving faculty obligates the subject’s “will, which could also be determined from elsewhere” […] “to a particular manner of acting. Theological morality, on the other hand, situates the active obligation in God and the passive obligation in human beings”. But whether we assume that “God wrote His will in man’s heart originally, or made it known subsequently through intermediaries (revealed naturally or supernaturally, directly or indirectly), the reason must cognise, or at least recognise, God’s will (divine law) and operate under the guidance of the reason’s own specific principles”. So both perspectives, the moral and the religious, essentially “came down to the same thing”.300 Hence Likawetz’s analysis is based on a camouflaged Kantian postulate: the equal status of natural religion, foundation in reason and truths of faith communicated by revelation. This first generation of the Restoration was attuned to the philosophical and theological pulse of the time, and could not do without Kant’s critical philosophy. At around the transition from the 1820s to the 1830s these Kantian-hued compromise constructions underwent a gradual demolition process. A notable example of this development is Anton Günther (1783–1863), a theologian of northern Bohemian origin, and along with Friedrich Schlegel one of the key figures of the Restoration in science and scholarship.301 As a priest, following brief novitiates with the Jesuits and the Redemptorists Günther lived in Vienna as an independent scholar, gathering around him a group of talented and versatile students. He repeatedly declined invitations to accept a chair of theology at various German universities. Günther’s theories too could not have existed without Kant’s critical philosophy, but he distanced himself from the adaptations of Kant seen in the early Restoration period. In Euristheus und Heracles [Euristheus and Heracles], published in 1843, Günther reanalysed the enthusiasm for Kant that had appeared amongst Catholic theologians fifty years before. This Kantian euphoria had been expressed in two variants, he claimed. This first was the recovery of positive religion, which specifically could not be founded in reason, the abstinence from reason in matters of faith. According to Günther, in the years around 1800 there were a host of theologians for whom Kant’s ‘I do not know’ in theoretical philosophy came at just the right time, since they made this negativity the basis of positive revelation, initially for theoretical knowledge, but then also for practical knowledge as conscience. They found critical philosophy to be a rather unkempt vagrant, but able to be tidied up without much difficulty in the hostel of Catholics keen to secure his services and dressed up with a feather in his cap to be sent out into the field of battle.302
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The second variant of Catholic Kantianism in the early 19th century identified by Günther applied a two-fold strategy aimed at challenging materialism, by arguing the supremacy of understanding in cognisance of the world and that of practical reason in the cognisance of the truths of faith. For Günther, the problem of Kant and the Catholic Kantians lay in the fact that they placed the assertion that natural law, and with it causality, were a product of the intelligible “I” directly alongside the role of the intelligence in the organisation of nature from chaotic sensory material. Kant, in his view, made the transcendental object of cognition “in itself” meaningless for the theory of experience, by declaring it to be unrecognisable. For Günther, this precluded the possibility of this object being able to determine in any way the subject of experience in its empirical cognition – Yet according to Günther it was at precisely this point that the objective faculty of every human being should be situated, as the basis for understanding through reason our nature as creatures. The Catholic Kantians, Günther wrote in his retrospective survey : very clearly did distinguish both between the objective and subjective spheres of existence, and between the reality of each, which was synonymous with the so-called “in self”-ness of things in both spheres. And if the tables of categories as the essence of predicabilia and as content of subjectivity were not to suffer any application on objective existence (the world of appearances), then why would Kant have applied the old Cartesian definition of opposing elements in relative existence, as thought and extension, in the new form and matter […] if he had not intended predicabilia to have any application to the givens of existence or appearance as prior? But because he declared those pure forms in the thinking subject to be originally intended solely for the given in the sphere of the objective as the merely apparent, in order to bring unity to the chaotic mass of sensory impressions, he prematurely cut off that path so as to set the crown on the head of cognition in the thinking of the “in itself”, in the knowledge of being.303
Frint’s and Likawetz’s textbooks were picked apart by Günther in a series of reports he composed during the 1830s as imperial and royal censor. On Likawetz he wrote acerbically as follows: “How can a Kantian speak of God as the most real of all beings before any application and transfer of an original thought form, since all reality of all beings arises only through and after that application, but does not arise at all if the appearance of the thing is lost?!”304
Post-Revolutionary Aftermath 1848 marked a turning point in theology as elsewhere; the university reform, long postponed, was now addressed, and the existing textbooks were scrapped. In a new periodical, Zeitschrift für die gesammte katholische Theologie [Journal for the whole of Catholic theology], published by the faculty in Vienna, Günther
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published a brief polemical pamphlet entitled Über den Vernunfthaß auf katholischem Gebiete [On the hatred of reason among Catholics].305 The text harshly criticised those theologians who denied the importance of reason for the cognition of God. Shriller tones were to be heard in a commentary published in June 1850 in the Wiener Kirchenzeitung [Vienna church newspaper], under the title Kants Nachzügler [Kant’s stragglers]. It referred to “Kantians”, who had long played an “anything but salutary role in Austrian theology”. These Kantian theologians, the author wrote, had contrived to boast of “their intelligence, humility and practical efficiency”. They had devised “a series of catchphrases on the humility of their faith and their venerated confines of reason”, as they carried modern non-belief into theology. These Kantians, according to the anonymous author, had “entirely departed from the Christian view of world history, whereby until such time as the hand on the world clock points to the hour of transfiguration on the morning of the great resurrection, our planet remains a great house of the sick and the dead, suffering a succession of diseases, in which the Catholic church does its work as a healing institution founded by heavenly physicians”.306 Catholic spiritual and intellectual life after 1848 had no place for either Kantian theology or Bolzano or Günther supporters of the pre-1848 era.307 The supposedly so rigid “Restoration” was to be replaced by neo-scholasticism. Translated by John Jamieson
Franz von Zeiller and Kantianism in Jurisprudence by Franz L. Fillafer Franz von Zeiller (1751–1828)308 was one of the most important jurists of the Hapsburg monarchy. A professor and head of studies at the law faculty of the University of Vienna, where he twice held the office of vice–chancellor, Zeiller regenerated the law studies syllabus, was responsible for the final editorship of the General Civil Law Code [Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuches, or ABGB] of 1811,309 and worked right up until old age as a member of the Court Committee for Legislative Matters and of the Supreme Judicial Office. Revered in the 19th century as the doyen of pre-1848 jurisprudence and as the creator of the ABGB, Zeiller was regarded as a Kantian and as an “early liberal”, and in 1891 a monument to him was unveiled in the arcaded passage of the University of Vienna.310 Zeiller, it is said, cleverly incorporated civil liberty into the ABGB and in so doing created a liberal private law which was able to survive the restoration under Franz I and Ferdinand I unscathed. This codification made the thaw of 1848 possible and subtly predetermined the modern constitutional state. In
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recent years, Karl Anton von Martini (1726–1800) has begun to outstrip his pupil Zeiller, who now tends to be seen rather as the foster-father or adoptive father of the ABGB, since it drew upon material from Martini’s original design; it is also said that Zeiller threw Martini’s catalogue of fundamental rights out of the ABGB and ousted his former mentor, a man who had saved the Austrian Jacobins from the gallows.311
Fig. 20: Emanuel Pendl, Franz von Zeiller, Arcade Court, University of Vienna (1891)
In most studies of the epoch around 1800, the notions of “enlightenment” and “reaction” are distributed according to a random key, like the prospects of winning with chips at a roulette table. If Martini is presented as a supporter of rational law, as a supporter of the duty ethics of Christian Wolff and of the geometric method, then Zeiller figures as his antithesis, as a liberal supporter of Kant; for authors who regard Martini as a proponent of “fundamental rights”, Zeiller becomes a partisan of the restoration, and the ABGB appears as a law book for a class society with formally embellished liberal characteristics. To continue with the roulette metaphor : it is certainly the bank that wins here, and
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little light is thereby shed on the actual question of what the Enlightenment and Kantianism meant for jurisprudence during Zeiller’s lifetime. The clich¦ that the monarchy had cut itself off from Kantianism and that the intelligentsia in the pre-1848 Hapsburg dominions were stewing in their own juice, needs profound revision. Kant’s reception in the early 19th century was occluded by the construction of an “Austrian philosophical tradition” allegedly based on Leibnizian and Wolffian foundations.312 In the following pages, Zeiller’s relationship to Kantianism is taken as the starting point for tracing the ramifications of legal dogmatics and the philosophy of law at that time, yet the context of previous homages to Zeiller and Kant will also be outlined. However, it should be noted in advance that the study of legal Kantianism displays astonishing gaps,313 and that important points of reference still have to be elaborated even for pre-1848 Austrian jurisprudence, which for a long time was derided for its constricted worldview. The debate about Zeiller and Kant is frequently conducted in the guise of discussing Kant. In this, there are two contrasting images of Kant: one showing the “republican” patriarch of German intellectual freedom, the other a hypocrite who is piously devoted to the state.314 The first systematic representation of Zeiller as a Kantian was published in 1926 by Ernst Swoboda, who went on to make a career as a highly decorated Nazi jurist.315 It had an ideological German nationalist point to prove: Zeiller is presented as the herald of Kant the “German thinker”, and Swoboda attempts to prove that, thanks to Zeiller, the ABGB is “saturated” with Kantian views.316 This conclusion is untenable, and there have rightly been warnings about the dangers of overestimating “Kant’s influence on Zeiller from a material perspective”.317 If one wants to examine Zeiller’s “Kantianism” more closely, one must first clarify its presuppositions: that is where natural law plays a key role.
Natural Law and Scientific Methodology in Wolff and Kant Natural law provides the matrix for Zeiller’s reception of Kant. In early modern times, natural law combined, as justificatory knowledge, different subject areas, with natural law and natural religion, the natural history of the human race, the natural distribution of wealth and the natural interest rates all acting, as hinge concepts that connected theology, economy, political science and jurisprudence.318 However, natural law was not an autarchic or prescriptive “political language”, but rather a way of thinking which made certain forms of argumentation plausible. Elements of natural law were adulterated and underpinned with arguments from legal antiquarianism and legal precepts from the Roman law of usus modernus pandectarum. Yet natural law was not only the source of
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universal justification for laws, it was far more than merely a discursive support for the opening section of juristic writings. The depth of the focus in the dogmatisation of legal precepts in “natural private law” is considerable, and besides the deductions of original and derivative types of possession in accordance with the usus modernus, natural law justification dealt with all the “natural” and civil law forms of acquisition, usucapion and forfeiture. Zeiller’s law studies were dominated by natural law in the vein of Christian Wolff (1679–1754), propounded in lectures given by Karl Anton von Martini in Vienna. Even as early as the 1770s, pamphlets took sides for and against Martini’s syllogistic manner of presentation, which apparently made it possible to completely derive natural law-informed ethics in the mathematical sense as a function from the infallible knowledge of the good.319 Kant’s doctrine of law and his writings on the philosophy of law were explicitly directed against Wolffian natural law. Four aspects are especially relevant for Zeiller’s engagement with Kant: Kant’s revision of Wolffian systematics and methodology, Kant’s shifting of the normative content of law from obligation to freedom, his subversion of the Wolffian state of virtue, and finally the Kantians’ criticism of the Wolffian amalgamation of law and virtue. Wolff ’s theory of knowledge of the real essence and attributes of the notions of things (res/realitas) is based on the assumed possibility of harmonising logical and transcendental-ontological predicates through the power of reason, which Wolff depicted as the faculty of creating clear concepts. It was held against Wolff and Martini that, according to their system, definitions of norms did not contain proof of their possibility, without which no knowledge of the essence of things was achievable. If the objects of knowledge then contained predominantly arbitrary and not necessary determinants, then the demonstration would disintegrate into a conglomeration of nominal definitions which, according to Wolff, were not capable of generating philosophical knowledge.320 In the field of the constitution of norms, Wolff was accused of mixing (let\basir eQr %kko c]mor) the statements of “is”and “ought”: the deduction of norms from statements of facts is used, together with the identification of normative statements, as a determinant of the concept of nature, so that in Wolff and Martini the establishment of the norms of natural law ends in a vicious circle.321 Kant divested nature of its value determination and trimmed the final cause and the truth-aptness of purposes; in 19th century legal doctrine, relational causality (cause/effect) and value relations (is/ought) would replace the criterion of truth. Whereas, in Wolff, the “system” had served to organise rules for a formal arrangement adequate to the material, in Kant, the form of knowledge was separated from its object and no longer defined the form of scientific knowledge as an external summary of the material, but as a classification of content according to principles.322 In Kant, the “natural order” of things is a
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result of the performance of understanding, as the “faculty of rules”,323 reason brings the “manifold of appearances” to the “concepts of pure reason” or “categories”.324 Knowledge of law by means of reason, the ”faculty of principles”,325 is therefore impossible. Rather, law is constituted by reason, which is comprehended by transcendental philosophy in such a way that, in all legal principles, the subject is always the subject of a self-determining freedom, never of a solely external, normative obligatory order. Kant’s definition of law as freedom in a self-binding legal form, rather than freedom that results from a recourse to exterior determinations, makes a dialectical construction necessary : in its legal form, in the form of external self-obligation, this freedom must of course also justify external coercion, i. e. an apparent lack of freedom.326
Fig. 21: Franz Egger, The Natural Public Law, According to the Tenets of Freyherr C. A. von Martini on State Law, With Perennial Consideration of the Natural Civil–Law of Imperial and Royal Privy Councillor Franz Edlen von Zeiller
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Supporters of natural law adopted the scholastic premise of the “natural freedom” of all human beings, which they took to be translated into a social structure by means of the social contract. The social contract remained a central feature of arguments in favour of natural law, yet two further elements, a model and a method adopted by natural law proponents, are also relevant to our purposes. The model in question established the object field’s non-arbitrary regularity, proceeding from a prima causa, a God that no longer intervenes in his creation, and allowing the examination of secundae causae and object-specific, particular natural principles. In addition, there was the natural lawyers’ diagnostic method, which worked with a time differential: analogous to the justification of the principles of nature, “pure” unadulterated primal states were contrasted with later “mixed” forms of development.327 This discrepancy in the relation between primal law and positive law would become the crux of Zeiller’s reception of Kant. Before discussing this in the third section, I would like first of all to elucidate Zeiller’s disagreement with Kant on the basis of three premises of his doctrine of law :
Fundamental Principles of the Philosophy of Law in Zeiller Firstly, like Kant, Zeiller defines the human being as a person who is assigned primal, innate and natural laws as an end in themselves.328 In his Natürlichen Privatrecht [Natural Private Law], Zeiller understands law as a “limitation of the freedom of every single individual to the condition that others” can exist “as persons apart from him”, as “freely acting beings”.329 The human being should not be treated as a means to arbitrary ends: the “legality of an action” is thereby verifiable by the condition that “if everyone acts in such a way, then others […] can exist as persons alongside him.” Secondly, Zeiller’s concept of law is saturated with Kantian determinants. Wolff ’s definition of natural law is based on reciprocity, the reflex duplication of obligations: natural law was the legitimate demand that all other norm addressees also fulfil their obligations. Wolff ’s paternalistic doctrine of state objectives was closely connected to this congruence of obligations, it supported the government of the wise legislator who coordinated the desires and strivings of the citizens, avoided conflicting aims and thus guaranteed the “security” of the community. Political scientists such as the Viennese professor Joseph von Sonnenfels, popular philosophers, as well as Kantian journalists and writers, have all dismissed Wolff ’s teleocratic doctrine of felicity and perfection as “worm-eaten metaphysics”.330 Zeiller followed Kant in thinking of law as being predicated on freedom, no longer deriving it from happiness, or comprehending it as a demand for the reciprocal fulfilment of obligations. Instead of forcing
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doubtful benefits on the citizens by means of an institutionalised state, the aim of society is the unobstructed enjoyment of personal freedom.331 That was dogmatically translated by Zeiller into the civil freedom of disposition, property rights and liberalisation in the acquisition of property. Thirdly and lastly, Zeiller adopted Kant’s separation of law from ethics.332 Zeiller differentiated accurately between the external affirmation and the internal approval of laws. In this way, law conformity replaced law abidance, the law was no longer a catalogue of virtues, and in relieving it of this burden there ensued the moral self-responsibility of the citizens. Zeiller formulates it as follows: Whoever places morality after sensual well-being, neglects the culture of his intellectual and physical powers, weakens his intellect and body through sensual enjoyment, and shortens the length of his life, yet even though he has to suffer the natural consequences of vice, the accusations of his conscience and God’s judgment, he only has to worry about an external coercing constraint if, in so doing, he harms others.333
At that time, Zeiller was not the only one issuing the call to avoid “confounding ethics with law”.334 In 1798, Joseph von Sonnenfels remarked in his Handbuch der inneren Staatsverwaltung [‘Handbook of Internal State Administration’]: Satisfied therefore with Kant’s astute differentiation that well-behaved citizens are not necessarily thoroughly good morally, the government will have to content itself with observing the outward appearance, the body of the actions alone, as it were, and leave it up to enlightening instruction to make the connection that links the spirit of higher attitudes and inner convictions with social virtue.335
Sonnenfels does of course expand on this: even if one construes the legal concept in the sense of reciprocal restrictions on spheres of limited discretion, one still cannot derive any unlimited autonomy of reason from it. Although the power of “moral-practical reason” is the “direct legislator” in the field of the morality of every individual human being, this “autonomy” would cease when it is a matter of “social order”, in which case “conduciveness” would decide, in accordance with the precepts of the doctrine of prudence; reason would still have at its disposal the rather narrow-minded “veto”, which it can interpose “insofar as” the proposals of the doctrine of prudence “were found to be in contradiction with morality, i. e. with justice in general.”336 Similar reservations were also voiced by Zeiller, and this leads to the mediation of primeval laws in social circumstances.
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Primeval Law in the Natural State and “Positive” Private Law in the State: A Mediation Problem In order to understand the import of the question, one has to briefly define Kant’s position. For Kant, it is by virtue of being subsumed under the notion of law that the state-organised power structure first receives its character of an objectively obligatory legal order which serves the idea of peace and harmony despite its imperfection. Kant’s concept of law was frequently criticised as being “empty of content”, yet this objection is based on a one-sided reading. The concept of law is augmented by both formal and material content: among the formal qualities are human dignity, the legitimacy of laws in terms of public consent, and the social contract,337 as well as the “condition of the greatest possible human freedom” as a “regulative” and “necessary” idea;338 these criteria are at odds with Kant’s rejection of the right of resistance,339 and likewise with his well-known reservation that it did not become the population, to “subtilise” about the “origin of the supreme power […] during their working days”340 Among the formal contents are the less stringently executed postulates of the separation of powers and the principle of popular representation.341 The categorical imperative underpins design of the law, yet it is a double-edged sword, and its nature is one of rules and principles: as a principle, it functions by making it obligatory to act according to precepts that can be universalised; on the other hand, when employed as a rule, the imperative serves as a criterion of judgement: a criterion stipulating that an action is always and only then morally right when its precepts (under the given conditions) can be universalised.342 This transformation of principles into rules is indispensable for every weighing-up of choices and for every decision involving a collision of principles. In this way, by means of the above-mentioned contents of the concept of law (human dignity, the approvability of laws, the social contract etc.), Kant tries to introduce the precepts of morality into law-making and administrative action.343 Zeiller adopts freedom as an object of the state guarantee of security ; he emphasises sibisufficientia,344 the independence and free enjoyment of property and its fruits as the content of the demand for civil rights and liberties. At the same time, Zeiller also emphasises that the purpose of the state does not consist in maintaining the natural and inalienable rights of human beings,345 because “basic rights” are forfeitable and alterable.346 The sharp distinction between law and ethics is embedded in a fabric of conditions involving both factors: since Zeiller regards the protection of rights as a condition of morality, he decrees it a moral duty of the citizen to act as a member of the state.347 He does not espouse Kant’s idea that the foundation of the state is a legal obligation. Zeiller defends the incontestability of the “civil sovereignty” (”bürgerliche Oberhoheit”) of the monarch, even though, in private law, the monarch is of course a citizen like
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everyone else. Zeiller rejects the sovereignty of the people, yet he – like Martini and Paul Anselm Feuerbach – makes it a legal obligation of the monarch to respect basic civil rights, otherwise the subjects are entitled to exercise passive disobedience.348 Zeiller describes “original equality” as an “abstraction of writers”, although it may, nevertheless, still have “practical use”, since it can teach us “to respect humanity in every human being, however lowly his standing in civil life may be, and to regard him as a moral being, invulnerable and sacred.”349 Zeiller regards the people as being incapable of comprehending the “legal origination of the state”, and for them to ruminate about the origins of state powers would only lead to fractiousness.350 Zeiller bypasses the precepts of “Republicanism” and of “publicity”, which Kant had conflated on the occasion of the Prussian-French Peace Treaty of Basel in 1795, when he argued that the Prussian king was obliged, on account of an emerging “league of nations”, to rule his country as if it were a republic, as if the laws of the land had to be generally agreed upon.351
Legal Dogmatics Zeiller’s Kantianism was at times exaggerated, full of red herrings and retouchings. What is the situation with regard to the legal dogmatics involved in integrating Kantian suggestions into the ABGB? According to Zeiller, the nominal task of the legislator is to announce and to apply adaptive supplements to the natural principles of law.352 § 16 of the ABGB stipulates that: “Every human being has innate rights, as already becomes evident through the exercise of reason, and is therefore to be regarded as a person. Slavery or serfdom, and the exercise of any power related to it, is not permitted in these lands.” § 17 gives the cleverly elaborated definition: as far as “natural rights are appropriate”, they will be accepted as “existing”, as long as no “legal restriction” can be proved against them.353 Zeiller refused to include Martini’s catalogue of fundamental rights in the ABGB; that arose from his decision not to positivise pre-positive rights in the law. In doing so, Zeiller condemned outright a catalogue of basic rights which in the Wolffian rational mode defined the law as that which was “good in itself”,354 differentiating between innate rights and the “good things in life”, i. e. “coincidental privileges”. The elimination of the basic rights section was therefore not a “reactionary” tit-for-tat response to the “enlightener” Martini, but was rather the result of considerations of legal doctrine: Zeiller wanted to purge private law of the embellishments of the “metaphysical doctrine of law”.355 § 16 was therefore not a mutilated rump of norms,356 it was supposed to provide a sustainable formulation which would be immune to misunderstandings. The declaration of human and civil rights in France, explained Zeiller, has “given rise
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to the most dangerous misinterpretations”, yet a list of them can of course be dispensed with, among other things, because “these rights are intelligible to everyone through reason.”357
Fig. 22: Franz von Zeiller, The Natural Private Law
Differences between Kant and Zeiller can also be observed in the field of emigration law – Kant approved of it, whereas for Zeiller it was a punishable offence to abscond from the social contract – and in the ius albinagii (the state’s confiscation of that part of an inheritance which citizens acquire from the estate of foreigners).358 Zeiller made it necessary for the founding of corporations to
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require prior approval.359 He also remained unimpressed by Kant’s salvo against the law of reprieve (the “most slippery” of the rights of majesty, well-suited to increasing the “splendour of sovereignty” through demonstrating grace and benevolence).360 Kant’s lex talionis is also rejected by Zeiller, who believes premeditated murder should not be punishable with the death penalty.361 On the other hand, there are tinges of Kantianism in Zeiller’s objections to the negotiorum gestio in the case of management without a contract.362 In contrast to Kant, however, Zeiller remained committed, in his textbook on natural law, to the acquisition of property through a simple contract (consensus principle): Zeiller insisted that the freedom of contract partners not to bind themselves in their contractual transactions by an erroneously submitted declaration, in the sense of the theory of trust, ends where the social order becomes endangered.363
Concluding Observations Zeiller admitted that “critical philosophy” had performed the service of “having defined more exactly the most important and previously wavering concepts, and having introduced formal principles (created by the form of pure reason) to jurisprudence, in the process elevating it to the status of a true science.”364 Gerhard Luf emphasises that Zeiller, in his Natürlichen Privatrecht [Natural Private Law] obstructed the “deliberative actualisation of practical reason”, which is why he was not in a position to deduce positive law from primeval laws. The relationship between private law and “primeval law”, but also that between liberal civil law and public corporative order remained controversial.365 Precisely this legal grey area was discovered by pre-1848 liberal jurists when they fostered the privatisation of class privileges obtained by birth and interpreted manorial claims as alienable property subject to limitations and claims: in this way, they attempted to transform personal bonded labour into land easement, linking it to property rather than to the person of the subject.366 Zeiller was by no means alone when tackling the mediation problem between natural laws and positive law. For ages, supporters of natural law had been preoccupied with the question of the conditions under which a legislator might be allowed to render natural law inoperative by tolerating behaviour contrary to the norm and infringing natural rights. Kant himself had studied this intensely,367 and the most important jurists of the early 19th century, Feuerbach, Gustav Hugo, A. F. J. Thibaut and Friedrich Karl von Savigny had done likewise. For example, Gustav Hugo, the private law specialist from Göttingen, whose pupil Savigny praised him as the progenitor of the “historical school”,368 interpreted Kant in such a way that eternally true doctrines were based exclusively on “formal” principles, and material-ethical content could solely be determined
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empirically-historically. In his Naturrecht als eine Philosophie des positiven Rechts [Natural Law as a Philosophy of Positive Law], Hugo also combined the state of law, as an “obligation of conscience”, with ethics, at the same time emphasising the indispensability of the highest demand of reason, according to which one has to act in such a way that the “general legal situation” of “eternal peace” will be achieved. Nevertheless, like Zeiller, Hugo admitted that no single positive law could be peremptory, i. e. conclusive, but would inevitably remain provisional, in contrast to natural law.369 Many of the misunderstandings that arise when interpreting Zeiller are due to the erroneous opposition of the “state” and “society”, which is back-projected from the second half of the 19th century onto the pre-1848 period. Zeiller was an ingenious pragmatist in the spirit of the legislative doctrines of his time, a late Enlightener taking the self-determination of the citizen as his starting point, yet allowing the authorities considerable supervisory rights. Liberal private law was intended to apply as a “universal” law to a monarchy “which for a long time has attempted to render all its provinces similar”,370 as a stable ensemble of civil forms of commerce, separate from wavering “political laws” which stipulated the privileges and special powers of the estates.371 At the same time, Zeiller was convinced of the fact that “humanity” and “intelligence” might make it necessary to tolerate “deeply anchored anomalies” in the state.372 It requires a great deal of wishful thinking to expect the codifiers to have planned the ABGB as a constitutional surrogate, a letter placed in a bottle by a “pioneering”, “contra-factual” “civil liberties movement” which was forcing the “corporative social order” onto the defensive.373 Zeiller was a loyal scholar who was faithful to the dynasty and had been entrusted with the education of Emperor Franz’s younger brother. The court committee on education ascertained that, in his text book on natural private law, Zeiller had repudiated “dangerous ‘principles’”, and moreover had exercised the “requisite caution and restraint” in presenting older “principles which at that time had not aroused the slightest concern”, but had become a source of worry due to the deplorable world-historical incidents that would emerge from them.374 Zeiller was initially portrayed as a liberal pioneer by the generation of his pupils, the “enlightened liberals” of the pre-1848 period, led by Vincenz August Wagner and Joseph von Kudler.375 One concluding remark on “Kantianism”: the pandectists, who came to power through the university reform of the 1850s, regarded themselves as the trailblazers of German science in the Hapsburg monarchy, which had allegedly lacked all contact with the wider world before 1848. The jurisprudence of the pre-1848 period was reprimanded in a slogan as the “watered-down, officially sanctioned Kantianism”.376 The liberal pandectists around Josef Unger were sure of their innovation premiums, topped off with a scrapping bonus: pre-1848 science was presented as “rationalist and speculative”, and was blamed for the
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revolution of 1848; the pandectists presented themselves as guarantors of scientific progress and as forerunners of the impeccably “positive” foundations of knowledge demanded by the Ministry of Education run by Leopold Graf von Thun Hohenstein.377 In the 1850s, the applicative hermeneutics of the Justinian corpus, which was now used to underpin the ABGB, was compared as a “historical” method with the “rationalist” and “Kantian” school of exegetics. This was an intellectual-political manoeuvre by the pandectists and one ought not to take its description of the situation at face value: their account neither does justice to pre-1848 jurisprudence, nor to pandectist science, which was only ostensibly purely Kantian, while the gesture of dissociation outplays Savigny’s engagment with Kant and rational law.378 “Kantianism” has here become a polemic code, the scapegoat of the university reformers. Translated by Peter Waugh
Ernst Topitsch and Kant by Franz L. Fillafer As an analyst of belief systems and a critic of ideology, Ernst Topitsch (1919–2003) was one of the most original Austrian thinkers of the 20th century. Born in Vienna, Topitsch studied at Vienna University under the philosophers Victor Kraft and Robert Reininger, the historian Heinrich von Srbik, as well as the theologian and historian of philosophy Alois Dempf. After spending several years in Heidelberg, he began to lecture as a professor of philosophy at the University of Graz in 1969.379 His exegesis of Kant is interesting on three counts: as a Kelsenian kicking goading his opponents, Topitsch presented an analysis of belief systems that deconstructed transcendental philosophy ; he fleshed out the ideological premises of the Catholic post-National Socialist renaissance of natural law after 1945;380 lastly, Topitsch wrote an exceptional sketch of the reception of Kant in Austria, which remains indispensable for the well-founded overview that it provides.381 Topitsch was blessed with a wealth of polemic talent, and he spared neither the interpretative elites of national conservativism, nor the heroes of the student movement.382 He became heavily involved in the dispute about positivism, at which time he made the critical rationalism of Karl Popper and Hans Albert his own. From the 1960s onwards, Topitsch’s favourite opponent was Jürgen Habermas, whom he described as a Neo-Platonist keeper of the seal of a civitas dei, a celestial city of “dialectical reason”.383 The belief in the practice of “communicative action” as the basis of “understanding” (“Verständigung”) was dismissed by Topitsch as belonging to the realm of the ideologemes of salvational history. He regarded Habermas’ ideal of a “non-hierarchical discourse” as fed by a
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Fig. 23: Ernst Gottmann, Ernst Topitsch (1968)
pietistic exaltation of Parousia and by a desire for redemption after the Fall of Man, claiming moreover that the terminology of Hegelian dialectics was muddled and bombastic, and went against verifiable argumentation. This motif of a Platonising, gnostic two-world doctrine is one of Topitsch’s standard interpretaments, and it runs throughout all his analyses of belief systems and also informs his essay Kant in Österreich [Kant in Austria], dating from 1949. For Habermas, in turn, Topitsch’s criticism of ideology had degenerated into a repetitive unmasking ritual, eventually lending support to those very institutions of the restorational intellectual powers which it was purportedly combatting.384 This controversy was carried on with a great deal of theatrical thunder on the intellectual-political stage. Topitsch’s analysis of certain premises of the late Frankfurt School remains noteworthy. Like Georges Canguilhem, Topitsch was critical of programmes of self-regulation, and regarded the Frankfurt School’s anti-scientific and anti-technical phobia of adjustment and control as a continuation of older organistic patterns of thinking in the humanities in Germany. In doing so, Topitsch also draws attention to an aspect of the history of disciplines and the sociology of knowledge: concealed behind
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Enlightenment scepticism and a pseudo-egalitarian enmity towards science, one often finds the intellectual aristocratic autoeroticism of the old Bildungsbürgertum (members of the educated classes), expressed in resentment of the “specialist”. For Topitsch, immunisational “empty formulas” are produced in the name of “dialectics”, while prestige words and noble substantives disguise a lack of conceptual precision, and normative standpoints are not disclosed in a comprehensible manner.385 Topitsch was just as critical of the “concrete order” and anti-semitic “racial pride” epistemology of Carl Schmitt, as he was of Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas.386 Topitsch also regarded the philosophy practised at Austrian universities as being typified by suggestion and distraction.387 He dedicated a few beautiful guest book distichs to his friend Hans Albert (“If in Vienna you want to make a career/ simply write something that’s really quite obscure!”), but after moving from Heidelberg to Graz in 1969 and leaving the “Holy German vegetable patch of being” behind him, he then plunged into the mist of “Austrobscurity”.388 What he meant by this was academically-based Catholic existentialism, Heideggerian phenomenology and Hegelianism.389 Topitsch embellished his description of the intellectual situation of the time with the remark, attributed to the Minister of Education Heinrich Drimmel (ÖVP, 1954–1963), that one thing was certain while he was head of the department: not a single positivist or psychoanalyst would be appointed to a professorship.390 In his book Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [The Presuppositions of Transcendental Philosophy], which was published in 1975, Topitsch applied to Kant the criteria of demonstrability and the high-resolution valence analysis of political ideas and their historical localisation. It was a matter of “analysing the doctrines of the centrepiece of Kantian philosophy from the perspective of belief systems, tracing them back to their largely implicit presuppositions and developing them from there.”391 The book on Kant is based on Topitsch’s doctrine of types; inspired by Max Scheler and Karl Lamprecht, Topitsch attempts to grasp how primary human experience in coping with reality and the satisfaction of needs is translated into cultural representations and scientific models. Topitsch draws upon Konrad Lorenz’s genetic theory of epistemology when he explains human world views as plurifunctional systems of directing action that derive from innate triggering mechanisms which have become differentiated over the centuries into four functional types. Our understanding of the cosmos is therefore conceived in accordance with primal images from the four areas of life: bio-morphs (the biological curriculum vitae from conception till death), socio-morphs (social relations), techno-morphs (virtuosity between ars and ingenium) and ecstatic-cathartic models (world transcendence in dream, trance and rapture). Topitsch’s analysis is greatly indebted to the critical-reflective Austrian sci-
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ence of the fin de siÀcle,392 which was forced into exile by Austrofascism and National Socialism, and which was suppressed by those thinkers who became the academic leaders of the incipient Second Republic. Topitsch oriented himself above all to Hans Kelsen’s studies of the anthropomorphosis of God and the state, and of the causality of retribution. He adopted Edgar Zilsel’s and Hans Reichenbach’s studies of the process of human projection, which show how a conceptual transfer from the cognitive field to the field of ethics leads to the idea of a “universal” and “perfect” world law, corresponding to a morally meaningful cosmos. In order to explain why these older manifestations, borrowed as they are from our knowledge of nature, could persist as meaningful interpretations of the world longer in the moral-political realm than in the study of nature, Topitsch adopted Sigmund Freud’s studies of the human being’s mechanisms of sublimation and compensation, which, like some “prosthetic God”, shield the field of ethics from the technical-scientific environment.393 Topitsch also presumes such a shielding attempt in the case of Kant: Topitsch emphasises that Kant had no wish whatsoever to destroy the metaphysicalreligious tradition. Rather, it was his intention to place it on a new foundation by dispensing with dogmatic-speculative justifications, in order to face the challenge of the mechanistic view of the world and the empirical knowledge of nature, thereby saving the core religious content of God, freedom and immortality.394 Topitsch’s analysis of Kant’s pre-critical works therefore reveals a twoworld doctrine: in a hierarchically ordered cosmos of gradations, Kant draws a border between the world of the senses and the intelligible “spiritual realm”. In this way, final causes are cut out of the epistemological field, the effect of morality comes to be located in the field of “pneumatic laws”, spiritual nature is declared as a “noumenon of negative understanding” and a way is prepared for the paradoxical view “according to which, the empirical and the intelligible egos are identical with each other, even though they do indeed belong to different worlds.”395 Topitsch took his cues from Dempf when seeing in Kant evidence of a law of association after the manner of the “analogia entis” between the empirical world and the immaterial world, which is imperceptible to the senses, but “pure” and “perfect”, although the value predicates of omnipotence, goodness, wisdom and justice, introduced for God as imagined in the socio-morphic framework, can then only be established by means of “subreptions”, i. e. tacit assumptions.396 For Topitsch, the failure of Kant’s critical system results from interferences occurring between three interconnected functions of his philosophy : those of world-elucidation, world-transcendence and behavioural instruction; but also from the templates which Kant transferred to the Critiques from his pre-critical work. Topitsch credits Kant’s theoretical philosophy with a world-creating production model of “cognitive theology” that is uneasily combined with an affect-based and empirical “physics of knowledge”; in his practical philosophy,
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Kant mixes the ecstatic-cathartic concept of a “pure” higher self with the sociomorphic, morally and legally definded conception of a “judge within the ego” who decides over good and evil and is responsible for this decision, in accordance with the Christian doctrine of sin. Grave tautologies would eventually result from duplication of the omnipotent and immutable world law, which has come down to us from archaic times, and which Kant regards as being a natural necessity at work. Yet at the same time, Kant implants it into the moral world as a universally absolute “moral law”, and it is from the tension between these two postulated laws that there arises the “problem of freedom” in Kant’s philosophy. Topitsch’s reading of Kant’s critical work highlights three “central elements”: the differentiation between an existent and a simply apparent world, the doctrine of the thing in itself and the doctrine of the ego. Herewith comes the contrast between the decontaminated, perfect and “true world”, cleansed of non-valid content, and its opposite, the “world of appearances”, emerging from the same two-world impulse as the presupposition of one higher ego situated beyond causal regularities: this “higher ego”, in its turn, is irreconcilable with the ego as an empirical-rational composite being, since the sensation correlates of this empirical ego arise according to “formal” principles, and their position between the intelligible and the sensual world remains unexplained. At the same time, the “true world” is supposed to provide the explanatory reason for empirical reality, particularly since the “things in themselves” which are located in it figure as a contributory cause of the “appearances” and “ideas” of consciousness, and since the “higher world” affects this world by developing an archetypical normative model for morally good behaviour. “Things in themselves” therefore exist in a world which does not obey the laws of causality, yet should have an effect on the world of appearances. In order to prove that Kant loads up his transcendental-idealistic epistemological theory with determinants which counteract it, Topitsch draws on the works of his teacher Robert Reininger. As early as 1900, in his monograph Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn und seine Theorie der Erfahrung [Kant’s Doctrine of Inner Meaning and his Theory of Experience], Reininger had pointed out that, in the introductory sections of the Critique of Pure Reason, the “thing in itself” has a “decidedly objective” character, and that the transcendental existence of things in themselves may be regarded “practically as an axiom”, whereas in Kant’s subsequent ideas it becomes a “simple limiting notion”, an “absolutely undetermined and undeterminable something.”397 It therefore follows that the transcendental object of knowledge becomes meaningless for experiential theory as soon as its unknowability becomes articulated, as soon as there is a lapse in “the power to determine, somehow or other, the subject of experience in its empirical act of cognition”.398 Topitsch then observes that Kant, in order to be able to comprehend cognitive processes beyond the “thing in itself”, once again
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avails himself of the empirical-realistic model of an affective relation between that which exists and the “appearance” and “imagination” caused by it. Topitsch regards the premise that the laws of nature, and with them causality, are a product of the transcendental ego, and that “understanding prescribes the laws of nature”, as resulting from Kant’s belief in a quasi-divine, transcendental “ego”, which should be judged as a concession to the affective model, an admission that reason “designs” nature from the confusing material of the senses. Of course, the categories cannot be derived from these assumptions: if the concrete laws of nature can only be ascertained by means of experience, there would seem to be a real world with specific structures and laws which are independent of reason after all. Topitsch claims that Kant, in order to save his a priori construction, therefore fills the gap between legislative reason and “sensibility” with two further faculties of cognition, namely schematism and the “reflective power of judgement”. Whereas schematism ends up becoming ambivalent and blurred, the reflective power of judgement once again offers only regulative and heuristic principles, thereby remaining entangled in the empirical.399 For Topitsch, equally serious problems arise in connection with Kant’s moral philosophy : here, too, there recurs the supremacy of an “unblemished”, purely intelligible world, which nevertheless cannot dispense with elements empirically mediated by experience. Of course, according to the transcendental-idealistic view, the intelligible ego, as a “thing in itself” would be undetermined, although on such a basis no moral philosophy could be developed at all: that is why Kant then introduces determinations of individuality, of thought, will and action, although as far as content is concerned he envisages an ecclesia spiritualis, an intellectual-moral being which combines Platonising and Christian ideas of the divine realm. This “realm of ends” (Reich der Zwecke) is ruled by an iron moral law, which seems just as immutable as the necessary natural law of the sensual world. The two-world theory breaks through once more in the determination of the moral ego: the empirical ego is separated from the intelligible “higher” ego. For Topitsch, the consequence of Kant’s Platonising construction is that, while the “pathological” world of the senses is not regarded as being an appearance of the intelligible world, remnants of the older moral-theological interpretation of the sensual world are incorporated into the system as a sinfully corrupting countervailing power. Here, too, the determination of the relation between the two worlds remains elusive: although causal relations cannot prevail between the two, the pure will of the intelligible ego – the will that should have an effect on the world of the senses, in order to determine thought and action in an ennobling manner – is endangered by sensual proclivities and predispositions. Kant avails himself of auxiliary constructions: the “causality of freedom” and a “non-empirical feeling” of “respect for the law” serve as wildcards of the spirit world in
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the sensual world; Kant does not provide a coherent answer to the question of whether and how the “causality of freedom” and “respect for the law” belong to an empirical reality of experience that is subject to causality.400 Moreover, in Topitsch’s opinion, Kant exacerbates the Christian forensics of original sin by not describing the carnal debauchery of the world of the senses as affecting sinfulness, but instead establishing the intelligible ego, the “true human being”, as a being which decides freely and responsibly between good and evil. Here, Kant shifts the onus of proof in relation to sin to the “intelligible” world and grants absolution to sensual nature. This construction is complicated by the fact that the will of the higher, true ego – as a member of the intelligible world – prescribes the moral law itself. However, if the intelligible will now has to decide between good and evil, this not only results in the intelligible world forfeiting its role as model for the empirical world, but above all entails that the assertion that the origin of the moral law lies in this will of the “true ego” can no longer be justified. Consequently, according to Topitsch, the interferences between the functions of various world and valence perspectives in Kant’s philosophy “tie themselves up” within the problematics of the ego, forming “a truly Gordian knot.”401 According to its predisposition, the intelligible ego is supposed to be superior to all empirical determinants which constitute the sensual world for the ego, yet it cannot be the subject “of our understanding”, which of course prescribes the laws of nature. The same applies to the empirical ego, which, in the final analysis, is natural and therefore cannot by any means be regarded as a subject of understanding, through the legislation of which it is initially constituted.402 Topitsch, like Viktor Kraft,403 then goes on to point out the contradictions in Kant’s doctrine of the immortality of the soul: in the sense of the Enlightenment’s endless perfectibility, immortality should make a gradual approximation to the principles of the moral law possible. Nevertheless, at the same time, Kant holds on to the eschatology of the Last Judgement, which decides over salvation or damnation. The process of perfecting the soul after death implies temporality and change, yet if history itself and the life of the soul naturally come to an end at the Last Judgement, then how can one speak of incipient bliss or abjection after the judgement has been enforced? Moreover, the whole construction is in great contradiction to the doctrine of the intelligible ego as “timeless pure true self.”404 A similar imbalance emerges with the concept of God: God is the omnipotent creator, omniscient judge and all-bountiful legislator, yet it remains unclear how much God is still to be regarded as a legislator, since our “understanding” should, after all, prescribe nature’s laws, and moral legislation is the responsibility of the intelligible ego. As an omnipotent creator, God also has feet of clay : if the intelligible world is timeless and therefore uncreated, yet the empirical is designed by the ego from the material of the senses, then a creator god becomes
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redundant. Here, Kant candidly admits the insolvability of the paradox and consigns belief in God to practical reason.405 Topitsch’s overall conclusion is correspondingly laconic: Transcendental idealism remains even in principle unfeasible, only empty tautological formulas are provided by the quasi-divine legislative ego and the universal causal principle, and in view of the diversity and concrete specification of Nature, the only remaining recourse available is to empirically determinable laws and regulative or heuristic principles, if not fictions.406
So how should Topitsch’s oeuvre be evaluated in the end? His relationship to “value freedom” remained ambivalent: in the name of scientificity, he put “empirical-rational” analysis, as he himself practised it, on a pedestal, and he imagined this “critical rationalism” of his to be superior to “critical theory”, because it was apparently not a mere by-effect of social powers. Here, Topitsch, the critic of ideology, applies double standards.407 In Austria, Topitsch attempted to reinstate those traditions of the inter-war years which had been so despised by the national-conservative interpretative elites: the Vienna Circle, psychoanalysis and the Kelsenian doctrine of law. He did not join the neo-conservative tirade against “perspectivism” and “relativism”, and enjoyed commenting on rhetorical utterances about values. His favourite topic was science: intersubjectively verifiable, open and unbiased. With this claim, Topitsch continued the analyses of processes of social projection begun by Hans Kelsen and Sigmund Freud. He showed that socio-political arrangements only seem to be immutable because they are passed off as natural and hence legitimate; moreover, Toptisch also highlighted that the legitimacy of publicly sanctioned ways of thinking derives from the fact that their validity has apparently been proved by experience – both of which involve illusions maintained by interest groups with specific intentions of their own.408 From Topitsch’s thinking it therefore follows that no citizen can be absolved of the responsibility to constantly question the social and intellectual conditions of society. Nevertheless, if this were done with the intention of judging the prevailing circumstances in accordance with a normative standard, for instance that of Kantian “republicanism”, then Topitsch would be quick to make the accusation of a “two-world theory”. Yet a Europe in which the “fatherlands” have once again become too much of a talking point, could definitely do with a spark of utopia in the spirit of federal-democratic popular sovereignty. Translated by Peter Waugh
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Right, History, Religion – A Report on Two International Kant Symposia in Vienna, 2004 and 2005 by Herta Nagl-Docekal “It is high time for a revisiting of Kant’s oeuvre – not just in view of the state of art of contemporary philosophy, but with regard to current issues of public debate.” So starts the foreword of the book entitled Recht – Geschichte – Religion. Die Bedeutung Kants für die Gegenwart [Right – History – Religion. Kant’s Importance for the Present Day], recording the presentations given at an international symposium held from 4–6 March 2004 in Vienna.409 The Austrian Academy of Sciences had decided to mark the 200th anniversary of Kant’s death by organising this symposium, which was jointly conceived and directed by Rudolf Langthaler and the author of this report. The thematic focus of the gathering lay “not in the domain of historical and philological reconstruction, but in the contemporary relevance of Kant’s philosophy – although this is in turn dependent on scrupulous textual analysis and criticism”.410 This concept was taken up by Jürgen Habermas in his opening address, entitled “The boundary between belief and knowledge. The past impact and current significance of Kant’s philosophy of religion”,411 in which he examined in greater detail some of the considerations formulated in his address given at the ceremony for the awarding of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2001,412 which were also to the fore in his opening statement in the debate with the then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger that took place on 19 January 2004, hosted by the Catholic Academy in Bavaria.413 In general terms, the fourteen presentations given during the symposium can be seen to fall into three thematic categories. The first of these focused on issues of the possible implementation of the moral imperative in the context of the asymmetrical conditions and conflict potentials characterising the world today. This group of papers also highlighted that the effective force of Kant’s conception of morality becomes fully evident only following the elimination of some over-simplifications resulting from mainstream analytic approaches. This group of papers forms the section of the proceedings entitled “Autonomy, Right, Morality”.414 Two examples may suffice for the purposes of this article. Onora O’Neill addresses two shortcomings that she describes as marked by complemetary deficits in some respects. While expressing her concern regarding a form of philosophical rigour based on the model of l’art pour l’art, which was devoid of any real impact in practical terms – „a purely custodial approach to Kant’s legacy might have little impact on contemporary debates and fail to keep Kant’s thought alive“415 – she primarily targets views of autonomy that are widespread in analytical discourse and are claimed to originate from Kant, and yet miss the point he was making, by characterising autonomy “in markedly
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individualistic terms”,416 thereby ignoring the relevance of Kant’s concepts of “self-legislation” and “form of law”. Paul Guyer also criticizes an analytically simplified reception of Kant, focusing on a reading of Kant’s idea of the social contract originally suggested by John Rawls, which has now gained wide currency : Kant does not use the idea of the social contract just as an abstract norm for general principles of justice, but also uses it to model the continuing responsibility of citizens both to accept their states with their ‘good enough’ but never perfect justice but also to work to reform those states in the direction of ever greater – though no doubt still never perfect – justice.417
Elaborating this thought, Guyer notes that Stanley Cavell’s research on Ralph Waldo Emerson had thrown up some subtle distinctions in the idea of a contract that showed significant correspondences with Kant’s core concepts, and could therefore be invaluable for spelling out a Kantian critique of Rawls.418 A second group of contributions focused on the degree to which Kant’s conception of enlightenment and understanding of history continue to provide valid criteria for a critical discussion of contemporary conditions; these presentations are grouped under the title “History, Progress, Enlightenment”.419 Two examples will serve to illustrate the issues addressed by these presentations. Pauline Kleingeld rejects the standard interpretation of Kant’s critical remarks on the topic of a “world state” whereby these are seen as his last word on the subject, pointing out that this interpretation drastically simplifies Kant’s systematic examination of the relation between right and history, and therefore prevents a proper appreciation of the potential relevance of this differentiation today, e. g. for the further development of the United Nations and other international and transnational institutions, such as the International Court of Justice. She demonstates that Kant “takes a position that combines the defence of a voluntary league of nations (or more properly league of states) with an argument for the ideal of a worldwide state of nations (or more properly a federation of states)”.420 Sharon Anderson-Gold takes a slightly different track, investigating the current significance of Kant’s ideas on “cosmopolitan right” as the point of intersection between historical progress and the moral improvement of individuals: “Kant’s vision of international relations […] is not limited to the constraint of open hostilities nor to a balance of powers but extends to an open and dynamic system of intercultural exchange which in time produces a genuine cosmopolitan existence of mutual understanding and respect“, she argues and emphasises: „But culture grows towards mutual understanding only under the condition of cosmopolitan right which guarantees that cultural exchange shall not be treated with hostility.”421 The third section of the proceedings: “Life, Reason, Religion”422 also reflects
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the fact that the two organizers of the symposium represent two different faculties of the University of Vienna: The Institute of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy and Education (Herta Nagl-Docekal), and the Institute of Christian Philosophy at the Faculty of Catholic Theology (Rudolf Langthaler). The point of departure for the discussions under this conceptual triad was the notion that the question of the meaning of human life cannot be fully answered in terms of our hope for a more just future. Among the issues debated was how religion can be addressed from the parameters of contemporary philosophy in ways that avoid an over-simplified anti-religious dogmatism. A significant difference of opinion emerged here. Whereas Jürgen Habermas, in the face of phenomena of a „derailing modernisation“ calls for a partial „translation“ of religious conceptions into secular language, as a way of acquiring moral “resources”, other presentations asserted the essentially trans-moral character of religion. Reiner Wimmer, referring back to Kierkegaard, notes that “(at least) the Christian religion exceeds the bounds of reason specifically in moral and practical respects”, emphasising, with Charles Taylor, „that there are some concerns that transcend the limits of any conceivable moral order for this human world”.423 Wimmer elucidates this dimension through the idea of forgiveness of moral guilt.
Fig. 24: Speakers at the AAS conference ‘Recht – Geschichte – Religion’ [‘Law – History – Religion’] (2004)
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Vienna made an appropriate venue for the symposium for several reasons, some of a general nature, others more specific. On the one hand, decades of teaching and research focusing on Kant’s philosophy at the University of Vienna provided the general context for the symposium. This is a story that cannot be told here in detail – suffice it to say that already in the student days of the two organizers of the symposium, and ever since that time, Kant has always been a major presence in philosophical discourse in Vienna. This is documented not only by numerous publications on Kant written by scholars teaching at the University – studies that represent a wide range of perspectives, each addressing specific critical concerns – but also by many degree theses, including Habilitation theses, written here. Some years before the appointment of Michael Benedikt as professor at the Institute of Philosophy in Vienna, he had already gathered around him a discussion group of doctoral students with a keen interest in Kant. The fact that close relationships with the international Kant research have always been an integral part of the Viennese philosophy discourse is evidenced by publications with relevant publishers and in journals such as KantStudien424 and also many Festschrifts honouring the careers of Viennese philosophy professors and numerous guest lectures held at the Department of Philosophy. Academic teaching of Viennese philosophers in the USA focused on key elements of Kant’s philosophy already in the 1960s and 1970s. Professor Kurt Rudolf Fischer, who was forced to flee from Austria during the Nazi era, and eventually reached the USA by way of Shanghai, was by this time Chairman of the Philosophy Department of Millersville State University, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At his invitation, in the years from 1968 to 1972 a succession of three philosophers from Vienna lectured at his department, with a full teaching load in each case: Michael Benedikt for two years, and Kurt Buchinger and Ludwig Nagl for one year each. As regards the more specific aims of the 2004 symposium, i. e. to draw on Kant’s thinking for contemporary discourse on the basis of an attentive reception of international research, significant preconditions for holding the event in Austria had already been established. This is exemplified by the volume entitled Zur Kantforschung der Gegenwart [Kant Research Today], published in 1981425, for which the editors, Peter Heintel und Ludwig Nagl, compiled a series of essays produced during the period between the two Kant anniversary years of 1954 (150th anniversary of the philosopher’s death) and 1974 (250th anniversary of his birth). For that volume too, the stated intention was to approach Kant “not only from a historical and philological perspective”.426 A significant part of the book is devoted to contributions showing that Kant had been appropriated, albeit in critical ways, across a diverse range of contemporary discourses: neoThomism, analytical philosophy, Marxism,427 existential theology and pragmatism. Accordingly, along with interpretative investigations of Kant’s three cri-
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tiques, by Dieter Henrich, Odo Marquard and Friedrich Kaulbach, for example, the volume includes contributions such as the essay Wittgenstein und Kant [Wittgenstein and Kant] by S. Morris Engel, translated into German specifically for this publication,428 and Karl-Otto Apel’s study Von Kant zu Peirce: Die semiotische Transformation der Transzendentalen Logik [From Kant to Peirce: the semiotic transformation of transcendental logic]. The book ends with a comprehensive article by Martin J. Scott-Taggart entitled Neuere Forschungen zur Philosophie Kants [Recent research on Kant’s philosophy], which compares and contrasts interpretations of Kant in the English-speaking countries and Continental Europe since 1954.429 Re-reading Kant in the light of contemporary problems had also been a longstanding research interest for of the two professors responsible for the 2004 symposium, Rudolf Langthaler and myself. Both of us had a keen interest in what we saw as the excessive demarcations against the thought of the Enlightenment characterising some positions in contemporary philosophy that have been articulated and widely received within and beyond the confines of academic discourse. The range of these demarcations includes a sweeping reservation against any notion of historical progress, the im-precisely argued discourse claiming the „death of the subject“, and the over-simplifying equation of Enlightenment thought with an anti-religious stance, which provides the basis for both scientism-focused arguments and calls from church circles for a return to pre-modern modes of thinking. Both Rudolf Langthaler and myself, taking slightly different approaches, have set out to highlight the subtle distinctions made by Kant, in order to arrive at a clearer definition of his ideas and explore their potential for forming a fuller understanding of life in the modern context.430 Jürgen Habermas has been a doubly important figure from this perspective, in that he shares these critical concerns regarding scientism, and also argues the need to recall and rethink some of the crucial distinctions in Kant’s philosophy of morality and religion. With the aim of engaging in a detailed debate with Jürgen Habermas on the content of his opening address at the 2004 symposium and on his writings on philosophy of religion in general, on 23–24 September 2005 another international conference was held in Vienna, again designed by Rudolf Langthaler and myself, this time under the auspices of the University of Vienna, which also provided the required lecture rooms. The idea for this second gathering originated from Jürgen Habermas himself. His opening presentation at the 2004 event had attracted a large audience, possibly reflecting the fact that, as he pointed out, this was the first time he had given a public lecture in Vienna. The baroque main building of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz, in whose main auditorium the lecture was held, had to be closed for a time for safety reasons. Since it was impossible to conduct any kind of serious discussion at
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such a large-scale event, Jürgen Habermas suggested holding a closed symposium on philosophical and theological issues, an idea we were delighted to take up and put into practice. A total of thirteen papers from a variety of philosophical and theological perspectives addressed the ideas expressed in Habermas’s lecture in 2004, and he continued the debate by formulating a detailed response to each of them. One of the main focuses of the discussion was “religion in modern society”, referring in particular to the possibility of, and need for, a „translation of religious potentials of meaning”, in the face of a paucity of „resources of meaning“. This also put the spotlight on the thesis formulated by Jürgen Habermas that “cultural and societal secularisation” results in a twofold learning process, which “forces the traditions of the Enlightenment and religious doctrines to reflect on their respective limits”. Another noteworthy feature of the gathering lay in repeated suggestions that elements of the “classics” of the philosophy of religion might be valuable for addressing problems of the present day. The thought of Immanuel Kant was cited from this perspective particularly in the presentations of Christian Danz, Rudolf Langthaler and Herta Nagl-Docekal, while post-Kantian religious concepts bearing Kant’s imprint featured in the contributions of Wilhelm Lütterfelds, Hans-Julius Schneider, Ludwig Nagl and Klaus Müller. Along with the text of the thirteen lectures presented at the symposium, the book Glauben und Wissen. Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas [Belief and Knowledge. A symposium with Jürgen Habermas]431 includes a detailed response by Habermas, written after the symposium, expressing his views on each presentation. This section of the book is entitled “Reply to objections, reaction to suggestions”.432 The first part of Habermas’s “reply” is devoted to the presenters’ objections and suggestions with regard to Kant.433 However the text as a whole is much more than a response to specific issues raised in the debate in Vienna – in fact, he used it as a further opportunity for a detailed exploration of the issue of religion in the context of modernity. The basis of his ideas is outlined as follows in the introduction: Both belief and knowledge belong to the genealogy of post-metaphysical thought, and hence to the history of reason. Therefore secular reason will only be able to understand itself if it can clarify its position vis-a-vis the by now reflexive consciousness of modernity, and understand the common origin of these two complementary forms of the intellect from the sudden cognitive advance of the axial age. In this way, taking Kant as our starting point, we can advance to a Hegelian questioning without giving up the Kantian mode of thought.434
The systematic and autonomous character of this “reply” is underlined by its inclusion in Habermas’s volume of essays entitled Nachmetaphysisches Denken II [Post-metaphysical thought II].435
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Fig. 25: Rudolf Langthaler, Herta Nagl-Docekal (ed.), Belief and Knowledge. A Symposium with Jürgen Habermas
Subsequent writings of the speakers at the „Belief and Knowledge“ symposium have addressed these issues in a variety of ways. A number of points raised at the symposium have also been taken up in recent studies by Maureen JunkerKenny, a theologist at Trinity College, Dublin, who attended the event as a nonspeaker.436 Those of the presenters who teach at the University of Vienna have continued the debates from the two Vienna symposia in their subsequent publications, focusing particularly on the current relevance of Kant’s thought.437 Presentations in recent years by guest lecturers from Vienna in Seoul, Beijing, Riga and St. Petersburg, for example, and the publications based on these lectures, are testimony to the international standing of the approaches to Kant discussed in Vienna. Translated by John Jamieson
Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold
The First Kantian – Reinhold, a Citizen of Vienna by Philipp Schaller and Violetta L. Waibel If one wishes to understand the conditions that enable an epochal change of thinking to occur, one has to examine history. Kant himself regarded the emergence of critical philosophy not simply as some kind of historical fact, but rather as the consequence of a real historical necessity – and therefore also as constituting one itself. Its emergence had to be preceded by a history of failure in the field of dogmatic metaphysics, and this first led the power of reason to an insight into the causes of this failure, as presented by Kant. Kant succeeded in convincing a sufficiently large number of people over a whole era that there was a necessity for a comprehensive critique of the whole power of reason, so that practically anyone who pursued philosophical questions, or who wanted to express an opinion about them, found it necessary to confront this criticism – its presuppositions and theses, its implementation and its results – and at least to take up some position, whatever it might be, on the subject. The manner in which Kant, in his works, grasped, evaluated and presented the intellectual situation in which the thought of the age found itself, and how, in the act of elucidating it, he at the same time also transformed that situation, testifies to the fact that select intellectual seeds were scattered on a fruitful historical soil. To this day, there is a power of conviction that emerges from his writings, the conviction of actually being able to do justice to such high requirements in some form or other, and it is probably this fact which causes many people not to place Kant in the same category as all the others who achieved prominence with an original theory and an attractive way of looking at things, and who are occasionally remembered – often only to be contradicted. In contrast, people associate with Kant something resembling a new orientation in philosophy, if not a completely new start for the subject. If there were any of Kant’s contemporaries
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Fig. 1: Peter Copmann, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (around 1821)
who exemplified such a perception of critical philosophy, and who regarded it as a significant event in the history of humanity, then it was Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Reinhold was born in Vienna, during a period of upheaval when the Enlightenment was beginning to take shape in Austria. He himself experienced this upheaval within his own person, and his persistence in the process eventually became existential: in order to be able to really participate body and soul in the new world view and lifestyle to which he had converted when still young, as a result of his study of philosophy, he was forced to put down roots in a new land. Reinhold was the type of intellectual whose extraordinary docility makes him highly application-oriented, insofar as that docility can be combined with passionate social commitment. At a tempo which was definitely too fast for the general surroundings of Vienna at that time, he raced through the transformation of world views that was continuing apace with the spread of the Enlightenment in Europe. Initially called to serve in the church, Reinhold made an intensive study of those forms of German and English philosophy which were
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opposed to ways of thinking that expressly strove to preserve certain dogmas, and which valued reason-based and scientifically-oriented knowledge instead. Reinhold consequently found himself, in the Austria of Joseph II, among the organised ranks of those who, in the name of the enlightenment of reason, the scientific approach and social progress, called into question the very foundations of the order represented by the church. By the time he was forced to leave Austria, Reinhold had therefore already delved deeply into the most serious philosophical problems of the period. Aided by the broad network of personalities who were committed to the cause of the Enlightenment, he soon found a new place to work in, namely Protestant Germany. This happened to be situated precisely in that little town which would lend its name to the whole culture of the emerging epoch, on account of its importance to it: Weimar, where Reinhold was amicably accepted by his future father-in–law, Christoph Martin Wieland, as a colleague on the latter’s newspaper. Reinhold’s study of the aforesaid problems, which had been prolonged by the grace of fate, was basically guided by the hope of developing a philosophy which, in a certain way, could provide answers to those questions which controversially sowed division among people of differing standpoints: answers which would not only help to create an intellectual consensus on the side of the supporters of the Enlightenment, but could also dispel the customary objections of their opponents, which took the form of a concern for existing morality and religion. The difficulties involved in maintaining the belief that such a hope could be fulfilled were considerable, and Reinhold spared himself no intellectual effort in doing so, drawing on his solid philosophical education and considerable knowledge of the prejudiced positions of the time, which had become interlocked in debate. It is all the more impressive, then, that Reinhold, when he finally managed to study Kant’s principal masterpiece, regarded it as nothing less than “the Gospel of Pure Reason”.1 Even if he was only “one of the first” of its supporters, Reinhold decided to make use of his skills as a journalist, particularly in the field of philosophy, in order to serve “like no other” the cause of propagating these glad tidings addressed to all the children of the Enlightenment. Thus is came about that the Austrian who had become a refugee on account of his love of philosophy, was obliged to actually reveal to the Germans for the first time that intellectual treasure, without which the ascent of its philosophy to the status of world philosophy would not have occurred as it did. Although Kant owed the first truly extensive recognition that his writings and ideas received to his discoverer Reinhold, the latter also profited from demonstrating his skillful use of popular language in bringing a master living in distant Königsberg closer to a wider audience. One began to perceive Reinhold as an authority on the subject of philosophy in his own right. His appointment as an
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associate professor at the university of neighbouring Jena initiated a revival which turned the university into the philosophical centre of Germany for several years. Students, poets and all kinds of prosperous representatives of the educated middle-classes, from a variety of countries, streamed to Jena or, if they were already there, then into Reinhold’s lecture hall, in order to receive instruction in the new, so-called Kantian-Reinholdian philosophy. That influence, which continued with Reinhold’s personal approach of total identification with the cause of the Enlightenment, led to the emergence of a circle of acquaintances whose members included the industrialist Herbert, originally also from Austria, who was prominent in providing a kind of hub for the movement and acting as a wealthy supporter of other committed intellectuals. The personalities involved in this circle not only exchanged views with Reinhold about Kantian philosophy, but also became inspired to action and undertook travels all over Europe, sometimes together with Herbert personally, sometimes only with his money : to Italy, Carinthia, Switzerland, Denmark and even to Königsberg, in order to visit the elderly master himself. Reinhold attracted droves of pupils who wanted to be introduced to the new philosophy and sought to disseminate the knowledge that they received through their intellectual activities in Germany, Austria and other countries in Europe. For a while, having entered into a correspondence with Kant himself, Reinhold even succeeded in enlisting the master’s support for his indefatigable network oriented towards strategies of enlightenment. However, as already indicated, in the final analysis (and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of all), there is much more to be learned from Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s relationship to Kant than simply how a thinker of Kant’s format must not only possess the power to engage in scholastic thinking, but also maintain a sound grasp of the intellectual difficulties of the time. After all, Reinhold’s life and work clearly also epitomise a remarkable idiosyncrasy of philosophy : namely, that every philosophy, however much power its creator may have over his own ideas, eventually follows its own destiny – one unforeseen by him – as far as its influence is concerned. Reinhold’s attempt to continue the thinking that Kant himself had previously practised illustrates, in a very special way, how the thoughts recorded by an author in his words and works, in happening to reach some of the many addressees, partly unknown to him, at just the right moment, might demonstrate and signify something which was not original intended as such by the author, yet which they might equally well be associated with. In this way, Reinhold was himself not only a pioneer of German philosophy, the path of which deviates from Kant’s intentions, but also its first trailblazer, since he sought to grasp Kant’s critical doctrine as something which in truth was not Kant’s at all, but rather his own, although it had only really become attainable
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for him through Kant’s achievements. At the same time, it goes without saying that Reinhold had done his utmost in performing the service of at least understanding Kant’s philosophy, and that the extent of this service was perceptible to Kant. However, for his part, Reinhold succeeded both in convincing others of the desirability of pursuing this subject, which, at bottom, is profoundly connected to his own personality and manifested in the path that his life took, and in persuading them of its presumed affinity with the new, critical philosophy. What was said about Kant at the outset therefore also applies to Reinhold himself, and even if it certainly does so to a lesser extent, his importance is nevertheless on a scale that is anything but insignificant. After all, there would otherwise not have been such an influential reception to Reinhold’s striving to secure ultimate justification for the results of Kantian philosophy, by tracing them back to a first, absolutely certain supreme principle, even though that striving might be due in part to a not unclouded understanding of Kant’s critical demands. After Reinhold moved to Kiel, which at that time was under Danish rule, and Fichte had, as it were, conquered the city of Jena, which had been turned into a fortress of Kantianism by Reinhold, he increasingly became forgotten by the world of philosophy. This state of oblivion was at best interrupted by the appearance on the scene of the new philosophical spokesmen Schelling and Hegel, who distanced themselves sharply from Reinhold’s concepts in relation to the designs of their systems. Nevertheless, without that striving, articulated by Reinhold in his own work, which he had linked to Kant’s critical philosophy and which had been adopted and modified by Fichte, neither Schelling nor Hegel would have set off on their own renowned paths. Translated by Peter Waugh
Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823) by Martin Bondeli Karl (Carl) Leonhard Reinhold was a key figure within early Kantianism. He was also an initiator and critic of German idealism as well as of philosophy of language active in the early 19th century. Born on 26 October 1757 in Vienna, Reinhold attended the Viennese College of Jesuits in 1772, the College of the Barnabites starting in 1773, and was ordained as a priest in 1780.2 From 1780 to 1783 he taught as the Master of Novices for Philosophy in the College of the Barnabites in Mistelbach and in Vienna. During this period he gradually moved into the centre of the Josephite reforms in Vienna. Along with Alois Blumauer, Joseph von Sonnenfels, Ignaz von Born and other academics and artists, he formed the literary circle of “Viennese Friends.” In 1783 he joined the illuminati-
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infiltrated Viennese Masonic Lodge, “For True Harmony” [Zur wahren Eintracht] and immediately climbed through the ranks from journeyman to master. He wrote numerous articles for their literary organ, the Journal for Freemasons. At the same time he became involved in the Viennese branch of the Illuminati and he also held a leading position thereafter for a short while. In 1784 he left Vienna hastily for reasons still not completely clarified. Through correspondence with branch lodges and with the accompaniment of Crusius-student Christian Friedrich Reinhold Petzold he first came to Leipzig, where he attended the lectures of Ernst Platner, going a short time later to Weimar. There Christoph Martin Wieland, also a prominent illuminati, gave him a new livelihood. Reinhold was an employee of Der Teutsche Merkur and co-editor of a General Women’s Library [Allgemeine Damenbibliothek]. In 1785 he married Wieland’s eldest daughter Sophie. Wieland was also the person who led him to convert to Protestantism under the care Johann Gottfried Herder. As his essays, already published in 1784 in Thoughts on the Enlightenment reveal, Reinhold, at the beginning of his Weimar period, was dedicated in striving to bring the Enlightment into effect both in the education of mind and thinking as well as in the cultivation of sense and sentiment. In this sense the reliance on classical rationalism was articulated in the task of “clearly illuminating confused concepts” and bound up in the need for concepts of return which have not been removed from “individual sensations, the driving impulses of all human activity.”3 During this phase Reinhold still had no mature knowledge of philosophy. During his Viennese period, when he came into contact with such classicists as Malebranche, Leibniz, Wolff, Locke, and Hume, he was then able to discover that none of these authors offered him a satisfyingly philosophical position. A moment of clarity came while working on der Teutsche Merkur, as he was drawn into the controversy triggered by Kant’s anonymously published critical review of the first part of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity (AA VIII, 43–55).4 After an anonymously written defense of Herder in Schreiben des Pfarrers zu *** against Kant’s attacks, Reinhold saw himself suddenly compelled to change his opinion, comporting himself with the reviewers as a man whose occupation might be “metaphysical orthodoxy.”5 In the course of his intensive reading of the Critique of Pure Reason, he found in Kant’s critical philosophy the motive which, over some ten years, should have lent his own philosophical view more solidity. From August 1786 to September 1787, he published a series of Letters on the Kantian Philosophy in Der Teutsche Merkur, which in short time led to his reputation of being a Kantian of the highest order. Shortly thereafter a friendly exchange of letters began with Kant lasting into the early 1790s. At the beginning of 1787, Reinhold was appointed Special Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jena. Together with Christian Gottfried Schütz, the
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founder of the Kant-friendly General Literary Journal [Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung], and Carl Christian Erhard Schmid, the author of the first Kant Lexicon, within this school, Reinhold belonged amongst the most renowned advocates of critical philosophy. At the end of 1786 Reinhold conceived of the idea of applying the results of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals to various areas and to work them out into a system. Working with this in the background, during his first years in which he taught in Jena he taught revised aspects of the system and from 1788 he taught in terms of the results of the Critique of Practical Reason and its enriched Kantian critique. Additionally, he also worked on questions on the doctrine of taste. He read about Wieland’s Oberon during his first years in Jena and spoke about – he would do so, last but not least with a sideways glance towards Kant’s still nascent Critique of Judgment – in the essay On the Nature of Pleasure [die Natur des Vergnügens] on the “loftiest former doctrines” as well as his evolving theory of aesthetic pleasure.6 At the end of the 1780s he increasingly freed himself from his earlier role as a mere apostle of Kantian evangelism and then went to work out a stand-alone system for the whole of theoretical and practical knowledge aimed at improving the findings of Kant. The result of this project, which Reinhold first designated as a “theory of the faculty of representation” and then from 1790 called “elementary philosophy,” “philosophy in general,” or “philosophy without titles,” found expression above all in the widely read Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation [Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens] (1789), in both volumes of the Contributions to the Correction of Previous Misunderstandings of Philosophers [Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen] (1790/1794) as well as in the piece On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge [Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens] (1791). His suggestion to give the Kantian system a more solid and broad foundation was taken up in earnest by more than a few authors who were broadening Kant’s teachings (e. g. Johann Heinrich Abicht), though his suggestion was critically deepened and developed further by the main exponents of German idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), while his suggestion was rejected out of hand and vehemently criticized by other philosophical contemporaries. From the late 1780s, Reinhold, like Kant, had to fend off a phalanx of neo-rationalists, led by Johann August Eberhard and the neo-empiricists, represented mainly by Johann August Heinrich Feder and Christoph Meiners, as well as neo-skeptics like Salomon Maimon and Gottlob Ernst Schulze. He also fought it out on more than one occasion with such allies of Kantian philosophy as his colleague Schmid or Ludwig Heinrich Jakob from Halle. He also had to battle with some willful figures from his numerous students in Jena. Because of these diverse criticisms, Reinhold saw himself again compelled to modify his attempt at a system. Although in the end he was not able to change the plans for elementary philosophy to the degree desired, Reinhold was all in all
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successful during his period in Jena, which lasted until 1794. He stood, much like Fichte and Schelling in the mid-1790s, in the limelight of philosophical renown, serving as the luminary of post-Kantian philosophy. His lectures were especially sought after – with Reinhold having taught in Jena on the Critique of Pure Reason and on his own system of elementary philosophy as well as on logic and metaphysics, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. He had talented students like Johann Benjamin Erhard and Karl Friedrich Forberg, who defended his teachings publicly. Through the recommendations of Jens Baggesens and Johann Kaspar Lavaters, Reinhold received an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel in the summer of 1793. In early 1794 he moved to Danish-ruled Kiel and became a follower of Johann Nicolaus Tetens there. He also became a new spiritual centre at his new workplace. His classes, including lectures on morality and natural law held regularly since the winter semester of 1794/1795, attracted further great interest. With his engagement in the enlightenment, he made essential contributions to Kiel’s opening a student Court of Honor in the spring of 1794 and its ability to be effective over a longer timespan. This institution, whose introduction at German universities failed because of the opposition of conservative forces, replaced the practice of dueling with resolving disputes by means of a regular trail.7 In 1802 as well as in 1806, Reinhold was the Rector of the University of Kiel. In 1808 he was named as an external member of the Munich Academy. In 1816 he was raised to the level of Royal Danish State Councilor I. Alongside this he also stepped up his activities in Illuminati circles. Since his time in Weimar he had become acquainted with Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, who followed Adam Weishaupt as head of the Illuminati, and after Bode’s death he personally managed the reorganization of the internally turbulent order that had been officially dissolved since the mid-1780s. In particular, he devised plans for the continuation of the Illuminati Enlightenment ideal in a “Moral Federation of the Agreed.” Soon the moral and no longer statutory or symbolic connection among the members would remain in the foreground. In 1820 he succeeded in once again reviving the Kiel lodge “Louise for Crowned Friendship” [Louise zur gekrönten Freundschaft], which he headed until shortly before his death. Although he remained unswayingly productive in the course of approximately three decades of activities in Kiel, Reinhold lost more and more of his central and autonomous position in the philosophical limelight. His unabated effort to develop a self-standing philosophical system completely failed to change the general opinion that considered him, above all, as a devotee of Fichte and secondly as a mere critic of post-Kantian systems. The first years in Kiel were affected by doubt about his own attempts at elementary philosophy, as well as from personal and subject-based quarrels with Fichte, his successor in Jena. After a long spiritual fight, Reinhold came to the
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view that the doctrine of science, which arose in critical opposition to elementary philosophy, would be able to clear up grave shortcomings in the latter. He recognized this in 1798 in a review of relevant works of Fichte on this subject. However, already a year later in his writings On the Paradoxes of the Most Recent Philosophy [Ueber die Paradoxien der neuesten Philosophie] and Letters sent to J.C. Lavater and J.G. Fichte [Sendschreiben an J. C. Lavater und J. G. Fichte] he took up a position between Fichte and Jacobi. From 1800 Reinhold’s faction aimed at a major realignment, which at the same time – also understood self-critically – should point to a distancing away the earlier philosophical movement from Kant to Fichte and Schelling. He turned to Christoph Gottfried Bardilis’ Outline for First Logic [Grundriß der Ersten Logik] (1800) and from 1801 in the Contributions to a Simple Overview of the Status of Philosophy at the Beginning of the 18th Century [Beyträge zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophie beym Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts] (1801–1803) he worked out a system of “logical” or “rational realism” on its foundations. This should be understood as an objective and realistic alternative to the idealism of the doctrines of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. This realignment promptly demanded a philosophical and personal break with Fichte and this required a firm, polemical argument with Schelling and Hegel. In fact, between Reinhold’s objective-realist notion of system and Schelling’s system of identity, significant affinities reveal themselves, especially with the latter, since the subjectively oriented idealism of Fichte called for correction through a corresponding contrary position. From 1806 until the end of his life, Reinhold most notably composed questions regarding philosophy of language that had immediately resulted out of the programme of his realist system. Next to the lesser writings, in 1812, the Groundwork for Synonymy [Grundlegung der Synonymik] appeared as the principal work of this final period. In 1820 Reinhold justified his insights into the philosophy of language also from the perspective of truth and public disclosure theory with his essay The Old Question: What is Truth? [Die alte Frage: was ist die Wahrheit?]. Also of essential significance here was his repudiated stance opposing newer speculative philosophy. Reinhold particularly criticized the linguistic representation model as well as the spirit-, rather than letter-, oriented thought of this trend. Reinhold’s last and, time-wise, longest philosophical chapter enjoyed only marginal resonance in public philosophical circles. Correspondingly, his protestations about having finally found, the proper philosophical perspective in the philosophy of language became increasingly monotonous and embittered. Reinhold died on 10 April 1823. Translated by James Garrison
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Preludes for a Kantian-Reinholdian Philosophy in Vienna by Philipp Schaller Presenting Reinhold’s “path from Josephine Enlightenment to Kantian rational belief as being the consistent development of a unitary problem”8 was the declared goal of the chapter that Werner Sauer devoted to the Viennese-born philosopher in his book Austrian Philosophy between Enlightenment and Restoration [Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration]. In 1886 and 1887, while working on the Teutscher Merkur, edited with his stepfather Christoph Martin Wieland in Weimar, Reinhold published his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy [Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie] and thereby made an essential contribution to their breakthrough in Germany, where he was prompted to see in this novel philosophy precisely what he had begun to seek in the Vienna of Joseph II and his enlightened absolutism.
Fig. 2: Personal record in the monastery files with a note about Reinhold’s death
Karl Leonhard Reinhold was born in Vienna on 26 October 17579. His father served as a junior officer in Maria Theresa’s army during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) before being employed as an inspector at the Vienna Arsenal as a result of an injury that made him unfit for further military service.10 Reinhold’s lively religious sense was awakened, above all, by his mother. This allowed him to take up a spiritual way of life, which was predestined for him as
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the eldest son of his parents, just as much as it was foreordained by his soon evident literary abilities and philosophical talents. As their further development eventually sparked enthusiasm in him for Enlightenment thought, the spiritual way of life became alien, while religiosity remained for him a problem in the form of reconciling it with his intellectual convictions. After attending secondary school and before his fifteenth birthday in the autumn of 1772, Reinhold counted the Jesuits among his teachers, who soon became aware of his talents and took him up as a novice in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit school). The brothers of the order, founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola, came to Vienna in 1551. In 1573 they took over the Pilgrim’s Church of St Anna, which was presumably founded in 1514 (and which recently celebrated its fifth centennial). It was almost abandoned following the first Turkish siege of Vienna (1529) as the stream of pilgrims stayed away.11 After two hundred years of supervision by the Jesuits, who at the time were educating up to ninety novices, the order was annulled by a papal bull issued by Pope Clement XIV, less than a year after Reinhold’s entry into the Society of Jesus at St Anna. This decree coincided with the expectation of a terrible event amongst the members of the order, and it was on account of this that the Father Rector instructed the teachers and the novices to petition the adorned Holy Virgin Mary for hours – although it would turn out to be pointless. The young Reinhold summarized the annulment of the order as a punishment of God and attributed it to the novices’ halfheartedness as well as his own. Nevertheless, he could not reconcile the decision of the Pope with his infallibility, until the Rector consolingly explained to him that this was not ex cathedra (from the papal throne), but rather ex curia and thereby presumably fell under the auspices of worldly wisdom. So he then had to return to his parents’ home where he declared to his father, testifying to his continuing devotion to monastic principles: “I will live in the world in order to live without the world.”12 The novices were given the hope that the order might be brought back to life, giving them hope that they should wait before entering into another one. However, in the same year Reinhold sought admission to the Barnabite Collegium, and this came to pass the following year in 1774. This order, founded in Milan in 1536, was named after the Church of St. Barnabas and along with the Jesuit order, played its role in the Counter-Reformation and, since 1626, had its Viennese location in St. Michael’s Church. The order was not monastically oriented and had even performed services for the sciences. After he had converted to the Protestant faith while in Germany, Reinhold, in his work on the Honorable Rescue of the Reformation [Ehrenrettung der Reformation], also granted such a title to the Barnabites. The proponent of the Enlightenment considered it necessary to declare that this order promoted the growing demand for education in the humanities rather than hemming it in.13
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His son Ernst, who, like his father, himself was a Professor of Philosophy in Jena, described the course of study taken up by Reinhold while he was with the Barnabites: The sciences, in which the novices and the young ordained chaplains, as long as they were in possession of the lower ordinations, were instructed by a number of men highly-qualified for these posts, were divided first in a so-called curriculum of philosophy and in one of theology following thereafter. A period of three years was necessary for each.14
Reinhold made such a positive impression on the order’s superiors with his knowledge and assiduous study, that he was recommended to the Archbishop of Vienna and was designated Master of Novices and Teacher of Philosophy. From 1780, after the completion of his theology course of studies, he himself taught the novices logic, metaphysics, ethics, spiritual rhetoric, mathematics and physics. In this same year he was ordained as a Catholic priest under the name “Don Pius”.
Fig. 3: Michaelerplatz, Vienna, shot of Michaeler Church from Schauflergasse (around 1900)
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Reinhold’s studies had made him particularly knowledgeable in LeibnizianWolffian philosophy, which agreed with the epistemological premises of modern thought in natural science, while at the same time he also sought to resolve the problem of agreement between the doctrines of religious revelation with the kind of reason valorized by both rationalist thinkers. His teacher at the Barnabite Collegium, Paul Pepermann, imparted Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy to him according to the version of his predecessor, Sigismund Storchenau, whose position was far from the Enlightenment and who undertook adaptations in favour of church beliefs instead of developing the Enlightenment potential of this philosophy.15 This occurred more forcibly in the case of certain professors at the University of Vienna, for example, the ex-Jesuit Joseph Ernst Mayer (1752–1810). He taught the Leibniz-Wolffian system in Latin, following in the footsteps of Friedrich Christian Baumeister and, from 1779, with Anton von Scharf (1753–1803, who taught in the modern style, following Johann Georg Heinrich Feder). Both already found themselves in the faction of the Enlightenment representing a religious rationalism and belonging to the Viennese Free Masons for True Unity.16 During the second half of the eighteenth century, the mathematician, physicist, and former Jesuit Rugjer (Ruder) Josip Bosˇkovic´ (Roger Joseph Boscovich, 1711–1787) worked in the field of natural science amongst others in Vienna, where he wrote a book rejecting the predominantly mechanistic and atomistic view of nature in which he anticipated the dynamism of Kant, whom he may have influenced. He also anticipated Kant’s concept of matter.17 Through Pepermann, who grew up in England, Reinhold also learned the English language and was introduced to the English poets and philosophers and, above all, Leibniz’s opponent Locke. An awakended passion for poetry brought Reinhold into contact with the Viennese poet Michael Denis, 1729–1800 (Pseudonym: Sined the Bard), who also belonged to the Jesuit order. He entered the circle of the upcoming generation of Enlightenment-oriented writers, amongst whom were Johann Baptist von Alxinger (1755–1797) and Aloys Blumauer (1755–1798), known to him since his school days. In this environ, Reinhold also made the acquaintance of other future Illuminati. Among these was the leader of the Academy of Graphic Arts, Privy Councillor Joseph Baron von Sonnenfels (1732–1817), who came to Vienna from Moravia and was not only a secret Illuminati member, but also the Director of City Lighting. He made a considerable contribution to the Austria of Maria Theresa’s reign, which was the first of the European monarchies to abolish torture. Today a street in the Inner City District of Vienna is named after Sonnenfels. Another of Reinhold’s Illuminati acquaintances was the prestigious mineralogist and geologist Ignaz Edler von Born (1742–1791) who had also been a Jesuit.18 He, as Worshipful Master of the Viennese Freemason Lodge for True
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Unity, significantly increased its membership. It was under his leadership that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) joined the Freemasons’ Society, and it is alleged that von Born was the model for Sarastro as the epitome of Illuminatism in the opera The Magic Flute.19 In December 1780 the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa, died in Vienna. Her son Joseph II, who had been the Holy Roman Emperor since 1765, followed her to the throne of the Danube monarchy. A changeover took place from a reign based on the thought of the Counter-Reformation to one oriented towards an enlightened absolutism (with the motto “Everything for the people, nothing through the people”). The Emperor’s politics were within the framework of pragmatic reforms, amongst others connected with controversially viewed limitations of the clergy. At the same time he introduced a far-reaching freedom of the press in Austria, under which friends of literature and poetry, in whose midst Reinhold found himself, came together. The Emperor did this in order to serve the new freedom of thought and conscience and to fight superstition and raving, whose harmful sources were identified primarily within the monastic orders.20
Fig. 4: Freemasons’ lodge, Vienna (1785)
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While Reinhold breathed in the spirit of the Enlightenment in this environment, he was occupied with philosophy and metaphysics along with the deep entrenchment of dogmatic church belief, yet he began to question the sense of cloistered existence, although it was expected of him on account of his calling. Although he was outwardly a member of the ecclesiastical sphere, he was devoted to the world, to the sense of a life active for the new ideal of the Enlightenment of reason. He put his thought into the service of this end, and as a writer began to give it a voice. In the autumn of 1782, his friend, the writer Blumauer, had assumed the position of editor of the Wiener Realzeitung from the aforementioned Professor of Philosophy von Scharf, who was a founding member of the lodge to which Blumauer belonged. This lodge was considered the replacement of the Academy of Sciences originally planned for Vienna by Leibniz, which he instead founded in 1700 in Prussia as the German Academy of Sciences.21 Thanks to his friendship with Blumauer, Reinhold could now use the signature “Dr.” (the first and last letters of Reinhold’s last name), and his works became more accessible to a much wider circle than before. From October onwards, the column of “Theology and the Church” printed articles that were written by the 25 year-old. Following the editorial policy, Reinhold wrote in favour of the reforms of Joseph II and against the resistance of the clergy. In his writings – undiscovered up until now – he also condemned monastic life, adverse to nature and reason, which he was required to lead by the church to which he belonged. It could not have taken long before Reinhold secretly entered into the other order (alongside the order of the Barnabites) in which he, along with his editor, already found many other friends and ex-Jesuits, and where being a member, in the case of a Catholic priest, meant leading a double life. Reinhold’s written request to Blumauer to support him in entering the Free Masons, where he wanted to unite again with the “chain of humanity,” from which he had been “torn” because he belonged to the clergy, clearly shows how he understood himself: You know that my education was my first and most important occupation for many years. I certainly sinned against the laws and requirements of a calling which prizes as blessed what is simple in spirit and makes it a duty for a humble soul to rest in the bosom of ignorance; but I thereby had the advantage that I drove the educational enterprise of my soul with all the greater zeal, and perhaps with all the quicker success, because my spirit wrapped itself around enlightenment and truth as forbidden fruits.22
The Freemason Lodge for True Unity, which he probably joined in 1782, or at the latest in the early months of 1783,23 under the cover name of Decius, was part of a union which devoted itself to the moral reshaping of society through the co-
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ordinated acts of its members, and whose intentions and ideas of freemasonry, which they themselves reinforced in secret meetings through the performance of common rituals, were to be implemented through their official posts and functions. Under the protection of secrecy, it would ideally be possible to override the unfortunate and obligatory distinctions of profession and confession within the organization.24 Looking at the truths and mysteries made accessible to the insiders, in principle it can be said that though they were outwardly Protestants or Catholics, they secretly shared a belief and a confession. Under the leadership of von Born, the Lodge prospered as a meeting point for the intellectual elite in Vienna. During Reinhold’s membership, the German writer of the Enlightenment, Goethe’s brother-in–law and later Kant critic, Johann Georg Schlosser (1739–1799) joined it,25 and, a little later, Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) found himself amongst its members, where his friend Mozart, who belonged to the Lodge for Beneficence, often accompanied him. Reinhold made an extraordinarily rapid career ascent in the order and only a few months after his acceptance by the Freemasons, he was also accepted into the elite Illuminati order, in which he soon attained the rank of “illuminatus minor”. He was now able to develop his talent for writing in the order’s own journal. Reinhold’s peculiar development, not to speak of his transformation, led to two problems. The first problem concerned the outward circumstances of his life and had to be dealt with within these circumstances: his double life. The second was more of an inward problem of his thought: It determined the orientation of his thought and therefore points out Reinhold’s philosophical method of looking at a problem. Reinhold’s first problem lay in his priestly vows: While his new ideal of life strengthened him inwardly, awareness of the irreconcilability of his change of heart with the outward circumstances of his life must have forced Reinhold to find himself a quick solution for everything. His son Ernst summarized the serious situation, which Reinhold faced after he became ill-disposed to priesthood: Reinhold had quickly developed the characteristics of an adroit thinker and a tasteful writer under the influence of these advantageous circumstances, such that he was directly set from the beginning of his youthful years as an adult on a life of lively and hope-filled activity for the higher interests of humanity. However, at the same time he became more and more encumbered and burdened by the disconnection between the professional duties of his inward and outward person. With a clear view seeing through the invalidity and inadmissibility of the priestly vows, he could find no insurmountable obstacle in them to once again take possession of the innate human rights, which he had now recognized the value of, having not understood what he had foregone at an age when he knew not what he was doing. (…) Reinhold therefore decided to escape the
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fetters of his calling and to secure for himself natural freedom and a situation fit for his mode of thought in a Protestant land.26
The necessary solution for this problem could thus only be found in fleeing. Reinhold had meanwhile decided to live in the world, and he had to pursue the path of flight from his vows in order to be able to live in the world and fulfil this goal. It was high time: The dissolution of his priestly existence was already underway, and Reinhold had fallen in love with a woman.27 Chance had it that an opportunity presented itself to him through the freemason network in the form of a Professor from Leipzig named Petzold who was visiting Vienna. Having agreed earlier, while on an excursion northwest of Vienna during the autumn holidays, Reinhold covertly jumped onto Petzold’s carriage, allowing himself to be abducted to Leipzig. Although he had originally wished to return, Reinhold never saw Vienna again. In Germany, friendship, love, and fame were awaiting him. He kept in contact with the friends left behind through von Born, to whom he continued to send articles for the Journal, and he also remained in contact with Pepermann until his death. From Jena he not only attracted many Austrians who came to study philosophy with him. Friends, such as Denis and Alxinger, apparently also paid him visits.28 Reinhold was dearly missed in Vienna. The circle around von Born worked hard to free their brother mason from the obligations of his vows and ensure him impunity in order to organize the speedy return of their friend. In the monastery archives of the Barnabites it was meanwhile recorded that Don Pius had been “secretly abducted by an evil spirit” over night.29 For the second problem there was still time to be had. Reinhold was to continue working on this in his new home. Later, he admitted that someone else had resolved the problem, assuring him in a letter that the latter had become through his work “the best and greatest benefactor that one person has been and could be to another”.30 This problem concerned creed, the basis of which had become questionable to Reinhold. Although he had easily, with emancipatory determination, abandoned the unquestioning acceptance of the dogmata and their validity, namely concerning the monastic vows and the requirement for a celibate life, in order to take up the position of rational enlightenment, the problem remained that this still offered him no new satisfactory basis for religion and creed. In Vienna, Reinhold had already dedicated his thought, fortifying it in Jena with a view to the task of making genuine Enlightenment distinguishable from a misused concept of it, which played into the hands of its opponents. As long as reason was not be able to show how religion was based on it, infidelity (false enlightenment) and superstition (irrational monastic doings) seemed to mutually strengthen themselves in Reinhold’s eyes. The ship of reason, constantly in great
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peril, sought a safe harbour, where true belief would be allowed to take hold, but it had to try to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. At the time, Reinhold still could not comprehend how reason in itself could find the right coordinates to navigate successfully around both monsters in order to reach its goal.
Fig. 5: Note on Reinhold’s escape from Sta. Margharita in the monastery files
Reinhold’s thought had took on its basic characteristics and orientation during his time in Vienna, when he was living between the Catholic counterreformation and the Josephine Enlightenment, between monastic life and freemasonry, between the priesthood and Illuminatism, and he began an intensive study of the major works of philosophy. His engagement with thought, oriented under these circumstances, was to determine his future personal fate. This was connected not only with critical philosophy, the early reception of which Reinhold had moulded and understood in terms of his own personal constellation of philosophical problems, but also played an essential role in then nascent history of the philosophy of German Idealism. Translated by James Garrison
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Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Weimar Years 1784–1787 by Guido Naschert When Karl Leonhard Reinhold climbed into the carriage of the Leipzig professor Christian Friedrich Petzold (1743–1788) in Vienna in November 1783, in order to travel with him to Saxony, he was fleeing neither upon his own initiative, nor into the unknown. Rather, he already had various contacts in the area of Saxony, a fact which encouraged him in the hope that he would soon be able to establish himself there. Above all, Ignatz von Born (1742–1791), the Master of the Illuminati order in Vienna, was working to ensure Reinhold’s protection as a member of his lodge. Once in Leipzig, Reinhold was finally informed by von Born that he would be receiving money in order to travel to Weimar “where you should live under the protection and in the company of Wieland, until we here have either obtained your unpunished return, or your order has been dissolved.”31 In the general perception of Reinhold’s career, the years in Weimar are often overshadowed by his subsequent time in Jena, since in the town on the River Saale he elaborated his philosophical system in detail, published it in voluminous books and discussed its controversial points among an important circle of disciples. Yet during the three comparatively contemplative years which he spent living in the close proximity of Christoph Martin Wieland,32 he realigned both his thought and life in several ways. Firstly, under the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), he converted to Protestantism only a few months after his arrival on 1st May 1784. Secondly, he was able to establish himself both professionally and privately with astonishing rapidity, being firstly appointed a councillor for Saxony-Weimar by Duke Carl August in 1785 and then, not long afterwards, on Whit Monday of the same year, marrying Wieland’s daughter Sophie. On the day before the wedding, his future father-in–law described Reinhold’s situation as follows: Just a brief word, my dearest brother, about my new son-in–law. His name is Reinhold, he was born in Vienna, and he has followed strange and remarkable paths, yet without being an adventurer, and although only 26 years old, he used to be and still is a favourite of some of the best people in Vienna, in particular the quite admirable Court Councillor v. Born (who is also one of my closest and most devoted friends) and has to date already been invested as a councillor of our town by the good Duke. I have arranged for him to live comfortably & c. for several years from a moderate literary occupation, without it being necessary to appoint him to an office. He is staying at my house and it will be difficult for us to part, unless there is not enough room for both of us, or I make room by travelling to another part of the world.33
However, the “moderate literary occupation” of which Wieland speaks here, was anything but idleness. Wieland needed the talented Reinhold as an editor, re-
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viewer and innovative author for his literary magazine The German Mercury.34 Through this work he came into contact with numerous publishers, contributors and friends of Wieland, such as Georg Joachim Göschen (1752–1828), Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747–1822), Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811) and Christian Gottfried Schütz (1747–1832). In addition, “to earn his daily bread”35 Reinhold translated the Universal Library for Ladies (6 volumes, Leipzig 1786–1789) from the French for Wieland, while continuing, at the invitation of his patron von Born, to submit written elaborations of his Vienna lodge speeches to the freemasons’ Journal der Freimaurer.36 Already in the July 1784 issue of Der Teutscher Merkur, Reinhold presented the German public with his Gedanken über Aufklärung37 [Thoughts on the Enlightenment]. From then on, he used his texts to castigate the belief in miracles and emphasise the advantages of Freemasonry in comparison with the monastic system, establishing his proximity to the programme of the Illuminati through his philosophy of history and the effort to establish an (albeit elitist-driven) popular enlightenment. His public image as a journalist must be understood within the context of his clandestine work in the secret society, since he rose rapidly to the innermost leadership circles of the order in Weimar.38 As early as September 1783, Reinhold had been initiated by Blumauer as an ‘Illuminatus minor’, adopting the alias of ‘Decius’, and becoming a member of the Viennese Minerval Church. He then became friends with influential leaders such as Johann Joachim Christoph Bode (1730–1793),39 who even became the godfather of his daughter Karoline Friederike (born in 1789), and he grew still more deeply involved in the discussion culture in the secret order. Further important members included not only Duke Ernst II of Gotha and Duke Carl August of Weimar, but also Herder and Goethe. Later, Reinhold also became involved in a largescale project of reforming the order, the development of which he himself continued after Bode’s death under the name of the Bund der Einverstandenen (‘Union of Consenters’). It was not only questions of general popular enlightenment that were discussed among the Illuminati, but also the latest developments in the new philosophy. This was of no small significance for Reinhold’s third realignment, his turning towards Kant. Although there was at first broad opposition to him among the Illuminati philosophers (for instance Feder, Meiners, Knigge, Weishaupt and Herder), the first voices, led by Schack Hermann Ewald (1745–1822), who has recently been rediscovered by Horst Schröpfer,40 began to break away from this phalanx in the mid-1780s. Reinhold knew Ewald as a fellow-contributor to Der Teutscher Merkur. The fronts between the Illuminati and the non-Illuminati, the Kantians and the anti-Kantians did, therefore, overlap, although this did not stand in the way of an amicable exchange of opinion between the disputants.41 It is therefore perhaps not by chance that the
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first letter in which Reinhold summarised the results of his early Kant studies and outlined the programme of his Letters, was addressed to Councillor Christian Gottlob Voigt (1743–1819), a member of the Weimar Illuminati, who wished to receive more precise details of Reinhold’s evaluation of Kantian philosophy.42 However, the discovery of Kant did not occur in a straightforward manner. When the Königsberg philosopher anonymously attacked Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity], a loyal supporter of Herder was sought in Weimar. In his Schreiben des Pfarrers zu *** [Writings of the Priest of…],43 Reinhold took up Herder’s defence, yet without knowing exactly whom he was up against. He accused Kant of being a metaphysician himself and claimed that he should have deferred his criticism of Herder’s assumption of organic forces until the unresolved issues had been elucidated. Kant insisted on replying to such oversimplified argumentation and annoyed Reinhold to such an extent that the latter subsequently relativised his support for Herder, his brother in the Illuminati.44 In autumn 1785, Reinhold embarked on his study of the Critique of Pure Reason. This was also related to a rivalry with Christian Gottfried Schütz (1747–1832), who had just reviewed the Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft [Elucidations on Professor Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason] by the Königsberg court preacher Johann Schultz (1730–1805).45 Whether the intensive re-readings, of which Reinhold himself spoke, really began as early as is usually presumed, has recently been called into question by Ernst Otto Onnasch.46 However, only one year later, in August 1786, Reinhold became one of the most important proponents of Kantian philosophy with the publication of his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy] in Der Teutscher Merkur : The precise intention with which I began to write my Letters on the Kantian Philosophy […] was to encourage and prepare more people to read the Critique of Reason. […] I did not want to scare my readers more than invite them: to that end I was left with no alternative but to reveal the most conspicuous results of the C. of R., and to expound upon them in relation to their external causes, derived not at all from Kant’s works, but rather from the contemporary state of philosophy, and the most pressing scientific and ethical needs of our time.47
The previously ambiguous and wavering positions of his Viennese and early Weimar period, which had even included sympathy for the materialistic radical Enlightenment, seem to have been clarified. As he wrote to Kant in a letter dated 12 October 1787, it was above all the “moral basis for knowing the fundamental truths of religion”, which gave him the means “to be freed from the deplorable alternatives of superstition and disbelief.”48 In the case of Reinhold, one can
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examine, paradigmatically, the fascination of the idea of the existence of a third way between the extremes thrown up by the radical Enlightenment. However, still greater attention must be paid precisely to Reinhold’s gradual turning towards Kantian philosophy in Weimar, as well as in the discursive setting of the Illuminati in Saxony, in order to have a better understanding of the steps that he took there towards elaborating his theory of the faculty of human representation and his programme of a new elemental philosophy. On 1 May 1787, Bode departed on his memorable journey to Paris, which subsequently earned the order the reputation of having triggered the French Revolution through a conspiracy. Two weeks beforehand, Duke Carl August had announced Reinhold’s appointment as a professor in Jena. In June 1787 he moved to Jena, and started his professorship there in the Michaelmas term of the same year with a lecture about the influence of taste on the culture of the sciences and on morals. The secret society had been involved in this appointment too.49 Translated by Peter Waugh
Reinhold’s Letters on the Kantian Philosophy by Martin Bondeli In a detailed letter written to Weimar government councillor Christian Gottlob Voigt in November 1786, just before his appointment to the staff of Jena University, Reinhold says that his future intentions are to further explore the principal results of Kant’s critique of reason both in terms of “internal” aspects, lying within the “structure of the Kantian system itself”, and on the basis of “external” considerations, arising “from the current situation of philosophy and the most pressing scholarly and moral needs of our time”.50 Whereas the “internal” focus was to lead to Reinhold’s formulation of his post-Kantian system of elementary philosophy a few years later, his outward-focused intentions referred to pragmatic efforts on behalf of the Enlightenment that had already been in train for some months, including on the publication of his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy], which had begun to appear in August 1786. Their stated aim was to disseminate and defend central results of Kant’s philosophy, and in fact the Letters represent Reinhold’s efforts to put Kant’s ideas into practice, in order to bring about salutary transformations in culture and society, in short, to advance the cause of the Enlightenment in the spirit of Kant’s ideas. In the months up to September 1787, eight essays by Reinhold, under the title Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, appeared in the Teutscher Merkur journal. The initially anonymous author enjoyed great success with these tracts, and two years later a pirated edition of the collected essays was circulating. However the
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Fig. 6
title Letters on the Kantian Philosophy refers to more than just these essays, since the author intended this to be the title of a major work continuing the discussion, while the actual outcome was a series that continued under this title for half a decade. In 1790 Reinhold published a first volume of the letters, containing not only the extensively revised earlier essays, but also further texts commenting on the recent developments and upheavals that had redefined the spirit of the age. This was followed in 1792 by an imposing second volume comprising twelve essays written in 1791 and 1792.51 It should however be noted that the Letters do not exclusively fit into the context of an Enlightenment project of the type mentioned above. Some of these texts are rather focused on philosophical system concerns. And some of the essays in the second volume of 1792, particularly
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those discussing morality, natural right and free will, represent substantive contributions to public debate that can clearly be placed in the context of Reinhold’s efforts to elaborate on the practical component of his elementary philosophy. His initial characterisation of the Letters as addressing Kant’s teachings in terms of external considerations becomes less apposite with regard to the second volume.
Fig. 7: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Letters on Kantian Philosophy
Given Reinhold’s declared intention of addressing the needs of the time, it comes as no surprise to see repeated explicit statements on, and allusions to, the burning philosophical and theological controversies of the day in the Letters. Particularly on issues of the philosophy of history, these can often be seen as
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postscripts to the dispute between Kant and Herder, in which Reinhold himself had been directly embroiled. And a series of pronouncements on the subject of reason- or morality-based religion hark back to the “What is Enlightenment?” debate launched in the Berlinischer Monatsschrift monthly, the “Fragmentists” dispute associated with the name of Lessing, and the debate on Spinoza between Jacobi and Mendelssohn. However the actual concern addressed by the essays, right from the outset, was to identify the principal obstacles and opportunities for the religious, moral and political Enlightenment. The spirit of orthodoxy was proving more tenacious than expected, and Reinhold was also troubled by the factional discord within the camp of Enlightenment supporters and the lack of consensus on questions of principle, which in his view were frustrating all attempts to advance the cause of reason and freedom. All in all, the picture of the situation painted by the author of Letters on the Kantian Philosophy would have been a sombre and pessimistic one, were it not for his simultaneous proclamation of the “good news” that ways and means were now to hand for freeing the enlightened spirit from the turmoil of hostility, unsubstantiated opinion and factional squabbling. Kant was the Messiah, and these ways and means were to be found in his Critique of Pure Reason, elevated by Reinhold to the status of “gospel of pure reason”.52 He therefore saw making the main results of the critique of reason available to a wider audience of scholars and independent thinkers as a task of the utmost importance. In its initial phase, Reinhold’s Kantianism had a decidedly religious and social utopian aspect, anticipating nothing less than a new, Kantian age of human history. Yet there was also a clear-headed awareness of the ideological function of philosophical systems and the possibility of advancing the interests of the Enlightenment through unification philosophy. According to Reinhold’s point of view, Kant in his most important work above all demonstrates an outstanding ability to identify philosophical misunderstandings and thereby address systemological oppositions: dogmatism versus scepticism, rationalism versus empiricism, materialism versus spiritualism, determinism versus indeterminism, for example, in some cases unmasking them as oppositions in appearance only, in others overcoming them by showing a “third path”. Accordingly Reinhold does not agree with Mendelssohn that Kant’s critical theory “reduces everything to pulp”.53 On the contrary, Reinhold argues: the declared intention was to settle disputes on systems and theories not on the battlefield of controversy, but in the “courtroom” of pure reason, thereby securing “perpetual peace” within the domain of speculative reason.54 In particular, Reinhold drew attention to the potential for critical reconciliation that lay within Kant’s formulation of moral theology as the foundation for reason-based faith that was outlined in Kant’s principal work, then set out in greater detail in the theory of postulates in Critique of Practical Reason. According to Reinhold, by providing
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this new foundation for reason-based faith, Kant had produced convincing arguments showing that the philosophical and theological dichotomy between naturalism and supernaturalism could now be regarded as overcome. This he saw as completely undermining the classical rationalist and empirical variants of reason-based religion on the one hand, and on the other the extreme faith-based religion that Reinhold identified with Blaise Pascal, and, as more recent proponents, the so-called “Lavater” faction (Johann Kaspar Lavater, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Thomas Wizenmann, Johann August Starck). This enabled Reinhold to claim, as Kant himself had already hinted in his essay Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? [What does to orient oneself in thinking mean?], published in 1786, with regard to the dispute between Mendelssohn and Jacobi, that “the issue had actually been decided several years before the conflict broke out.”55 In 1788, Reinhold, on the vexed issue of the existence of God, undertook a closer scrutiny of the factional camps, which were clearly open to criticism in the light of Kant’s moral theological position. He identified four factions that were now to be regarded as obsolete, since they either accepted or rejected God’s existence on a dogmatic basis. Along with naturalism and supernaturalism, he now brought the positions of materialism (or Spinozism) and of scepticism, deriving from Hume’s ideas, into the debate. Kant’s morality-based argument for God’s existence was defended as the only correct position, as against the theses of “dogmatic scepticism”, “supernaturalism”, “atheism” and “dogmatic theism”.56 After 1789, the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution, Reinhold was confronted with a sharper polarisation of Enlightenment supporters and proponents of orthodoxy, and also with a far more radical form of enlightened religion, morality and politics. The subject of discord was the question of the abolition of the feudal state with its “estates”, and the introduction of human rights and the sovereignty of the people, as called for by supporters of the Enlightenment and the revolution. As a result, as time went on the subject-matter of the Letters on the Kantian Philosophy became less and less restricted to matters relating solely to Kant’s moral theology. In the second volume of 1792, the focus shifted to the concepts of morality and right, with the formulation of an interpretation of natural right and positive right that was clearly based on Kant’s concept of morality. In Reinhold’s view it was essential to counter the “vagueness and ambiguity surrounding the notion of natural right”57 in the minds of ordinary people and scholars, and thereby provide those championing the cause of natural right with a starting point that would be convincing and acceptable to all. He also argued the importance of clarifying what sociopolitical consequences should attach to the assertion of natural right, and the positive right to be subsumed within it. Reinhold saw himself as a supporter of natural right to the
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extent that it promoted the definitive breakthrough of inalienable human rights. But he criticised the natural right position where it adopted the more radical view that equated the much talked of “third estate” with human society as a whole, rendering the former first two estates, or even any kind of estate-based state, superfluous. Conversely, Reinhold supported the positive right faction when it argued that the estates could not be abolished, and opposed it when it declared human rights null and void. On this basis, Reinhold took up arms both against ‘dilettante’ supporters of the revolution and against dyed-in-the-wool conservatives and patriots devoid of any cosmopolitan understanding. In their regard, Reinhold faced opposition from spokesmen for conservatism like Justus Möser, the author of polemic articles against the introduction of human rights published in 1790 and 1791 in Berlinische Monatsschrift.58 His main opponent on this issue was, however, August Wilhelm Rehberg. As from 1790, Rehberg acquired a profile as a constant critic of the new French concepts of the state, as well as vehemently attacking Reinhold’s elementary philosophy whenever the occasion arose.59 Subsequently he also saw himself in the role of the conservative antipode of Kant and Fichte. As regards the level on which the Letters were a reflection on philosophical system concerns accompanying the Enlightenment programme, it is worth noting that Reinhold, inspired by Kant’s dicta on faith in an “existence of God and in a future life”60 that was founded on morality, already in the first volume of the Letters succeeds in formulating a principle- and system-based concept. The insight that there is a “moral foundation for cognition” that is intimately linked with religious ideas or practical postulates of God’s existence is seen as constructing a template for a future Kantian philosophical system. “With the foundation of cognition in morality”, Reinhold wrote in early 1787, “the critique of reason has given theology a ‘first principle’. In this way, with morality-based cognition it is able to provide the whole of ontology and metaphysics with a first principle, since just as the moral foundation of cognition is the only foundation that withstands the test, the notions that ontology, cosmology and physical theology contribute to the structure of the teachings of pure theology at once receive content, cohesion and full definition.”61 Subsequently, however, rather than maintaining this system concept, Reinhold constructed his Kantian system of philosophy (elementary philosophy) on the basis of the faculty of representation and the principle of consciousness. Reinhold’s earlier intentions could well have been thwarted by Kant’s statements on the theory of postulates in the Critique of Practical Reason, which appeared in 1788, since these clearly revealed postulates to be subsidiary concepts with only subjective or hypothetical certainty, and therefore unable to provide the robust structure of the system that Reinhold was anxious to arrive at. However the change of direction can also clearly be attributed to the fact that around 1787
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Reinhold began to focus more intensively on system-related issues of theoretical critique of reason, including in particular a closer analysis of Kant’s concept of the faculty of cognition, from a system-related and historical perspective. In the last two letters in the first volume, Reinhold expresses the view that Kant, with his theses arguing that along with empirical sensuality there was a pure sensuality, and that sensuality was a receptive form of the faculty of representation, had formulated an insight that since the days of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics had either lain concealed, or been articulated only in vague and one-sided terms. Accordingly Kant’s theory of the faculty of cognition was the key to understanding the philosophical psychology of the ancients and at the same time the highest developmental stage to date of the process of discovery of the nature of the faculty of cognition. In making these claims, Reinhold was clearly demonstrating to prominent historians of philosophy of the day, such as Christoph Meiners and Ernst Platner, that Kant’s critique of reason also introduced fruitful innovations in the area of the history of philosophy.62 But another aspect of this approach was Reinhold’s decisive focus on the line of thinking that led him to conclude that in Kant’s theory of the faculty of cognition, the concept of representation was insufficiently developed, and hence that the faculty of representation had to form the starting point in the formulation of the critique of reason as a whole. As mentioned previously, the project of the Letters on the Kantian Philosophy also included in its latter stages issues relating to the practical application of Reinhold’s thinking on the theory of representation. The second volume of 1792 contains definitions of the concepts and system structure of practical elementary philosophy. These centre around the effort to explicate an adequate understanding of morality, right in general, natural right and free will on the basis of critical philosophy. The significance of the texts of this volume of the Letters is due not least to the fact that during the decade of the 1790s, views on these same practical application concerns were also expressed by Kant himself, in many cases later than Reinhold. It is striking to note that on the matter of the validity of moral judgements, Reinhold often takes a slightly different line from Kant. Admittedly Reinhold follows his master in advocating the strongly cognitive and formal character of practical reason. He concurs with Kant’s view that “material principles of morality”63 cannot have any part to play in the validity of moral judgements.64 With the intention of mediating between reason and sensuality, however, Reinhold aims also to apply the concept of reason-based morality in the form of a theory of impulses. In this context he contrasts sensual, “self-interested impulses” with moral, “non self-interested impulses”.65 This adds a correlative in impulse theory, directed against self-interest, to the faculty of practical reason, as the entity with authority over moral law. Reinhold does not see this as leading to
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an inconsistent position, since the relationship between the faculty of practical reason and moral impulses is to be understood as that between the standpoint of philosophising reason and the subordinate – while essential – standpoint of common sense.
Fig. 8: Edmund Adolf Schmidt, The Johannisthor (St. John’s Gate) in 1898 with Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s first Jena Auditorium to the right of the gate
Reinhold also follows a different approach from Kant with regard to the concept of ‘right’, which is discussed in the sixth letter in the second volume. Whereas Kant determines right and legitimate right primarily on the basis of a law of right [Rechtsgesetz] that is couched in similar terms to moral law, Reinhold derives right as legitimate right first and foremost from the concept of permissibility or possibility that is subordinate to moral law. Permissibility here refers to that which is “merely permitted”, hence clearly distinct from the meaning of ‘permitted’ that is simply the opposite of ‘not permitted’ or ‘prohibited’ (‘thou shalt not’), and fully identical with ‘imperative’ (‘thou shalt’). Similarly, ‘possibility’ is to be understood as referring to that which is “merely possible”, as opposed to “solely possible”.66 According to Reinhold, as well as
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appropriately incorporating the idea of tolerance and latitude associated with the new rights of freedom, this approach also provides a meaningful distinction between right and morality (the imperative, ‘thou shalt’). Reinhold’s formulation in detail of the lawfulness of coercion and empowerment to coerce that are associated with ‘right’ is on the level of natural right. They are seen as admissible counter-coercion in the event of the infringement of a right or unjustified coercion. The “first principle of natural right”, according to Reinhold, should therefore be: “You may use coercion to restrain one who coerces himself merely to satisfy his own self-interested impulse.”67 And finally, not only striking but also of extraordinary significance for the entire post-Kantian debate on the nature of moral freedom is the discussion on free will extending over the eighth to tenth essays in the second volume of Letters on the Kantian Philosophy. Reinhold increasingly gave pride of place to the idea of free will within his thought. In his view, a correct understanding of morality, moral law, right and religion stood or fell by the correct interpretation of free will. Accordingly, in the practical part of his elementary philosophy, the same function was reserved for free will as that we awaited the correct, and to date just as badly misunderstood, concepts of representation in the future philosophy as a whole, particularly theoretical philosophy”.68 But another way in which Reinhold placed the focus on his understanding of free will was in defending his concept against alternative interpretations of moral freedom expressed by Kant followers, particularly his colleague Schmid at Jena,69 and even Kant himself. In his discussion of Kant’s view of freedom in the area of morality, Reinhold emphatically argued the importance of realising that practical reason or moral law on the one hand, and will on the other, differed in that free will could not be reduced to freedom in moral law, but it rather always, and essentially, denoted freedom with regard to moral law, with regard to the decision for or against the precepts of moral law. Reinhold accordingly defined free will as “a person’s ability to determine to satisfy or not to satisfy a desire either in accordance with the practical law or against it”.70 From this it followed that not only a decision for the moral law, but also one against it, was to be called “free”: “Both the pure and the impure will are therefore nothing more nor less than the two equally possible forms of conduct of the free will”.71 One of Reinhold’s objectives in advancing this position was to take appropriate account of acting and willing for which agents could be held responsible and were aware of their responsibility. With regard to the existing traditions of freedom, he followed the “freedom of indifference” line, while at the same time endeavouring to remove the defects of this understanding of freedom. Reinhold’s attempt to also remain true to Kant throughout this process was abandoned, if not before, on the appearance of Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals], since in the “Introduction” to
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that work Kant expresses views on the issue of freedom that indicate that Reinhold’s demands call for firm criticism. On the basis of this stance Reinhold duly became embroiled in a controversy with Kant. However it is important to note that Reinhold’s difference with Kant is much less significant than would appear from Kant’s statement made in the “Introduction” that free will, which was really “free choice” [Freiheit der Willkür] “cannot be defined […] as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law (libertas indifferentiae)”,72 since Kant too – who has made some changes to his earlier terminology relating to freedom – accepted that there could be no freedom in relation to moral law and its precepts, but only in relation to our maxims that we choose to adopt with regard to the moral law.73 Translated by John Jamieson
Reinhold’s Correspondence with Kant by Martin Bondeli “I am the author of Brief von dem Pfarrer aus *** über die Recension von Herders Ideen usw. [Letter from a Clergyman from *** on the Review of Herder’s Ideas etc] in the A.L.Z. [General Literary Journal].”74 This is what Reinhold wrote in the first part of his letter to Immanuel Kant dated 1787. A few lines later he also identifies himself as the author of the Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy], which he began in August 1786 and continued “in January of the present year” and which were widely read when they appeared in Der Teutsche Merkur [The German Mercury].75 It deals with Reinhold asking to be forgiven for an earlier attack on Kant, which he now regards as completely unjustified. (Reinhold changed from being an advocate of Johann Gottfried Herder to becoming an enthusiastic Kantian.) This was the beginning of a remarkable correspondence with the Königsberg philosopher, which continued until July 1795. During the period of their correspondence they wrote twenty three dated letters in total, according to the latest research. Twelve were written by Reinhold, and eleven by Kant.76 The correspondence for the most part reveals a friendly relationship between the two, and in the early stages of the correspondence there was an element of confidentiality as well.77 The sixty-yearold Kant not only discusses the usual philosophical matters with Reinhold, who had just become a professor at the University of Jena, but very often touches on personal matters. It is obvious that Kant respected the abilities of Reinhold, whose journalistic engagement with critical philosophy Kant responded to with great gratitude; he allowed him to share his philosophical discoveries and immediately sent him his latest work. Reinhold, on the other hand (who was about thirty years younger than Kant), assumes the role of the pupil, the admirer and
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the comrade-in-arms. He provided Kant with the latest news on the reception and expansion of critical philosophy at the University of Jena, gave detailed information about his lecture programme and plans for publication, and also made sure his correspondent was regularly sent his latest publications. He was one of the leading lights of Kantianism in Jena, and this young friend needed to gain public recognition through his mentor – something Kant gladly allowed. The mood changed when Reinhold sent Kant the Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Essay on a New Theory of the Human Capacity for Representation], hoping Kant would pronounce favourable judgment on it and that it would provide a better foundation for the critique of reason. In this respect, Reinhold’s unrealistic expectations and Kant’s unwillingness or inability to engage in the complex new concepts of his young comrade-in-arms led to a cooling of the relationship after 1790 and to a mutual feeling of mistrust, even though the tone of the letters was always polite and respectful. For more than two years before the beginning of their correspondence Kant knew that Reinhold was the author of the Schreiben des Pfarrers zu *** [Writing of a clergyman to ***], in which Herder’s thinking about history and nature are defended against the attacks that appeared in the review of Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind], published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [General Literary Journal]. The publisher of the General Literary Journal, Christian Gottfried Schütz, drew his attention to the fact that a “young convert by the name of Reinhold, who is staying in Wieland’s house in Weimar”, will be publishing a “response” to the said review in The German Mercury.78 At the beginning of 1785 Reinhold responded to the anonymous reviewer, using mostly arguments that were critical of metaphysics; but the point at which Reinhold was informed that the person behind the review was none other than Kant himself cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Reinhold must clearly have realised who he was dealing with by the time Kant let it be known that he was “fully in agreement with the clergyman”79 in a brief, albeit unsigned, response dealing with the philosophical stance taken against traditional metaphysics. At this point Reinhold promptly came down strongly on Kant’s side and became an enthusiastic reader and interpreter of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]. In Reinhold’s first letter to Kant on 12 October 1787 this back story remains somewhat obscure. What is both striking and remarkable is that he instead discusses a religious theme, something that had preoccupied Reinhold in an earlier stage of his thinking and which would fascinate him in later years: namely the attempt to bridge the gap between belief and knowledge in an appropriate way, and thereby “to be freed of the unfortunate alternative choice between
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Fig. 9: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement
superstition and disbelief.”80 As he admits to Kant, he has failed repeatedly to do this. Now, however, thanks to the Critique of Pure Reason, he is well on his way to doing so. The “moral basis for knowledge of the basic truths of religion”,81 which were developed in the closing sections of this highly esteemed book and were elucidated in Reinhold’s own Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, turned out to be a successful cure for the diseases of superstition and disbelief. In other words, the Critique of Pure Reason was lauded here by Reinhold as an interesting work because of its moral theological innovations. He incidentally let it be known that he owed his own access to the Critique of Pure Reason to his reading of Schütz’s
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informative review of Johann Schulze’s Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft [Explanations of Professor Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason].82 In the following year the moral theological aspects of critical theory continue to be a theme of the correspondence. Reinhold was self-critical about the outcome of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, and in 1788 he informed Kant that his [Kant’s] account of the moral ground of knowledge in his Critique of Practical Reason, gave him [Reinhold] a feeling of “complete satisfaction” and as far as the “level of evidence” was concerned, it was unsurpassed.83 Without a doubt this thread of discussion throws a light on an important and formative part of Reinhold’s devotion to Kant. However, the metaphysical-critical motif, which played a role before their correspondence began, should not be underestimated in the broader context. And we should also not be tempted to view Reinhold’s appropriation of Kant as not having been thorough enough. Reinhold himself claimed to have read the Critique of Pure Reason “four times […] in a row”,84 after the mid-1787, and since teaching in Jena regularly gave lectures on the entire system of the critique of reason. He increasingly interpreted this system with a distinct emphasis on the theory of knowledge and epistemology. Systematic matters of theoretical reason, which was the core field of the Critique of Pure Reason, came crucially close to the theme of religious thinking. The development of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy was unthinkable without this critique that ran in parallel. In his first years in Jena Reinhold also gave lectures on “Wieland’s Oberon” and on “Aesthetics according to Eberhard”.85 Since Kant at this time was working on his third Critique, which included the principles of aesthetic reason, it is hardly surprising that what arose out of this was a common interest in the clarification of questions to do with the mode of functioning of the faculty of aesthetics or taste. In this context it is appropriate to recall an episode which we know about through the correspondence. In his first reply to Reinhold, in a letter dated on both 28 and 31 December, Kant describes his current preoccupation with the Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment], which at that time had the working title of ‘Critik des Geschmacks’ [‘Critique of Taste’]. He surprises the friend with the news that he had discovered a “new set of a priori principles”, of which there are now “three”: “the faculty of cognition, the sense of pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire.”86 This discovery would be made public very shortly. Kant expected to complete the manuscript “towards Easter”. In his reply of 19 January 1788 Reinhold seems to be extremely taken with this news: “I am now looking forward to the Critique of Taste twice as much as before.”87 His enthusiasm arose from the fact that he was working on a similar project based on rational-critical theories of sensibility and reason and was rather optimistic in assuming that “he would have concurred at least to some extent with the opinion” of the Master.88 His project dealt with the “theory of pleasure”, the main
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features of which Reinhold outlines in the same letter and which he developed into a three-part essay Über die Natur des Vergnügens [On the Nature of Pleasure], published in 1788 and 1789. Its main theoretical thrust is to present the power of pleasure in relation to 18th-century paradigmatic contributions to aesthetics and the theory of perception – mainly Dubos, Mendelssohn, Sulzer, Helv¦tius and Platner – as a self-differentiating and condensing subject-object relationship, which included among its considerable innovations in this context the integration of Kantian ideas of pure sensibility and receptivity.
Fig: 10: Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Immanuel Kant on 9 April 1789
We can well imagine that Reinhold must have felt he had seriously misunderstood Kant’s intention when the much-anticipated Critique of Judgment appeared in 1790. For Kant’s piece on an aesthetic faculty deals first and foremost with matters of judgment of taste, not with the subject–object relationship. Moreover, “pleasure” from Kant’s point of view is not a key aesthetic concept. “Pleasure” goes with taking delight in what is “pleasant”, but not in what is
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“beautiful”.89 After 1790 Reinhold considered it necessary to modify his theory of the aesthetics of pleasure and to fine-tune it with Kant’s classifications of beauty and sublimity. It is difficult to work out precisely and systematically the ramifications of this revision, given the current state of the sources. It is a pity that this theme did not emerge again in his correspondence with Kant. Reinhold always felt compelled to strengthen the following of Kant’s philosophy and to put those key stubborn opponents in their place. Even in this regard his correspondence with Kant is revealing. We learn for instance that Reinhold and Professor Ludwig Heinrich Jakob from Halle almost formed a close alliance. Jakob, whom Reinhold later criticised because of several misinterpretations of Kant’s theories, briefly harboured the idea of a collective journal “that would be completely devoted to Kantian philosophy.”90 This would later emerge as a different journal project founded by Jakob. In a broader context, we can even assume that Friedrich Schiller became a Kantian in 1789 because of Reinhold’s efforts: “Schiller my friend, who, after forming a deep acquaintanceship with him, I am convinced has one of the finest minds of anyone today, follows your teachings through my words.”91 When it came to the treatment of Kant’s opponents, the name Johann August Heinrich Ulrich keeps coming up. Ulrich, who attacked Kant in his lectures, was a fairly minor figure who vied with Reinhold to earn the favour of audiences in Jena. Several other intellectuals came together to form the anti-Kantian movement. The letters from Kant to Reinhold on 12 and 19 May 1789, which show both correspondents at the peak of their cooperation, deal with doing battle with such an intellectual. Johann August Eberhard, who was teaching in Halle, had set himself the goal of discrediting critical philosophy with the publication of his Philosophisches Magazin [Philosophical Journal]. He stated categorically that the alleged epistemological-critical discoveries of Kant had already been voiced by Leibniz some time ago. Even though Reinhold had high regard for several of Eberhard’s earlier works, he became increasingly concerned about Eberhard’s anti-Kant stance and decided to rebut his attack on him. In retaliation he planned a harsh review of several pieces in the Philosophical Journal. He sought Kant’s support, for whom the whole affair was a source of great annoyance. With this in mind, Kant sent him (in the letters just mentioned) extensive critical comments on Eberhard – especially concerning problems on the relationship of analytical and synthetic judgment, as well as logical principle and real ground – which were “to be used as you please”.92 Reinhold did not let this opportunity pass. Kant’s comments were interwoven throughout the whole text of the review of the Philosophical Journal, which was published in June 1789.93 In subsequent publications Reinhold would again lock horns with Eberhard and his comrade-in-arms Johann Christoph Schwab, drawing on the material supplied by the Master in his letter of May 1789. All in all, the alliance between Reinhold and Kant proved to be very effective in their
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dispute with Eberhard, even though they still had a few problems reconciling their respective standpoints.94 Kant certainly took a somewhat more aggressive and dominant stance than Reinhold. This is illustrated by the fact that Kant went on to expand his critical comments on Eberhard and in 1790 published them in a separate paper (Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll [On a discovery according to which any new Critique of Pure Reason has been made superfluous by an earlier one]). On reading Kant’s Aufsatz Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie [Essay on the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy], published in The German Mercury in 1788, we come upon a concluding section in which the young author of the Letters on the Kantian Philosophy is praised attentively and with some gratitude. In retrospect we can appreciate that, aside from all the sincere affection, it was Reinhold’s strategy that was the reason for Kant’s praise. In his first letter to Kant on 12 October 1787 Reinhold hinted at the usefulness of some “official evidence” of this sort, in other words: he was discreetly requesting it.95 Later on Reinhold uses a similar modus operandi, as, for example, when they began their polemic against Eberhard, and also in the delivery of the upcoming Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsmögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation], published in the autumn of 1789 for public appraisal. This latter attempt was not successful, obviously not only because of Reinhold’s rather demanding way of proceeding, but also because of some factual reservations Kant had towards Reinhold which arose in their discussion about the higher foundation of the critique of reason. Although Kant spontaneously declared himself to be in agreement with the content of the “lovely” Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, the response was completely different when it came to the Essay. It took some time for Kant to pass judgment on it, for after the end of 1789 it was the afflictions of old age that dominated his conversations. Meanwhile Reinhold’s paper Über das Fundament des philosphischen Wissens [On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge] was in circulation. Then, in September 1791, Kant finally reached the point of wanting to publicly admit “that the further division of the foundation of philosophical knowledge was of great benefit to the Critique of Reason”.96 However, as an afterthought, he also lets Reinhold know that it would not be easy to justify raising the premises of critique of reason onto a higher level convincingly. It is therefore not surprising that the promised public declaration in the end did not eventuate. At that time Kant openly and critically expressed his thoughts on Reinhold’s new foundation of the critique of reason in conversation with several of his students, most notably Jacob Sigismund Beck. Kant complained that “Mr Reinhold’s theory of the faculty of representation goes into such dark abstractions that it is impossible to represent what he postulated with any exam-
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Fig. 11: Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Immanuel Kant on 12 October 1787
ples.”97 For this reason he suggested that Beck should familiarise himself with Reinhold’s writings in elementary philosophy and pass informed judgment on them. Beck followed this suggestion in 1796 within the framework of his “Doctrine of the Standpoint”; this doctrine could also be regarded as a restatement of the critique of reason within a representational theoretical framework, and would anger not only Reinhold, but also Kant himself. According to the research it is debateable whether Kant had ever given any serious consideration to Reinhold’s Essay, and if he did, it is not clear how thoroughly he had done so. One can suppose that Kant at least for a while had good intentions of reviewing it. This view is supported by the fact that Johann Benjamin Erhard, who acted often as a mediator for Reinhold and Kant after 1790, prepared a thematic overview of the Essay.98 Reinhold did not allow himself to be discouraged by the failure of his initiative with the Essay. At the beginning of 1793 he sent Kant the second volume of the Letters on the Kantian Philosophy and asked him “to read the sixth, seventh,
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eighth, eleventh and twelfth” and if possible to pass comment.99 One has to remember that the letters that Reinhold mentioned, especially the seventh and eighth, drew attention to his latest findings on the practical section of elementary philosophy. These were to do with comments on morals and natural law on the one hand, and on the other on free will as the foundation of practical philosophy. Once again Kant’s reaction is elusive and quite unsatisfactory for Reinhold. Apart from Kant’s brief remark that “in essence” he agreed with how the “Principles of Natural Law” were dealt with,100 Reinhold was barely able to extract anything useful from his correspondent. Of course we cannot entirely discount the possibility that Kant’s expanded definitions of right and freedom, which appeared in 1797 in his Einleitung in die Metaphysik der Sitten [Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals], were a rather underhand response to this latest request of Reinhold. At the time that the correspondence between Reinhold and Kant drew to a close in the summer of 1795 there was no rift between the two of them. Reinhold still wished to be regarded as a staunch supporter of Kant, and still continued to shape his students as Kantians – though by this stage they were students at the University of Kiel. However, the relationship with the Master had certainly cooled. Kant showed little interest in staying in close contact with his one-time disciple, even though he had called upon the friendship. As Reinhold moved more towards an affiliation with Fichte’s Science of Knowledge at the end of 1796, the distance between him and Kant quite understandably grew. However, Reinhold was not included in the circle of false friends which Kant drew up in 1799 in his famous Erklärung in Beziehung auf Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre [Explanation in Relation to Fichte’s Science of Knowledge]. Kant obviously knew just how much he owed to the Kantian philosopher of Jena and Kiel. Translated by Linda Cassells
Reinhold as Mediator of Kantian Philosophy by Philipp Schaller As well as playing a part in the creation and further development of the philosophy of German idealism, in that Fichte, Schelling and Hegel – each in his own way – responded to Reinhold’s attempts to further develop Kant’s philosophy, Reinhold was also an early disseminator of Kant’s theories, and went on to become an active interpreter and mediator of the new philosophy. Nor was this role confined to the “Herbert circle” that became the point of origin for the early reception of Kant’s ideas in Austria: his reputation and the lectures he gave at the University of Jena, where Reinhold was appointed soon after the publication of his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy],
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attracted extraordinary interest and numbers of students. The following discusses a few of the better known among them, which may suffice to illustrate Reinhold’s role as a mediator of Kantian philosophy. The first case in point is Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). In late August 1787, after being introduced to the daughter of his fellow-poet Wieland at the home of Charlotte von Kalb in Weimar, Schiller accompanied her to her husband’s home in Jena, and stayed with them for about a week.101 Reinhold had published his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, and it was during Schiller’s visit that his imminent appointment as an extraordinary professor of philosophy was reported in the press. It is scarcely surprising that Reinhold discussed Kant’s ideas with Schiller. The latter had become aware of Kant through his friend Körner, but it was thanks to Reinhold that Schiller came to develop a real and lasting interest in the new ideas, even if initially he only read Kant’s essays and Reinhold’s articles in Teutscher Merkur, and did not study Kant’s principal works until some years later. It was not just as a reader and interpreter of Kantian ideas that Schiller followed in Reinhold’s footsteps, because it was also Reinhold who smoothed the way towards Schiller’s appointment to a similar professorship at the University of Jena, in Schiller’s case in the subject of history.102 However Schiller may have found these footsteps too restrictive. Initially he seems to have regarded Reinhold merely as a critic and reviewer of the works of others, and he may have envied Reinhold’s success with his father-in–law and the latter’s periodical, in contrast with Schiller’s conviction of his own less prosaic, clearly superior merits and talents.103 Yet he later became better acquainted with Reinhold as a person and an independent thinker, and as he studied the works of Kant he became more aware of the differences between Kant’s theory and Reinhold’s presentation of Kantian ideas. He was particularly interested in Reinhold’s reformulation of the concept of freedom, developed in response to Kant’s ideas;104 Schleiermacher was also taking up this question at almost the same time. Reinhold was also much impressed with Schiller, informing Kant in a letter, taking some pride in the fact, that he had been introducing a certain highly promising Mr Schiller to the master’s teachings: My friend Schiller, who from the close acquaintance I have formed with him I believe to be one of the best minds in this city, is listening to your teachings through mine. The universal history he intends to create is laid out according your plan, which he has grasped with the purity and fiery intensity that makes him so dear to me. […] He has asked to be most warmly commended to you.105
Another leading figure to take note of Reinhold’s expertise in the new philosophy catching hold in Germany was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Before the two men met, Reinhold learned from Wieland that Goethe “had been reading Kant’s Critique with a measure of intensity for some time”, had engaged
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in a “deep discussion”106 about it with Wieland, and quite possibly wanted some instruction on the subject. And according to one source, Goethe actually received some private lessons from Reinhold,107 but no real personal or intellectual bond developed between the two. Goethe can therefore probably not be reckoned amongst the writers who were familiarised with Kantian philosophy through Reinhold, although this is somewhat at odds with the praise for Reinhold’s work expressed by Goethe six years earlier, speaking of Über die bisherigen Schicksale der Kantischen Philosophie [On the Fortunes to Date of Kantian Philosophy].108 A very different scenario developed with the writer Jens Immanuel Baggesen (1764–1826). Baggesen was not particularly impressed by Goethe,109 but much more so with Reinhold and Schiller. Known as the “Danish Wieland”, primarily because of his ‘Comic Stories’, in late July 1790 Baggesen visited the German original of this comparison in Weimar, and so became acquainted with Reinhold. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Enlightenment, and with the support – and often on the instructions – of Prince Frederick Christian II of Augustenburg he used to travel throughout Europe and meet with leading intellectuals, particularly in the German-speaking countries. He had become acquainted with Kant’s philosophy while studying in Göttingen, and indeed had adopted his second name in Kant’s honour.110 Following a dinner with Wieland and some friends, Baggesen and Reinhold had sat talking far into the night, mainly on the subject of Kant.111 Kant was also something of a patron saint for Baggesen, and a constant reference in the extensive correspondence between him and Reinhold, in which Reinhold shared and further developed many of his thoughts. Baggesen made excessive use of central terms of Kantian philosophy, such as “a priori” or “a posteriori”, even in the most trivial contexts, but was genuinely impressed first and foremost with the purity of the ideals formulated in Kant’s enlightened moral philosophy. The friendship that developed between him and Reinhold was so close that they were even on du terms with each other112 and some thought was given to the possibility of the prince inviting Reinhold to move to Denmark from his post in Jena, a city that was no longer congenial to Reinhold. Baggesen recommended that the prince read the works of Reinhold, who would be responsible for giving instruction in the fundamentals of the whole of philosophy.113 Even though the planned move to Copenhagen and Reinhold’s proposed educational role for the Danish state did not materialise, these efforts to leave Jena eventually led to his departure to Kiel, where he was later employed for a time together with Baggesen (although Baggesen’s appointment was largely pro forma only). The two friends share the same tomb in that city, in the Eichhof cemetery.114 Reinhold also esteemed Baggesen extremely highly, throughout their acquaintance. Baggesen did not have this effect on everyone, as his noble patron
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Fig. 12: Philippus Velijn, Jens Immanuel Baggesen
was somewhat surprised to learn.115 Wieland, who on one occasion even entrusted one of his daughters to Baggesen’s care when she was travelling, finally lost patience with his self-important manner, and made a cruelly witty joke at his expense, until he learned to be more circumspect in this regard.116 Whereas the favourable initial impression made by Baggesen on his contemporaries during his travels did not usually develop into close and lasting friendships, he definitely succeeded in forming a close friendship with Reinhold. One of the special bonds between them was probably the tireless energy both men deployed in their efforts to advance the Enlightenment cause across their wide networks of contacts. Baggesen even arranged for a meeting between Johann Caspar Lavater and Reinhold, although he first had to convince Reinhold to change his philosophical view of the Switzerland-based scholar.117 And for his part, Reinhold introduced Baggesen to Schiller. When the German poet fell seriously ill in 1791, Baggesen had already formed an extensive circle of Schiller admirers in Denmark, which included the Prince of Augustenburg. When Reinhold informed Baggesen that contrary to the rumours, Schiller had not died, but was in precarious financial
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circumstances, which Reinhold as an extraordinary professor at Jena was well able to understand, the prince said that he and Count Ernst Heinrich von Schimmelmann were willing to support him with a stipend.118 Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) (1772–1801) left Jena in October 1791 to study for a law degree in preparation for the profession of salt works director for which his father intended him. In a letter to Reinhold he wrote, with regard to Schiller, who at his father’s request had probably influenced him in this direction: “You have so many chances to pour out your souls to each other in intimate evening conversations, while I, who thirst so intensely for such a thing, am unable to sit there as a silent, attentive listener, hanging on and savouring every word of this wonderful drama.”119 Novalis can also be included in the list of writers and poets who initially became acquainted with Kant’s philosophy through the influence of Reinhold’s presentation and reformulation of Kant’s ideas, as reflected in his use of Kantian terminology in his hymns of praise to Schiller, as in the letter to Reinhold quoted above. Following his enrolment at Jena, where he studied philosophy in 1790 and 1791, his closest associates among his fellow-Reinhold students were Niethammer and Erhard, with whom he continued to correspond throughout his life. He also attended Schiller’s lectures, and made the personal acquaintance of Herbert. Some Reinholdian influences on a philosophy focused on a theory of the faculty of representation can also be discerned, as noted by Manfred Frank, in Novalis’s Fichte-Studien [Fichtean Studies], so that Reinhold can also be attributed a minor role in the creation of early Romantic philosophy.120 This role was a negative as well as a positive one, however, in that Novalis also noted the criticisms of Reinhold’s principle-based philosophy expressed by his close associates among Reinhold’s students. In the final analysis, there is an inherent tension between that philosophy and the philosophical core of romanticism. A figure whose keen intelligence and wide-ranging intellect created high philosophical expectations and made him a sought-after acquaintance for many of his contemporaries, particularly for Reinhold, Schiller, Baggesen, Herbert and Kant, was the physician and philosopher Johann Benjamin Erhard (1766–1827). He had come to Jena even before he completed his medical degree, less to study Kant’s philosophy with Reinhold than to talk with Reinhold as the author in his own right of a theory of the faculty of representation formulated with the intention of underpinning Kantian philosophy.121 His knowledge and clear understanding of Kantian philosophy enabled him to differentiate Reinhold’s thinking from Kant’s, so that he proved to be not only a student and supporter of Reinhold in public, but also a close personal friend and critic of his teacher. Erhard wrote anti-critiques in response to negative reviews of Reinhold’s works, and himself reviewed Gottlob Ernst Schulze’s (1761–1833) Aenesidemus oder über die Fundamente der von dem Herrn Professor Reinhold in Jena gel-
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Fig. 13: Eduard Eichens, Novalis (Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) (1845)
ieferten Elementarphilosophie [Anaesidemus, or the Foundations of the Elementary Philosophy Imparted by Professor Reinhold in Jena], published in 1792.122 In that work, Schulze had in particular criticised Reinhold’s elementary philosophy, but also Kant’s thinking, and indeed this was the first formulation of the most familiar objection to Kant’s ideas on the thing in itself. It was also Schulze’s criticism of Reinhold that brought Fichte into the picture, who while acknowledging some of the points raised, held to the direction of Reinhold’s thinking in principle. When Erhard himself had reservations about Reinhold’s approach, and endeavoured to defend Kant’s critical philosophy against Schulze’s endorsement of scepticism on the basis of his (Erhard’s) own understanding, he was somewhat reticent in Reinhold’s defence. When Reinhold quickly endorsed the project set out by Fichte, whom Erhard saw as a clear opponent, Erhard assessed this as a continuation of Reinhold’s faulty methodology-based programme, which in his eyes was irreconcilable with Kant’s philosophy.123 Erhard travelled to Klagenfurt to meet Herbert, and on to Italy. Before this he
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visited Baggesen in Copenhagen, and continued from there to Königsberg, where he visited Kant, who esteemed him very highly, in 1791. He told Erhard in a letter, to the latter’s great delight, that out of all his many acquaintances and visitors, Erhard’s company was the source of special and lasting enjoyment.124 Reinhold too, for whose Teutscher Merkur Erhard wrote, wanted to take Erhard with him to Kiel on his move there. The correspondence between Erhard and Reinhold shows that Erhard was one of the people Reinhold turned to first to exchange ideas on issues of understanding and further developing Kantian practical philosophy in particular, and also the latest developments in philosophy in general and the increasing prominence of Fichte, to whose thinking Reinhold was drawn for a time. In the philosophical domain Erhard was mainly engaged in practical questions of right and politics. He was probably interested in and attracted by Kant’s thinking on issues to which he was committed as a republican-minded pioneer and benefactor for the humanity of the future. Noteworthy among his own texts, therefore – along with some on medicine – is an essay, influenced by his encounter with Kant’s thinking, entitled Über das Recht des Volkes zu einer Revolution [On the People’s Right to a Revolution]. Already at the time of his visit to Kant in Königsberg Erhard had been particularly interested in whether Kant had already formed a view on significant philosophical issues of right on the basis of his practical thinking. When he published his thoughts on the right to a revolution in 1795, there was a clear conceptual reference to the events in France. As a prior condition for this right, Erhard said that the people had to be so weighed down as to prevent any human form of undertaking, forcing it into the “stupidity of a beast of burden”.125 Most of the copies were seized at the Leipzig Book Fair, and the work was banned in several German states and in Vienna.126 Even though Kant preferred reform to revolution, and was clearly reinforced in this view by the events in France, he never directly opposed this view taken by Erhard. As a supporter of the more radical direction within the revolutionary movement in France, Erhard was at times also in the service of revolutionary forces in Germany. His plan to unify Jacobin-minded political activists also included Austria, as shown by the records of the interrogation of Viennese Jacobins during the Vienna Jacobin trial. Apart from Herbert in Klagenfurt, to whom Erhard had been introduced by Reinhold and whose name frequently appears in the interrogations, Erhard’s revolutionary political plans also included contacts in Vienna. The interrogated detainees had been told this by Erhard himself at a – supposedly chance – meeting with Erhard in the spring of 1791 in Stuttgart, as revealed by the Austrian Jacobins during interrogation, at times under torture. An anecdote recounted by one of them, and duly placed on the record, effectively illustrates the influence that the contagious enthusiasm for Kantian philosophy could have on those with similar political opinions. At this
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meeting, according to the detainee, Erhard had spoken with Andreas Riedel (1748–1837) who a few years later was to receive a prison sentence in the wake of the Vienna Jacobin trial in 1794, served in at times the harshest conditions, until his escape assisted by French troops in 1809. In Stuttgart they had talked about “the principles of Kant’s theory of pure reason”. The detainee under interrogation said that “this gave Erhard, as a deep thinker, the opportunity to communicate all the extensive knowledge he had gained on the theory from his personal encounters with Kant. Riedele, whose head was spinning from all this talk, was impressed beyond with measure with Erhard.” Regarding the ensuing quarter-hour conversation between the two, for which they had moved away to stand by a window, the detainee said that “this short conversation brought them very close to each other, because at the end of it I saw them kissing each other passionately.”127 Erhard’s commitment to the republican cause suffered a rude reverse from a confidence trickster, who passed himself off as an American officer, supposedly recruiting Erhard as a physician for service in the United States. Instead of putting his convictions to use in his chosen field in the first modern state with a democratic constitution, Erhard had to suffer the ignominy of losing his fatherin–law’s financial credit to a fraudster. In Denkwürdigkeiten des Philosophen und Arztes Johann Benjamin Erhard [Memorable Anecdotes of the Philosopher and Physician Johann Benjamin Erhard] published subsequently by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense,128 there is even a letter from Erhard to George Washington recounting this story to the American president. It contains the request, for the sake of their shared progressive humanitarian convictions, which in Erhard’s case had been senselessly squandered with abuse of Washington’s good name, for the promise made to him with fraudulent intent to be made good in reality. Although this matter did not diminish Erhard’s reputation with friends and acquaintances, there are indications that he had to contend with a diminished desire to keep on living. But he resisted this impulse to take his own life – whether out of duty or convention – if indeed he had ever really felt this urge, and eventually placed his skills, somewhat disillusioned, at the service of the Prussian state. The theologian, publisher and later church official Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848) arrived in Jena in 1790 to study with Reinhold, where he became part of the circle of students forming around the Austrian manufacturer Franz de Paula von Herbert. He was also in Jena at Schiller’s lunch meetings in 1792, at which Kant was discussed.129 Whereas Schiller had taken up the study of Kant’s works only in the last two years, Niethammer’s encounter with Kant’s ideas went back to his time as a student in Tübingen between 1784 and 1790. While reading Kant, he had probably also become acquainted with Reinhold’s texts. This experience was shared with Immanuel Carl Diez, who was
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Fig. 14: Johann Benjamin Erhard, On the People’s Right to a Revolution
also in Tübingen, and later joined with Erhard in criticising Reinhold’s attempts at formulating a foundation for Kant’s philosophy, to such effect that Reinhold heard the message, leading to a crisis of his system in summer 1792.130 Niethammer took up Diez’s and Erhard’s criticisms of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy, and in communicating them to others probably also influenced the thinking of Hölderlin.131 Already in the Tübingen college Niethammer had become acquainted with Hölderlin and with Schelling and Hegel. His reservations regarding the principle-based philosophical approach as set out in Reinhold’s Neue Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation] probably went deeper than those of Fichte, who adopted the same approach, if with major modifications, in his concept of an absolute “I”;132 yet he became joint editor of the Philosophische Journal einer Gesellschaft Teutscher Gelehrten [Philosophical Journal of a Society
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of German Scholars], which Niethammer edited at first on his own from 1795, and then jointly with Fichte from 1797. He was therefore caught up, along with Fichte, in the ‘atheism dispute’ triggered by another of Reinhold’s students, Friedrich Karl Forberg (1770–1848).133 Forberg, like Reinhold, had initially attended the lectures given by Ernst Platner (1744–1818) in Leipzig before discovering Kant’s philosophy, and he arrived in Jena in 1788. The “certainty and decisiveness”134 with which Reinhold spoke of moral law, and some prompting from some of his Hungarian admirers, urging Forberg to open his mind to Reinhold’s mode of thinking, soon led Forberg to abandon Platner’s sceptical approach to ethical questions and his eudemonism and determinism, and to be introduced to critical philosophy by Reinhold. Forberg was soon able to raise objections to specific points in Reinhold’s Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation] (1789), which Reinhold accepted, and even singled out for praise.135 Reinhold also took up some of Forberg’s suggestions in Über das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens [On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge] (1792). In 1791 Forberg accompanied Baron von Herbert on his homeward journey via Nuremberg, Linz and Vienna to Klagenfurt. Before their departure from Jena they made a brief farewell excursion to a location near the city, where they had agreed to meet with Reinhold, Schiller and Erhard. Forberg told Reinhold of his impressions of Vienna, where he had visited the usual sightseeing attractions of the imperial city, enjoyed the cuisine, and also met the poet Blumauer.136 After his return to Jena in October 1791 he began to give philosophy lectures himself. He remained on excellent personal terms with Reinhold up until the latter’s departure for Kiel in 1794, but in his teaching, being well aware of the differences between Reinhold and Kant, he again tended towards the latter’s point of view. It was Forberg’s attempts to formulate the implications of Kant’s practical philosophy for an enlightened philosophical understanding of religion and a theology founded on reason in morality137 that ultimately led to the affair around the atheism dispute, in which, through Forberg, Fichte and Niethammer also became embroiled as editors of the Philosophical Journal. This affair, which followed the publication of Forberg’s essay Entwickelung des Begriffs der Religion [Development of the Concept of Religion], cost Fichte his position at the University of Jena. A thinker who had a very special influence on Reinhold’s reading of Kant’s philosophy and his attempts to enhance it, was Johann Heinrich Abicht (1762–1816). Abicht had published two essays in 1788: De philosophiae Kantianae ad theologiam habitu [On the Attitude of Kantian Philosophy to Theology] and Versuch einer krittischen Untersuchung über das Willensgeschäft und einer darauf gegründeten Beantwortung der Frage: Warum gehen die moralischen Lehren bei den Menschen so wenig in gute Gesinnungen und Handlungen über?
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Fig. 15: Franz Hanfstaengl, Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1832)
[Attempt at a Critical Investigation of the Workings of the Will and an Answer Formulated on this Basis to the Question: Why do Moral Teachings so Seldom Translate Among Men into Goodness of Disposition and Actions?]. He sent Reinhold both texts, seeking affirmation from the author of Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [Letters on the Kantian Philosophy] of his ability to address moral questions on the basis of Kantian critical philosophy. Reinhold assured Abicht of his friendship, sending him a new text of his own, Über die bisherigen Schicksale der Kantischen Philosophie [On the fortunes to date of Kantian philosophy] (1789).138 In 1789 Abicht produced a further work, Versuch einer Metaphysik des Vergnügens nach Kantischen Grundsätzen zur Grundlegung einer systematischen Thelematologie und Moral [Attempt at a Metaphysics of Pleasure According to Kantian Principles for the Establishment of a Systematic Thelematology and Morality], and in the following year he was appointed junior lecturer (Adjunkt) at the faculty of philosophy in Erlangen.139 In 1792 the philosopher Gottlob Ernst Schulze, already mentioned, published his Aenesidemus, as a sceptical rebuttal of the elementary philosophy formulated by Reinhold in Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation]. This position was also asserted against Kant’s critical philosophy, which had aspired
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to provide a middle way out of the dilemma between scepticism and dogmatism, superseding both. Among Reinhold’s students, it was Abicht who proved to be a particularly vigorous supporter. His rebuttal of 1794 was entitled Hermias, oder Auflösung der die gültige Elementarphilosophie betreffenden Aenesidemischen Zweifel [Hermias, or Resolution of Aenesidemian Doubt Regarding Valid Elementary Philosophy]. Translated by John Jamieson
Reinhold and the Reception of Kant among the Herbert Circle in Klagenfurt by Guido Naschert Herbert’s house is an Athens! Men, youths, women and girls – in short, everyone worships philosophy! […] The name of Reinhold is sacred here, everyone loves and reveres you unutterably, and I – how can I express in words the gratitude which I owe to you, my dearest Reinhold? You are the father of my mind, the creator of my happiness!140
It was with these ebullient words that Friedrich Carl Forberg (1770–1848), a young philosopher from Meuselwitz, who had taken his degree exams shortly beforehand, reported to his teacher Reinhold in Jena what he had experienced on his journey to Klagenfurt. At the same time, he expressed his thanks that his patron’s mediation had given him the opportunity to make such an extraordinary trip. The house of Franz Paul Freiherr von Herbert (1759–1811), the Klagenfurt owner of a white lead factory, constituted an intellectual centre of the Enlightenment in Carinthia, which under Reinhold’s influence had contributed quite early on to the theoretical and practical, as well as to the religio-philosophical and political reception of Kantian philosophy in Austria.141 As a result of his two sojourns in Weimar and Jena, from May to July 1789 and from December 1790 to March 1791, von Herbert had established very close relationships with Wieland, Schiller and Reinhold. Particularly in the circles of the last-mentioned, friendships for life were formed. Time and again, Reinhold’s pupils stayed for longer periods at Herbert’s house, known as the Herbert-Stöckl, a property located at that time in the suburbs of Klagenfurt, but which today bears the more central address of Sankt Veiter Ring 1. Among the visitors were the following: Friedrich Carl Forberg, from May to September 1791, Johann Benjamin Erhard (1766–1826) from December 1791 to March 1792, and a second time at the end of January 1794, as well as Immanuel Carl Niethammer (1766–1848) from January to April 1794. Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763–1808), with whom von Herbert had possibly likewise become acquainted in Jena, visited in February 1794, together
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with Jens Baggesen (1764–1826), the Danish poet and member of the Illuminati order, making a stopover before travelling on to Italy together with von Herbert (and also at his cost).142 In contrast, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) never visited his friend in Klagenfurt at all, though remarkably enough he was planning to do so just before his death in March 1801, since the friendship which the two had established in Jena had not deteriorated and had even been renewed in later years. Baron von Herbert therefore had, as Manfred Frank has formulated it, a special “genius for friendship”, and perhaps it is also correct to ponder whether the circle of the Reinhold’s pupils might not have “died a quick death” without the patronage of the prosperous industrialist.143 Reinhold, in whose house in Jena von Herbert had stayed during his second sojourn there, started to reward (and promote) this connection quite early on, dedicating his work Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens [On the Foundations of Philosophical Knowledge] (Jena: Mauke, 1791) to his Austrian follow– adding: “In memory of the spirited days that we spent together striving for the truth”.144
Fig. 16: August Prinzhofer, Paul Freiherr von Herbert (1859)
Although commonly used in research, the term ‘Herbert’s circle’ is nevertheless in need of clarification and seems to continue the language of the sources. Various different circles may be distinguished within von Herbert’s network, and when discussing Reinhold’s philosophy and its widespread influence these
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should be evaluated very differently : 1. The family. 2. Freemasons and Illuminati from Klagenfurt and Vienna. 3. Philosophical friends from abroad.145 The Baron’s close family circle – which included his wife Antonie, Baroness von Herbert (1762–1843), n¦e von Glaunach (the two were married in 1785), their son Albin von Herbert (1788–1834), and von Herbert’s unmarried sister Maria von Herbert (1769–1803) – were not necessarily perceived by the visitors from Jena as being philosophically adept, even if Maria, full of self-recrimination on account of her unrequited love for Ignatz von Dreer, a friend of von Herbert’s youth, did at times seek moral support from Immanuel Kant in person. It was quite different in the case of the aforementioned Ignatz Ritter von Dreer zu Thurnhub (1762–1842), a free spirit who was a daily guest at the house and joined von Herbert on the journey to Saxony in summer 1789. The documents that have come down to us indicate that this ‘democrat’ and ‘Kantian’ may perhaps have been the most important personality in Herbert’s circle. However, we know far too little about his philosophical views to be able to do justice to his contribution to history. A Viennese police agent describes him as “a most dangerous man, doctor juris Dreer”, who “seeks to disseminate the system of freedom at every opportunity”.146 Forberg remembers his “open mind”, and that he “simply made fun of philosophical and ecclesiastical matters”.147 The German guests, on the other hand, spoke of his sisters Ursula and Babette in nothing but glowing terms: “Since now even the ladies think for themselves here,” Fernow once wrote to Reinhold, “the whole day is spent philosophising and polemicising, and the conversation never becomes dull and boring; for that reason life here has such a heavenly attraction for me.”148 Forberg reports that the parents of the two female philosophers were so pious that the women had to slip away to Herbert’s house in order to participate in discussions, and had their copies of Kant bound in black in order to “occasionally take them to mass with them, instead of the breviary.”149 In the circle of the two families he found, as he writes to Reinhold, “the most living proof of the beneficial influence […], which Critical Philosophy exerts not simply upon one’s mind, but principally also on the heart of its admirer.”150 Here, both the question of the furtherance of female education and that of the need for an enlightened understanding of religion are addressed. Another characteristic of the personality of Baron von Herbert was his radical political republicanism, which was closely connected with his business interests. The abolition of compulsory levies, which he had to pay as an industrialist, was one of his most central demands. Moreover he was a Freemason and was close to the Illuminati. When in 1783 the first lodge Zur wohltätigen Marianna (‘To the Beneficial Marianna’) was founded in Klagenfurt, von Herbert was among its most important members, together with the Grand Master of the lodge, Count Max Thaddäus Egger, and the three brothers Christoph, Johannes and Peter
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Fig. 17: Herbertian white lead factory (around 1900)
Moro. However, the lodge was dissolved again in 1786. Although the Baron was not a member of the Illuminati order, he nevertheless counted some of the members of the order (such as Sonnenfels and Blumauer in Vienna, Reinhold in Jena, Baggesen in Copenhagen and Pestalozzi in Switzerland) as his friends, and corresponded with them.151 After 1789, his house was regarded by the Viennese state police as a kind of Jacobin club. Factors which aroused suspicion included not only the presence of free-thinking guests from Jena, but also subscriptions to foreign newspapers such as the Straßburger Courier (which was banned from time to time). In the mid-1790s, at the height of the persecution of the Jacobins in Austria, attempts were made to crush the Baron’s network, and the house in Klagenfurt was searched and a part of the pan-European correspondence was confiscated. It was during this period that von Herbert attempted, together with the Nuremberg doctor, Kantian and revolution theorist Johann Benjamin Erhard to effect an amalgamation of anti-aristocratic circles in Austria and in the German Empire. These attempts were, however, thwarted by the Viennese police authorities.152 Naturally enough, it was not only also Kant’s and Reinhold’s theoretical writings, but also their statements on everyday political topics, such as the change of government in France, that played a great role in von Herbert’s thinking. However, from the point of view of the history of philosophy, the most important documents were not those that took the form of elaborated manu-
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Fig. 18 (a): Letter, Johann Benjamin Erhard to Franz Paul von Herbert on 13 September 1791
scripts or printed writings, since arguments and positions were rather communicated in situ, orally or in letters to a circle of friends. From von Herbert’s correspondence there occasionally emerges, apart from a general identification
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Fig. 18 (b): Letter, Johann Benjamin Erhard to Franz Paul von Herbert on 13 September 1791
with the aims of the Enlightenment, a distinct difference of opinion about the latest developments in Kantian philosophy. For instance, among the circle of Reinhold’s pupils in Jena there was an increasingly sceptical discussion of the
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possibility of a philosophy which consisted of one supreme principle, and this was also a topic of conversation in Klagenfurt and on journeys undertaken together. After von Herbert had attended the first lectures given by Fichte on the principles of science in Zurich in April 1794, he subsequently attempted to persuade Niethammer to position himself against Fichte before the latter’s arrival in Jena: “From now on, I declare myself the irreconcilable enemy of all socalled first principles of philosophy, and he who has need of one to be a fool [!].”153 He continued: “It depends on you alone […] whether Jena will remain a temple of philosophy or not, since from Fichte’s abstract lecture no-one can become wise who has reason.”154 This blunt rejection of Fichte’s system philosophy enables one to presume an early reserve towards Reinhold’s idea of principle, although it would certainly not have been motivated solely by these problems. It would also have been due to an interest in reconciling philosophical speculation with human common sense, which Baron von Herbert expected from philosophy and which he had evidently experienced in Reinhold’s mediation of Kantian writings in Jena. From 1792 onwards, Reinhold made every effort to once again place greater emphasis on the system. In a letter to Erhard, von Herbert writes a few years later : “Compare the results of common sense with those which can be drawn from transcendental idealism; if a Sophist wished to take the trouble with it, you would firstly find that all the pros and contras could be demonstrated by strict logic. Kant has paved the way for Socrates, now you are on the road, so keep following your goal.”155 This insistent effort to allow the results of Kant’s and Reinhold’s philosophy to become widely influential in society is typical of the reception of Kant in Klagenfurt. On the other hand, there are hardly any definite repercussions to be found in the discourse conducted in scholarly printed works. Moreover, since 1798, Baron von Herbert was faced with increasingly difficult health problems, which were partly connected to his work in the white lead factory, and partly with a gonorrhoea infection, so that for many years he yearned to be able to commit suicide, which he finally did in March 1811 in Trieste. The heyday of the ‘Athens’ of Klagenfurt which Forberg had evoked, had passed by the end of the 1790s. Nevertheless, through his influence as a patron, von Herbert made a considerable contribution, during the key years of classical German philosophy, to disseminating Kant’s and Reinhold’s ideas beyond the scholarly world and among the aristocratic and bourgeois circles of Europe. Translated by Peter Waugh
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Fig. 19: Alois von Saar, Carinthia. Lake Wörth upon Klagenfurth (around 1830)
Elementary Philosophy – Reinhold as an Interpreter of Kant’s Critique of Reason and Forerunner of German Idealism by Martin Bondeli Reinhold’s ‘elementary philosophy’, which he taught from 1789 to 1796 and published in several texts and essays from this period, is a presentation of Kant’s ‘critique of reason’ with some changes in aspects of system and method, aspiring to the status of a critical revision of Kant’s work. The basic idea is to present the essential content of Kant’s theoretical and practical critique of reason as emerging from a theory of the faculty of representation, or more precisely, from a first principle of consciousness and a set of associated subsidiary principles, and to form an overall system of pure reason structured in this way. Following an initial formulation of this basic concept in Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation] of 1789, and a fragmentary further attempt in 1790, Reinhold proceeded to give a more generalised and focused form to his initially merely cosmetic criticism of Kant’s teachings. He grew increasingly critical of what he saw as the merely preparatory character of the Critique of Pure Reason as a system, and of Kant’s failure to make the premises of his theories of cognition and morality sufficiently clear. In 1791 he arrived at the conviction that the
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“foundation” of the Critique of Pure Reason was “neither general (comprehensive) nor robust enough to bear the entire scientific structure of philosophy.”156 Accordingly, he now presented his own system as the latest stage in the historical development of philosophising reason, on a higher level than Kant’s critical theory. And in the years from 1790 Reinhold was also undertaking an ambitious systemological project, the construction of a system of “philosophy” in general, comprising a theoretical component with many different branches and a practical element whose classificatory structure was yet to be elaborated.157 In terms of its scope, the system envisaged by Reinhold was comparable to Kant’s plans for a future metaphysics of nature and metaphysics of morality, or Hegel’s encyclopaedia system. In this context the term “elementary philosophy” carries more than one meaning. In the strict sense, Reinhold uses it to denote the foundational component of his philosophical system, consisting of the theory of the faculty of representation, but both he and subsequent interpreters and critics also frequently use it to refer to the system itself, or even more generally, to the stage of philosophical thinking represented by his efforts to formulate a system in the spirit of Kant.
Fig. 20: P. Merker, Medal showing Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1794)
In the event, Reinhold managed to complete only a relatively small proportion of his philosophical system – essentially the detailed formulation of the foundational component and texts on selected general segments of the theoretical and practical components. Nor did he succeed in bringing the foundational component into a satisfactory form. But these cavils do nothing to detract from the achievement of creating a reformulation of Kant’s teachings in a substantive, systematically organised structure that produced a real and lasting impact. Seen against the background of Kant’s critical theory, the foundational
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component of Reinhold’s system is not a preparatory theoretical discussion from an external perspective, but a theoretical foundation for the theoretical and practical critique of reason. Reinhold starts from the idea that preceding both the theoretical critique of reason – now reformulated as a ‘theory of the faculty of cognition’ – and the practical critique of reason – now referred to as the ‘theory of the faculty of desire’ – there must be a ‘theory of the faculty of representation’, as their common point of origin. His aim is to present a complete system that meets the requirements of terminological and systemological unity. As such, the theory of the faculty of representation is a system of concepts and propositions with the intentional concept of ‘representation’ or ‘consciousness’ at its apex. This is understood as forming a three-part structure: the subject or that which represents; the object or that which is represented; and representation as a central element referring to but distinct from both (subject and object). In terms of its existence, this structure is presented as an original ‘fact’ of human consciousness, and in terms of its content as a first principle, asserted as selfevident and universally applicable. This “principle of consciousness” is described by Reinhold in 1790 as follows: “In the consciousness, representation by the subject is differentiated from the subject and object, and refers to both.”158 This starting point of the theory of the faculty of representation is followed by definitions of the specific aspects of the structure of consciousness, representation as a faculty and the oppositions of ‘form’ and ‘matter’, ‘unity’ and ‘manifold’, and ‘faculty of spontaneity’ and ‘faculty of reception’, to be constructed on the basis of the relationship between subject and object. And when considered against the background of Kant, Reinhold can be seen as reformulating, with clearer distinctions and in a more systematically robust way, what is set out in the Critique of Pure Reason as a general model of cognition, forming the prerequisite for the transcendental deductions of space, time, categories and ideas: the relationship between the thinking “I” and subject-matter of thought that is assumed by pure apperception, and the assumption that on the side of the cognising subject are unity, form and spontaneity, and on the side of the cognised subject-matter are manifold, material and receptivity. In his theory of the faculty of representation, Reinhold places considerable emphasis on the classificatory aspect of the fundamental concept of representation articulated as the principle of consciousness. In other words, it corresponds to “representation as such, the generic term”.159 This means that all system-related concepts are to be understood from the theory of the faculty of representation, and from the ensuing theories of the faculties of cognition and desire, as subsumed within representation. Importantly, placing representation at the foundation of the system also provides a clearer explanation of the distinction between appearances and the thing in itself, and of the related thesis of the uncognisibility of the thing in itself,
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than that found in Kant. If all consciousness comprises three elements, we always merely have objects represented by the subject (rather than objects in themselves) and subjects represented as objects (rather than subjects in themselves). The thesis adopted by Reinhold goes further than Kant, to claim that the thing in itself is inaccessible not only to cognition, but also to representation: “no thing in itself admits of representation”.160 And, in confirmation of this result, he argues that since all representation comprises form and substance, the thing in itself, which is to be characterised as not admitting of representation, is to be thought as substance alone, i. e. substance without form, or as form alone, i. e. form without substance. However, with his thesis of the unrepresentability of the thing in itself, Reinhold is immediately forced to make an important distinction, in order to show that the thing in itself (both the object in itself and the subject in itself) is not an empty idea, a mere product of the imagination. Accordingly Reinhold argues that the thing in itself is not a non-representation, but a ‘negative’ of representation of subject-matter.161 Along with statements on a clear, distinct and cognising consciousness, the theory of the faculty of cognition for which Reinhold provides a general component and specific component in Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation], as opposed to subsequent formulations, which confine themselves to presenting a general component, also includes theories of sensuality, intelligence and reason. The specific component of the theory is based on Kant’s subdivision of the elementary theory of Critique of Pure Reason into transcendental aesthetics, analytics and dialectics. Reinhold’s theory of the faculty of desire, which in the Versuch is initially merely outlined in the form of “baselines”, then formulated in greater detail in the second volume of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy of 1792 and later publications, covers the areas of morality, natural right and religion. Furthermore, Reinhold clearly also includes the theory of taste, the rough formulation of which in Reinhold’s works suggests an attempt to integrate Kant’s analysis of the beautiful and sublime into an independently developed subject-object relationship, as part of the concept of pleasure, the faculty of desire. The theory of taste is not however assigned to an independent third faculty, as is the case in Kant. It is however important to note that from the time of his academic inaugural address Ueber den Einfluß des Geschmackes auf die Kultur der Wissenschaften und der Sitten [On the Influence of Taste on the Culture of Sciences and Morality], given in 1788, Reinhold recognised the aesthetic faculty, or faculty of taste, in the role of a mediator between intelligence and morality. In an assessment of what actual innovations Reinhold’s theory of cognition introduced vis-a-vis Kant’s theory of cognition, it is important to note that adopting the principle of consciousness as the point of departure for the theory
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Fig. 21: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Attempt At a New Theory of the Faculty of Representation
of representation provides a more robust and unified definition of cognition in comparison with the Critique of Pure Reason. Reinhold devotes considerable efforts towards completing Kant’s classification schemes and placing his concepts in a more rigorous logical sequence. Starting with modifications to the subject-object relationship, Reinhold proceeds to derive, in the domain of intuition, the forms of pure sensual intuition, space and time, and in the domain of the intellect, the table of forms of judgement and the corresponding tables of categories and time schemata. In the domain of reason, Reinhold, following a similar pattern, reconstructs Kant’s parallelisation of final forms and ideas and Kant’s concept of a system of ideas. And finally, on the basis of Kant’s view of philosophy as a “school”, philosophy as a “system of all philosophical cognition”,162 Reinhold even attempts to develop a “concept of the history of phi-
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losophy”, defining this as the “essence of the changes that have occurred in the science of the necessary connection of things”.163 There are numerous striking differences of emphasis between Reinhold’s system and Kant’s. In Reinhold, for example, the stages of intuition, intellect and reason, from the fact of their common foundation in the theory of representation, are given a more precise form, whereby each is structured in its own particular way by the subject-object relationship and the associated notions of form and matter, unity and manifold and spontaneity and receptivity. As a result, already at the stage of sensual intuition a faculty of spontaneity and unification is taken as being present. Rather than asserting the existence of an intuiting intellect, the aim is to take account of the fact that the different faculties are to be seen as complementing one another. In other words, Reinhold is lending further emphasis to Kant’s dictum in the context of the theory of representation that “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”164 And again in the context of general prerequisites for cognition, Reinhold starts from the premise that along with the affect that impacts on the faculty of representation when it addresses subject matter through the action of ‘outer matter’, there is also an affect experienced inwardly by the faculty of representation, through the action of ‘inner matter’. Accordingly the faculty of representation does not refer only to matters external, but is at the same time able to represent its own acts and forms. It is therefore seen having self-reference, which Reinhold analyses most impressively on the level of a “self-consciousness” preceding the cognising relationship with subject-matter, describing it as a process in which “the subject of consciousness is represented as identical with the subject”,165 and which the individual can make recognisable, including in the sense of an “intuition” that can be termed “intellectual”.166 Here too, Reinhold is not adopting a stance in favour of an intuiting intellect, but merely attributing a stronger significance to reflection, which remained somewhat marginal in Kant. Reinhold finds it necessary to fully develop the thoughts that come to the fore particularly in the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason regarding the mind that by means of the inner sense “intuits itself or its inner state”,167 by means of the inner sense, or inwardly exerts an affect on itself. The area in which Reinhold goes furthest beyond the results of Kant’s cognitive theory is the proof of synthetic a priori judgements. On this issue, which is not yet centrally addressed in the defining and systematising writings on the faculty of cognition, Reinhold naturally shares Kant’s insistence on experiential reference and the restriction of cognition to subject-matters in time and place. He also follows Kant completely on the method of proving synthetic a priori judgements, essentially keeping to the transcendental proof, whose principle Kant enunciated with the “Principium” of transcental deduction168 and with the “supreme principium of all synthetic judgements”,169 and applied in the third
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section of the “System of the Principles of Pure Understanding”.170 However, on this point too, Reinhold finds it necessary to assert the principle of consciousness, and on this basis to identify a shortcoming in Kant. In his view, Kant’s transcendental principle of proof, which states that experiential propositions are possible only subject to the condition of the pure forms of sensual intuition, space and time and the categories of the intellect, and accordingly a unity of “conditions of the possibility of experience in general” and “conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience”, can be inferred171 only with the reservation that here too it is necessary to start from the principle of consciousness as the first entity.172 Reinhold clearly proceeds on the basis that the principle of consciousness and the elementary pairs of concepts developed from it are to be understood as an indispensable prerequisite for the proof. Without the relationships between subject and object, form and matter, unity and manifold, spontaneity and receptivity, Reinhold argues, the concept of establishing the possibility of experience would not be sensible, since this concept assumes that experiential propositions cannot arise from an object, substance, manifolds, for recipients without subject, form, unity, spontaneity.173 And since Reinhold again in the theory of the faculty of desire has recourse to modifications of the subject-object relationship, whereby the structure of consciousness becomes a relationship between the willing subject, willed object, and willing as the intermediate aspect, it would not be unreasonable to contend that again in this area, Reinhold is strengthening and unifying the structure of Kant’s results. On closer examination, however, it is a different dynamic and form of reinterpretation of Kant’s results that is dominant in this instance. The main driver in Reinhold’s theory of the faculty of desire is the relationship between selfish impulses, unselfish impulses and free will as the capacity to decide to follow or not to follow them. So essentially Reinhold is underpinning Kant’s concept of morality, right and religion with the theory of impulses, and with a foundation in the theory of freedom. As from 1792, Reinhold elevates the free will, as the capacity to decide to follow or not to follow the moral law, to the status of the first principle of the entire domain of the faculty of desire. He intends the correctly understood concept of the free will (Freyheit des Willens) to perform the same key function in the “future practical philosophy” as that of the correctly understood concept of representation in theoretical philosophy or philosophy in general.174 This insight has a decisive impact on the fundamentals of morality and religion in his philosophy. When Reinhold speaks of the moral law and its implementation in society, he is mainly concerned with our moral and religious conscience, as the authority we call on when exercising our free will. Kant too refers to conscience as a “consciousness of an internal court”,175 supplementing the reason of moral law, but without according such strong significance to it as Reinhold does.
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As regards the genesis and context of the phase of Reinhold’s thought devoted to elementary philosophy, it must be remembered that right from the outset, his development of the system was closely integrated with his activities as a teacher, begun in Jena in 1787 and continued in Kiel from 1794. Already some time before taking up his position in Jena, Reinhold talked of “organising the Kantian system itself” as a project of great significance for the reform of philosophy in the universities.176 Any discussion of the genesis and contexts of elementary philosophy must also note the fact that Reinhold’s development of his system was accompanied by vigorous debate with critics and like-minded spirits from various schools of thought. The reception of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy shares many similarities with that of Kant’s critical theory itself. Over a period of several years elementary philosophy and the critique of reason were regularly the butt of vehement attacks from prominent supporters of Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy such as Johann August Eberhard, new empiricists or German proponents of English common sense philosophy such as Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, and neo-sceptics like Gottlob Ernst Schulze. Reinhold also immediately came under fire from Kantians such as Carl Christian Erhard Schmid, Jacob Sigismund Beck and Salomon Maimon, all of whom had little time for the project of providing the critique of reason with a firm foundation of philosophical principles. Adding their voices to the choir, particularly on methodological aspects relating to the presentation and establishment of the elementary philosophy system, were critics from among his students at Jena. A virtually constant problem for Reinhold, and a frequent subject of debate among his critics of all shades and hues, was the thesis that the thing in itself was not an empty concept, but nonetheless did not admit of representation. Following various attempts to formulate this thesis in a way that would rebut the accusation of being ensnared in contradictions, in 1796 Reinhold found himself confronted by difficulties that finally prompted a radical reorientation in this thinking. Another thorny problem for Reinhold, also frequently raised by his critics, was how exactly the derivation of subsidiary principles from the principle of consciousness was to be understood. While Reinhold denied ever having proceeded from the ridiculous idea “that an entire science lies in its first principle like an Iliad within a nutshell”,177 he was nonetheless forced to make some corrections to some of the anomalies in his concept of this derivation process.178 And finally, Reinhold had to contend with a subject problem that became increasingly importunate as time went on: after repeated examinations of what capabilities the subject must possess, given both the transcendental function of consciousness and human free will as an autonomous faculty for making decisions, Reinhold came to the realisation that along with the subject in itself and the representing subject, it was also necessary to recognise an important role for
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the subject characterised by attributes of self-consciousness and self-activity, simply in view of the first principle of elementary philosophy. Accordingly, as from 1792 the principle of consciousness is placed at the apex of his philosophical system not in isolation, but in coalition with the “fact” or several “facts of pure self-consciousness”.179 Around 1795, following a reconsideration of the relationship between free will and theoretical truth, he formed the view that primacy should be given to the self-consciousness.
Fig. 22: Johann Friedrich Jugel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1814)
Given the manner in which Reinhold solved his subject problem and problem of the thing in itself, it is not surprising that in 1797 he espoused the theory of science of the professor who followed him at Jena, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte’s “I” theory, which declares the thing in itself to be a chimera and places a monistic principle of self-consciousness at the beginning, appeared to Reinhold to be the right way to enhance elementary philosophy. Fichte is known to have realised this already around 1794, in a different context and with different aims. This raises the question of the influence exerted by Reinhold’s elementary philosophy. There can be no doubt that Reinhold’s system approach was of fundamental importance for the leading figures of German idealism; Fichte,
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Schelling and Hegel all developed their systems either directly or indirectly on the basis of Reinhold’s ideas.
Fig. 23 (a): Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Franz Paul von Herbert on Baggesen’s visit to Jena on 5 July 1793
Fichte’s theory of science of 1794 was largely formulated during a long process of critical assimilation of Reinhold’s elementary philosophy, as is evident from “Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie” [Personal Meditations on Elementary Philosophy].180 In Rezension des Aenesidemus [Review of Aenesidemus], for example, he explicitly states that his position is to be un-
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Fig. 23 (b): Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Franz Paul von Herbert on Baggesen’s visit to Jena on 5 July 1793
derstood as an anti-sceptical extension of Reinhold’s stance. The neo-sceptic and Reinhold critic Gottlob Ernst Schulze was correct in saying that the principle of consciousness was not self-evident, and accordingly could not be the first principle of philosophy, yet Reinhold’s suggestion of the need to “distil the whole of philosophy down to a single principle” was a welcome innovation, and indeed valid, once the right “keystone” to the structure was found, Fichte argued.181 According to Fichte, this is achieved by placing at the beginning of the system, rather than the “fact” of a subject-object relationship, in which the two
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elements each refer to but are distinct from the other, the “act” of “the immediately most certain statement I am”, which is self-referring, and carries the implication that for the “I”, everything is “non-I”.182 For Schelling, who espoused Fichte’s early theory of science in the mid-1790s, the inception of philosophy from a first principle of the “I”, which by its very nature is self-activity, is a henceforth absolutely basic stage in the laying bare of the premises of Kant’s critical theory. He therefore describes Reinhold’s attempt to start philosophy with the principle of consciousness as worthy of being mentioned with the “greatest respect”,183 even if he seeks no further engagement with it. In Schelling’s opinion, further progress could only consist of reaping the harvest of the Fichtean principle of the “I” in the natural philosophy context, thereby ultimately presenting it as a living state of ‘being’. Hegel, who only joined the postKantian debate shortly after 1800, found his way to the system-based mode of thinking discovered by Reinhold through his association with Schelling, although an increasingly vigorous polemic against “Reinhold’s view of Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophy”184 continued to prevent him from appreciating the merits of the creator of elementary philosophy. Even as over the years the systems of the philosophers of the day took on very individual traits, sometimes drifting far apart and developing in a process of polemics each against the other, and in spite of the lack of agreement on what should be the first principle of philosophy, and on the form of existence and capabilities that should be attributed to it, there was nevertheless a fundamental consensus, whose roots lie in Reinhold’s elementary philosophy. There was agreement on the need to create a post-Kantian system, that it had to be based on a first principle, and that in architectural terms it must be a holistic system of philosophy and a unified system, which would therefore meet monist and various other structural unity requirements. There was agreement that the first principle of the system must be able to be continued or applied as the foundation of theoretical and practical knowledge. And finally, in the domain of right, morality, state and religion, it was agreed that the system to be created must be worthy of being called a “system of freedom”. Translated by John Jamieson
Kant and Eastern Europe
The Advent of Kant’s Philosophy in Eastern European Countries by Olga Ring There is probably no other philosopher who has been so influential and has had such a lasting effect on the intellectual landscape of Europe since the end of the 18th century as Immanuel Kant. It is therefore hardly surprising that his philosophy spread so rapidly beyond the borders of what constituted Germany at that time. Awareness of it also grew in the countries of Eastern Europe, which are focused on here since Vienna’s geographical and political position had for a very long time made it the gateway to the East. Without making any claim to completeness, this volume brings together articles on the reception of Kant’s philosophy in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in some countries representative of eastern Europe, namely Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, some of the southern Slavic countries, and Poland. The fact that there was a more or less fruitful soil for the reception of Kantian philosophy in eastern European countries can largely be attributed to the diverse political and socio-cultural circumstances which prevailed at that time in the countries concerned. That is why the contributors usually make an attempt to localize the reception of Kant within the context of the history and culture of the respective countries. Some of the articles are concerned with the propagation and influence of Kant’s ideas in Hungary. Up until the end of the First World War, Hungary formed part of the Habsburg Monarchy and was about one third larger in size than the present nation state, since it also comprised Croatia, Slovakia, areas of present-day Serbia (Vojvodina) and large swathes of what is today Romania (Transylvania and Banat). As a result of the connection between Austria and Hungary, the life of the Hungarian bourgeoisie under the dominance of the Austrian monarchs, was determined by the close political, administrative, economic, cultural and other ties between the two countries. It is therefore
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hardly surprising that the tenor of the contributions demonstrates how here, as in Austria, officially propagated Catholicism, ecclesiastical and political censorship and the official educational policy all played decisive roles in the dissemination and adoption of Kantian philosophy at this time. Moreover, it had become increasingly difficult for Hungarian students to study abroad. The first encounter with Kantian philosophy in Hungary occurred towards the end of the 18th century. Hungarian philosophy of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries was mainly allied to empiricism and positivism, in all their many variations, so that its enthusiasm for taking from Kantian philosophy only extended to those elements which could be more or less reconciled with these two schools of thought. Among the representatives of that philosophy were scholars such as Pl Sipos, Istvan Marton, Gustv Szontagh, Bernt Alexander, and to some extent also Kroly Böhm, one of the most original thinkers in Hungarian philosophy. Other aspects were emphasised by those philosophers who read Kant through the works of his followers, i. e. mediated by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, or by Fries, who was extremely popular in Hungary on account of his empiricist orientation, and later mediated by the neo-Kantians. Representatives of these tendencies included Ferenc Scorja, Mûzes Sz¦kely, Kroly Böhm and his school, as well as Sndor Tavaszy. One of the most vehement Hungarian critics of Kant was Jûzsef Rozgonyi, whereas Smuel Köteles was among the ‘loyal’ Kantians and championed the institutionalisation of Kantian philosophy in Hungary and Transylvania. Among the contents that were particularly eagerly received were above all Kant’s moral philosophy and his theory of epistemology, which was highly critical of dogmatism. In Romania, the situation with regard to the reception of Kant was rather different. During Kant’s lifetime, i. e. in the 18th century, and even up until the mid-19th century, the political, social and cultural situation of the Romanianspeaking population was quite disastrous. The Romanian population lived as second-class citizens, exploited, oppressed, and dispersed over three countries, Transylvania, Walachia and Moldavia, each of which had lost its independence, been divided up under the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy and Russia, and had experienced changing conditions of dependency, sometimes with changing borders. Around 1848, uprisings also occurred in these three countries, which were initially suppressed, but were not without consequences for the Romanian nation. However, a separate Principality of Romania, with Bucharest as its capital, did not emerge until the rule of Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1862. The article on the reception of Kant in Romania shows that this process actually began with the work of the first Romanian Kantian, Gheorghe Laza˘r, who had studied in Vienna. He was the founder of the first secondary school in Romania and it was through his textbooks that Kant’s philosophy entered the
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Romanian teaching syllabus. In 1860 it entered the university syllabus as part of the discourse on natural philosophy. The first Romanian university was founded in Ias¸i in 1860 and the first professor of philosophy at the University of Bucharest in 1864 was Ion Zalomit, who had written a study of Kant for his doctorate in Berlin. Other professors at this time who were influenced by Kant included August Trebonui Laurean, and Eftimie Murgu, as well as Simion Ba˘rnut¸iu, who had taken an active part in the revolution of 1848 and championed the rights of Romanians, invoking the ideas of the Enlightenment for the cause. One of the most famous Kantians among the professors was Titu Maiorescu, although his ethics were admittedly greatly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and his pupil Constantin Ra˘dulescu-Motru. There were of course also various Romanian scholars who criticised Kant from different positions, including Petre P. Negulescu, Dmitrie Gusti, Nae Ionescu and Lucian Blaga. However, one may say that, in general, up until the end of the Second World War, Kantian ideas were, with very few exceptions, primarily used to reinforce the rationalist discourse in Romanian philosophy. From 1945 until the 1990s, the official reception of Kant was largely restricted to viewing his work through the spectacles of MarxistLeninism. Since the early 1990s, when it first became possible to interpret Kant free of any ideology, there arose once again an interest in Kantian ideas in Romania, evidence of which may be seen not least in the fact that a Romanian Kant Society was founded in Bucharest in 1991. Other contributions are concerned with the reception of Kant in the Czech lands and in Slovakia at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. When considering the socio-political conditions that were prevalent in the Czech lands and Slovakia at the end of the 18th century, one should bear in mind that neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia existed as a nation state at this time. These countries belonged to the Habsburg Empire: the Czech lands to the Austrian half of the Empire and Slovakia, after the introduction of the dual monarchy, to the Hungarian half of the Empire. The history of Czechoslovakia begins in the year 1918 and its independence is above all the work of the Czech politician and scholar Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk. Masaryk had completed his studies in philosophy under Franz Brentano in Vienna, and knew the philosophy of Kant well. Like his teacher, he was a vehement critic of Kant, being in favour of positivism and pragmatism. The official academic ground was therefore well-prepared for further Kant-critical scholars. Nevertheless, at this time, there were several voices that were critical of the official philosophy, and adopted arguments drawn from strands of Kantian thought. Among these voices were those of Vladimr Hoppe and Max Steiner, for instance. Another contribution deals with the reception of Kant in Slovenia. Having belonged to the Habsburg Empire for centuries, the country of Slovenia became part of Yugoslavia at the end First World War. It subsequently became part of the
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Fig. 1: Map of Austria-Hungary, a game for young people
‘Communist camp’ after 1945, meaning that Kant could thereafter only be viewed through the spectacles of ideological Marxism. Since Slovenia did not become an independent country again until 1991, one can only speak of an independent reception of the work of Kant in academic circles there from the 1990s onwards. These circles developed within the broad spectrum of the neoMarxist, phenomenologico-hermeneutic, psychoanalytical and analytical tendencies of contemporary Slovenian philosophy, to which thinkers such as Alenka Zupancˇicˇ, Zdravko Kobe and Jure Simoniti belong. Another contribution is devoted to the reception of Kant in the southern Slavic countries. In the 18th and 19th centuries, present-day Croatia was a country that was alternately dependent on Venice, Austria and Hungary, France under Napoleon, and the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. In 1868, Croatia received limited autonomy within the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy, although Dalmatia and Istria remained administratively in the Austrian half of the Empire. After the end of the First World War, Croatia freed itself from its ties with Austria and Hungary and shared the chequered history of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, which was then renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. After the end of the Second World War, as a consequence of which Croatia gained some territory (Istria, Rijeka and Zadar) from Italy, the
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country became a constituent republic of Communist Yugoslavia. An independent state of Croatia was not proclaimed until 1990. Since Croatia was a country that was thoroughly Catholic, Kant’s philosophy at first fell on absolutely unfruitful, scholastically dominated ground. For instance, Ioannis Baptist Horvth, a Croatian scholar of the Aristotelian-Thomist School, wrote a critical review of the Critique of Pure Reason as early as 1797. In it, he accused Kant of subjective idealism – being one of the first to do so. Further ˇ ucˇic´ and Stjepan scholastically influenced critics of Kant included Simeon C Zimmermann, although their work does already show some evidence of moments of recognition. Only with the foundation of a modern university in Zagreb under Emperor Franz Joseph I were the pre-requisites created for a positive reception of Kantian philosophy in Croatia. The first professor of philosophy at the University of Zagreb, Franjo Markovic´, as well as his famous pupil, Albert Bazala, drew their inspiration from the intellectual tradition of Kant. As in other eastern European countries during the period after the Second World War, the work of Kant could only be viewed through the ideological spectacles of Communist Marxism. Today, Kant is of course to be found on the standard syllabus of every university in Croatia. A further article supplies a general outline of the reception of Kant in Poland. In 1795, i. e. during Kant’s lifetime, Poland disappeared from the map of Europe as a sovereign country. Until the First World War, Poland was divided up between the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy. The reception of Kant’s philosophy began very early in Poland, although no ‘Kantian period’ developed there and the reception proceeded in a very ambivalent manner, which may be ascribed not least to the circumstance that Prussia was one of the nations that had robbed Poland of its independence (and Kant was a Prussian philosopher). Nonetheless, Kant was among the best-known and besttranslated philosophers in Poland. The reception of Kantian philosophy started with the work of Jûzef Władysław Bychowiec, who had studied in Königsberg and who (it was said) had known Kant personally. He made the first translations of Kant’s writings into Polish. After Bychowiec, there emerged other influential philosophers, whose thinking was eclectic in character and partly oriented towards criticism of Kant. They included Jan S´niadecki and others, who made reference to Kant’s ideas, yet only took them as a reference point for the elaboration of their own philosophy. These included even the famous philosopher of the Lemberg-Warsaw School and the Polish phenomenological schools. After the period of Communist influence, during which an ideology-free interpretation of Kant had been impossible in academic circles, Poland awakened in the 1990s with a renewed interest in the thought of Kant, and that has continued to this day. As different as the process of appropriating Kant’s ideas was in the various countries of eastern Europe, there are nevertheless some common features that
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may be discerned. These common features may be summarised under the following three characteristics. First of all, Kant’s enlightened philosophy, built as it was from the primacy of reason, often proved fruitful for intellectual, social and political modernisation, and in part also helped to motivate the practical realisation of this. Such interpretations of Kant’s philosophy linked up with the striving of emerging nations to found independent nation states and were actively encouraged in the national philosophies of eastern Europe. Secondly, the positive or negative relationship to Kantian philosophy served as a demarcation line between the various philosophical camps which were established at eastern European universities. Thirdly and lastly, Kant’s philosophy gave the philosophy of eastern Europe much food for thought and a great deal of inspiration, which could be translated into action against the background of the tradition of independent thinking in the eastern European countries. Translated by Peter Waugh
The Reform of the Teaching of Philosophy – The Transylvanian Paradigm by Péter Egyed The Transylvanian cultural landscape at the transition from the 18th to the 19th century was an exceedingly heterogeneous one, so that the researcher interested in the reception of philosophy and its creative consequences has many different threads to follow when analysing events and situations at a specific location. One of these threads is the matter of religious denomination. The relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism had not reached a point of equilibrium, partly owing to the establishment of the Habsburg empire in Central Europe. This meant that the question of school education (including obstruction of the development of Protestant classical secondary schools) also became a political issue, in that modernisation primarily called for clear, transparent, and regulated conditions, and the importance of this was naturally not lost on the bureaucracy planning the empire. At the same time, the conceptual system of Enlightenment ideas was spreading with explosive force in the central European region (Immanuel Kant had published his What is enlightenment? tract in 1784), with a strong appeal for intellectuals in particular, and forming a kind of counterweight to a narrow, bigoted view of how a state should be organised. The best way to understand this is to look at the university studies undertaken by Hungarian students, which were more liberal than those of their Viennese counterparts, and based at the higher-level German universities, and to consider them from the perspective of
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the political orientation that defined the students’ future careers. The task is therefore to clarify the precise content of re-Catholicisation as a conditioning system.1 The term “counter-reformation” is colloquially used to refer to the period starting with the incorporation of Transylvania into the Habsburg empire, with the Diploma Leopoldinum of 1690 setting down the intended content of this transition or starting with 1711, the year of the Peace of Sathmar. During the ensuing years, Transylvania can already be described as a governorship. This period was genuinely one of re-Catholicisation, not just in terms of religious belief, but also including a “political” form of Catholicism manifested primarily at the level of education and schools. Up until this time, the selection of talented youth in Transylvania had mainly been subject to the authority of the principality of Transylvania (Approbata et Compilata Constitutiones) and decisions on the assignment of professional positions to the respective denominations. This meant that the institution governing university attendance for Transylvania was under their control. Now, however, the assessment of the situation of students wishing to travel abroad to study came under the purview of the military authorities (General Commando), governorship authorities and of course those in charge of religious denomination issues.2 This arrangement had a particularly severe impact on Seklerland (Sz¦kelyföld). While major gaps unfortunately remain in the political, and particularly the cultural, history of the eventful period of the 18th century in Transylvania, much has been revealed by some research carried out in recent years. From the work of Jnos J. Varga, for example, we know that, acting on the basis of instructions from the Viennese Court Chamber, a committee3 of the Buda chamber inspectorate formulated a regulatory plan under the direction of Cardinal Leopold Kollonich, who does not feature in the annals as a figure particularly welldisposed towards Hungary. This plan did however contain numerous modernisation elements, especially with regard to Hungary, because the new State system needed a reliably functioning, practical administration and State bureaucracy, which meant particularly Catholics, with a good grasp of German and practical knowledge. This would obviously require changes to the school system.
Cultural Consequences of Re-Catholicisation in Transylvania What was the significance of re-Catholicisation? In this context it is worth recalling that in 1673 and 1674 seven hundred clergy and teachers, including a significant number from Transylvania, had been arraigned before the court of
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Bratislava for rebellion and treason against the fatherland and the monarchy. In an episode later famously recorded in Hungarian literature, forty-two of them had their death sentence commuted to labour as galley slaves. However an end to intolerance and militant anti-Protestantism was prompted by the pragmatic realisation that the depopulated areas had to be settled by someone, even Protestant Hungarians, or they might be permitted to remain there. The Ödenburg parliament of 1681 decreed freedom of religious practice for Lutherans and Reformed Protestants, including the construction of churches (paragraph 25, Article 26).4 In Transylvania the situation was both simpler and more complex: simpler in that much depended on the strength of the local communities, centuries-old accepted practice and legal mores governing the construction and transfer of churches. Within the context of the diocese-based system of church administration that had developed over a period of centuries, transfers of churches between denominations had been taking place according to a system for this specific purpose. The situation became more complex when a tendency towards exclusion emerged following re-Catholicisation, ultimately leading to localised acts of violence and interminable cases before the courts. Many of these situations were finally “resolved” by sending in military troops.5 (Contemporary records speak of “sundry conflicts and mutual strife”, and in places use more extreme language such as “rage, recantations, bloodbaths”, even “massacres”.) As regards the school system, the Codex Theresianus of 1752, following Charles III’s university study regulations (Studienordnung) of 1735, became a long-standing institutional structure, within which the system of Piarist colleges determined questions of educational content, form and level.6 In terms of form, the Protestant school curriculum should have joined this system, but the classical secondary schools (Gymnasien) had such firmly embedded teaching practices that external regulations had little or no ability to change them. The Jesuit teachers continued to play an important role, and in this sense the two counter-Reformations became linked. In Transylvania the resistance of the estates, the Protestant ideal of education and mores and the European Enlightenment had led to a small-scale, localised flourishing of the Enlightenment already in the 1770s, even though church censorship remained very strict. This was to the enormous detriment of Hungarian culture. For example, the works of Pl Sipos (1759–1816), one of the most important Hungarian philosophers, whose work would later serve as a model for others, were never published, even though an edition of these works was requested already by Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831), and two hundred years of Hungarian cultural history since then have still not been able to fill this gap. From the perspective of Hungarian culture in Transylvania, the elsewhere so eventful 18th century appears to be sparse in noteworthy achievements, partly
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because of the censorship situation. The importance of this aspect cannot be sufficiently emphasised: the strength of the State bureaucracy and military and religious censorship and the pressure they exerted were so great that they played a critical role in the development of Hungarian language and culture in Transylvania. This issue is now an urgent priority for researchers. The natural sciences clearly represent an exception to this paradigm. Pl Sipos (1759–1816) as a mathematician was a famous and acknowledged author in his own time, and his achievements were also subsequently highly esteemed by the Hungarian scientific community. In 1791–1793 he attended lectures given by Abraham Gotthelf Kaestner (who also taught Carl Friedrich Gauss and Farkas Bolyai) in Frankfurt an der Oder and later in Göttingen. His first mathematical works attracted favourable attention, and he also intensively studied Kant’s cosmology and metaphysics. Sipos’s study Beschreibung und Anwendung eines mathematischen Instruments für die Mechaniker zur unmittelbaren Vergleichung der Circulbogen [Description and Application of a Mathematical Instrument for Use by Engineers for the Direct Comparison of Circle Arcs] was published by the Berlin Academy and honoured with a gold medal in 1795. The work described the isometer, a device of Sipos’s invention for measuring the arc of a circle and dividing it into any number of equal parts, using a very elegant technique, and introduced the transcendental curve now known as the “Sipos curve” for the exact determination of the length of the arc of an ellipse. Sipos continued his work in mathematics during his period as a professor and dean in Srospatak (1805–1810), where he prepared a draft proposal for the modern teaching of mathematics. At this time philosophy was being taught there by Jûzsef Rozgonyi, a prominent anti-Kantian. In 1807 Sipos’s well-known trigonometric tables: Specimen novae tabulae trigonometricae ad Compendium Systematicae constructionis reductae were published in Bratislava, proving to be an outstanding resource, which was soon in widespread general use.
The Reform of Hungarian Secondary School Teaching in the Spirit of Kant The history of the Enlightenment in Transylvania is closely bound up with the emergence of modern philosophy written in Hungarian. (The teaching of philosophy in the Saxon classical secondary schools would be an interesting research topic in its own right.) In the decades between 1780 and 1830, philosophy was taught at the five major Transylvanian classical secondary schools in Latin. However these institutions, with “collegium” status, operated in the cities of Klausenburg (Kolozsvr/Cluj-Napoca), Neumarkt am Mieresch (Marosvsrhely/Trgu Mures¸), Strassburg am Mieresch (Nagyenyed/Aiud) and
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Odorhellen (Sz¦kelyudvarhely/Odorheiu Secuiesc) in close coordination with the instruction provided at the colleges of Srospatak and Debrecen. Research shows that encyclopaedic philosophical instruction was conducted by 30 teachers, who in addition to philosophy subjects also taught numerous other disciplines, ranging from mathematics to geography. A third of them had originally been clergy. The major breakthrough came with the works of Immanuel Kant and their dissemination in Transylvania. There is a clear connection between the Transylvanian philosophical Enlightenment and the changeover to the use of Hungarian on the one hand, and Kant’s philosophy and moral doctrine on the other, with the latter corresponding very closely to the church’s viewpoint in terms of Protestant morality. During this period, the instruction given at Catholic classical secondary schools was governed by the Theresian Ratio Educationis. However the Protestants made some major changes to the document, and their Novum Studiorum Systema was even approved by the Court Chamber. The essence of the Protestant point of view has already been clarified in early research, so this is not the place for an analysis of the aspects of the Ratio educationis that were questioned. The provincial consistory took a firm position in the question of reform as early as 20 August 1781, followed by some further adaptations and reductions. However the Protestant classical secondary schools did their utmost to follow the stance adopted on the teaching of philosophy, even under the parlous conditions they had to work within. The reform proposals contained a genuine reform programme with regard to the requirements for the holders of teaching positions, and any such programme is of great importance for philosophy. In the last decade of the 18th century Immanuel Kant had expressed reservations regarding the philosophies taught in schools, but nonetheless accepted that their teaching, even as currently practised, was essential, as indispensable structures demonstrably exercising a powerful influence on living thought. And in 1784 Kant wrote what was perhaps his most important position statement, a manifesto-like tract entitled Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? [An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?], in which he took a stance against the restrictions to freedom accepted in society, under the appellation of “obedience”, and argued as follows: “For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the least harmful of anything that could even be called freedom: namely, freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.”7 This clearly meant being able to express one’s mind freely at all times. It should however be noted that Kant himself was always of the view that philosophy can only be practised by one who has learned to do so.
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The Novum Studiorum Systema regulations date from 1781, three years before Kant’s Enlightenment manifesto. However the authors of the document would clearly have been aware of the spirit of the recent wave of reform in the German Protestant universities, and it may well be that their initial motivation was the shameful backwardness of the local education system. It is therefore interesting to appraise these early reform ideas. The following recommendations are presented in the form of theses: – The “discovery” of philosophical truths is a process of development, which is an essential step in terms of their reception and representation in the course of instruction. – A succession of different manuals must be used, each balancing and compensating for the other, covering the entire spectrum of accepted “truths”. Admittedly Transylvanian philosophers left this request unmet for a long period, until the arrival of Smuel Köteles, who set about covering the entire spectrum of needs. The justification of this point includes the ideologeme of other, more developed nations, accepted as a justification formula since the time of Jnos Apczai Tseri.8 – There is a reference, in so many words, to “freedom of philosophising”. This is not however a discovery of the Enlightenment period, but rather a common formula in theology. Access to God via the intellect is a concept that has been formulated by religious figures down the ages, from Moses to the Apostle Paul, and later by Meister Eckhardt, for example. This is a particularly important imperative for the Calvinist current of the Reformation. Hence there is an organic connection between Protestantism and freedom of thought. – However the text also emphasises that complete equality in the freedom to philosophise is harmful, that there must indeed be a master, but at the same time his word cannot be exclusively followed. This formulates the conceptual basis of critical anti-dogmatism. – The programme discusses the lack of utility of the Aristotelian system, to which no innovation has been permitted. The document is entirely accurate on this point: Catholic teaching of philosophy was based on the AristotelianThomist system at all levels through to the mid-19th century. This prevented any integration of classical German philosophy, for example, and also systematically excluded scientific advances. Scholastic debate and procedures were applied to attempt the impossible: the integration of results of inquiry in the fields of anthropology and cosmology. – The most important part of the programme is the section defining, according to clear criteria, the elements of philosophy that are doctrine based on firm fundamental principles, and those that cannot be defined by laws. The “competition” concept is a particularly appealing one, whereby competing
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doctrines and representations are based on a typically Protestant, freethinking conception. – And of course the document discusses the situation of the Catholic form of instruction, the numerous restrictions, and the negative role played by popes and councils in the flourishing of philosophical freedom. No appraisal of the authors’ opinions can be attempted here, since each and every epoch has to be understood from the viewpoint of its own context.. It must however be noted that the role of the councils was in many cases a positive one: the debates they conducted and the widening of the concept of God have in many instances contributed to the further development of theological and philosophical doctrines. – It is a purely Protestant idea that councils always lead to defined doctrines, to dogmas from which no subsequent deviation is possible. This is the sign of a mode of thinking more consistent with a militant Protestant polemical attitude. – In the final analysis, the document defines differences of principle between Protestant and Catholic modes of thought and teaching. This is not however to be seen primarily as part of a militant Protestant stance, but rather as justifying arguments for specific teaching methods and institutions, and breaking away from the basic conceptions of Ratio educationis. The most important justifying argument is that Protestants have a fundamentally different conception of sovereign rights, whereby, as set down in the section of chapter VI of Calvin’s Institutio entitled Über die Freiheit der Christen [On the freedom of Christians], any form of resistance is permitted in order to safeguard freedom of religion. These ideas justify the teaching regulations, in other words it is the faith-protecting foundations of the Protestant system of instruction that underpin the entire structure: freedom of philosophy, acceptance of critique, free choice of textbooks and other similar principles. On the basis of all this we have to conclude, without wishing to sound any kind of anti-Catholic note, that the Novum Studiorum Systema document formulates the normative principles for the teaching of philosophy with extraordinary clarity. The question of how much of all this they were able to achieve in the halfcentury under consideration here in terms of the conditions in which philosophy was taught, the structure of its teaching, and the lack of textbooks and teachers, is another matter again. Under all these conditions the most important role was that of the trained professors, of whom there had to be a sufficient number. The major obstacle on the road towards specialised instruction in philosophy was probably the requirement for philosophy professors also to teach “encyclopaedic philosophy”, which embraced almost every field of knowledge. This Encyclopedica philoso-
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phia was necessary in the time of Apczai, who defined the entire teaching structure for one hundred and fifty years, because of the need at that time to build educational foundations for a Transylvania “wallowing in the mud”.9 Philosophy teachers could, and did, teach virtually any subject. However the concept of philosophy as the “science of the sciences” (literally encompassing every scientific discipline) was outmoded by the age of Enlightenment, when specialised instruction in philosophy and the sciences came to the fore. This was indeed asserted in Novum Studiorum Systema, when it stated that theology and philosophy should be separated, as exemplified in the teaching system followed at Strassburg am Mieresch (Nagyenyed/Aiud). Separate instruction was now possible in theological subjects: Methodus studii theologici, Hermeneutica sacra, and philosophy subjects, of which the text mentions the following: Historia philosophiae, Encyclopaedia philosophica et mathematica, paedagogia – but this list is too general, merely providing a few examples. The observation that “moral philosophy might be taught in Hungarian” stands out as particularly important, having been made as early as 1781, when the required conditions were not in place for the teaching of philosophy in Hungarian, primarily because of the lack of specialist terminology. The required basis for forming a consensus on typological principles with regard to the history of Hungarian philosophy or formulating credible judgements is probably lacking at this time. For example, most of the oeuvre of Pl Sipos10 remains unpublished and virtually unknown. The problem here is that without at least an approximate record of who was acquainted with and had read particular textbooks, books, manuscripts, correspondence and debate materials, we are limited to merely elaborating hypotheses.
Samuel Köteles, Founder of a Philosophy in Hungarian Based on Kant On the basis of existing research it is however possible to formulate the thesis that Smuel Köteles (1770–1831) played a vital role in the development of philosophy written in Hungarian in Transylvania in an essentially Kantian form. Köteles had studied in Vienna, Jena and Göttingen, and played a leading part in the institutional penetration of Kant’s philosophy in Hungary and Transylvania. He was the author of the first Hungarian textbook on moral philosophy (1817). He wrote his works in the spirit of Kant,11 having realised, on the basis of the ideas in circulation at the time, and in concert with several fellow teachers, that it was time to switch to teaching philosophy in Hungarian, after first creating the necessary basic terminology.
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Fig. 2: Smuel Köteles
Köteles’s intention was not primarily to create original works, but rather to produce thorough textbooks for teaching purposes, covering a range of philosophical subject areas. He was highly regarded in professional, ecclesiastical and secular fora, and was seen as epitomising the Transylvanian Enlightenment. Any comparison of his works with what others produced marks him as by far the most important figure at the time. There are two questions to be considered here: the role of Köteles as a productive writer in creating works in Hungarian, and Köteles as a language innovator in the domain of philosophy, his role in the Hungarianisation of key terms. Here we must concur with the conclusions reached by Andrs M¦szros, that Köteles in fact rejected even those already accepted Hungarianised expressions whose meaning was still uncertain, in favour of Latin vocabulary. His professorial successor at Strassburg am Mieresch was Ferenc Csorja, whose Fichtean Grundphilosophie (Basic philosophy), in Hungarian, appeared in 1842. He had compiled his textbook on the basis of the ideas of the philosopher Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770–1842), who is now becoming better known and regarded; Csorja’s work demonstrates a good knowledge of Fichte, and also
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refers to Hegel und Schelling. He had a very accurate understanding of the principles of Kant’s critical philosophy, and was able to formulate the role of German idealism as against the “dogmatic slumber”. He described himself as a representative of synthetism. Mûzes Sz¦kely taught at the Unitarian college. In 1843 he published his Metaphysik [Metaphysics], which refers mainly to the Kant supporter Fries, and Hegel. In this context it should be noted that considerable research has been done on the manuals and textbooks that were familiar in educational circles (Krug, Fries, Baumeister) and their Hungarian variants. It is however important to address this issue from some sort of basic consensus, which would require comprehensive research into the extent to which these books were known, read and used. Yet at present it is estimated that there are only fifteen researchers fully engaged in the subject of Hungarian philosophical history. The final two steps in this process confirm the aspiration towards a separate path of development for philosophy written in Hungarian in Transylvania, which at that time meant the ambition to form its own specific system. Philosophy would finally have gained access to a public audience, and found its way into the salons. However a different path was imposed on it for the next thirty years as a consequence of the Hungarian liberation struggle of 1848–49 and the Transylvanian civil war (as a result of which the Strassburg am Mieresch college again ceased to exist). In summary, therefore, the renewal of Hungarian philosophy in the spirit of Kant (in Transylvania as elsewhere), in terms of both content and Hungarian terminology and language, related to modernisation in a general context, beyond the domain of philosophy alone. It also reflected Protestant moral spirituality. All this formed a century-long generic bond linking Hungarian education and book publishing to German Enlightenment philosophy, scientific institutions, and the German language. Translated by John Jamieson
József Rozgonyi’s Critique of Kant by Béla Mester Jûzsef Rozgonyi (1786–1823) is one of the leading figures in Hungarian philosophy at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. In multiple respects his life and work can be seen as spanning changes of epoch and historical transitions. He began his student years before the French Revolution, but wrote most of his works in the latter years of the Napoleonic wars and first years of the Holy Alliance. In the Hungarian historical context this was the time of the reforms of Joseph II and the eventful ensuing decades. In terms of Hungarian culture, it was
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the end of the Enlightenment period, just before the age of Romanticism. Within the history of philosophy, Rozgonyi’s student years and productive period coincide with the emergence of a growing number of critics of Kant and the beginnings of the debate among the first generations of his German adherents. The “Kant debate” was also taking place in Hungary. Another remarkable feature of Rozgonyi’s works is that he was the last leading Hungarian thinker to write his most important works in Latin, even though he was already a participant in Hungarian polemics and debates. His Latin and Hungarian works were addressed to different audiences – the former to European academic philosophers and the latter rather to the educated general public. Accordingly the two bodies of work also differ in terms of scope, style and thematic content. The shorter Hungarian texts are polemical writings on moral philosophy, whereas the Latin writings are mainly systemological essays on the theory of cognition. His oeuvre clearly spans a transition between periods in the history of Hungary, although exactly when the change occurred is difficult to pinpoint because of insufficient research, and contradictory views of the age in the Hungarian historical and cultural tradition. Daily life and material conditions were becoming ever more refined, yet the philosophical culture that was still strong in the 17th century was declining, book imports were banned, censorship by the (Catholic) church was stricter than it had ever been, and the ability of Hungarians to attend universities in western Europe was severely restricted. This may be highlighted by Rozgonyi’s own “peregrination” as a student, insofar as he succeeded in renewing this tradition towards the end of the 18th century, in order to undertake his own studies. This paper will briefly describe Rozgonyi’s life and work, focusing on his intellectual motivation, his works and the German and Hungarian debates on philosophy taking place at the time. The ongoing impact of his opinions on 19th century thought will be touched on at the end of the paper. Any detailed discussion of his works would be beyond the scope of this contribution, which is confined to a summary of Rozgonyi’s life and an outline of the philosophical cultural and historical context.
A Life Journey: Utrecht, Oxford, Göttingen and Sárospatak Jûzsef Rozgonyi was born into an intellectual family from the city of Srospatak in north-eastern Hungary. His grandfather and an uncle had both been professors at Srospatak Reformed Church College, an institution with a long and honourable tradition. The young man’s talents quickly became evident, and he left to study abroad, funded partly by his own income as a “teacher” and partly by his inheritance from his grandfather. However attending a foreign university
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was scarcely possible for a Protestant in Hungary without connections at court, because since the time of Maria Theresia’s rule the granting of authority for Hungarian subjects to attend a foreign university had been at the monarch’s personal discretion, and permission was particularly difficult for Protestants to obtain. He therefore had to choose between the universities in the Hapsburg monarchy, opting for the University of Vienna. It is reported that Joseph II sought a personal meeting with the young man as an outstanding student, at which Rozgonyi supposedly convinced the Emperor to allow him and all Hungarian subjects in future to travel to study in western Europe, although this was probably intended as a symbolic gesture towards Hungary. In going abroad to study, Rozgonyi was continuing the Hungarian tradition of the peregrinatio academica that had been abruptly terminated at the beginning of the century. He first went to Utrecht, which had traditionally been a destination for Hungarian students abroad. It was here that Jnos Pûsahzi (1628–1686) completed his degree on the anti-Cartesians, before becoming one of the leading professors at Srospatak College, as its most prominent professor of philosophy before Rozgonyi himself. Rozgonyi spent four years in Utrecht attending the lectures of Professor Hennert (1739–1813), Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the university. Hennert had explored the world of Scottish thought in the 18th century and was familiar with the debates in that country, and he shared the opinions of Reid and Beattie, as opponents of Hume, on the common sense school. Rozgonyi duly absorbed his teacher’s views, and remained true to this position, as demonstrated by his subsequent critique of Kant. Following his years of study, he also completed a term at Oxford University. During his years as a student he may also have attended universities in England, France and Switzerland, but this cannot be conclusively documented. Nor has it been possible to establish from where he learned of the events of the French Revolution. We know that he enrolled at the University of Göttingen in November 1789, where he became familiar with the various interpretations of Kantian philosophy and the associated debates in Germany. In order to undertake further studies of Kant, his homeward journey included a detour of a few months to attend the lectures of Reinhold in Jena and Jakob in Halle. He then hurriedly returned home, as he himself records. The reason for this haste was his appointment to a position at the classical secondary school (Gymnasium) in Losonc, Upper Hungary (now Lucˇenec, Slovakia). Rozgonyi taught here from 1791 to 1797, and it was here that he produced his critique of Kant12 – which was to become the subject of considerable public debate – in its final form. For a considerable period this remained his only published work. On the retirement of his former friend Istvn Szentgyörgyi in 1796, Rozgonyi was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Srospatak College, a position he held for the rest of his life. Apart from his inaugural
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lecture,13 here too for a long time he wrote virtually nothing, and busied himself with the publication of his deceased colleague’s papers.14 Further works by Rozgonyi appeared only in 1813–1822, and it was not until shortly before his death that his more significant works of wider scope saw the light of day. Hence his active life may conveniently be divided into two phases, the first of which comprised his critique of Kant and in-depth research, while the second produced his longer works and what can be seen as his spiritual testament. His silence in terms of publications in the period between these two phases may be attributed partly to the lack of printing presses in Srospatak, and partly to censorship restrictions during the Napoleonic wars. This long period of inactivity had an impact on his later philosophy ; while he attempted to take up his writing activities at the point where he had left them off, the systemological focus of the debate on Kant’s ideas in both Germany and Hungary had moved on in the interim, and to some extent he had to adapt the content of his writings to the new context.
The Works of József Rozgonyi Rozgonyi’s first published text, under the title Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold, expresses his doubts regarding Kantian philosophy. The work, which appeared in 1792, is structured in the form of questions put to Reinhold and Jacob by a young thinker who has just completed his university degree. As he states in the introduction, Rozgonyi had attended the lectures of Reinhold and Jacob in order to become acquainted with the German interpretations of critical philosophy from Germany’s two greatest experts (“optimata, duumviri”). According to the author, in Jena and Halle there had been no opportunity, apart from attending the lectures themselves, to engage in any lengthy discussions with the two professors, although both Reinhold and Jacob had said they would be happy to respond to written questions. However Rozgonyi set his questions and doubts down in the form of an entire booklet, which he even published (“for greater ease of legibility”, he claimed). So now he was waiting for an answer to his tract, which he expected to be a public one. These questions “from a humble student” were in fact ironical. He had attended the lectures not as a student, but as a colleague (himself being two or three years older than the professors). The tract may have been entitled Dubia, but in fact it was a polemic. It set out to interpret the Critique of Pure Reason and to explore and elucidate its unclear passages on the basis of the Critique of Practical Reason and the interpretations of Reinhold and Jacob, described as “proven experts” on Kant, and to point out the passages that still remained obscure. The “unclear passages” were
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Fig. 3: Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Doubts about the elements of Kantian Transcendental Idealism: To the most distinguished men, Jacob and Reinhold (1792)
in fact theses that Rozgonyi understood perfectly clearly, but of which he was not convinced either by Kant’s arguments or those of the “duumviri”,15 and did not expect to become so convinced in the future. Rozgonyi’s own philosophical position is indicated by a quotation in English preceding his own Latin text – in itself unusual for an analysis of Kant – which was taken from Beattie’s An Essay on the Immutability of Truth: “All sound reasoning must ultimately rest on the principles of common sense, that is, on principles intuitively certain, or intuitively probable; and consequently that common sense is the ultimate judge of truth to which reason must continually act in subordination.”16 James Beattie (1735–1803) was a Scottish philosopher and supporter of the “common sense” philosophy of Thomas Reid. This motto of the Scottish philosopher expresses the key role played by common sense in human cognition, and Rozgonyi constructed his critique of Kant specifically on this principle. His slim volume
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Fig. 4: Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold, preface in the form of a letter to Jacob and Reinhold (1792)
(“opusculum meum”) provides a reconstruction of the sequence of Kant’s thinking, to which he appends his critique. This text, which can be regarded as part of the anti-Kantian initial position in the Kant debate in Hungary, actually expresses considerable respect for Kant’s merits, and his great achievement of “sweeping out the Augean stables and bringing about a Newtonian revolution in philosophy”.17 The foreword refers to “unclear passages”,18 that can only be elucidated by the best (“optimi”) interpreters of Kant. But these passages are actually the fundamentals of Kant’s philosophy : the questions of space and time, causality, and the possibility of a priori synthetic judgements. While the details of his arguments cannot be considered here, the quality of Rozgonyi’s thinking on all the issues raised is clearly evident. In each case he traces Kant’s ideas back to 17th–18th century views, particularly those of the Scottish Enlightenment, i. e.
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the debate taking place in that country in the mid to late 18th century, and formulates his own positions essentially within this Scottish context. Accordingly he argues that (1) Kant’s concept of causality can be traced back to the equivalent in Hume; (2) the problems of Hume’s concept of causality are best outlined by the critique of Thomas Reid; (3) in Rozgonyi’s opinion Reid was right and Hume was wrong; (4) Rozgonyi accepts Reid’s views, and believes that he (Rozgonyi) is right and Kant is wrong. The discussion refers to several contemporary figures of British, and particularly Scottish, philosophy. Cited as Kant’s predecessors are not only Hume, who is often quoted in the text, but also Butler, Oswald and particularly Reid, then Beattie; from earlier thinkers, Berkeley is referred to, and from the empirical tradition, Locke, although his theory appears as if “purged” of the secondary qualities. The references to Continental European philosophy authors, including German philosophers other than Kant, are merely tangential. There are some comments on Leibniz and Wolff as founders of pre-Kantian systems. Rozgonyi also addresses Reinhold’s and Jacob’s interpretations, and with regard to the latter expresses his opinion on his critique of Mendelssohn and hence on Mendelssohn’s ideas as such. Rozgonyi saw his main task as being to give voice to his own Scottish-informed style of thinking within the “German discourse” of the Kant debate. While Dubia was intended first and foremost as a critique of Kant rather than for the formulation of the author’s own views, from the text it is reasonably clear that the author is outlining the contours of a post-Kantian philosophy that belongs to the “common sense” school only in terms of its foundations. Although Reinhold and Jacob did not respond to this polemic from a previously unpublished author, Dubia did not go entirely unnoticed. The work is best examined in conjunction with the review that appeared in the year following its publication19 and Rogonyi’s reply.20 The anonymously published review thoroughly addresses Rozgonyi’s theses, claiming that the author either is not sufficiently familiar with the views of Kant under consideration, or has misunderstood them. The publisher did not offer Rozgonyi the opportunity to reply, and the identity of the reviewer, presumably a Kant supporter, was not revealed. However a particular turn of phrase in Rozgonyi’s reponse, later published in the introduction to the reply in a separate volume, can be understood as implying that Rozgonyi at least suspected to what circles the reviewer belonged, and may also have had an idea of the reviewer’s actual identity : “In my ‘Doubts’ booklet [in libello Dubiorum] I humbly advanced some objections to the illustrious Reinhold and Jacob, but these gentlemen remained silent. Yet in 1793 a discussion of my humble opus, couched in immoderate tone and with professorial ridicule, suddenly sprang up like an Aretalogus from a magic box.”21 Later in his reply, in a 62-page separate volume, Rozgonyi set out the reasons why the re-
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viewer had been incorrect, and further developed his own critical ideas. Hence he reasserted his earlier thoughts. Today there is little possibility of reconstructing who was the author of the review. It was probably one of the Hungarian Lutherans who in the 1790s had largely become Kant supporters. The reviewer could also have been from a group of intellectuals of institutional rank. Rozgonyi’s philosophical canon is best evaluated against the background of the history of philosophy that he wrote for teaching courses at his university. This volume discussed the theory of cognition issues addressed by the ancient Stoics and Sceptics and contemporary compendia.22 Remarkably little attention is paid to the thinkers of the French Enlightenment, but there is a detailed discussion of Priestley, Price and the debates of the Scottish (“common sense”) philosophers, and of Reid and Hume. Anti-Kantian arguments, advanced with polished rhetoric, play an important role in the discussion. As earlier in his reply to the review of Dubia, he refers to Schulze. Rozgonyi’s own philosophical ideas can be found in his late writings, in which he summarises the content of many years of lectures to his students. Some of this thinking as expressed in his lectures is also recorded in the lecture notes taken by Pl Almsi Balogh in 1812–1813. These indicate that Rozgonyi was continuing a form of school-based philosophical tradition. However the text is generally confined to a description of the contemporary philosophy of mind, and a characterisation of the different approaches taken in this domain. Most philosophical disciplines are discussed within the context of this area of philosophy (e. g. ontology, cosmology, problems of time). A critical analysis of contemporary aesthetic ideas then leads to his critique of Kant’s aesthetics. The ideas of Rozgonyi’s anti-Kantian ally Schulze are discussed here in detail. In 1791 Rozgonyi had clearly not yet fully absorbed the content of Kant’s Critique of Judgement. And finally the third part of the work develops themes and content that would today fall within the discipline of psychology. In the version of the lectures that appeared a few years after their delivery,23 emphasis is given to the content on the philosophy of mind. The sections devoted to aesthetics are curtailed or have disappeared altogether, with aesthetic phenomena used solely as illustration material on the philosophy of mind. The other work published within Rozgonyi’s lifetime was a “philosophy of right”, in Latin.24 This short work, intended for use as a textbook, sets out more than a philosophy of right as we would understand it today. The basis on which some of the issues are addressed includes the rudiments of economics according to Adam Smith. Most interesting from the perspective of Rozgonyi’s attitude towards Kant are the chapters in which extensive sections are devoted to examining and critiquing Kant’s views of natural right. A close look at the title page of the last two works in Latin provides an
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overview of the author’s planned philosophical oeuvre, even if the system he envisaged never fully materialised. The left side reads as follows: A) De vero. Pars I. Psychologia empirica et rationalis; B) De bono. Pars I. Jus Naturae. The question of why he did not proceed with De bono (on what is good) is difficult to answer satisfactorily. While Rozgonyi did engage in the philosophical discussion of ethical questions, he was not capable of properly formulating them from a systematic standpoint (consequentialism, eudemonism). He was convinced that Kant’s formalism, which he rejected, needed to be broken down in the context of the analysis of private and common goods, but ethics could not legitimately stand as a sovereign discipline in this area.
Rozgonyi and Schulze in the Context of the Kant Debate in Germany and Hungary Following the unfavourable reception of Dubia and Rozgonyi’s long silence thereafter, he was delighted to discover the writings of Gottlob Ernst Schulze, which he continued to regard as important and fundamental for the rest of his life. He particularly prized Schulze’s anonymously published work Aenesidemus.25 Rozgonyi’s first mention of Schulze comes only in 1816 in his Responsio, so it is difficult to know whether he became aware of Aenesidemus immediately after the publication of its first edition, or not until 20 years later. Irrespective of when he discovered the work, however, Rozgonyi was delighted to have found an unhoped-for ally in the anti-Kant debate. From this time on he invoked Schulze’s sceptical standpoint as a corroboration of his own, “common sense”-based critique of Kant. There are in fact differences between the two thinkers’ views, however, on matters of considerable importance, such as probabilism. Apart from a certain similarity in their train of thought, the commonality between them lies solely in their efforts to trace the problems addressed by Kant back to Hume, but in different ways and with different aims.26 All of Rozgonyi’s later works contain multiple references to Schulze, but this does not denote any real parallels in their manner of thinking: in Rozgonyi’s De vero and in his summaries of the history of philosophy the Göttingen professor is described as having delivered a “mortal wound” to Kantianism in German culture, whereas the only discussion of Schulze’s own positive philosophical contributions is to be found in a marginal area of Rozgonyi’s philosophical endeavours, in the field of aesthetics. In April 1817 Rozgonyi, through one of his students, sent copies of all his philosophical works published so far to the University of Göttingen. Schulze responded with a letter, expressing his delight at the presence of anti-Kantian fellow combatants even in Hungary. Rozgonyi immediately had his letter pub-
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lished in the Hungarian press, in Hungarian translation.27 His next work, Aphorismi psychologiae, was actually dedicated and sent to Schulze, and an anonymous, but favourable, review duly appeared in Göttingen. Some historians of philosophy maintain the review was written by Schulze himself.28 Rozgonyi later published the “Schulze letter” and a further letter reflecting on the work in a separate volume, along with the letter of thanks from the University of Göttingen librarian. Rozgonyi was clearly anxious to have his anti-Kantian position within Hungary confirmed by Schulze’s prestige and the reputation of Göttingen as a centre of learning. But he was also aiming to situate his own (“common sensed”-based) theory of cognition and critique of Kant in a philosophical milieu that he saw as sufficiently far removed from the English tradition. His efforts to become involved in the contemporary philosophical debate in Germany yielded a modest, but visible, harvest. The exchange of correspondence with academic colleagues was followed by a favourable review of his most important volume, and most of his works were ordered and held in the largest German libraries. Rozgonyi’s critique of Kant and the Hungarian translation of the “Schulze letter” had a marked impact on Hungarian philosophy in particular. In the history of the country’s philosophy Rozgonyi is now seen as the spokesperson of the anti-Kant side in the debate on Kant in Hungary in the years between 1792 and 1822 (into which he was drawn essentially against his will) as the main opponent of the Kantians, particularly Istvn Mrton (1760–1831). And just as the Kant debate in Hungary began with Rozgonyi’s Dubia, it ended with his last work, published in 1822. There had been only insignificant changes in Rozgonyi’s philosophical views over this time, during which a succession of interlocutors had come and gone. In 1810 he was asked, as the director of the College’s publishing house, to assess a Kantian-oriented manuscript in a compendium. In his report, which appeared in print, he summarised, with regard to Kantian ethics, everything that he had previously said about the topic in his gnoseological writings. His arguments consisted essentially of a critique of Kant’s view of man, and a defence of the material view of ethics against Kant’s formalism.29 In 1817 a positive review of Rozgonyi’s critique appeared in the periodical Tudomnyos Gyu˝ jtem¦ny, the journal in which he had published the first translation of the Schulze letter. This periodical was read by the general public as well as the academic community, and accordingly Rozgonyi now became a wellknown author. The work best known to the public was “A pap ¦s a doctor” [The Priest and the Doctor],30 even though it appeared anonymously. The work adopts a pamphlet style, but after the introduction Rozgonyi takes up his philosophical arguments in a more serious vein. In the arguments he advances against Kant, he addresses two aspects that show significant parallels with later developments in Hungarian and English philosophy. In the course of his investigation of Kant’s
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maxims and in defence of his own eudemonistic position, Rozgonyi argues that in his derivation of moral duties even Kant himself was not able to avoid consequentialism, or certain consquentialist principles. Rozgonyi’s arguments are almost identical to those of John Stuart Mill, in his critique of Kant in Utilitarianism. The reference to the laws of probability, which Rozgonyi believed were also applicable to moral judgements, is not surprising in the light of his familiarity with “common sense” philosophy. In this popular work of a thinker mainly concerned with the philosophy of mind there is only one passage that can be linked to political events of the time. To illustrate the contrast between action on the basis of probability and action based on mere possibilities (probabilitas et possibilitas), a disabused Rozgonyi writes as follows: “To proceed merely on the basis of possibility is to proceed as Kant did. At the time of the French war he wrote a short text on perpetual peace, in which he enlists the then French republic as the foundation of perpetual peace, which will always defend that peace. Accordingly he believed that peace would now exist for ever. However the great French republic perished soon after, being transformed into an appalling bourgeois society, and so ended the hope of perpetual peace.”31 This historical reference in Rozgonyi’s critique of Kant is then broadened into a critique of all the illusions of Continental Enlightenment regarding the French Revolution, without any need to move closer to Romanticism or to apologise. Among his Kantian opponents there were however some who equated Kant’s ideas on perpetual peace with the Holy Alliance, and tried to make them acceptable in this distorted sense.32
The Legacy of Rozgonyi’s Philosophy in Hungarian Thought Rozgonyi’s critique of Kant had an indirect impact on later Hungarian philosophy, in the form of some distinctive modifications to Kantianism in Hungary. The Hungarian philosophers coming after Rozgonyi endeavoured, on the basis of, or in parallel with, his critique, to orient themselves towards approaches that in their view had already resisted critical philosophy in the way the philosopher of Srospatak had done. One such direction of philosophical thought was that of Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843), who exerted a particularly strong impact on Hungarian philosophy. The most comprehensive discussion of the Hungarian Frieseans to date is that of Andrs M¦szros.33 The thinking of the Frieseans fulfils the tenets of Rozgonyi’s critique of Kant in several respects. Schulze’s critique of Kant is known to have had a major influence on Fries. And during the student years of Hungarian Frieseans, it was Rozgonyi’s parallel critique of Kant that in many ways paved the way for their alignment with Friese’s approach. It is also interesting to observe the later reception of the “common sense”
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philosophers, as Rozgonyi’s preferred thinkers, since they were partly the foundation of his critique of Kant. The most influential representative of their reception in Hungary was Gusztv Szontagh (1793–1858), who can be seen as the originator of “Hungarian harmonistics”. He and his philosophical orientation can be regarded as part of Rozgonyi’s philosophical legacy by virtue of the constant references to Scottish philosophy in his numerous reviews of works by Hungarian philosophers. His thought was focused (although he was insufficiently aware of this) on bringing the Scottish school ever closer to Kant. He marks the beginning of an effort that characterised the whole of the 19th century in Hungarian philosophy, namely to reconcile the more or less utilitarian ethical view in political philosophy with Kant’s ethics. In the 1850s and some years later this led to results that display a degree of similarity with American pragmatism, and prepared the way for the reception of John Stuart Mill in Hungary in the 19th century, and for similar efforts on the part of Kroly Böhm (1846–1911) and his followers in social philosophy.34 Translated by John Jamieson
Károly Böhm – System Building and Value Theory by Imre Ungvári-Zrínyi Kroly Böhm (Karl Boehm), was a Neo-Kantian philosopher and one of the most prominent figures in Hungarian philosophy at the turn of the 19th century. He was the author of the first fully-fledged philosophical system written in Hungarian and was born on the 17 September 1846 in Besztercebnya (Bansk Bystrica/Neusohl) in the county of Zûlyom in the Kingdom of Hungary. His parents were Gottlieb Böhm, a farrier and Anna Zsufay. Böhm, before becoming a student at the Theological Faculty of Pozsony, (Bratislava/Pressburg) attended the Besztercebnya Evangelical Gymnasium and the Evangelical Lyceum of Pozsony between 1852 and 1865. After his graduation he attended various courses in German universities studying philosophy and theology. During the period 1867–1869, at the University of Göttingen, he attended the courses of such well-known professors of that period, as Rudolf Hermann Lotze (teaching Psychology) – who is considered “a key figure in the philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century, influencing practically all the leading philosophical schools of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, including the Neo-Kantians”.35 He also attended courses given by the proto Neo-Kantian evangelical theologian Albrecht Ritschl (teaching dogmatics) and Heinrich Ritter (teaching history of modern philos-
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ophy). This crucial Göttingen period was followed in 1869 by a semester in Tübingen with Otto Liebmann (teaching history of the philosophy of nature), whose Kant und die Epigonen (1865) “heralds” the rise of the Neo-Kantian movement,36 and Hubert von Luschke (teaching anthropology). After his studies in Germany, in 1870 Böhm became extraordinary professor of Philosophy, History of Philosophy, and Theology at the Lyceum and at the Theological Faculty of Pozsony. He also published a series of critical studies in the literary supplement of the daily paper Elleno˝ r [Controller], concerning mostly the aesthetic writings of his Hungarian contemporaries (Ýgost Greguss, Mihly Zsilinszki, Lszlû N¦vy, Klmn Babics).37 Among the writings of that period there is also proof that Böhm observed closely German philosophical life, e. g. by writing a study on Eduard von Hartmann’s Die Philosophie des Unbewußten.38 After his Pozsony (Bratislava/Pressburg) period, from 1873 Böhm moved to Budapest becoming professor at the Evangelical High School. In this period he was very active both as the founder of philosophical institutions and also as a philosopher. He was a leading figure in high school reform and also a member of the Philosophy Circle [Filozûfiai Trsaskör], which later became the Philosophical Society. He was also the founder of the Hungarian Review of Philosophy [Magyar Philosophiai Szemle, 1882]. Among his philosophical works are to be found high school manuals, such as Experiential Psychology [Tapasztalati L¦lektan] (1888), and Logic [Logika] (1889), lectures delivered at the philosophical society, such as The Physiology of Memory [Az eml¦kezet fiziolûgija], and also papers published in the Hungarian Philosophical Review and in other periodicals, such as The Formal Character of the Essence [A l¦nyeg formaisga] (1881), Instinct and its Satisfaction [Az ösztön ¦s kiel¦ged¦se] (1881), The Basic Contradiction of Realism [A realizmus alapellenmondsa] (1882), Criticism and Positivism [Kriticizmus ¦s positivismus] (1883) and The System of Positive Philosophy [A positiv philosophia rendszere] (1884). Due to the acquaintances made during his German period of studies, Böhm made his debut in German philosophical life by collaborating with the Leipzig based philosophical review Philosophische Monatshefte during 1876–1878.39 Despite his collaboration, and his editor’s interest in his work, Böhm refused to allow the publishing of his main work in German, because of his project to create the first philosophical system in Hungarian. In 1883 Böhm published Man and his World. Philosophical Investigations. Part One: Dialectics or Fundamental Philosophy [Az ember ¦s vilga. Philosophiai kutatsok, I. r¦sz, Dialektika vagy alapphilosophia],40 inspired by Kant and Fichte. In his foreword, Böhm considers himself a Kantian philosopher who preserves Kant’s basic position and dedicates all his work to the service of its confirmation. In his conception, Kant and Comte complete each other and both
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Fig. 5: Mrkû Laci, Kroly Böhm, bronze plaque in the courtyard of the Protestant diocese, Klausenburg (2012)
are examples of the avoidance of dogmatism and of philosophy based on critically established principles.41 The subject of this introductory and foundational volume consists of the aims, field, method and categories of philosophy. Böhm’s position, in accordance with Kant’s, is that: philosophy aims at an understanding of knowledge, i. e. the interpretation of modalities in which knowledge occurs. Knowledge, according to Böhm, appears in consciousness in projected “meaningful images”. This implies a conscious reconstitution of the unconsciously projected image. He asserts: “knowledge, regarding both its content and form, is subjective. Knowing and understanding images is one and the same thing”.42 This way of thinking corresponds to both the Kantian view of the necessity that knowledge is grounded in experience, and Kant’s claims that the formal (rational) conditions of sensibility should be given in the constitution of cognitive faculties themselves.43 The idea of placing the initial experience in the phenomenon of projection, a direct effect of the spontaneity of consciousness, comes from Fichte. The unavoidability of projection is for Böhm the source of the objectivity of the cognitive image. This intention of approaching Kant from Fichte’s “more consistent Kantianism” was fairly common with Neokantian thinking, e. g. in the philosophy of Wilhelm Windelband, founder of the Baden School. The Fichtean orientation in Böhm’s work is more prominent in the second
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volume of Man and his World entitled The Life of the Spirit [A szellem ¦lete] (1892),44 which describes man’s whole life as being the process of the “selfaffirmation of the self-positing spirit”. The self positing activity consists in man’s all unconscious (“instinctual”) and conscious, self-governing psychological manifestations (“manifestations of higher degree”). Together, the first and the second volume are considered by Böhm to constitute his “Ontology” representing “the hemisphere of the real” as opposed to the later developed axiological volumes of the system which represent the “hemisphere of the ought”. Böhm’s axiological period coincides with his professorship in Transylvania from 1896 until his death in 1911, at the Franz Joseph University [Ferenc Jûzsef Tudomnyegyetem] in Kolozsvr (Cluj-Napoca/Klausenburg). The foundational work for this period is Axiology or the doctrine of value [Axiolûgia vagy ¦rt¦ktan] (1906),45 the third volume of the main work which continues Böhm’s Kantian train of thought by differentiating classes of values, starting from the sorts of pleasures and judgements that are experienced.46 Values, in Böhm’s view have a transcendental status which derives from their role in creating, maintaining and validating the spiritual unity of the “autoposition” of the autonomous Ego. The last three volumes are dedicated to the problems of specific axiological disciplines (Logic, Ethics and Aesthetics). The Doctrine of Logical Value [A logikai ¦rt¦k tana] (1912),47 the 4th volume, treats “the value of science” i. e. the transcendental meaning of cognition, the ways of producing meaning and their relations with the forms of thinking, alongside the spiritual self-projection of the Self. Here, the sense of logical value is considered as in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, to which Böhm refers explicitly as a work aiming, in Kant’s terms, “to supply the touchstone of the worth or worthlessness of all cognitions a priori”.48 The Doctrine of Moral Value [Az erkölcsi ¦rt¦k tana] (1928)49 reveals the conditions of application of the moral appreciation of human activities on the basis of the self-appreciation of conscience. Its fundamental principle is “the principle of subjecting the singular wishes to self-position, in its totality”. In doing so, the subject also conforms to the absolute priority of reason stated by Kant and maintained by Böhm in the formula “In morality we must bow before the sublimity of Reason, we must recognize it as higher and more grandiose, and set it out for ourselves as an imperative task”.50 Finally The Doctrine of Aesthetic Value [Az eszt¦tikai ¦rt¦k tana] (1942)51 deduces the origin of different arts from the system of human faculties. It also underlines the significance of aesthetic categories, by way of the analysis of their effect upon the individual, designating their value in accordance with their contribution to the dialectics of the Self. In the interpretation of aesthetic categories alongside the ideas of aestheticians contemporary with Böhm, such as
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Hermann Lotze, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, Theodor Lipps, Johannes Volkelt and Max Dessoir, the most often cited is Kant and his arguments related to the differences between the beautiful and the sublime. The Böhmian philosophical heritage remained a pertinent spiritual frame in Transylvanian and Hungarian culture, constituting the basis for a specific moral and cultural attitude attached to Neo–Kantianism and Axiology. This attitude was maintained by his disciples (György Bartûk, B¦la Tankû, Lszlû Ravasz, Sndor Makkai, B¦la Varga, Sndor Tavaszy – most of them theologians) who considered themselves members of “The Böhmian School”, or members of “The School from Kolozsvr”. Their spiritual position could be described as a sort of openness to transcendental philosophy and the questions of axiology, but also as a sort of “Neo-Kantian and Value-Theology”.52
Károly Böhm’s and Bernát Alexander’s Hungarian Neo-Kantianism by László Perecz The aim of this essay53 is to present in parallel two outstanding personalities of Hungarian philosophical culture at the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries and into the early 20th century. Kroly Böhm (1846–1911) features within Hungarian philosophical consciousness as the formulator of the first Hungarian philosophical system, while Bernt Alexander (1850–1927) is seen as the creator of Hungarian philosophical institutionalism; both thinkers are indebted to the idea of Hungarian “national philosophy”. Both of them were simultaneously influenced by positivism and neo-Kantianism: while working on his system, Böhm moved from an attempt to integrate positivist and Kantian ideas towards a philosophy of values related to the programme of the Baden school, while Alexander, through his activities as a teacher, editor and translator, founded a significant number of institutions, and adopted an eclectic and impressionistic philosophical stance, focused on bringing the different tendencies into agreement with one another. This essay compares the traits and philosophies of the two thinkers, and is divided into two parts. The first outlines the sociocultural and intellectual background to the careers of both thinkers, and raises the issue of a change of identity and commitment to the reception of western European philosophies. The second outlines the motivations defining the direction of their philosophy, focusing on its positivistic and Kantian elements.
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Identity and Reception It will first be of interest to consider the sociocultural and intellectual background to their life paths, for it is remarkable to see two thinkers tackling the task of creating a Hungarian “national philosophy”, on the one hand purposefully acquiring a national Hungarian onsciousness, and on the other regarding philosophical activity as inseparable from the reception of foreign philosophies, in the context of their philosophical studies at western European universities.
Fig. 6: Bernt Alexander
Böhm and Alexander were contemporaries, with Böhm being born immediately before the 1848 revolution, and Alexander immediately after it. Hence for both of them their intellectual awakening occurred during the neo-absolutism period. Their first impressions were acquired in those years that were so crucial for the course of modern Hungarian national consciousness. And for both of them, their experience of the birth of the modern Hungarian national con-
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sciousness was combined with a change of national identity, with the development of an awareness of their Hungarian identity replacing their former sense of being German and Jewish respectively. Böhm was from a German family of tradesmen, and up until early puberty he barely understood a word of Hungarian. He learned to speak and read in German, his first intellectual impressions connected him to German culture, and his first literary attempts were formulated in German. While in his later writings he communicates effectively and eloquently in Hungarian, with a fine sense of nuance, aspects of sentence structure and pronunciation in his verbal delivery made it evident that Hungarian was not his mother tongue, and this remained the case throughout his life. In contrast, Alexander was of petty bourgeois Jewish origin, from a family belonging to the Neolog group, but devout. He retained his sense of Jewish religious identity along with his chosen Hungarian national identity. Even though he owed his career advancement to the growing influence of freethinking attitudes, his professional career – specifically his appointment as professor at Pest University, which typically reserved its chairs for Catholics – was long held back by his unwillingness to convert, in spite of pressure from above. Accordingly the extraordinarily strong sense of a Hungarian cultural and political identity in Böhm and Alexander was in each case the result of a deliberate change of identity. Given that both men, in spite of having very different ideas, set about establishing the foundations of a Hungarian “national philosophy”, it can legitimately be concluded that each in his own philosophical area was endeavouring to advance the project of a conscious acknowledgement of the Hungarian nation. After a short period of university studies in Hungary, both Böhm and Alexander then pursued their studies during long stays at universities abroad. This was the “post-Hegelian” era of Continental European philosophy, when following the dissolution of Hegelian idealistic system philosophy, a range of philosophical schools emerged in an increasingly pluralistic philosophical space. There was no longer any aspiration towards building a comprehensive systematic structure, and the schools were gradually drifting further apart from one another. Following theological studies in Bratislava, Böhm attended some German universities to deepen his knowledge of philosophy, including a lengthy period at Göttingen, then a semester in Tübingen. At Göttingen he attended lectures by Hermann Lotze in psychology, and Heinrich Ritter in modern history of philosophy, among others, while his studies in Tübingen included Otto Liebmann’s lectures on the history of natural philosophy. Alexander passed the Matura university entrance examination as a private pupil, and was enrolled in the
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faculty of philosophy already at seventeen years of age. After completing two semesters, at his professor’s suggestion he left to continue his studies abroad. Over the next six years he attended the universities of Vienna, Berlin, Göttingen, Leipzig, Paris and finally London. In Vienna, as well as attending lectures in the medical faculty he was taught by Robert Zimmermann. In Berlin he attended lectures in pedagogy from Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, on Greek philosophy from Hermann Bonitz, on anthropology from Emil Du Bois-Reymond and on theoretical physics from Hermann von Helmholtz. He also formed personal friendships with Friedrich Paulsen and Benno Erdmann, subsequently to become leading figures in Kant interpretation; in Göttingen he was a student of Hermann Lotze; in Leipzig he completed and defended his thesis; in Paris the lectures of Hippolyte Taine had a major impact on him; and in London he carried out research in the British Library. As the above imposing lists of names indicate, both men were subject to influences from two directions, comprising positivistic and Kantian components. In this period these two directions appear to complement rather than oppose each other. Kantianism appears to create the foundation upon which positivism can built its edifice, marking the boundaries of our experience, and thereby negatively preparing the way for positivism. On the other hand, positivism systematises the data of our experience, thereby positively fulfilling the programme of Kantianism. Interestingly, this idea became a sustaining conviction for both philosophers. The positivist conviction of philosophy’s role in synthesising knowledge and the (neo-)Kantian view of its critical task were two elements that were ultimately to stay with both men throughout their lives and careers.
System Philosophy versus History of Philosophy Böhm and Alexander were descendants of the above-mentioned “post-Hegelian” era in the history of Continental European philosophy, and their development was mainly defined by their response to three key philosophical concepts: speculation, deduction and system. Alexander actually rejected all three of these concepts, and therefore refrained from any attempt to construct his own system, but while being deeply critical of speculation and deduction, he nonetheless clung to the idea of a system. He saw giving up system as synonymous with giving up philosophy. He therefore attempted to counter the speculative and deductive system with the empirical and inductive system. Conversely, Böhm as a mature thinker, after leaving behind the short-term kaleidoscope of his early development, embarked on the construction of a system – a task that essentially occupied him continuously for three decades. In
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terms of his intentions, he was working throughout this time on a single system, but the results as recorded in his completed works actually seem to comprise not one, but two systems. One is a positivistic anti-metaphysical system that experiments with the reconciliation of Kantianism and positivism, and the other a new idealistic metaphysical construction related to the programme of the Baden neo-Kantians, focused on a philosophy of values. Their evolution clearly mirrors the transformation taking place in Continental European philosophy around the turn of the century, in that he moves from positivism to neo-idealism, from antimetaphysics to metaphysics. Hence the point of departure is a Kant read through the spectacles of Auguste Comte and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. With Kant from the perspective of Comte, Böhm’s intention is to carry out the programme of early – positivist anti-metaphysical – neo-Kantianism, to bring Kant, who determines the limits of experience, into agreement with Comte, who systematises the data of experience. And with Kant from the perspective of Fichte his aim is to convert criticism into subjective idealism. By emphasising the necessarily subjective character of the object of cognition, he grasps reality as an image of our consciousness. This means that reality is the result of a projection: identical with the conscious replication of the image unconsciously projected by the “I”. The construction is prevented from becoming solipsistic by acceptance of the transcendental subject, as formed in the sense of the Kantian general consciousness. Reality is an intersubjective medium, since it is possible to accept the transcendental subject, and hence “self-positing”, the functional unity of conscious and unconscious mental activities. In “self-positing” the continuously active mind is disclosing itself, and reality is the result of this self-disclosure. At this point Böhm’s system changes from a positive naturalistic philosophy into a philosophy of normative validity. The system is arranged such that the mind possesses not only unconscious, but also conscious projections. The unconscious projections create the existing reality, and the conscious projections prescribe the world of values that is to be created. Hence along with the “real” there unfolds the “necessary”, along with ontology, deontology, along with cognition, evaluation. The resulting theory of values appears at once as anthropology, philosophy of history and philosophy of culture. The anthropology aspect forms the value problem as the foundation of the abstract picture of man, the philosophy of history element builds the unfolding of human and cultural development upon the inner dialectic of values, while the philosophy of culture interprets the various cultural spheres by means of the typology of values. The end result of Böhm’s system is therefore a transcendental philosophy, embedded in a critical theory of values, and opening out into the philosophy of history and culture. In contrast, Alexander endeavours also to draw the consequences from the
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assumption that systems are no longer possible. Notwithstanding his extraordinarily comprehensive oeuvre across an astoundingly diverse range of topics, his impact, which can genuinely be described as extraordinary, even on the scale of the overall evolution of Hungarian philosophy, was exerted not primarily as an author, but rather as an organiser of knowledge and a communicator of specialist content to a general audience. His activities as a philosophy scholar and researcher were not in fact the main focus of his life and work, since at least equally important was his work as a teacher, publicist, translator and editor, while still creating an enormous body of written work as a hugely productive author. He wrote and published a whole series of works on the history of philosophy, the history of aesthetics and literature, and psychology. Yet he saw himself not primarily as an original thinker, but rather as a mediator and teacher, making his readers aware of the thought of the classics of the philosophical canon, and bringing them and their values into the Hungarian collective consciousness. He had no desire to create a system of his own, preferring to familiarise his readership with the great philosophical systems already in existence. His works were mainly focused on studies of the history of philosophy, as opposed to system and theory aspects. At the time of his university studies in western Europe, along with the emergence of “post-Hegelian” philosophies another new development was the creation of the “history of philosophy” in the modern sense as a new discipline within the social sciences, and – true to his role as a mediator – he became one of the first proponents of this emerging discipline in Hungary. The evolution of his work in the history of philosophy is inseparable from that of his interpretations of Kant: on this basis it is even possible to see his entire oeuvre as belonging to the neo-Kantian approach, or as an expression of the Hungarian “Kant renaissance”. His doctoral thesis defended in Leipzig was devoted to one of the most complicated sections of Critique of Pure Reason, the transcendental deduction of the categories. After his return to Hungary he published the first extensive monograph on Kant (although only the first volume was ever completed), and then, with Jûzsef Bnûczi, he proceeded to translate Kant’s chef d’oeuvre and provide explanatory notes to the text. Remarkably enough, behind his endeavours in the domain of the history of philosophy, with their focus on Kant, lay a conception of philosophy that was fundamentally influenced by positivism. He saw philosophy as a means for rational knowledge and cognition, but as quite distinct from specialist scientific disciplines. He believed that philosophy did not have any specific subject-matter, and therefore could not be regarded as a science, but rather as a connecting element between the individual sciences. It was not therefore a systematic science, but a summary and systematisation of human knowledge. Translated by John Jamieson
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The Reception of Kant by Sándor Tavaszy and the Klausenburg School by Márton Tonk
Fig. 7: Sndor Tavaszy
Sndor Tavaszy (1888–1951) is an important representative of the history of 20th century philosophy in Hungary. In his treatise54 What is Philosophy?, which was published in 1927, he devoted a whole chapter to the “scientific designation” of philosophy.55 Almost thirty years later, around the years 1945–46, this thinker from Klausenburg re-examined the definition of philosophy in his Introduction to Philosophy, which remained unpublished, but was among the manuscripts that formed part of his estate. Any date assigned to the latter work has to be regarded as merely approximate, since the only definite points of orientation are to be found in the bibliographical references that it contains. Yet if one appends the fact that the last really productive period of his life can be traced back to the
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time when he was a professor at Klausenburg from 1944–48, then it may be claimed that, in all probability, the Introduction to Philosophy was also written around these years. However, the possibility that the manuscript contains the same material as the eponymous lecture cannot be excluded. In comparing the two works What is Philosophy? and the Introduction to Philosophy, one immediately notices that Tavaszy presents his introductory textbook to philosophy without any essential changes whatsoever, and with the same Kantian inclination, so that it seems as if the philosopher of the later work of 1945–1946 were the same one who had been writing thirty years beforehand. Tavaszy was a Kantian and a pupil of Kroly Böhm (1846–1911), an exceptional figure and formative influence in the history of Hungarian philosophy, whose name is connected to the Böhm School in Klausenburg, which constitutes one of the topics of the following essay. Tavaszy was a thinker who felt himself quite at home in the optimistic European science of the turn of the century, able to move within it in a thoroughly adept way. On the basis of his writings from the 1920s and 1930s, one might say that he subscribed to existential philosophy, or at least clearly oriented himself towards it; Tavaszy read Kierkegaard and Heidegger and helped to establish Barth’s central European dialectical theology.
Fig. 8: Franz Jaschke, Klausenburg (1823)
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The scientific notion of philosophy can serve as a suitable starting point for Tavaszy’s Kant-oriented philosophy. In his works, the scientific notion of philosophy gives rise to a set of problems that basically derives from Kantian thought, and includes some areas which do not depart from the framework of a principally critical, transcendental philosophy. This applies irrespective of the creative phase and context in which Tavaszy happens to be discussing the questions relating to the notion of philosophy. It is necessary to underline the fact that the significance which Tavaszy accords to analysing the notion of philosophy represents in itself a neo-Kantian mentality. Almost every author of a neo-Kantian monograph emphasises namely the significance which such writers ascribe to the interpretation of philosophy. The basic striving of neo-Kantian schools consisted in defining the concept of philosophy. Earlier tendencies placed great primary importance on epistemology ; in this way, a standpoint emerged in which the object of philosophy became equated with epistemology. Even Lange, who sceptically rejected the idea of ‘systematics’, defined his own world view as an ideal perspective. Helmholtz links philosophy with science and views epistemology as the core question of culture. In his Introduction to Philosophy, Tavaszy paraphrases Hönigswald, a loyal pupil and colleague of Alois Riehl, and states that “the problem of philosophy, of philosophy as such, [is] its own definition”.56 That is indeed correct, since Tavaszy regards the elucidation of essence/fields and the methods of philosophy – in brief, self-reflection on the same – as being an essential condition of every philosophy that is driven by scientific claims. Only if it defines itself as a science can it attain credibility in the face of reasoning, which entails logical and moral consequences. If one wishes to represent any knowledge as science, one must first exactly determine its differentiating features, those which it does not have in common with any other science, and which are therefore unique to it alone; otherwise, the boundaries of all sciences become blurred, and none of them can be treated thoroughly in accordance with its nature. This uniqueness may well consist of differences in the object or in the sources of knowledge, or even in the kind of knowledge, or perhaps in all these elements together, and upon this is initially based the idea of a possible science and its territory.57
In this way, Kant determines in the Prolegomena the parameters of the respective scientific disciplines. Tavaszy likewise adopts the above-mentioned demands made upon philosophy as a “possible science” and attempts above all to answer questions such as what constitutes the unique nature of philosophy as science and how its position within the sciences might be established. In the process of gaining knowledge of the truth, two groups of sciences are defined in Tavaszy : the natural sciences and the humanities. Within the natural sciences, he distinguishes the mechanical, chemical and biological sciences,
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whereas within the humanities he distinguishes mathematical, linguistic, historical, philosophical and theological studies. Tavaszy adopts here the classification of the Baden School, above all that of Rickert, who likewise takes as his starting point the difference between the natural sciences and the humanities. Rickert traces these two modalities of cognition back to differences in valuation, namely to the fact that, while the natural sciences work with specialist subjects, from which they derive laws, the cultural sciences examine areas from which values may be derived.58 The thoughts expressed above, as well as their implicit connections to the history of ideas, go far beyond Tavaszy’s philosophy and may be regarded as the fundamental philosophical attitude of a whole epoch. In fact, of all the tendencies that emerged in Europe during the first years of the twentieth century, the one that aroused the most obvious and possibly the greatest interest was that of German neo-Kantianism, which was above all opposed to materialistic views and positivistic principles. For Hungarian philosophy, this neo-Kantianism signified, as it were, a kind of rebirth of intellectual life. Tibor Hank is of the opinion that the so-called Transylvanian School was an affiliate of that tendency of neoKantianism which focused on the theory of values; and that the theoretical foundations of the school are due above all to Kroly Böhm. Incidentally, the first mention of the term ‘Transylvanian School’ is to found in Sndor Kib¦di Varga, whereas in the writings of other authors the names ‘Klausenburg School’ or ‘Böhmian School’ are used. The view that a school developed as a result of the influence of Kroly Böhm on his students Hörer György Bartûk, Lszlû Ravasz, Sndor Tavaszy, Sndor Makkai, B¦la Varga and Sndor Kib¦di Varga – even if their subsequent views drew not only on philosophy, but also on the spiritual roots of Protestantism – has today become generally accepted by researchers into the history of Hungarian philosophy. The philosophical thought of Ravasz, Varga and Makkai is strongly grounded in the Protestant tradition; Bartûk, Tavaszy and Kib¦di moved above all in Kantian circles. From the very beginning, the members of the Böhmian theoretical tendency turned their attention with great interest to German Idealism, even though they were initially repelled by its metaphysical questioning. On this head, Sndor Kib¦di Varga writes as follows: The authoritative Kant studies of the Transylvanian School brought it into a still closer contact with those neo-Kantian tendencies which were developing critical approaches to Kant’s doctrines. However, as soon as the work of this school begins to focus on axiology, their attention and interest turns inexorably to the neo-Kantian tendency, which strives to […] systematically develop Kant‘s initiative in the philosophy of values. […] In this way, the south-east Hungarian School, otherwise called the Transylvanian School, meets the south-west German School, otherwise known as the Baden School.59
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In order to elucidate the interconnections between the receptive history of neoKantianism and Tavaszy’s philosophy, I would here like to mention a few dates. From 1911 to 1913, Tavaszy studied first of all in Jena and subsequently in Berlin. Due to the particular nature of the universities during that period, it may be claimed with full certainty that his studies of philosophy in both Jena and Berlin were conducted in a markedly Kantian or neo-Kantian atmosphere. Tavaszy attended four lectures at the department of philosophy at Jena University : two of them were given by Bruno Bauch (one on logic, and one on philosophy and natural science).60 At Berlin University, Tavaszy attended eleven lectures: six of them given by Ernst Cassirer (2), Georg Simmel (2) and Alois Riehl (2).61 The topics of these courses were: Cassirer – ‘Fundamental Questions of Logic’ and ‘The Most Important Tendencies in Modern Epistemology’; Simmel – ‘Ethics’ and ‘The Foundations of Logic’; Riehl – ‘The Philosophy of Kant’ and ‘Kant’s Transcendental Dialectics’. If, on top of that, one adds Tavaszy’s personal notes, or the carefully preserved book-lending forms kept by the libraries during this period, then it becomes evident that Tavaszy was reading above all Kant and works of neo-Kantianism. It speaks for itself that, of the approximately 100 lending forms which were issued for books related to philosophy, 33 of them, i. e. one third, were for works by Kant, or by Kantians and neo-Kantians. The others included works by Paul Natorp, Hermann Lotze, Heinrich Rickert, Jakob Friedrich Fries, Wilhelm Windelband, Salomon Maimon, Oswald Külpe, Friedrich Paulsen, Otto Liebmann, Kuno Fischer and Ernst Troeltsch. Of the various epistemological tendencies, Tavaszy regarded the following aspects as acceptable: of the critical realism propagated by Oswald Küppe: the objectivity of thinking; of Bolzano’s logical objectivism: the principle of the proposition in itself, which Tavaszy identifies with objective meaning. From Böhm he adopts a “bridging solution” between objectivism and subjectivism, which states that, while the ego appropriates its own knowledge, it does not do so in any kind of arbitrary manner, since reality asserts itself in meaning. In relation to meaning, and above all to the question of the objectivity of the same, one should nevertheless underline the fact that, for Tavaszy, it is the general features of meaning prior to experience that are expressed above all in Kant’s categories and in the conclusions of the principles of pure reason. In this context, Tavaszy answers the time-honoured questions of philosophy, namely wherein lies the objectivity of our knowledge and how can its correspondence with truth be ascertained. Such correspondences between judgements and facts are only possible if the structures of thought and the structures of truth correspond to each other. At the same time, he is also convinced that only the Kantian solution can avoid the difficulty that confronts the representatives of rationalist metaphysics, namely that there needs to be some proof tendered of the existence of the principle upon which both thinking and the forms of things depend.
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Using Tavaszy’s terminology, one can correctly describe the epistemological paradigm of his thought as objective critical idealism: ‘objective’ because it believes in the objectivity and universality of thought; ‘critical’ because, based on Kantian doctrine, it asks profound questions about the conditions which make knowledge possible; and finally ‘idealism’ because it places human consciousness and the human mind at the centre of knowledge and therefore of philosophising. Translated by Peter Waugh
The Reception of Kant in Romania (1818–1989) by Ma˘da˘lina Diaconu and Marin Diaconu There is hardly another modern philosopher who has influenced Romanian philosophy more strongly and lastingly than Immanuel Kant. When examining his reception, the historical context has to be taken into account. Transylvania was a Crown land within the Habsburg Empire, while in the 19th century Wallachia and Moldavia gradually liberated themselves from the Ottoman Porte and orientated themselves towards the west. Due to the different prerequisites for the respective traditions in philosophy and theology in the German- compared to the Hungarian-speaking circles in Transylvania, the following elaborations on the reception of Kant are restricted to Romanian-speaking culture. From 1818 until the foundation of the first Romanian university in Ias¸i in 1860, Kantianism is disseminated via textbooks. From 1860 to 1890, Kantianism shares its influence with a philosophy informed by the contemporary natural sciences. From 1890 to 1920, Kant serves as a starting point for a return to metaphysics. Subsequently, until 1944, the rationalist camp relies on Kant for support. From 1945 onwards, attitudes towards Kant alternate between condemning the “idealism” and defending the “progressive” character of his works. It is not until 1990 that the reception of his work ceases to be ideologically biased.62 Although representatives of the enlightened “Transylvanian School” were occasionally said to manifest a Kantian influence,63 the first undisputed Kantian in Romania is Gheorghe Laza˘r (1779–1823). The Transylvanian Laza˘r studied in Vienna. In 1818 he founded the “Colegiul Sfntul Sava” in Bucharest, the first grammar school where pupils were taught through Romanian. Laza˘r is responsible for shifting the emphasis from Condillac (in the formerly Greek schools of Wallachia) to Kant. This was probably the right decision for Romanian thinking, which was initially more in need of “a rationalist philosophy that
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was apodictic” than of “an empirical philosophy” that “was imbued with scepticism and hypothetical in nature.”64 In addition, one student reports that Laza˘r had intended to undertake a translation of Kant.65 His “Sf. Sava” colleague Ion Zalomit (1810–1885) finished his doctoral dissertation entitled Principes et m¦rites de la philosophie de Kant and became the first professor of philosophy at the University in Bucharest, which was founded in 1864.
Fig. 9: Gheorghe Laza˘r
Other Romanian scholars from Transylvania and the Banat also spread Kantianism on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains. In his Academic Speech of 1845, August Treboniu Laurian (1810–1881) filled the students with enthusiasm for the Kantian moral ideal, and Eftimie Murgu (1805–1870) made reference to Kant in the first philosophy lecture course held in Romanian in Ias¸i. In 1847, Laurin published the first volume of System von Wilhelm Traugott Krug [System of Wilhelm Traugott Krug], Kant’s successor as professor of philosophy. However, all of Krug’s works had already been translated for the Romanian school in Blaj (Transylvania), both in 1839 by Simion Ba˘rnut¸iu and in 1861 by Timotei Cipariu. Ba˘rnut¸iu (1808–1864), the prominent participant of the 1848
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Revolution, adopts Krug’s arguments for his elaborations about natural law in the context of his lectures about legal philosophy in Ias¸i. He further uses Krug’s arguments to fight for the recognition of the political rights of Romanians in Transylvania. Krug’s thinking continues to resonate in Transylvania before World War I, while in Ias¸i Titu Maiorescu distances himself from Ba˘rnut¸ius’ radical conclusions. Not least, Ba˘rnut¸iu and Laurian also draw on Kant in order to justify the emancipation of philosophy from theology.
Fig. 10: Alexandre Quintet, Titu Maiorescu (1882)
Tito Maiorescu (1840–1917), who is also from Transylvania, is regarded as the most influential Kantian from Romania in the second half of the 19th century. Maiorescu studied in Vienna, Berlin and Paris and completed his doctorate in Gießen before being appointed to the chair of philosophy at the universities of Ias¸i (1863–1872) and Bucharest (1884–1909). Maiorescu follows the recommendations of his professor, Karl Werder, and revisits Schopenhauer as well as Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]. In fact, in 1861 he begins to translate Critique of Pure Reason, and dedicates to Kant his first lecture course as well as a number of talks he gives for Junimea, a cultural society he founded.
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Even later, Maiorescu’s main interests encompass epistemology and Kantian aesthetics. In his ethics, Maiorescu is more inclined towards Schopenhauer’s morality of compassion than towards Kantian formalism. As a literary critic, he defends the anatomy of art in the Kantian mode of disinterested delight. He is particularly influenced by “transcendental aesthetics”, however. Maiorescu gives numerous empirical proofs for the apriorism of space and time, including the precociousness of mathematicians and musicians and even (against Kant) Svedenborg’s Fernvisionen [Visions]. Finally, his interpretation of the so-called “transcendence” of space and time leads to a “realistic metaphysics of what is unchangeable.”66 Kantianism tinted with Schopenhauer also influenced the Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu (1850–1889). Between 1874 and 1877, while he studied in Vienna and Berlin, Eminescu twice attempted to translate the Critique of Pure Reason.67 However, these “readings”, as Eminescu called them, were not intended for publication and cannot, due to their posthumous publication,68 influence the development of the Romanian philosophical language. It was particularly via Schopenhauer’s reception that Kantian thinking entered Eminescu’s literature, for instance in the philosophical novella Sa˘rmanul Dionis (1872) with its meditation about the subjective character of space and time. From 1890 onwards, Maiorescu attempted to fuse Kant with Comte and Spencer, while Maiorescu’s successor as professor in Ias¸i and subsequently in Bucharest, P. P. Negulescu, criticised the concept of apriorism from the perspective of the sciences [Critica apriorismului ¸si a empirismului, 1892]. Nevertheless, most of Maiorescu’s students, such as Constantin Ra˘dulescu-Motru, Mihail Dragomirescu, Ioan Petrovici, Mircea Florian, Mircea Djuvara, Grigore Ta˘us¸an and others developed Kantian thinking in an anti-positivist form. This side of the Carpathian Mountains, at the University of Cluj, the chair was held by Marin S¸tefa˘nescu, who had published two volumes on Kant in Paris: Le dualisme logique. Essai sur l’importance de sa r¦alit¦ pour le problÀme de la conaissance (about Kant’s precritical thinking) and his dissertation at the Sorbonne, Essai sur le rapport entre le dualisme et le th¦isme de Kant. The founder of the sociological school in Bucharest, Dimitrie Gusti (1880–1955), declares Kant’s topicality in 1904, when on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Kant’s death he encourages people to think independently. At the same time, Gusti condemns the broad effect of Kant’s thinking on contemporary philosophy, theology, the natural sciences, and even the theories of socialism. Gusti regards the Kantian impact in these contexts as a mere historical-philological exegesis and as a relapse from critical thinking into a form of dogmatism that renders the details of the Kantian system absolute.69 Although the question of the ground of possibility is important for the sciences, according to Gusti, the ideal of a scientific metaphysics would have to be discarded.
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Twenty years on, during the bicentenary of Kant’s birth, Ioan Petrovici (1882–1970) observes the failure of various attempts to move beyond Kant (in Spencer’s evolutionism, in empirical critical philosophy, intuitionism, pragmatism, sociologism).70 Petrovici suggests that the reduction of apriorism to atavism and heredity constitutes a “pseudo-explanation”; he thinks that the autonomy of philosophy from science can actually be attributed to an a-priori factor of thinking, which allows the universality of philosophical statements to remain intact even during the foundational crisis of science.71 Three years earlier, in Evolut¸ia sistemelor de morala˘, Grigore Ta˘us¸an had defended Kant’s ethics against the objections of Schopenhauer, Spencer and Jean-Marie Guyau. Constantin Ra˘dulescu-Motru (1868–1956), however, is regarded as the main representative of Kantianism after Titu Maiorescu.72 He studied with Carl Stumpf and completed his doctorate with Wilhelm Wundt in 1893, with a thesis entitled Zur Entwicklung von Kant’s Theorie der Naturcausalität [On the Development of Kant’s Theory of Nature Causality], which is also quoted by Bergson in Introduction la m¦taphysique. In 1906 he is appointed to the chair of philosophy in Bucharest and from 1938 to 1941 he even serves as President of the Romanian Academy of Science. As early as 1907, he views as the most important gain through Kantianism the proof that science is determined by the subject’s intellectual faculties.73 At the same time, however, he is dissatisfied with the ahistorical, abstract subject, which exists outside society and which is exclusively viewed in terms of its logical-formal constitution. In Elemente de metafizica˘ (1912), Ra˘dulescu-Motru devises his own system of thinking “on the basis of Kantian philosophy”, as the addition to the title in the second edition of 1928 says. In the second part of the text, he criticises Kant’s synthesis of empiricism and rationalism as an “obscuration” of the divergences between both schools of thinking. He also criticises Kant’s unhesitating orientation towards the science of his time, particularly Newton, without taking the controversies within science itself into consideration. Moreover, Ra˘dulescu-Motru claims that the theory of apperception, the core of Kant’s system, contains two heterogeneous systems: spontaneity and numerical identity. Spontaneity designates an “organic” (psychological) unit of the individual self, while numerical identity refers to a mathematical identity of a supra-individual consciousness. The leap from psychological to numerical identity is logically inadmissible. In response, Ra˘dulescu-Motru calls on contemporary psychology and evolutionism to replace supra-individual consciousness with a “real”, individual consciousness. This ultimately constitutes a return to the anchoring of epistemology in ontology. Consciousness and the world of objects are manifestations of one and the same reality, which is strictly deterministic in that it goes through several phases and ends in consciousness as the culmination of cosmic development. Unlike Ra˘dulescu-Motru, Mihai Ralea (1896–1964) finds confirmation of
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Kant’s apriorism in psychology, although he personally favours Max Adler’s interpretation of apriorism, which is influenced by Marxism. AustroMarxist neo-Kantianism, in turn, goes back to Mircea Florian (1888–1960). As professor at the University of Bucharest, he carried out a series of studies on Kant, among them a substantial chapter in Istoria filosofiei moderne,74 where he contextualises the rise of Kantianism historically and examines its development. Not least, he analyses the European reception of Kant systematically and divides it into four exegetic categories: the sceptical, mystical, anti-metaphysical and metaphysical interpretations. Each of these categories can be differentiated further. Florian’s closest affinities lie with the metaphysical interpretation. He is inclined towards viewing Kant as a rationalist whose main goal was to save metaphysics with the aid of a new dogmatism. Florian himself does so by reducing the domain of science to phenomena, without however relinquishing the necessary, universal and objective character of their knowledge.75 At the same time, Kant is studied by theoreticians of science, who mobilise the critique of knowledge against positivism.76 Thus, Alexandru Mironescu emphasises the subject’s active role in cognition, while Ion Bruca˘r looks towards Kant in order to fortify rationalism against Bergson’s intuitionism. Finally, the mathematician Grigore C. Moisil, who was influenced by Poincar¦, defends the mathematical ideal of knowledge despite the foundational crisis in the sciences. Moisil examines the Kantian spontaneity of mind and the apriorism of space and time in light of contemporary axiomatism and denies the finality that Kant had attributed to Euclid and to Aristotelian logic. The axiomatic freedom of logic and of geometrical pluralism bears witness to the fact that a thinker can choose between several geometries. What is relinquished here is not the notion of apriorism, however, but the historically determined Kantian understanding of space and time: Moisil replaces Euclid’s notion of space with the group and measureable time with duration, which is based on the concept of the algebraic chain. The school around Nae Ionescu, whose political support is for the Iron Guard and who foregrounds mysticism as a philosopher of religion, is particularly influential in the interwar period. For him, Kant is a phenomenon of the past. Lucian Blaga (1895–1961) rejects Kantianism for different reasons. The son of a priest from Transylvania finishes his doctorate in philosophy and biology in Vienna in 1920. Having spent some years as a diplomat, in 1939 he is appointed to the chair of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj (which is relocated to Sibiu after the Second Vienna Award in 1940). Blaga remains politically incontestable both before and after World War II. Nevertheless, he is dismissed in 1948 and his writings are even banned. The reason are his philosophical writings from the period between 1931 and 1942, which develop an independent and coherent system of thinking. There is no room for Kant in a type of thinking that
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regards metaphysics as the conceptual formation of the world, and thus as the high point of philosophy. For Blaga, the historically limited validity of metaphysics Kant had criticised does not refute the necessity of and need for metaphysics. This is because Kantianism itself is characterised by ambivalence: On the one hand, he “rashly” measured metaphysical knowledge in terms of an ideal of scientificality and ignored the autonomy of metaphysics, which can be criticised immanently and independently. On the other hand, Kant believed uncritically in the impeccability of the existing natural sciences and of deistic theology, which had led him to an ethics of conformism. For Blaga, metaphysics was finally taking “revenge”: “Kant practised metaphysical abstinence in order to satisfy his hunger for metaphysics with the generally available surrogates.”77 Before the war, Zum ewigen Frieden [Perpetual Peace] (1917), die Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals] (by Isidor Colin n.y.; by Traian Bra˘ileanu 1929), Prolegomena [Prolegomena] (Mihail Antoniade 1924), Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone] (Constantin Ra˘dulescu-Motru 1924), Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] and Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of the Power of Judgement] (both by Traian Bra˘ileanu 1930 respectively 1940) and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason] (Dumitru Cristian Amza˘r and Raul Vis¸an 1934) were published. After the war, the following works were published: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Nicolae Bagdasar, Elena Moisuc 1969), Die Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Nicolae Bagdasar 1972), Kritik der Urteilskraft (Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu, Alexandru Surdu, Constantin Noica 1981), Logik [Logic] (Alexandru Surdu 1985), Prolegomena (Mircea Flonta, Thomas Kleininger 1987). After World War II, Kant, along with other “idealist” systems of thinking, is condemned from the point of view of dialectic materialism. However, some, including the logician Athanase Joja, also emphasise Kant’s empirical and “relatively agnostic realism” as a counterpart to his transcendental philosophy.78 Nonetheless, new translations of his works are published, some of which are from representatives of older generations of philosophers. Niculae Bellu examines Kant’s ethics from a Marxist perspective (1972). Alexander Boboc, a professor at the University of Bucharest, publishes a monograph about Kant entitled Kant ¸si neokantianismul (1968) and his colleague Mircea Flonta analyses Kant’s theory of etymology. Flonta doubts that the formalised language of intensional semantics can appropriately describe the distinction between “analytical” and “synthetic”, as analytical philosophers used to think. Flonta demands a separate examination of the difference between these concepts from both a systematic and an empirical-historical perspective.79 Among the “non-official” philosophers of the time, one who stands out is
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Constantin Noica (1909–1987). He published a study on ontology, logic and cultural philosophy, which was very influential both before and after 1989, even outside the circles of academic philosophy. Noica studies Kant partly through Heidegger, including a Festschrift to mark the bicentenary of the first publication of the Critique of Pure Reason.80 Like Heidegger, Noica puts the question of how synthetic judgments are possible a priori down to the question of Being. Ultimately, the transcendental makes possible an experienced reality that is influenced by a-priori forms. This “constructive” process regarding reality should be understood as neither idealistic nor subjectivistic and, least of all, anthropological. Kant and Heidegger are the most important starting points for a return to leitmotifs of individual thinking and for Noica’s novel reinterpretations of everyday language. A synthetic overview of the 25-year-old history of Kant’s reception in Romania from 1989 onwards has yet to be provided. Translated by Katharina Walter
Tomásˇ Garrigue Masaryk’s Critical and Distant Engagement with Kant by Jan Zouhar Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) was an eminent Czech philosopher and statesman, Professor of philosophy in the Czech part of the University of Prague in 1882–1914, a key personality in the struggle for Czechoslovakian independence in 1914–1918, and the first President of Czechoslovakia in 1918–1935. Masaryk was well aware of the difficulties in the interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. It is clearly indicated in his work Karel Havlcˇek (1896): “One can hardly believe how little people understand each other, even if they have lived together for years; even less do they understand their ancestors. Consider philosophers. How many have written treatises on Kant or Plato? Nevertheless, one can only find two or three scholars in the large body of literature on Kant or Plato of whom one can truly say : he did understand his work.”81 This paper will focus on a number of Masaryk’s texts – his key monographs Sebevrazˇda [Suicide as a Mass Phenomenon of Modern Culture, first published in German in 1881], Pocˇet pravdeˇpodobnosti a Humova skepse [Probability Calculus and Hume’s Scepticism, 1883], Zkladov¦ konkr¦tn¦ logiky [The Foundations of Concrete Logic, 1885], its extended and updated German edition Versuch einer concreten Logik [An Attempt at Concrete Logic, 1887], Modern cˇloveˇk a nbozˇenstv [Modern Man and Religion, published in journal Nasˇe doba in
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Fig. 11: Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk
1894–98 and as a monograph in 1934], Otzka sociln [The Social Question, 1898], Rusko a Evropa [Russia and Europe, first published in German in 1913] and Sveˇtov revoluce [World Revolution, 1925]. Sebevrazˇda, rightly considered to be the foundational work of Czech sociology, only contains two references to Kant’s work – firstly, a reference to his Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View,82 secondly, a note that philosophy has definitely been Anti-Christian since Kant’s era.83 In Probability Calculus and Hume’s Scepticism, Masaryk did not intend to provide a rough exposition of Kant’s philosophy. He criticised Kant’s apriorism “for logical and particularly psychological reasons”84 while rejecting that Kant’s philosophy was a turning point in the theory of knowledge. It is unfortunate that Kant became a mythical figure; many praise him and proclaim him to be the greatest of philosophers, but only know him by hearsay and, thus, are not aware of the position that the Critique of Pure Reason occupies in the history of philosophy : it is merely one of the attempts directed against Hume’s scepticism and only in the context of Hume’s philosophy can it be properly understood. Therefore, philosophy ought to return not to Kant, as many claim today, but to Hume – if it ought
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to return at all, which I dare doubt. The ‘return to Kant’ proposal cannot apply to the whole of philosophy, but merely to the theory of knowledge, and there, as has been argued, we ought to return to Hume.85
It is clear, then, that Masaryk did not have a very high opinion of Kant’s philosophy. He even wrote: “Kant’s philosophy seems completely mistaken to me and as for his metaphysics, it contains a mistake so fundamental that all of his subsequent work is flawed from the beginning: the mistake of uncritical and vague concept of a priori”.86 In Foundations of Concrete Logic Masaryk notes that he understands the concept of a priori in the Humean sense developed in his Enquiry, that is, not as innate forms and categories of experience, but as that “which the spirit independently creates by comparing and analysing ideas and judgments resulting from experience”.87 In his Attempt at Concrete Logic he qualifies that his theory of knowledge is not the same as Hume’s. He emphasises that our mind creates concepts on the basis of experience as well as independently of it. The a priori covers that “which the spirit creates independently by comparing, analysing and synthetizing concepts given in experience”.88 Masaryk delineates the concept of a priori psychologically. It can be applied to ideas or judgments and the difference between a priori and empirical knowledge consists merely in the way they are formed, because “all science construes concepts not only empirically, but also in an a priori manner on the basis of logical rules. The differences between sciences do not consist in the amount of a priori knowledge, but in the character of the subject studied and methods used”.89 Masaryk gives Kant credit for “restoring respect for rationalism”. However, he believes that Kant “was misled by a lack of reliable psychological analysis of independent intellectual powers and ended up in somewhat confusing subjectivism”.90 Masaryk believed that Kant harmed philosophy by distinguishing metaphysics as a higher science from special sciences and sharpened the contrast between them: “Because the sharp contrast between philosophy and special sciences and the isolation of empirical and a priori knowledge resulted in those pompous systems that we all too often meet in Post-Kantian German rationalism.”91 Masaryk states that Kant did not attempt to classify sciences and adopted Aristotelian classification into mathematics, natural science and metaphysics. When he assesses Kant’s approach to natural science, he rejects his conception of mathematics and claims that mathematics is possible not due to subjective a priori forms of perception of space and time, but due to receptiveness and creativity of the mind in the field of quantities and relations of numbers, space and time. On the one hand, Masaryk believes that Kant’s philosophy resulted in the fact that instead of a sober psychological analysis, a non-psychological construction
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of a priori rational capacities took over, which further resulted in “the door being wide open to the psychological myth”.92 On the other hand, Masaryk appreciates that due to Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective [Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht], which Masaryk considered as an attempt to systematize concrete psychology,93 abstract and concrete psychology began to be precisely distinguished. Masaryk, however, also speaks about the Critique of Pure Reason as about the deepest expression of the new spirit of the era and its stimulus for sociology and philosophy of history. Nevertheless, according to Masaryk, “Kant, in order to avoid Hume’s consequences and inspired by older philosophers, isolated scientific philosophy from special sciences and sank into speculation that cannot compete with the outcomes of precise science.”94
Fig. 12: Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Specifically, the Underlying Logic
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Masaryk’s assessment of Kant’s work is deeply influenced by a comparison with Hume. We find evidence for this in a number of Masaryk’s texts: “How subtle psychological analysis Hume provides and how amazingly dogmatically – in his own sense – Kant moves in the logic of his time without a deeper understanding of psychology!”95 Masaryk was convinced that one cannot understand the problem of certainty and limits of our knowledge without understanding Hume’s philosophy. This is also the message of Masaryk’s first attempt to confront positivism in his Probability Calculus and Hume’s Scepticism from 1883. In Modern Man and Religion (1896–98) he claims that Kant did not succeed in overcoming Hume’s doubts about the certainty of our knowledge. Masaryk however rejects the claim that our knowledge consists merely in recording outer phenomena and considers man to be a rationally active and creative being. This is why he is able to recognize Kant’s positive contribution in his teachings about the organizing power of the human mind. Masaryk appreciated Kant’s ethical rigor and his emphasis on unconditional moral responsibility, but he believed Kant did not show a live and loving interest in man. Hume, in contrast, showed that people are bonded by sympathy which, in spite of widespread religious and philosophical scepticism, can at least ground trust in another man. Masaryk summarises his comparison as follows: “Comparing Kant and Hume and judging the positive and negative aspects of their theories, I find it difficult to decide. It is best not to accept either of them, but to learn from both. And both Kant and Hume provide a lot one can learn from.”96 It needs to be pointed out that Masaryk adopted his critical stance towards Kant during his studies at the University of Vienna in the context of Brentano’s teachings. For Masaryk, Kant is a subjectivist, who isolated man from the external world, devoted little attention to special sciences, underestimated the psychological analysis of human knowledge, separated the rational and empirical aspects of knowledge, all of which resulted in the rise of German Speculative Idealism as well as undesirable titanism in 19th century. It is clear that Masaryk criticizes the unintended effects of Kant’s philosophy : “It is unfortunate that in his half-heartedness and with his method, Kant did not have a positive influence and in spite of his critical stance he opened the door to his fantasy. This was clearly shown by Schopenhauer and his followers as well as a number of ‘ingenuities’ of modern times.”97 Even though Masaryk’s critical attitude to Kant did not change in his Modern Man and Religion, words of recognition appear, too: I am indebted to Kant for showing me how our thinking is not a thing, but a process which is complicated and very subtle. I do not agree with him, but I respect his synthetic approach; I have admitted that and repeat it now. The reader must not get the impression that I do not appreciate or that I completely dismiss the aspects of Kant’s
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work that I criticise. It is not so – I merely disagree. In the same sense I disagree with Kant’s synthesis, even though I learned a lot from it.98
In Russia and Europe,99 Masaryk stated that even though Kant’s impact on Russian thinking was relatively mild, his philosophy did penetrate the views of a number of thinkers (Pyotr Lavrov, Vladimir Solovyov, Alexander Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky). In Masaryk’s opinion, the Russians did not understand Kant, because they are more mythical than the Europeans. Masaryk appreciates Kant for his attempt to overcome Hume’s fundamental scepticism and in his criticism he was able to depict the relationship between a critically thinking man and the world as well as his mythical self. According to Masaryk, Goethe’s Faust is an artistic expression of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.100 Masaryk devoted a lot of space to Kant in his retrospective work World Revolution. During the War and in the War 1914–1918 published in 1925.101 He restated that Kant’s philosophy did not satisfy him and he was driven away from it due to its subjectivism, individualism and alleged Prussian titanism. He understood Kant as a thinker who opposed Hume’s scepticism by one-sided intellectualism of allegedly pure reason and a set of a priori eternal truths, which gave rise to the fantasy of German subjectivism leading to pessimism and egoism in German thought. Masaryk recognized Kant’s humanism and his ethical effort, but he rejected his categorical imperative, because, according to Masaryk, ethical principles cannot be specified formally, but only materially.
Fig. 13: Medal showing Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, manufactured in celebration of his 85th birthday (1935)
For Masaryk, Kant was neither a philosophical ground nor an inspiration. Masaryk’s opinions of Kant were bound to stimulate discussion in our academic environment. As early as 1901, Masaryk’s approach to Kant was criticised by a Czech idealist philosopher and professor at the Medical School of the University of Prague, Frantisˇek Maresˇ, in his work Idealism and Realism in Natural Science. This work started what became known as a “dispute over Kant”, which involved a number of Czech philosophers in the first third of the 20th century. Of course,
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the issue was not Masaryk’s opinion of Kant, but the character and significance of Kant’s philosophy itself.
The Intellectual Intuition – Kant as Interpreted by the Czech Philosopher Vladimír Hoppe by Jindrˇich Karásek Kant’s restriction of human cognition to man’s discursive intellect, “which thinks, but does not intuit”,102 was soon perceived as a defect in his philosophy, as illustrated by Fichte’s attempt to restore intellectual intuition to the repertoire of human rationality – no longer in the form of Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva, much less that of intellectus archetypus, but merely as the immediate access of the subject of human consciousness to itself. It was only later that Schelling’s philosophy of identity elevated intellectual intuition to the status of a means to grasp nature in itself. It may be seen as highly significant that an attempt to address this perceived defect in Kant’s philosophy emerged in Bohemia and Moravia as part of a critical reaction to positivism as the prevalent attitude in the region at that time, since clearly nothing could be further from positivism, in all its manifestations, than the idea that human rationality could possess an intuitive mode of cognition, an intellectual intuition. This attempt was undertaken by the Czech philosopher Vladimr Hoppe (1882–1931), who developed his intuitive and contemplative philosophy as an extension of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will, set out in its final form in Prˇirozen¦ a duchovn zklady sveˇta a zˇivota. Od zˇivota sub specie temporis k zˇivotu sub specie aeternitatis [Natural and Intellectual Foundation of the World and Life. From Life sub specie temporis to Life sub specie aeternitatis], dating from 1925.103 The sub-title is indicative of Spinoza’s influence on Hoppe’s work. At several points in the text Hoppe argues that his philosophical position is very close to that of Spinoza, and this is also indicated by his favourable stance towards Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva. Hoppe was convinced that Spinoza’s ethics contained within it all the prerequisites for an intellectual renaissance of the intuitive or contemplative method.104 Thus Hoppe’s strategy in the face of the then prevalent positivist position was clearly, with the help of Spinoza, to reassert the method of intuitive cognition of the foundation of reality. This paper highlights the role played by Kant in this process. Vladimr Hoppe, appointed as lecturer at Charles University in Prague in 1922, and as professor at Masaryk University in Brno in 1927, called his own philosophy ‘transcendental idealism’ or ‘transcendental reality’, denoting a position that aimed to show that within human subjectivity, this “centre of the universe”, a connection can be established with the supra-individual domain of
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the transcendental subject and object, which encroach on our everyday reality within space and time.105 This already suggests that Hoppe’s intention in addressing Kant’s philosophy is to use it as a way of defining his own philosophical position. After his death on 3 March 1931, the papers in his estate were found to include a publication-ready text entitled Dva zkladn probl¦my Kantova kriticismu [Two Fundamental Problems in Kant’s Critical Philosophy]. The text comprised two separate works, the first of which, entitled Probl¦m intelektulnho nzoru a intuice u Kanta (The problem of intellectual contemplation and intuition in Kant) had already been published in 1922 in the ˇ esk mysl”. The second, O Kantoveˇ antitetick¦m zpu˚sobu mysˇlen a periodical “C o jeho pokusu vyrovnati rozpory pomoc dialektick¦ synt¦zy [Kant’s Antithetic Mode of Thinking and his Attempt to Resolve Contradictions by Means of Dialectical Synthesis], which formed the basis for Hoppe’s lectures at Masaryk University in the winter semester of 1928–1929, was intended for publication in the form as found in the papers of his estate. It was duly published without alteration by the Masaryk University Faculty of Philosophy in 1932.106 In the first work, to which this paper will be restricted for reasons of space, Hoppe first attempts to elucidate why Kant introduces the above-mentioned restriction of human cognition to the discursive intellect, the implication of which is to reject intellectual intuition. Hoppe’s explanation is as follows: in order to rescue the theory of cognition of the exact natural sciences, i. e. the ideal of a mathematical natural science introduced by Newton and Galilei, Kant sees himself constrained to deny the possibility of intuitive cognition, which would be completely alien to that ideal.107 As proof of the fact that Kant indeed felt himself under an obligation towards the ideal of mathematical natural science, which Hoppe describes as “Newton’s mathematicism”, he cites a passage from the preface to Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science] of 1786,108 where Kant indeed states as follows: “I assert, however, that in any special doctrine of nature there can be only as much proper science as there is mathematics therein.”109 Hoppe finds it impossible to understand how Kant could have written these words four years before the appearance of what he sees as Kant’s most important work, the Critique of Judgement, since in § 75 of that work Kant argues, on completely convincing grounds, that there could never be a “Newton of a blade of grass”. According to Hoppe, this means that there must be a mode of cognition in which mathematics does not speak the last word, and which therefore requires a nondiscursive source of cognition. Hoppe identifies that mode of cognition as intellectual intuition. Hoppe formulates his critical main thesis at several points in the text, with slight variations on each occasion. At one of these points Hoppe even applies this criticism to Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’, as follows: it is true that Kant’s
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Fig. 14: Anton Weber, Oriel of the Karolinum at the University of Prague (before 1896)
Copernican resolution seeks and finds objectivity in subjectivity, thereby winning for philosophical thought the fundamental insight that the order originally thought to exist in nature and things is actually placed there by us, so that in scientific cognition we are merely re-encountering the modes of intuition and thought of our subjectivity (or ‘personality’ in Hoppe’s terminology).110 But on closer examination, Hoppe continues, it emerges that Kant has not fully achieved his Copernican revolution: instead of “proceeding from our rich world of qualities in its full extent, and declaring the world of quantities as merely a small fragment of that world, he follows the path of … natural scientific cognition on the foundation of mathematics, as if that symbolic, abstract world [i. e. of mathematical natural science] were in fact the measure of all human cogni-
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tion.”111 According to this argument, Kant failed in the achievement of his Copernican resolution in that he remained obligated towards the ideal of mathematical natural science, in which “the rich world of qualities” is reduced to relationships that can be expressed in mathematical form. By ‘qualities’ Hoppe means mental experiences and values that, in contrast with natural scientific cognitions, which are always only relative and expressed in the symbolic language of mathematics, are absolute and experienced directly in the inner domain of subjectivity. Hoppe argues that a successfully completed Copernican revolution would have required Kant to consciously differentiate mathematical natural scientific cognition from “our creative, absolute cognition, which enables us to live in the directly experienced world of values”.112 Hoppe’s criticism is therefore that Kant has only completed half the distance of a Copernican revolution designed to produce a radical turn towards subjectivity, because, following the ideal of mathematical natural science, he ignores the dimension of subjectivity, and has therefore left behind in his noetics a residual element of objectivity that has not been transferred to subjectivity. He grants Kant the unique merit of “freeing man from the chains of the external world and achieving the Promethean exploit of causing the outer cosmos to be originated from the inner”.113 But he did not fully achieve this, according to Hoppe’s cultural diagnosis, owing to the rationalist culture of the 18th century in which Kant lived and thought, which was excessively dominated by mathematical and natural scientific research.114 Hoppe even claims that because he was so firmly anchored in the ideals of the Enlightenment, Kant had almost no understanding of the comprehensive scope of the social sciences, discovered fifty years before Kant’s time by Giambattista Vico.115 Significant in the systematic context pursued here is Hoppe’s thesis that it was left to post-Kantian thinkers to accomplish the full radical scope of the Copernican revolution that was only half completed by Kant. Hoppe claims that it was Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer who were all quick to realise that “the category of the intellect had to be the starting point of any endeavour to construct a unified, non-self-contradictory philosophy on the foundation of the intellect”.116 As well as attributing to Fichte, Schelling and Schopenhauer the insight that our subjectivity in intellectual intuition is identical with the subjectmatter of cognition, Hoppe also claims that on the basis of that insight, those three thinkers have replied in the positive to the question of whether through our subjectivity, which we “experience to the full”, we would be able to penetrate to the innermost domain of nature, thereby acquiring a metaphysical picture of nature. Kant had replied to this question in the negative, Hoppe says, because he developed an “agnostic theory of cognition”, entraining a form of illusionism for which the subject-matter of cognition becomes only a representation of intellectual forms.117 In other words, according to Hoppe it is only the radically
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completed Copernican revolution, specifically because it leaves behind no residue of objectivity reduced to the internality of subjectivity, but rather seeks and finds all objectivity within subjectivity, that makes it possible to cognise the inner domain of nature. While it may be somewhat doubtful that all of these three philosophers would be able to recognise this position as theirs, there is one of Hoppe’s attempted undertakings with which Fichte would have acquiesced. That is the attempt to establish whether Kant, notwithstanding his explicit denial of the possibility of intellectual intuition, may not in fact have implicitly used specifically this mode of cognition.118 It was precisely this question that Fichte put to himself in the Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre [Second Introduction to the Theory of Science], answering it as follows: Kant must have used intellectual intuition as I (Fichte) understand it, that is to say not a the ability of an intellectus archetypus, but as the direct self-consciousness of the subject of consciousness, whether he wished to or not, at two points in his philosophy : first in the form of selfconsciousness as original apperception, and secondly in the form of consciousness of the categorical imperative.119 Hoppe is pursuing a similar aim, and the issue is not affected by the fact that what he understands by intellectual intuition is slightly different from Fichte’s understanding of the term, since for Hoppe it is not only a mode of the access of the subject of consciousness to itself, but also – as for Schelling – a cognitive ability to grasp the inner domain of nature. In this context it should be noted that Hoppe first recalls Kant’s public declaration against Fichte, in which Kant, against Fichte and against his own assertion in Critique of Pure Reason,120 contends that it is not true that his intention in his critique of pure reason was merely to provide an introduction to transcendental philosophy. Hoppe takes Fichte’s side, saying that this declaration by Kant “is in fundamental contradiction with everything that this thinker [i. e. Kant] had stated on the relationship of the critique of pure reason to transcendental philosophy as a metaphysical system”.121 So how does Hoppe set about attempting this undertaking? In his exposition of this problem Hoppe starts with the concept of ‘category’, and to this extent his strategy is different from that followed by Fichte.122 He argues that while the categories were “transcendentally derived” by Kant, Kant did not ask the following questions: “Where do the categories come from, where are they begotten, in what does the nature of the progenitor intellect that begets the categories from itself as fixed laws consist?”123 While there is no mention of ‘metaphysical deduction’, from the above list of rather rhetorical questions it is clear that Hoppe does not find it convincing. And also clearly evident from it is Hoppe’s conviction that the categories are begotten from the human intellect, whose essence must therefore be seen as one of begetting. On this point Hoppe states as follows:
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The cognition of begetting activities in the categories already implies the assumption of an intellect124 that at the same time cognises and begets, whose a priori knowledge is at the same time a priori begetting. Such an intelligence does not acquire its cognitions by abstraction from the subject-matters of cognition, but rather intuitively: already through the fact of seeing the products of its thought, it at the same time begets them.125
Kant saw categories as original entities, i. e. as unity-giving synthesis activities that are not reducible to any other concepts. Since however synthesis according to Kant is “an act of spontaneity of the power of representation”126 , it can be said, with a grain of salt, that Kant’s categories are original begetting actions, that is to say activities of an intellect that from within itself – sua sponte – begets the unity of consciousness of the manifold of intuition. And here, Hoppe suggests, is precisely the point in Kant’s theory of cognition at which Kant should have attributed to the intellect the ability of intellectual intuition, since the categories, understood by Kant as fundamental cognitions of subject-matters, are clearly not acquired, according to Kant, through abstraction from the given manifolds of intuition. So where do they come from, if their derivation from judgement forms is not convincing? According to Hoppe, they are begotten from the intellect, and not discursively, but intuitively in the act of intellectual intuition. The intellect intuits products of its activity, not as something already present before it, that only had to be found or discovered, but as something that is created or begotten, for the first time and simultaneously, with the act of intuition. And for this reason its a priori knowledge is at the same time an a priori act of begetting, because everything that it knows a priori is begotten from itself, spontaneously, in the intuitive manner described above. Thus, since the human intellect possesses categories in the Kantian sense, it must possess intellectual intuition and must be seen as an original progenitor. In other words, the mere existence of the categories in the human intellect is proof that the intellect is originally creative in the act of intellectual intuition. In contrast with sensual intuition, therefore, intellectual intuition cannot be passive, since the object of intuition is begotten simultaneously with the act of intuiting it. Admittedly this does not qualify the intellect possessing this intuition eo ipso as intellectus archetypus, since what is begotten through intellectual intuition is not things, but merely a priori cognitions of the intellect. Structurally, however, the intellect possessing intellectual intuition is the same as the intellectus archetypus of which Kant says that “through [its] representation the objects of that representation should at the same time exist”.127 Representation of the originally begetting intellect has the form of intellectual intuition, and its objects, begotten from it, are categories. However Hoppe is mistaken when he asserts that according to Kant such an intellect proceeds archetypically and synthetically, because Kant concludes, precisely to the contrary, that an intellect possessing intellectual intuition would “not require a special act of synthesis of the manifold into the unity of con-
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sciousness”.128 Since, however, Hoppe is convinced along with Kant of the synthetic character of consciousness and of the categories as functions of the synthetic unity of consciousness, as the entire text suggests, for Hoppe the function of intellectual intuition must be taken to apply only to the act in which the begetting intellect begets the categories: so only for this act is it the case that through representation by the intellect the objects of that action of representation exist, and only in this exclusive case is there no need for a specific act of synthesis of the manifold into the unity of consciousness. For Hoppe, intellectual intuition has to ensure two things simultaneously, even though he does not make this explicit: it begets categories, and is an immediate self-consciousness of the begetter. Here Hoppe comes into close proximity with Fichte, without realising it, because the reason why Fichte introduced intellectual intuition into his theory was to avoid the regressus ad infinitum that arises with the reflexive explanation of self-consciousness. However Hoppe arrives at the same result as Fichte, i. e. that even through Kant rebutted the possibility of intellectual intuition, he nonetheless has to admit it, “against his will”, in order to explain self-consciousness as an original apperception (Fichte), or to be able to defend the possibility of a prior cognition through the categories (Hoppe). In contrast to Fichte, who undertakes the attempt to demonstrate intellectual intuition also in Kant’s practical philosophy, as a component of moral law, Hoppe takes a more cautious approach: “The matter of whether he [i. e. Kant] also uses intellectual intuition in his practical philosophy, in his proofs of experienced free will and the incontrovertible fact of the moral law, remains a delicate philosophical question.”129 The author hopes that this brief discussion has made clear the role played by German philosophy originating from Kant in the inception of free thought in the democratic state of Czechoslovakia established in 1918. For some philosophers, including Vladimr Hoppe, this philosophy was a productive rallying point against the Anglo-Saxon positivism and pragmatism espoused by the founder of the state and its first president, Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, and an inspiration for the development of its own philosophical positions.130 This makes it all the more tragic that the possible further development of this inspiration in Bohemia and Moravia was brought to an end by the violent events of the Nazi era. With a measure of irony, it can be said that it was Hoppe’s good fortune not to live to experience that era. Translated by John Jamieson
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Max Steiner – A Pugnacious “Old Kantian” from Prague by Jörg Krappmann Let them carp, honest Kant, There’ll be plenty more, you’ll find, They deny the thing in itself, But themselves are out of their mind! Franz Grillparzer131
In 1905 the first publication of a 21-year-old chemistry graduate named Max Steiner appeared under the title Die Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums [The Backwardness of Modern Free Thinking]. The stated intention of the work was nothing less than “in the context of a discussion of the current prevailing philosophy, to reawaken interest in Kant’s teachings, which have fallen into semi-oblivion”.132 At first glance it would appear that the timing of this undertaking could not have been worse chosen. The 100th anniversary of the death of Immanuel Kant had just generated a flood of publications marking the occasion. The author of an article in the periodical Kant-Studien had counted almost fifty celebrations, from which proceedings and records were now inundating the philosophical book market in various forms of publications. In addition, following the “ominous collapse of Hegelianism”, for some time neoKantianism had been asserting itself against the scientific positivism that was extending its domain in the second half of the 19th century, referring back to a transcendental logic-based interpretation of Kant.133 Yet it was neither youthful hubris nor a lack of knowledge of the subject that had generated this polemical work, but the desire to ensure an appropriate approach to Kant’s teachings, which Steiner saw as being threatened from two quarters – first from a natural science-based materialism and positivism, which around 1900 had gained uncritical acceptance across wide sectors of society, and secondly through a reduction of the scope of Kant’s ideas to their application as a theory of cognition, a trend that was evident in contemporary Kant research even beyond the domain of neo-Kantianism as such. Max Steiner originated from the bourgeois Jewish enclave in the German community of Prague, which by the years before the First World War represented only five percent of the city’s total population. With Max Brod he shared his school desk, and also his love of Schopenhauer, whose works both pupils studied on their own initiative, since the subject of philosophy for the Matura university entrance examination was still taught on the basis of Herbart’s Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie [Textbook as an Introduction to Philosophy], which was first published in 1813 and was to appear in its last
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Fig. 15: Max Steiner
revised version in 1912. Herbart’s enormous impact on Austrian intellectual life in the 19th century at least matched that of Schopenhauer in the group later known as the “Prague circle”, whose membership, according to Max Brod, also included Max Steiner, along with Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Rainer Maria Rilke and others.134 In 1903, according to the custom among Prague artists and intellectuals, Steiner left the city to undertake university studies in Berlin,135 where he joined the Freie Wissenschaftliche Vereinigung (F.W.V.) [Free Learned Society],136 a liberal student association that emerged in 1881 from the protests against the anti-Jewish propaganda of Berlin court preacher Adolf Stoecker, and from the outset maintained “solidarity with German liberal Prague and its students”.137 Steiner’s choice to study chemistry would clearly have been based on the career opportunities available to a Jewish student in this up-and-coming discipline. However he soon came to despise his fellow-chemists: “They are completely bogged down in the empirical, and have no inclination to look further afield than their retorts”.138 He then added an aphorism that originally referred to chemistry, but applied equally to all the natural sciences: “Cooking is easier than
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thinking”. But in spite of his philosophical interests he did not consider a change of subject, since he held university philosophy in equal disdain. This can be seen from one of the letters to the editor of Fackel, in which he flagellated the posthumous psychologising approach taken to the works of Weininger.139 Karl Kraus was captivated by the young student from Prague, and used arguments and extracts from Steiner’s books in later essays. Within the F.W.V. a circle of separatists gathered around Steiner, forming a front against the association’s easy-going liberalism of habit, which they denounced as pass¦. Kurt Hiller, who joined the F.W.V. in 1905, still had vivid memories of their first meeting more than 60 years later : As an outsider and protester before I took a similar role in the association, he was respected from a distance as the group’s leading intellect even by our well-dressed beerguzzlers, with a mixture of resentment and apprehension. His manner was always ironic, acerbic and sarcastic. Although his view of the world and political feelings were out-and-out to the left, thinking had brought him to insights that were most definitely to the right, and this was something new. I followed him in many respects, though not in all, and found him hugely fascinating.140
This fascination exerted on Hiller led in 1909 to the foundation of the “Neues Club”, as the spearhead of literary expressionism. Steiner had no opportunity to witness the waxing fortunes of this new group, because in 1910, on the day of his doctoral examination, he took his own life, at 26 years of age. Along with Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums, by the time of his early death he had also published Die Lehre Darwins in ihren letzten Folgen [Darwin’s Theory in its Ultimate Consequences], published in 1908 in two editions in rapid succession. A third book applying his interpretation of Kant to ethics and politics remained uncompleted. Kurt Hiller published the existing materials in 1912 under Steiner’s planned title of Die Welt der Aufklärung [The World of the Enlightenment]. This posthumous publication from the author’s papers was reviewed in almost all the leading expressionist journals, most extensively by Salomo Friedländer in Sturm.141 Friedländer’s lifelong engagement with Kant has been evident since 2005, with the publication of his complete writings.142 He initially followed a concept of ethics that saw Kant’s categorical imperative as insufficient. It was only when provoked by harsh criticism from Ernst Marcus, whom he had known since the turn of the century, that Friedländer undertook a re-examination of Kant’s writing, and the review of this posthumous work of Steiner is probably the first written testimony to the new stance Friedländer had now adopted. He himself referred to this position as “old Kantianism”, a term that is used in different ways by researchers. On the one hand it refers to direct students of Kant, such as Reinhold or Jacob Sigismund Beck,143 and on the other it denotes a
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group of philosophical nonconformists, including Ernst Marcus and Ludwig Goldschmidt, and also Max Steiner.144 The latter sense of the word is taken from the organisational schema used in Karl Vorländer’s Geschichte der Philosophie [History of Philosophy], in which he distinguishes between neo-Kantians as such (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Rudolf Stammler), “old Kantians”, and philosophers related to Kant (such as Alois Riehl, Otto Liebmann and Wilhelm Windelband).145 For Vorländer, the term “old Kantian” refers to thinkers who “go back to the original Kant out of systematic rather than philological interest”.146 But Steiner, like other philosophical lone combatants in the years around 1900, saw much more in Kant than a historical source text. For Steiner, Kant’s theory of cognition was the guiding principle for the assessment of all philosophical theorems. Kant had demonstrated the subjectivity of cognition based on experience, so that the claims to absolutism asserted by contemporary natural sciences were by definition impossible, and their ill–considered excursions into metaphysics could be shown to be absurd. “Kant’s question: ‘how is experience possible?’ should be reframed in our situation as ‘how does experience become science?’”147 Steiner’s opponent is “fashionable materialism”, which is to be banished to within the “confines of the critique of reason”.148 He focuses first on the charge of inconsistency, levied against Kant by Ernst Haeckel in Welträtseln [World Riddles]. The accusation is that Kant in Critique of Pure Reason demonstrated that God, freedom and immortality were untenable, only to re-legitimise them, almost through the philosophical “back door”, in Critique of Practical Reason. Steiner shows this thesis to be untenable on the basis of many textual references to both works, which will not be reiterated here. It is more important to note the fact that Steiner approaches Kant’s oeuvre as a self-contained system, which sets out to “explore the possibility of morality and moral theology, with its inquiries into the soul, freedom and God”,149 and the writings on the theory of cognition are merely a preliminary, while indispensable, stage on this route, he argues. This ensures the supremacy of philosophy over the assertive claims of materialistic natural science, while also rejecting the project of neo-Kantianism largely to reduce Kant to the theory of cognition. Steiner formulates his basic thesis as follows, in a complete inversion of Vorländer’s conceptual structure: In philosophy, Kant spoke the last word. Our free thinking today does not represent progress, but a pernicious reaction. Many people talk about going ‘back to Kant’, but we must not follow them – because they are heading in the wrong direction. There is no path ‘back to Kant’, only one that falls ever more steeply away from him. And our modern free thinking is going further and further down that path.150
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Friedländer, too, aspires “not to find our way back to Kant, but forward to him”, since “he is still centuries ahead of where we are”.151 Like Steiner before him, he calls for the restriction of philosophy and knowledge through Kant: “We are only too ready to disregard the clear boundary line by which Kant differentiates experience from the unknowable. Our modern mixers find such a boundary disturbing.”152 The similarities in terms of content and choice of words suggest that Friedländer formulated his view of Kant under the patronage of not only of Ernst Marcus, but also of Max Steiner. “The backwardness of modern free thinking” attracted little response initially, and become known only after “Darwin’s theory in its ultimate consequences” gained considerable public attention. Houston Stewart Chamberlain read the book “in a single sitting, line by line”, on the recommendation of the Vienna physiologist and later Rector of the University of Vienna, Julius von Wiesner.153 He saw parallels to his arguments against Ernst Haeckel and Darwinism, as outlined in Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts [Foundations of the 19th Century] and explored in greater depth in his monograph on Kant.154 He wrote to Steiner, wishing him sales of “200,000 copies”, resulting in a correspondence between the two writers.155 In Kant-Studien, Oscar Ewald, Weininger’s successor as deputy chairman of the Vienna Kant Society, praised Steiner’s book on Darwin as “an indirect proof of idealism”. He also claimed that Steiner provided a “rigorous demonstration that a genuinely human system of ethics could never be built on the premises of the theory of selection”.156 This statement hit on the core of Steiner’s method. On the basis of logic and Kant’s theory of cognition he tests the premises of a theory, and applies it through to its ultimate consequences. If those consequences are unacceptable to the authors of the theory, or if prior logical aporia can be demonstrated, Steiner declares the presence of an inconsistency – a definitive condemnation in his eyes, because “inconsistency is the philosophical lie”.157 Along with the theory of selection, his book on Darwin also rejects altruism, suggested by Petr Kropotkin as the humanitarian way out of the “survival of the fittest”.158 This also highlights the socio-political implications of Steiner’s critique based on the theory of cognition. According to Steiner, Kropotkin’s mutual assistance, ultimately pointing towards a socialist society, is not tenable either according to logical premises or even the conditions formulated by Darwin, so that materialist and socialist convictions lack any philosophical foundations. Since Steiner also rejected liberalism as tied to an unjustified belief in progress, he eventually came to propagate an aristocratic form of socialism, which had little in common with the concept of social aristocracy as developed at the end of the 19th century by Julius Langbehn and Alexander Tille. Steiner’s views were a highly individual mixture of conservative, clerical and anarchistic ideas along the lines of Stirner’s.159
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This diverse mixture and enlightenment critique derived from Kant prompted Thomas Mann, in his Zeitroman “The magic mountain” [Der Zauberberg], to base the character of Naptha (initially called ‘Bunge’) on the personal and intellectual description of Steiner provided by Hiller in the introduction to “World of the Enlightenment”. Entire passages of Steiner are quoted verbatim in support of Naptha’s “denial of natural sciences’ claim to truth” in debate with Settembrini as his opponent.160 Steiner saw “World of the Enlightenment” as his last contribution to the field of ideological critique, and planned to “create a system of morality based on mere reason and pure experience”.161 He would probably have failed in this still unrealised endeavour. His last notes include the formula “life is absence of cognition” (Leben ist Erkenntnislosigkeit).162 It would appear that for him, at the age of 26 years, this was an insight with which it was no longer possible to live. As a connection between the very different cultural domains of Prague, Vienna and Berlin, as a striking thinker of the transitional phase of the modern era, and as a pugnacious “old Kantian”, Steiner, as Max Brod said, should not be forgotten. Translated by John Jamieson
Kant in Slovenia by Jure Simoniti Kant’s practical philosophy, and his philosophy in general, have usually prompted two mutually exclusive types of interpretation. On the one hand, his moral law has been considered a beacon of enlightened universal ethics, no longer bound to any definite limitations of gender, nationality, race, and so on. With his ideas of “perpetual peace” and “cosmopolitan Right”, Kant, not without good reason, became the “spiritual father” of the United Nations, and, in a broader sense, of International Law and Global Justice. In contrast with Kant’s Moralität, Hegel’s Sittlichkeit is generally (mis)understood as being essentially more particularistic. On the other hand, Kant’s philosophy of the thing in itself, of the asymptotic approach to the ethical ideal, of the beautiful that is only an object of judgment, and the sublime being perceivable solely from a safe distance, was often regarded as self-indulgent, abstract, lacking actuality (in psychoanalytic terms, even as an obsessively neurotic endless deferral of contact with ‘the thing’), and has sometimes been criticised as a precursor of the “ethics of the beautiful soul”, which is more concerned with its own purity than with the contingencies of the world. On this disparate ground, the two most prominent contributions to Kant’s (Practical) Philosophy in Slovenia have been made: the affirmative stance toward Kant of Alenka Zupancˇicˇ and the critical position of Zdravko Kobe.
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Fig. 16: Andy Miah, Slavoj Zˇizˇek (2008)
Kant’s personal life and thought present an interesting contradiction. A man, by whose daily walks the people of Königsberg set their watches, thus a man whose life could not have been more parochial, authored a philosophy that became synonymous with cosmopolitanism. There are analogies between this discrepancy and the specific situation in Slovene philosophy. Provinciality may be an element in Slovenes’ explicit and pronounced self-awareness; yet it is precisely Slovene philosophy, as represented by the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis (also: Ljubljana Lacanian School) and pre-eminently by its cofounder Slavoj Zˇizˇek, that has put Slovenia on the world map and also advocated a rigorous epistemological, ethical, and ontological universalism. “Emancipation”, “de-particularisation”, “decentrement”, are the most common concepts in this anti-humanist ethics, which is based primarily on Kant, as in the case of Zupancˇicˇ, and Hegel, as in the case of Zˇizˇek and Mladen Dolar. Thus, Kant and Slovenia could perhaps have been a match made in heaven. However, it was not until the 1990’s that the most notable contributions to academic studies of Kant were made. Before Kant, the landscape of Slovene philosophy was largely governed by other grand figures, Marx above all, naturally in the form of official Marxism, then by Heidegger’s existentialism in the 1960’s and 70’s, and, finally and most famously, by a psychoanalytical reading of Hegel in the 1980’s. The world-renowned Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis was founded in the late
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1970’s and now includes three most prominent members, Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Mladen Dolar, and Alenka Zupancˇicˇ.
Fig. 17: Ljubljana School For Psychoanalysis, f.l.t.r.: Dolar, Krecˇicˇ (journalist), Zupancˇicˇ, Zˇizˇek
Along with Zdravko Kobe, it was Alenka Zupancˇicˇ who opened the era of more prolific Kantianism in Slovenia. Her monograph Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan was published in 1993, followed by considerable international success in the coming years. The book, which was translated into many languages and published by the most renowned publishing houses, is a Lacanian reading of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, as well as a rethinking of Lacan by way of Kant. In a perhaps unexpected coalition of Kant’s moral law and Lacan’s notion of “the Real”, Zupancˇicˇ found the narrowest ground upon which an ethics not predetermined by any traditional moral content could be construed. To be able to think the absolute purity of ethical self-determination unburdened by any preconceived moral goods, Zupancˇicˇ argues that the ethical act does not presuppose the good, but, rather, defines it: “The fundamental paradox of ethics lies in the fact that, in order to found an ethics, we already have to presuppose a certain ethics (a certain notion of the good). The whole project of Kant’s ethics is an attempt to avoid this paradox: he tries to show that the moral law is founded only in itself, and the good is good only ‘after’, the moral law.”163 Since this “ethics of the Real” does not depend on any particular value,
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Fig. 18: Alenka Zupancˇicˇ
extending from personal pleasures to conventional practices and sexual or cultural identities, its aspiration is to establish an ethics of the most uncompromising, radical, and stringent universality. The value of Zupancˇicˇ’s book lies not only in its new outlook on both Kant and Lacan, but in the positive elaboration of a consistent and articulate ethical position, as well as in its clear negative differentiation from various traditional and modern approaches. Its counterparts are not only the ethics of religious gratifications or the utilitarian calculus of pleasures, but also modern secular ethics in all their diverse forms: the ethics of pluralism and multiculturalism, the ethics of manifold language games, the ethics of storytelling, the ethics of human rights, and, perhaps as a general term for all these, the ethics of the finite. Or, as Zupancˇicˇ puts it pointedly : “The ethics of the Real is not an ethics of the finite, of finitude. The answer to the religious promise of immortality is not the pathos of the finite; the basis of ethics cannot be an imperative which commands us to endorse our finitude and renounce all ‘higher’, ‘impossible’ aspirations.”164 The other seminal account of Kant’s second Critique in Slovenia is Zdravko Kobe’s Tri ˇstudije o Kantovi prakticˇni filozofiji [Three Studies on Kant’s Practical Philosophy] published in 2008.165 However, Kobe first made his name as a meticulous interpreter of Kant’s first Critique. In 1995, his Automaton transcendentale I. Kantova pot h Kantu [Automaton Transcendentale I. Kant’s Path to Kant] was published.166 Due to its accuracy, argumentative commitment, breadth of scope, and the sheer abundance of relevant sources quoted, the book is regarded by some as a kind of a paragon of Slovene academic prose; it is Kobe’s doctoral thesis. The treatise follows the path from Kant’s second dissertation in 1770, his De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis, to the publication of the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, focusing mainly on the years 1772 and 1777. Kobe con-
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Fig. 19: Alenka Zupancˇicˇ, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan
cludes that the Copernican turn was already accomplished in Kant’s letter to Herz in 1772. However, in 1777, Kant still believed the inner sense was capable of perceiving its representations immediately and adequately, and for this reason his rational psychology was still dogmatic (and, as such, included the ‘I’ as a noumenal substance, an a priori proof of life after death, and a proof of the
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existence of heaven and hell). Thus, over the next four years, in order to finally assume a ‘critical’ stance, Kant was above all compelled to change his doctrine of the inner sense. In 2001, the much awaited Automaton transcendentale II. Kritika ˇcistega uma [Automaton Transcendentale II. Critique of Pure Reason] followed,167 a thorough attempt to tighten and rectify the argumentative structure of the first Critique. Kant’s opus magnum is, however revolutionary, nevertheless a conglomerate of many heterogeneous strains, issuing mostly from the compendia of 18th century academic philosophy. According to Kobe, Kant’s deduction of the categories represents a central matrix of his entire argumentation. As a consequence, Kant should have altered the architecture of his work, a task he failed to accomplish. Critique of Pure Reason thus remains a hybrid of critical and pre-critical elements. Kant inherited many conceptual distinctions of the traditional philosophy, such as Baumgarten’s difference between sensitive and logical knowledge, which became inconclusive within the design of Critique. The original synthetic unity shows that the origin lies in the unity of sensibility and understanding rather than in their duality, so in order for the critical philosophy to “hold water”, sensibility is not something different from understanding, but, to paraphrase Hegel, is “the other of understanding”, hence, its inner disposition. Finally, if sensibility is reduced to understanding, the problem of the determinability of experience arises. The system is now unable to decide why, at this moment, the subject is representing this content rather than the other. In 2008, Kobe elaborated his somewhat deprecating approach to Kant’s ethics in Three Studies on Kant’s Practical Philosophy. He argues that Kant’s endeavour to establish a morality of pure reason, to justify the necessity of freedom existing “alongside” the necessity of nature, ultimately fails: “The undecidability of the content of duty, the failure to explicate the moral sense, and the inability to make an objective assessment of the moral value of a particular act are the three major weaknesses, the consequence of which is an essential subjectivity of Kant’s morality.”168 Historically, this type of moral justification is subsequently legitimately embodied in the romantic ethics of the beautiful soul, in Jakob Friedrich Fries’ “ethics of conviction”. As “essentially subjective”, this ethics is both completely empty on the one hand and completely arbitrary on the other. The truth of the beautiful soul lies not only in its passivity, but even more in the fact that it can do anything and remain untouched by it: “True enough, the beautiful soul is enamoured with its beauty and normally remains inactive. But its peculiarity lies not so much in its reluctance to interfere with the world for fear of soiling its hands with necessarily sordid particulars; it is even more characteristic of the beautiful soul to be ultimately able to do anything without the filth of this world sticking to its fingers, because the soul will always know how to present its act as an act of duty.”169
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Finally, in 2014, Jure Simoniti published in Vienna a monograph Die Philosophie der kleinsten Prätentiösität [Philosophy of the Smallest Pretentiousness], whose central figure is none other than Kant.170 Due to the ascent of “speculative realism”, Kant now enjoys the reputation of being the most fervent enemy of this new post-postmodern thought. Supposedly, Kant’s transcendental subjectivity encapsulated the whole of reality within its borders and, subsequently, the post-Kantian modern subject was now incapable of stepping out of his own reason. The book Philosophy of the Smallest Pretentiousness rejects this diagnosis. It begins with the familiar Kantian image of the moral subject looking at the starry heavens. While the subject of cognition was driven by an endless effort to totalise the experience under one transcendental idea, the moral subject is now, almost unaware, perceiving the outside world in a state of detotalisation: a dark sky opens and, being sublime, it no longer returns a gaze to the gazing subject. Kant thus provides the future philosophy with some sort of matrix of two irreducibly correlative operations, that of infinite accumulation of meaning and that of facing meaningless facticity. While the conscious subject always operates under the constraint of the operation of totalisation, reaching from Kant’s “absolute totality in the synthesis of phenomena”,171 Fichte’s Verichlichung of the non-I, Hegel’s becoming-self-conscious of the world, to Marx’s labour as “domination of nature”, Nietzsche’s over-powering, Heidegger’s Bewandtniszusammenhang of the ‘care’, structuralist kinship systems or postmodern discursive practices and language games, this subject nonetheless never ceases to entrain his necessary, albeit subconscious, counterpart, a subject performing an operation of release. Experiencing a pure meaningless facticity is a well-known phantasm of Western thought; the examples are abundant: Fichte’s desert island, Hegel’s glacier in Swiss Alps, Marx’ Australian coral island, Nietzsche’s island of the “seventh loneliness”, Heidegger’s island Delos, L¦viStrauss’ moonscapes in South America, Deleuze’s oceanic island, Lacan’s ruins of Caf¦ de Flore after human extinction. Realism is thus not a stance that became impossible with Kant, but represents a, however obscure, concomitant phenomenon of modern reason. The book’s thesis is that the realist stance can be claimed only at the precarious pinnacle of the dialectic of totalisation and release, where the overarching activity of the subject switches into a mode of detotalising indifference to the world. To sum up, Kant’s philosophy enjoys a certain popularity in Slovenia today. Mainly because of the pedagogical work of Zdravko Kobe at the University of Ljubljana, there is a new generation of students whose papers, doctoral theses, and research work show Kant studies attaining a level of quality that often surpasses studies in other fields of philosophy.
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The Reaction to Kant in South-Slavic Countries by Jure Zovko The influence of the Enlightenment in South Slavic countries was negligible, almost insignificant. This is reflected in the reaction to Kant’s philosophy. In contrast to the ideas of the Enlightenment, which remained without repercussion in South Slavic thought, the influence of Italian humanism and the Renaissance was very important in Croatian cities on the Adriatic coast, especially in Split and Dubrovnik. The father of Croatian literature, the Roman Catholic humanist Marko Marulic´ (1450–1520) wrote moral discourses under the influence of Italian Renaissance philosophy, and so, in chapter 4 of his book De bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum exhaustively argued, we could say in an almost Kantian manner, in support of the necessity of truth-telling and advocacy of veracity in life.
Ioannis Baptist Horvath’s Critical View of Kant Some years after, following the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) we encounter among representatives of Scholastic philosophy in Croatia, a critical review of Kant’s transcendental philosophy written by Ioannis Baptist Horvath (1732–1799), entitled Declaratio infirmitatis fundamentorum operis Kantiani ‘Critik der Reinen Vernunft’ (1797).172 Horvath reproaches Kant for attempting the destruction of traditional metaphysics, which he unfortunately did not study. As is generally known, Kant defended the view in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Present Itself as a Science, that a metaphysics which presents itself as a science will be to standard school metaphysics “as chemistry is to alchemy, or astronomy to astrological divination”.173 Horvath took pains to defend the dignity and the philosophical and theological relevance of traditional metaphysics, especially those of Aristotelian and Thomistic provenance. Unlike Kant’s metaphysics of subjectivity, which rejects knowledge of entities that are not accessible to sense experience, Horvath is committed to traditional realism as based on Parmenides’ principle of identity of thinking and being. In this sense, Horvath believes that Kant’s critique of metaphysics misconstrues the core significance of Scholastic metaphysical doctrine, which is based precisely on the correspondence of entities and knowledge. Horvth’s main objection to Kant is that his philosophy consists of subjective idealism in which there is no real correlate of our knowledge to which our sense representation should correspond. The problem is that in Kant’s philosophy, the human being as a thinking entity is, ontologically speaking, understood and interpreted as a mere empirical phenomena in the world, while the “thing in itself” (Ding an sich) remains beyond the range of our under-
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standing and unknowable. Kant’s theory of correspondence is of itself paradoxical, says Horvath, because our perceptions correspond only to concepts available to us in our consciousness. As one of the weaknesses of Kant’s idealistic system, Horvath points to his “transcendental aesthetics”, that is, the doctrine of space and time that were perceived as “a priori form of intuition.” Instead of Kant’s subjectivizing theory of space, Horvath, in his critique of Kant, relies primarily on the theory of space that was developed by the most influential Croatian philosopher of the age of Enlightenment, Rud¯er Bosˇkovic´ (Roger Joseph Boscovich, 1711–1787) in his most significant work Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis (1758, 1759, 1763). Horvath had, in fact, already written an important work Elementa Physicae (1793) under the influence of Ruder Boskovic. Horvath primarily criticizes Kant’s conception of space (“Space is represented as a given infinite magnitude”174) referring to Boskovic’s theory of forces, as well as to his concept of matter, understood as a set of points (materiae puncta). Unlike Kant’s conception of space and time as subjective forms of intuition, for Horvath, space and time are real modes of existence (modi existendi). It is paradoxical, says Horvath, how a philosopher of the Enlightenment, who wants to subject all structures to criticism, at the same time wants to replace the argumentation of traditional cosmology, psychology and rational theology “with a moral faith” (eas supleri quadam morali fide) which is supposed to constitute a new future metaphysics as science. In Horvath’s opinion, if someone argues for “freedom of life”, as Kant does, the probability is greater that such a concept will entail negative, rather than positive results. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason opens the Pandora’s box of uncontrolled subjectivist voluntarism, something Kant tried to alleviate in the Critique of Practical Reason, which develops the rules and obligations of the moral life.
Stjepan Zimmermann and Franjo Markovic´ – Kantian Approaches at the University of Zagreb Both were professors of philosophy, who worked at the Jesuit Neoacademia Zagrabiensis founded in 1699, the forerunner of today’s University in Zagreb. They came mainly from the Scholastic tradition, so that their reception of Kant was mainly in the spirit of Scholastic criticism of his philosophy. But thanks to the enlightened openness of Queen Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II and their commitment to liberalization of the school system, there was later, at the Neoacademia Zagrabiensis, a quite fruitful reaction to Kant philosophy. This is ˇ ucˇic´ (1784–1828) in his work Philosophia critice best demonstrated by Simeon C 175 elaborata (1815). Here, Kant’s critical method is adopted, but in an attempt to
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elaborate the traditional disciplines of cosmology, empirical and rational psychology, anthropology and praxeology in the spirit of the Roman Catholic philosophical tradition. The most important representative of the Neoscholastic movement was certainly Stjepan Zimmermann (1884–1963), a consistent critic of Kant’s philosophy from the standpoint of the criteria set forth in the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris (1879). Zimmermann, in his habilitation thesis, Opc´a noetika. Teorija spoznaje i kritika njezine vrijednosti [A General Noetic. Theory of Knowledge and Criticism of its Value], published in Croatian in 1918, acknowledges that Kant and Aristotle are the greatest thinkers in the history of the human spirit.176 In terms of epistemology, Zimmermann, as a supporter of realism, gives Aristotle the advantage, since Aristotle claims that objects we know exist independently of our cognitive abilities, whereas Kant explicitly states that we know the object when the chaotic matter of perception is united by the synthetic unity of our understanding. It is significant therefore that Zimmermann, in his criticism, argues for the intentional character of our thinking: every thought or speech has intentional features, because it refers to objects which, as Zimmermann claims, are not in fact a chaotic mass, as Kant thought. As opposed to Kant, Zimmermann wants to prove, on the basis of the intentional structure of our thinking, that the objects of our knowledge “exist independently of our thinking” and that “our knowledge is true not only for empirical objects, but also for those items that transcend experience”.177 It is significant that in Zimmermann we can perceive a gradual assimilation of and sympathy for Kant’s metaphysics of morality. As a result of a decree of Emperor Franz Joseph I on the 19th of October, 1884, the modern University of Zagreb was inaugurated. At that time, it was composed of four faculties: the faculties of Law, Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. The first professor of philosophy at the University of Zagreb was Franjo Markovic´, founder of Croatian philosophical terminology, who defended the autonomy of the university in the spirit of Kant’s philosophy. He polemicized with Scholastic philosophy, and was a determined opponent of the materialism and positivism inaugurated by the French philosopher and sociologist, Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte held that, in the history of the human spirit, there are three stages of development and three epochs of progress in terms of knowing the truth: the theological, metaphysical and positivist eras. Unlike Comte, Franjo Markovic´, in the spirit of Kant’s philosophy, argues for a metaphysics of subjectivity based on a theory of self-consciousness. Kant’s notion of self-consciousness forms, for Markovic´, the basis of the autonomy of the university, but also the basis for the independence of the nation. It is notable that Markovic´ cites Kant’s treatise Streit der Fakultäten (1798), in which the ideas of freedom and
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autonomy of mind and freedom as final aims are presented as a basis on which to build future universities. The university is for Franjo Markovic´ the place where the self-consciousness of the individual and the nation comes into existence. The motto of Markovic´ ’s philosophy is that “Nothing valuable comes into existence by means of human labor without a living logical, aesthetic and ethical aspiration, that is without philosophical aspiration.”178 In his most important work, Razvoj i sustav opc´enite estetike [The Development and System of General Aesthetics, 1903] Franjo Markovic´ criticizes Kant’s subjectivization of aesthetics and points to the ontological dimension of beauty in the philosophy of art, ranging from Plato to Hegel. However, in the spirit of Kant’s philosophy, he saw the primary task of reflective judgment in the cultivation of our mind and mental abilities. Markovic´ believes that the fundamental feature of human cognition is that it proceeds from a singular perception to the universality of reason, and that a different foundation of philosophical disciplines is accordingly possible from that which is found in Kant and other representatives of the German idealism. “The flight of Icarus” on the wings of the metaphysics of subjectivity leads, in Markovic´’s opinion, to an inevitable descent into the “abyss of atheism and pessimism”.179 Markovic´ retained, in his reading of Kant’s philosophy, the fundamental characteristics of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, but at the same time promotes a moderate patriotism under the slogan “Homeland and world.”
Albert Bazala, a Liberal Kantian Philosopher Markovic´’s student, Albert Bazala, was without doubt the most famous representative of liberal philosophy in the 20th century in Croatia. Bazala’s extensive History of Philosophy (1912) was written under the strong influence of his reaction to Kant’s philosophy. “No one before Kant,” according to Bazala, “so determinedly, nor so clearly highlighted that knowledge consists in synthesis, in the binding and ordering of cognitive material”.180 The question of thematizing the synthetic abilities of our understanding and reason is considered by Bazala to be the key question of philosophy. But already in the treatise Metalogicˇki korijeni filozofije [Metalogical Roots of Philosophy, 1924], Bazala firmly distances himself from Kant’s remark that knowledge must be limited only to the phenomenal world, but that in our cognitive process we also find much from the world of the “noumenal”. Accordingly, Bazala stresses the importance of the “metalogical” foundations of philosophy. Far more than the logical foundation of self-awareness is the thematization of poetry, religion and art.181 Bazala tries to show that the task of philosophy consists in thinking the spirit of the time in its critical evaluation. He claims that, in our consideration of life, the metalogical roots of philosophy are found in the traditional myths of Homer and Hesiod, in
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Plato’s theory of enthusiasm and Eros, in artistic enthusiasm and in Nietzsche’s will to live. Bazala’s student Pavao Vuk-Pavlovic´, born Paul Wolf (1894–1976), was a connoisseur of Kant’s philosophy. In discussions of cognitive theory, however, he relied more on Husserl’s phenomenology. He wrote the best discourse on the philosophy of education and the philosophy of culture in Croatian, partly under the influence of Kant’s philosophy. Ten years after his expulsion from the University of Zagreb in 1947, Vuk-Pavlovic´ was named professor of philosophy in Skopje, and contributed significantly to the development of philosophy in Macedonia.
Kant Among the Yugoslav Marxists Acceptance of Kant among the Yugoslav Marxists (Milan Kangrga, Gajo Petrovic´, Branko Bosˇnjak, Rudi Supek, Mihajlo Markovic´, Svetozar Stojanovic´) was no better than among the Neoscholastics. After the establishment of the Communist dictatorship in 1945 and the reestablishment of Yugoslavia, philosophers of liberal orientation became the victims of persecution. The Hegelian, Julius Makanac, was executed in 1945, while the esthetician Albert Haller (1883–1945) died on the “Via Crucis” while fleeing from the Communists. Pavao Vuk-Pavlovic´ was expelled from the University of Zagreb on the basis of a complaint by students that he was teaching metaphysics and not the philosophy of revolutionary practice. Vladimir Filipovic´ was the only non-Marxist who remained in the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb after the war. As publisher of an anthology of philosophical texts from classical German idealism, Filipovic´ emphasized in his foreword that, for a proper understanding of Marx, it is necessary for young Marxists to also systematically study Kant and classical German idealism.182 Nonetheless, Filipovic´ did not take his own proposal seriously, and even less so the young Marxist “skojevci” (members of the Yugoslav Communist Party Youth) who took control of the chair of philosophy at the Universities of Zagreb and Belgrade. As a curiosity, it may be noted that Gajo Petrovic´ was the head of the department for cognitive theory, ontology and logic from 1950 on, although he only received his doctorate in 1956 with the theme The Philosophy of Plekhanov and Milan Kangrga held the chair for ethics immediately after graduating in 1950, although he only completed his doctorate in 1961 with a thesis on the topic Ethical Problems in the Work of Karl Marx. A similar situation existed in Belgrade, where Mihailo Markovic´, an officer in Tito’s partisan army, played the main role in determining the character of post-World War II academic philosophy, although he only completed his doctorate in 1955. Kangrga was the only Yugoslav Marxist who studied Kant to some extent and
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held that Kant’s “emphasis on the primacy of practical reason as regards theoretical reason was the line of thought which via Fichte, Hegel and Marx proved to be philosophically and historically most fruitful”.183 The primacy of Kant’s practical reason over theoretical was interpreted by Yugoslav Marxists as “philosophy of practice” or “revolutionary thought”. At first glance, it is obvious that the Yugoslav Praxis philosophers left out judgment as the link between theory and practice, something which Kant drew particular attention to in his essay On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, but it is of No Use in Practice (1793),184 when he emphasized that, however perfect a theory may be, the question of its application is confirmed by our ability to judge. For this reason, it is irritating to read about a philosophy of practice that takes no account of the need for valorization and judgment, as is the case with Gajo Petrovic´, who does not feel it necessary to even mention the role of judgment in Kant, where it is fundamental for the thought of “revolutionary practice”. The term ‘critique’ has nothing to do with mind and knowledge, nor any human activity, but is the equivalent of bourgeois society and of its legacy, which does not fit into the model of “practical socialism”, with its “merciless criticism” of “exploitative class society” and the ongoing process of its negation. Petrovic´ defines philosophy, in contrast to bourgeois thinkers, as “thinking of the revolution: a scathing criticism of everything existing, a humanistic vision of a different future and inspirational force for revolutionary activity”.185 In terms of criticism, the Yugoslav Marxists did not appeal to Kant, but rather to Marx who promoted “ruthless criticism of everything existing”.186 Marx stressed in his letter to Ruge (September 1843), that philosophy, which in the meantime had “become secularized” (“sich verweltlicht hat”), confronts its new task, to take on the role of “ruthless critique” of everything that exists, “ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be”.187 In the treatise Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (1943/44) Marx explains, referring to Hegel, what the intention of his conception of critique consists of , namely “to pass from cunning theory into ruthless practice”.188 Unlike Hegel’s cunning of the reason which Marx applied to social practice, the Yugoslavian Marxists were cunning only toward the global public, meaning that towards the outside world, beyond the borders of Yugoslavia, they advocated a one-party system “with a human face”. At the same time, in domestic publications, they mainly called for the “revolutionary practice” of the League of Communists, and in their texts in Croatian and Serbian , referring to the authority of Comrade Tito, demanded a sharp crackdown on opponents of the workers’ self-management as a one-party model of socialism. Yugoslavian Marxists connected to the journal Praxis, courted the Communist Party and Tito189 not for the purpose of getting the money for the expensive gatherings of the Korcˇula Summer School (1963–73)
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with sympathizers of Marxism and Yugoslavian workers’ self-management from around the world, but in order to pursue and suppress supporters of democracy and philosophers of non-Marxist orientation. Ruthless Marxist critique of all existing structures of society was fundamentally anti-Kantian in conception, as it required a crackdown on supporters of civil society and opponents of Marxism which was legally prescribed as the official philosophy. The task of philosophy was not abstract chatter, but the construction of socialist society. In this context, Petrovic´ explicitly states that only a „builder of socialism“ can be a „critical subject“.190 Opponents of the construction of socialism were characterized as revisionists, “ultra-critics”, voluntarists, subjective idealists. The Marxist ethicist Kangrga, who was known as a critic of Kant’s abstract morality, demanded, in an article published in the journal Praxis, that the League of Communists, “which relies primarily on the working class and on the Marxist (left) intelligentsia, to be the executor, guarantor and enforcer in activating the socialist revolution”. He also stressed the need to persevere in the effort to “remove and purge (i. e. disable in their in action) all who oppose [the Socialist revolution, JZ] and all enemy elements”.191 Kangrga wrote this, unsatisfied with the performance to date of the Communist leadership at a time when, after Tito’s persecution, imprisonment and liquidation of reformed Communists in Croatia in 1971, a large number of Croatian intellectuals were arrested. Most of these were Communist reformers. Among those arrested were a large number of philosophy students arrested three years after the demise of the “Croatian Spring”, a reform movement in the early 70’s for economic and democratic reforms in Yugoslavia. The movement was suppressed by force in November 1971 by the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist party and the military. The editorial board of the journal Praxis wrote in a joint article: “We believe that external to and irrespective of the program of Marxist-Communist ideological foundations and perspectives, and external to and irrespective of the program of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, there now exists no ideological and political force that could preserve the integrity of the country”.192 After the suppression of the Croatian Spring, a joke was current in Zagreb that the only thing worse than Stalinism was “the Socialism with a human face” of the Yugoslavian Praxis philosophers. The liberty, equality and autonomy of citizens which were proclaimed by Kant193 has proved to be a precondition of a conditio humana in civil society, whereby the right to freedom of opinion and publication is now taken for granted. None of this could be mentioned at all in the presence of Yugoslav’s Marxists, who understood philosophy primarily as the “maid servant” (ancilla) of political ideology.
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Experts on Kant’s Ethics, Aleksa Buha and Ivan Bubalo The Sarajevo professor of the history of philosophy, Aleksa Buha, who was foreign minister in the government of the Serb Republic from 1992–1998, during the period of the crimes of Radovan , has sometimes been considered one of the major experts on Kant’s ethics in the South Slavic region.194 Aleksa Buha translated and published in Serbian in 1990 Kant’s treatise Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Vernunft. However he never condemned the crimes nor the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croatians in the Serb Republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The question of ethics has obviously remained for him primarily of a purely theoretical nature. It is paradoxical that in the South Slavic region, the most significant analysis of Kant’s ethics was written by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Franciscan priest, Ivan Bubalo.195 His analysis was published in the same year as the first Croatian translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Bubalo tries, in the context of the rehabilitation of practical philosophy, to emphasize the relevance of Kant’s philosophy in today’s age of technology and technological development. Kant’s deontological morality puts the dignity of the person in the foreground and sees the priority of ethics in the necessary respect for human dignity that can never be monetized nor instrumentalized. A human being as a rational being exists, according to Kant, as “an end in itself” and cannot be instrumentalized as a means for technological development. Respect for human dignity is the best example of how an individual ethical stance can be universalized and become a universally valid principle. As such, the principle of human dignity can be successfully applied in modern ethics which is conditioned by the reign of technology (in the sense of Heidegger’s “Herrschaft der Technik”). Bubalo sees the task of ethics in human responsibility for the world and in overcoming the crisis of thought caused by the reign of technology. Ethics does this by limiting “technological reason” through the principle of human dignity and ethical responsibility. In this sense, Bubalo advocates the transformation of the idea of the highest good (Idee vom höchsten Gut) into the idea of meaning as the ultimate horizon of human activity. The equality of human beings in the face of universally valid moral law and the unconditional dignity of the human person should be integrated into the ethics of responsibility as the meaning of the world.196 As a result of democratic changes, systematic and thorough study of Kant without ideological colouring has become standard in the countries of former Yugoslavia.
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The Reception of Kant’s Philosophy in Poland by Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz The history of the reception of Kant in Poland has been intensively studied in recent years.197 The material is too complex to be discussed here in detail; the following is intended merely as an outline of the main features of Kant’s attitude towards Poland, and that of Polish philosophy towards Kant.
Fig. 20: Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto), Suburbia of Kracow seen from the Kracow Gate (1778)
At least three circumstances clearly require consideration in any discussion of the reception of Kant in Polish philosophy. The first regards the specific dimension of the problem: Polish philosophy – or the part of it that is regarded as forming an original contribution in the history of philosophy – is marked by its logical and empirical character, most clearly expressed in the Lwûw-Warsaw school (Kazimierz Twardowski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, Stanisław Les´niewski). From its perspective Kant can be seen as the founder in spite of himself of German idealism; his concepts were appreciated, but mainly solely as a point of departure for a empirically or semantically oriented polemic. The second circumstance relates to the position of Kant’s philosophy in relation to Polish culture in general, given that the latter was defined by an ongoing tension between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. During the partition of Poland (1795–1918), to some extent Polish culture developed as a substitute for the non-existent state, with the Romantic poets in particular (such as Adam Mickiewicz or Juliusz Słowacki) playing the leading role and defining the Polish
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culture, mentality and self-image. Yet the counter-current (positivism) was also repeatedly to the fore, emphasising the importance of education, hard work and self-organisation. This counter-current emerged from the Polish Enlightenment (Stanisław Staszic, Hugo Kołła˛taj), which had also paved the way intellectually for the vain attempt to save the collapsing first Polish republic from partition through a progressive constitution (Konstytucja 3 Maja, 1791). Within this tension, Kant’s philosophy was – and remains – an important reference point for all those who prefer to walk a non-Romantic, rationalistic path in philosophy and other cultural domains. And finally there is the historical and political context, which falls into two parts. 18th century Prussia was one of the powers that partitioned the first Polish republic, and accordingly the reception of Kant as a Prussian philosopher could never be fully separated from that political context. This is clearly reflected in some discussions of Kant’s attitude towards the partition of Poland, including current analyses. The second dimension of this historical context relates to the time of the Communist regime in Poland (1945–1989), during which Kant’s theory of morality and his political philosophy (partly defined by its interpretation by Hannah Arendt) was regarded as a liberal alternative to Marxist philosophy and Hegel as read through Marxist spectacles. In this context it should be noted that Kant is one of the best-known (even in non-philosophical circles) and best (and most completely) translated German philosophers in Poland. Kant’s presence can even be discerned in popular culture, in quotations in films, for example. Kant’s attitude towards Poland appears to have been an ambivalent one. In a passage in his anthropology lectures he makes some highly derogatory remarks about conditions in the Polish state, the prevailing anarchy, the paralysed legal order and the (supposed) lack of achievements displayed by Polish culture and science. According to Kant, these circumstances resulted in a general rejection of hard work and an excessive, untrammelled and destructive (“barbaric”) freedom. As is rightly pointed out by the Polish Kant scholar Mirosław Z˙elazny, this view of Poland was fairly widespread in Europe at the time, and to some extent justified (although inaccurate in many respects).198 On the other hand Kant praised Polish women, to whom he attributes not only sound intelligence, but also an understanding of matters of state. And a resounding echo was generated in Poland by the 5th preliminary article in particular of Kant’s “On perpetual peace”, which prohibits the intervention of a state in the internal affairs of another state, and which, according to most interpretations, referred indirectly to the third and definitive partition of Poland.199 This interpretation is borne out by Kant’s arguments against the political rhetoric accompanying the actions of the partitioning powers at the time, whereby their reason for acting was to prevent the “uproar” potentially created by Polish anarchy among the citizens of bordering states (even though
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a reform programme was already under way, marked by the progressive Constitution of 3 May, the first in modern Europe). Against this background it is easy to understand why Kant’s philosophy generated a strong response in Poland relatively early. This early reception is ideally symbolised by Jûzef Władysław Bychowiec, who studied for two years in Königsberg, and is said to have known Kant (whom he admired as “the wise man of Königsberg”) in person. Bychowiec is also a symbolic figure in that apart from his philosophical activities (particularly as a translator) and efforts to disseminate Kant’s philosophy on Polish soil, he also enlisted as a soldier on the side of Napoleon Bonaparte in campaigns against Prussia and Russia (which he, like so many of his compatriots, saw as a way of restoring the lost independence of his native land). Among his translations of Kant (thought to be the first in Poland) are Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte [Idea for a Universal History], the Friedensschrift [On Perpetual Peace] and parts of Streit der Fakultäten [Conflict of the Faculties]. Interestingly, his efforts to popularise Kant’s thought in Poland were opposed by an Enlightenment-supporting intellectual who played an important role in the renewal and revival of Polish science and scholarship: Jan S´niadecki. The cricitisms S´niadecki levelled against Kant’s philosophy were clearly based on a misunderstanding: S´niadecki thought that Kant was trying to “smuggle” traditional metaphysics back into philosophy – that same metaphysics that Polish Enlightenment supporters had combated so indefatigably in their reformatory fervour.200 This example illustrates the tortuous routes by which Kant’s thought found its way into Polish philosophy and culture. Further examples of important figures who were inspired by Kant’s philosophy in this period included Anna Sapiez˙yna, Franciszek Wigura and Jûzef Kalasanty Szaniawski. Their efforts were mainly focused on presenting and defending Kant’s fundamental ideas, writing summaries of his works, and in some cases translating them. The last of the above-named in particular, Jûzef Kalasanty Szaniawski, is regarded as having made an enormous contribution towards increasing the level of interest in Poland not only in Kant’s ideas, but in German philosophy in general. Yet the Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy Władysław Tatarkiewicz is probably correct in saying that “while Kantianism always had its supporters in Poland, there was never an actual ‘Kantian period’ in Poland”.201 In the 19th century Kantianism had to make way for Polish “Messianism”, which was speculative in orientation. The leading representative of this current of thought, who gave it its name, was Jûzef HoeneWron´ski, who had been probably one of the greatest Polish experts in Kant’s philosophy, but his thinking was then much more strongly influenced by German idealism, particularly Hegel. The name of another important Polish philosopher of the 19th century, August Cieszkowski, is also more frequently cited in
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Fig. 21 (a): Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, 5th preliminary article
the context of Hegel criticism and Marxism, which was then gradually taking shape. One might venture to argue that Kant’s philosophy appeared on Polish soil early enough to remain a fixed reference point in Polish philosophical culture, but too early to make any decisive impact on Polish thinking. Yet signs of the influence of Kant’s thought in various areas of Polish philosophical culture can be found at every turn. A good example is Polish theory of law, in which features clearly inspired by Kant can be demonstrated, for example after the First World War (as in the writings of legal theoreticians such
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Fig. 21 (b): Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, 5th preliminary article
as Edmund Krzymuski, Antoni Peretiatkowicz and Czesław Znamierowski).202 While the main current of Polish philosophy after the regaining of independence (1918), the Lwûw-Warsaw school, grew out of different philosophical contexts (mainly to be found within the Brentano school), its representatives regarded Kant as an important partner in the philosophical debate with most representatives of post-Kantian German idealism, which they rejected as speculative. Yet Kant’s concepts were used mainly as a point of departure for criticism and formulating their own standpoint, as for example in
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Fig. 22: Kazimierz Wojniakowski, Anna Sapiez˙yna (1798)
the materialistically oriented “reism” of Tadeusz Kotarbin´ski or in the ideas of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (as for example in a paper in which he undertakes a semantic translation of transcendental idealism).203 Particularly in the aesthetics of the Lwûw-Warsaw school, however, Kant’s concept of “disinterested pleasure” in judgements of taste is frequently taken up. Unsurprisingly, inspiration from Kant has a much stronger presence in the Polish phenomenological school. It is no accident that its leading representative, Roman Ingarden, made a brilliant Polish translation of Critique of Pure Reason (1957), in which traces of a phenomenologically oriented interpretation of Kant can be discerned. Influences from Kant can also be detected in Ingarden’s ethical and anthropological discussions, as in his posthumously published Büchlein über den Menschen [A Small Book About Man] (1972), in which, without mentioning Kant by name, he speaks of man as a being who stands between two worlds, and whose existence consists in the tireless effort to rise above the physical and biological determinants of life.204 For opposition Polish intellectuals during the Communist regime in Poland (1945–1989) an important role was played by philosophical reflection on the causes and foundations of totalitarian thinking (Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt). In this context Kant increasingly appeared as a “liberal” alternative to Marxism
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Fig. 23: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Roman Ingarden (1937)
as distorted by its orthodox interpretation, and Hegel interpreted through this kind of Marxism. This current of thought was strengthened after the collapse of Communism in Poland, so that a certain renaissance of interest in Kant can now be noted. As part of this “back to Kant” movement, the smaller, political and historical writings of Kant have been appearing, and are being interpreted on the basis of a non-paternalistic, liberal position. The Kant of the “crooked timber” metaphor and individual responsibility is to an extent seen as a remedy against belief in the “iron laws of history” characterising the Communist period. In the context of the development of a democratic civil society, in Poland since the 1990s there has also been a growing interest in Kant’s moral philosophical ideas, including in particular the concept of autonomy (the first complete translation of Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals], by Ewa Nowak, appeared only in 2005, for example). Given that the philosophical scene in Poland is mainly dominated by the post-modernism debate, and now increasingly, as in other parts of the world, by the growing influence of analytical philosophy and American pragmatism, it would be incorrect to speak of a “Kantian period”.
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Nonetheless, Kant’s thought remains what it has probably always been for the Polish intellectual landscape: a philosophy of right and freedom. Translated by John Jamieson
Kant and his Poets
Kant and German Romanticism in the Eyes of Austrian 19th Century Writers by Alexander Wilfing The claim that Kant’s works were not truly received and understood by Austrian writers, as repeatedly advanced by Roger Bauer, for example,1 can today be recognised as one-sided and overstated.2 However Kant’s relatively constant level of popularity among authors attuned to the Josephine reforms, such as Feuchtersleben, Grillparzer, and Schreyvogel, was due not only to his philosophical standing, but also to the vigorous growth at this time of German romanticism, perceived by many intellectuals as a rather dubious phenomenon. They duly countered what they saw as a clearly irrational trend with the critical stance of Kant’s “philosophy of reason”, now retrospectively conceived as a bulwark3 against the excessive enthusiasm of romanticism. For Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Kant’s theory stood for “methodical and responsible philosophising”, an “activity of the intellect; the philosophies of those who came later were intellectual self-indulgence.”4 Franz Grillparzer took a similar view : I fear I’ve lost my mind, Or pray it may be so, Because if I am not insane, Then Germany is, o woe! I tremble to admit That German wisdom’s pride To me is empty words (My shame I scare can hide). What these philosophers see As God’s mind here revealed, To me is plumped-up poetry, In form of prose concealed.
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And tawdry poetry at that, Where mistress fantasy Weaves her words as mist and fog With no clear forms to see. All that learned wisdom, But built upon the sand, Without good sense and reason To take it by the hand.5
And in his obituary (1850/51) for Feuchtersleben, a medical practitioner and a philosopher in his own right, Grillparzer sums up his friend’s close identification with critical philosophy as follows, again singling the underlying humility of Kant’s theory out for special praise: “When it came to philosophy, Kant was his man. This philosophy of humility, which puts the humble ‘I do not know’ at the very summit of its system, and takes as its point of departure a ‘given’ that neither admits of nor requires proof, and is fully satisfied if it succeeds in reconciling the logically correct, meritorious and useful with that ‘given’; and which by the very fact of setting limits on human thought enables presentiment and sensation to fill the gaps so created as religion and art – Kant’s philosophy was the one for him.”6 In contrast, Hegel’s thought, treated in Grillparzer’s notes as virtually the epitome of German romanticism, is assessed as a negative influence on the philosophy of the day : “Have just started on Hegel’s objective logic. The thing’s very badly written, and the whole system seems to me to be an empty vessel. […] The more philosophy I read, the more I respect Kant.”7 Grillparzer’s close friend Joseph Schreyvogel, too, declared the Königsberg philosopher to be “the deepest and purest intellect that ever wrote and taught!”8 As well as being of great relevance for any consideration of the reception of Kant in Austria, Schreyvogel’s writings also contributed to the way in which Kant became retrospectively stylised as a counterweight to German romanticism, sense as opposed to sensibility. Through his critical stance as editor of the Wiener Sonntagsblatt weekly (1807/1808), on which Lazarus Bendavid also collaborated,9 he became a leading proponent of this functional interpretation of Kant’s work, by repeatedly using the publication to oppose German romanticism and its growing influence.10 The influx of numerous romantic intellectuals in the early 19th century, drawing an immediate reaction from Schreyvogel’s Sonntagsblatt – they included Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, Friedrich Gentz, Jakob Grimm, Adam Müller, Ludwig Tieck, Zacharias Werner and the Schlegel brothers – lent further emphasis to Kant’s posthumously acquired role of an antipode of romantic trends. Schreyvogel was particularly severe on what he saw as an excessive veneration for the German culture, with a corresponding under-appreciation of the established classics, from ancient Greece to Racine,
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Calderon and Shakespeare.11 Here again, there is a striking similarity with Grillparzer’s at times biting verses: Middle High German and folk poetry Are not the chosen fare for me. I drink from the fountainhead, And leave the pools and puddles be. And where’s the fountainhead, you ask? You’ve not read Homer then, that’s plain. Look to Avon’s famous bard, Or further south to France and Spain. That’s where you can slake your thirst, And drink your fill from culture’s source! True beauty’s not by rabble spawned, Or subject to its paltry laws.12
Schreyvogel dismissed the retrospective ennoblement of the German middle ages as a “strange kind of fraud”,13 accompanied by patent linguistic mysticism. He consistently criticised three distinctive features of the romantic movement: “its philosophy, its excessive piety, and its mystic affectation.”14 Kant’s system, in contrast, he saw as the prime example of sensible philosophy and rational humility, which he contrasted with the overblown fantasy of German idealism, in order to give “common sense” the status he believed it deserved. A similar judgement can be found in Grillparzer’s aphorisms, which explicitly recommend setting prudent limits on the scope accorded to man’s cognitive faculties, and are openly sceptical of “romantic fanaticism”. “Kant’s philosophy is the scholar’s admission of man’s limitations”, he says.15 Grillparzer is particularly critical of the excessive historicism, in his view, of German romanticism, which he repeatedly challenges in connection with aesthetic judgements, for example, and contrasts with his own essentially context-free view of the arts:16 The critics that we have today Are much like parrots, strange to say. Three or four words they’ve learned to squawk, And trot them out where’er they talk. ‘Romantic’, ‘classic’, ‘modern’ they Adopt as merit’s ‘yea’ and ‘nay’ – Proud folly – ah, if but they could Learn to tell bad works from good!17
As indicated by this reference to the historical classification of artistic epochs, Grillparzer attributes this unfortunate tendency to Hegel’s system, whose negative consequences he blames not on Hegel himself, but on his philosophical successors:18 “Hegel’s soldiers, late released / From service of philosophy, / Now
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roam and wander in the streets / Of history and poetry.”19 Grillparzer’s scepticism with regard to Hegel, which also extended to other representatives of German idealism to the extent that he was acquainted with their writings, prompted Walter Seitter to remark that Hegel’s theory would be “right at the top of the list” in any statistical survey of Grillparzer’s polemics.20 Peter Wittmann, too, notes that for Grillparzer as a thinker, Kant’s theory represents the criterion by which all subsequent philosophers are measured, whereas Hegel’s system is identified with all negative changes in politics, literature and society.21 Grillparzer’s resistance to Hegel’s school became evident when, rather than perceiving the “actual” outside world and the a priori conditions for its cognition, it attempted to transform it according to its own views.22 This view of Kant’s successors is set out in detail in Grillparzer’s essay Über den gegenwärtigen Zustand der dramatischen Kunst in Deutschland [On the current state of dramatic art in Germany]: “Almost as soon as German philosophy had achieved its great revolution through Kant and had gained a secure status and position, it proceeded, much in the manner of all revolutions, to try to extend its influence and usurp neighbouring domains that were quite foreign to it – although Kant in particular was an exception to this tendency.”23 Grillparzer rather saw Kant as a clear thinker, who even on literary topics represented the appropriate rule to follow in order to avoid romantic bombast and all its associated fanciful excesses: “Anyone wishing to take up a literary career, even in belles-lettres, should study Kant’s works, not for their content, but for their strictly logical form. There can be no better way than such a study to become familiar with clear outlines and distinctions and precision of ideas, and the importance of these attributes, even to the poet, is surely self-evident.”24 Hence Grillparzer’s failure to find “clear outlines and distinctions and precision of ideas” in the German romantics led not only to his critical depreciation of idealistic philosophy, but also to a posthumously enhanced appreciation for Immanuel Kant and his “sensible” manner of thinking. Translated by John Jamieson
Friedrich Schiller – A Congenial Reader of Kant by Violetta L. Waibel Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) Friedrich (von) Schiller, ennobled in 1802,25 started studying Kant’s critical philosophy intensively in 1791 and was one of the most important protagonists in initiating the reception of Kant’s philosophy among poets and writers not only in German literature but also in Austrian literature and beyond. When exam-
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ining Austria in this context, reference should also be made to Franz Grillparzer, Joseph Schreyvogel, Ernst Baron von Feuchtersleben, and also to Egon Friedell. Furthermore, there is the not inconsiderable role played by Karl Leonhard Reinhold in encouraging Schiller to explore Kant’s writings, as Reinhold himself also conveyed to Kant himself: “Schiller my friend, and how convinced I am after a heartfelt acquaintance with him, the best of now living minds, one who harkens to your teachings through my mouth.”26 Franz de Paula von Herbert, who owned a white lead factory and who stayed in Weimar and Jena from May to July 1789 and from December 1790 till March 1791, had a very good relationship not only with Karl Leonhard Reinhold and his father-in–law Christoph Martin Wieland, but also with Schiller.27 In a letter of 10 April, 1791 to Christian Gottfried Körner (1756–1831), Schiller reports on the meeting with Baron von Herbert and writes of his studies of Reinhold and Kant in Jena: “A good healthy mind with an equally healthy moral character”, comments Schiller.28 These are the reasons why Schiller is a focus of attention in this context, although beyond what has been mentioned above, no closer associations with Vienna, Austria or eastern Europe are known. Schiller shares with Kant the fate that his work in 18th and 19th century Austria was obstructed by the censor from reaching a wider audience; in Schiller’s case it was also included in repertoires complete with distorting abridgements.29 Schiller was born in Marbach am Neckar on 10 November 1759 and attended first of all the Latin school in Ludwigsburg (1767–1772), then the Karlsschule in Stuttgart (1773–1780), i. e. the Ducal Military Academy, where he began studying law, only to then change to medicine in 1775. From 1781–1782 he worked as a military doctor and was among the so-called “philosophical doctors” who combined empirical psychology and somatic medicine. A series of disagreements between Schiller and his superiors in the Duke of Württemberg’s Army increasingly aggravated Schiller’s chagrin and dissatisfaction. As a consequence of the much-celebrated premiere of his play Die Räuber [The Robbers] in Mannheim on 13 January 1782, the content of which was perceived as being a vilification of Switzerland, Schiller was threatened with imprisonment, since the Württembergian Duke Carl Eugene used the occasion of a complaint about the play as an excuse to punish him for his part in the smouldering conflict. Schiller found himself forced to flee Württemberg in September 1782 and after several stopovers and detours eventually arrived in Thüringen. The former military doctor was now regarded as a deserter, and faced difficult years ahead. Nevertheless, further dramas were written, such as Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua. Ein republikanisches Trauerspiel [Fiesco’s Conspiracy at Genoa. A Republican Tragedy] (premiered in Bonn 1983; printed in 1783), Luise Millerin (Kabale und Liebe) [Luise Miller, Love and Intrigue] (premiered in Frankfurt am Main 1784; printed in 1784) and Don Carlos (premiered in Hamburg 1787; printed in 1787).
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Fig. 1: Friedrich Schiller
In 1788, Schiller was finally appointed professor of world history at the University of Jena, where on 26 May 1789 he gave his famous inaugural lecture, entitled Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? [What Is World History and Why Do We Study it?], which attracted an extremely large and excited audience of 500 listeners.30 The essay Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinigten Niederlande [The History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands against Spanish Rule] (1788) had smoothed his way to a professorship, and in 1792 he completed a further historical essay entitled Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs [History of the Thirty Years’ War]. It was in Jena, in August 1787, that Schiller met Karl Leonhard Reinhold, who encouraged him to read the work of Kant. First of all, he read Kant’s shorter essays, which had been published in the Berliner Monatsschrift [Berlin Monthly Journal], including Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht [Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Intention] and Mut-
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maßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, [The Presumed Origins of Human History], which Schiller also cited in his historical writings.31 On 3 March 1791, Schiller wrote to his friend Christian Gottfried Körner that: Kant’s Critik der Urtheilskraft [Critique of Judgement], which I myself have procured, enraptures me with its new enlightening and ingenious content and has given me the greatest desire to gradually work my way into his philosophy. Due to my lack of familiarity with philosophical systems, the Critik der Vernuft [Critique of Pure Reason] […] is still too difficult for me at the moment and takes too much time. Because I have already thought a great deal about aesthetics myself and am empirically even more conversant with it, I can make progress much more easily with the Critique of Judgement.32
On 28 November 1791 Schiller requested the publisher Georg Joachim Göschen to send him a copy of Kant’s Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason], which became essential reading for Schiller, and at the end of the year he also began reading Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of the Pure Reason].33 Kant’s doctrine of the two branches of knowledge, sensibility and reason, and of the relevance of the antithesis of nature and freedom to moral philosophy, became fundamental to Schiller’s aesthetic conception. On 22 September 1797 Schiller wrote to Goethe about his reading of Kant’s short but very important essay Zum ewigen Frieden [On Eternal Peace] which had been published in 1795.34 After Schiller fell seriously ill for the first time in 1791, he could only teach his classes at the University of Jena on an irregular basis, yet was dependent on the fees he received from tuition for his income. This period of his first illness was also the time when he made his first intensive study of Kant’s writings, with which he previously only had fleeting contact. In May 1791, Schiller suffered such a serious attack of illness that his difficulties in breathing made him believe he was going to die. He took his leave voicelessly from his family and friends. Caroline von Wolzogen reports in her frequently republished book (which was the most important source of reports about Schiller’s life for a long time) Schillers Leben verfaßt aus Erinnerungen der Familie, seinen eignen Briefen und den Nachrichten seines Freundes Körner [Schiller’s Life, Composed from the Reminiscences of his Family, his own Letters and the Reports of his Friend Körner] (1830): “I read passages from Kant’s Critique of Judgement which purport immortality to him.” Schiller answered: “We must surrender to the supreme spirit of nature’ […]and act as long as we can.”35 From January 1791 onwards, Schiller’s illness forced him to repeatedly interrupt his work as a lecturer. In winter 1792/93 and in summer 1793 he lectured with interruptions on aesthetic topics, but then had to stop lecturing altogether for health reasons, although
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numerous announcements were made between summer 1794 and winter 1799/ 1800 about forthcoming lectures on aesthetics to be given by him.36 Schiller was very interested in trying to get Kant involved in the journal Die Horen [The Horae] as is documented by a letter in which Schiller invites him to do so, dated 13 June 1794.37 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who had founded the journal along with Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1794, and had been one of the first to work on it, reinforced this invitation with a further letter to Kant, written on 17 June 1794. Only when Schiller, on 1 March 1795, sent Kant the first two issues of Die Horen, hot off the press, to Kant, together with a further letter, in which he once again assured him how much Die Horen would benefit if Kant would see himself able to send a short contribution to it, did Kant reply, on 30 March 1795. In his letter, Schiller had referred to the first two instalments of his essay Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen [On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters] which was contained in the copies of Die Horen that he had sent him. Kant indicated that he had a high regard for Schiller. The Letters he found “excellent and will study them in order to be able to inform you some day of my thoughts about them.”38 Kant criticised the fact that the articles in Die Horen were published without mentioning the author by name, and confirmed that he had received the earlier requests, including that of Fichte, but asked for Schiller’s understanding of the fact that he needed a “long period of grace” for an article, “since material on the state and religion are now subject to a certain embargo”.39 With that remark Kant was referring to the problems of censorship at the time. Moreover other articles still had to be written too. He never delivered a contribution to Die Horen. 1794 dates the start of the intensive friendship between Schiller and Goethe, who had first met in 1788. In the first period of this friendship, Schiller was still working on his theoretical writings on aesthetics, which took Kant as their starting point. It is against the background of Kant’s concept of genius in the Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement] that Schiller’s famous letter to Goethe on 23 August 1794 may be read, in which he celebrates Goethe as a natural genius in Kant’s sense, yet sets himself up on an equal footing as a genius of the art of ideas. Schiller writes: “You seek that which is necessary in nature, yet you seek it along the most difficult paths, which every weaker person would probably beware of taking. […] From a simple structure you climb, step for step, up to what is more complicated, in order to finally construct that which is most complicated of all, the human being, genetically from the material of the whole building of nature.”40 The description closes with the remark: However, what you can only know with difficulty (because the genius itself is always the greatest secret) is the beautiful agreement between your philosophical instinct and the
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purest results of speculating reason. Although at first glance it would seem as if there could be no greater opposita than the speculative spirit, which proceeds from unity, and the intuitive spirit, which proceeds from manifoldness. However, if the former seeks experience with chaste and faithful sense, and the latter seeks the law with its self-active power of free thinking, then there cannot be any mistake that both of them will meet each other halfway.41
In a further letter to Goethe, dated 31 August 1794, Schiller, now well-schooled in Kant, continues his reflections: To an extraordinary extent, your spirit works intuitively, and all your powers of thinking seem to have been put to shame, so to speak, by your imagination, their common representative. Basically, this is the highest that a human being can make of himself, as soon as he has managed to generalise his intuition and to make his sensation legislative. That is what you strive for, and to what degree you have already achieved it! My reason actually works in a more symbolising manner, and so I float as a kind of twin, between concept and intuition, between regulation and sensation, between the technical mind and the genius. This is what gave me, particularly in former years, both in the field of speculation and in that of poetry, a rather awkward reputation; since usually I am rushed by the poet, when I should philosophise, and by the philosophical spirit, when I want to write poetry. Even now, it frequently enough happens to me that the power of imagination disturbs my abstractions, and cold understanding disturbs my poetry. If I can master these two forces to such an extent that I can determine the limits of each of them through my freedom, then a great destiny still awaits me.42
Schiller describes Goethe in accordance with Kant’s understanding of the natural genius, and places the one inversion not foreseen by Kant, the intellectual genius, on an equal footing in significance with the natural genius. Each has its advantages and its underdeveloped powers, yet together they complement each other in the best possible way. In the years 1795/1796, Schiller’s work took another change, back towards poetry and drama, and this owes a great deal to his friendship with Goethe. Here we should remember the two great poets’ collaborative Xenien [Xenia], as well as several of Schiller’s most famous poems, including Das Lied von der Glocke [Song of the Bell] (1799). Among the late tragedies are the Wallenstein-Trilogie, which was completed in 1799, Die Jungfrau von Orl¦ans [The Maid of Orl¦ans] (premiered in 1801 in Leipzig), Die Braut von Messina [The Bride of Messina] (premiered in 1803 in Weimar) and Wilhelm Tell [William Tell] (premiered in 1804 in Weimar). Schiller died on 9 May 1805 in Weimar.
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Schiller’s Anthropology as Influenced by Kant For Schiller, Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft was the one work which stood at the centre of his reading of Kant. In an exchange of letters with Christian Gottfried Körner, dated 25 January 1793 to 28 February 1793, Schiller developed his critical attempts to establish an objective concept of beauty, opposed to Kant’s subjective – yet at the same time generally valid – concept of beauty. Whereas Kant only considered it possible to justify the judgement of beauty as a special form of the power of human judgement, based on a feeling, Schiller sought to determine the beautiful in the object. Beauty is, in Schiller’s approach, also a quality of objects and cannot therefore be reduced to subjective sensations. This attempt must be regarded as having ended in failure,43 although Schiller himself, in his essay Ueber Anmuth und Würde [On Grace and Dignity] written a few month later does speak of an objective beauty. The exchange of ideas with Körner formed the basis for the planned essay Kallias oder über die Schönheit [Kallias, or On the Beautiful], which was intended for publication at Easter 1793, as Schiller announced to Körner on 21 December 1792. However, this first intensive study of Kant’s conception of the judgement of beauty remained an unpublished fragment. It was based on Schiller’s lectures on aesthetics given in the winter semester of 1792/93, which are contained in a transcript by Christian F. Michaelis that has come down to us as fragments.44 The first publicly accessible longer essay on aesthetics written by Schiller and based on Kant was Ueber Anmut und Würde. It was published in 1793 in Neue Thalia, a magazine edited by Schiller himself. In it, Schiller elaborated his ideas of how Kant’s concept of beauty and the sublime can be applied to human beings. In this context, Schiller accuses Kant of rigorism in moral philosophy, because in his moral philosophy of rationality, he devotes ample space to critical practical reason, yet not enough to the sensual human being. Kant replied to the accusation of rigorism in 1794 in the second edition of his essay Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion with in the Limits of Reason Alone], in which Schiller is treated with great respect and a common basis is set out, without Kant giving up the principles of his moral philosophy. Nevertheless, Schiller complained once again in December 1798, after he had read Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective], that Kant was not able to benefit enough from the sensual human being: “It is the pathological side of human beings which he is always parading about […], and that makes his practical philosophy seem so grim. The fact that this cheerful and jovial spirit has not quite been able to disentangle his wings from the dirt of life, and even has not quite overcome certain of the gloomier impressions of youth, is something to be astonished at and lamented.”45 Schiller’s detailed studies of Kant’s moral philosophy and aesthetics were
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Fig. 2: Friedrich Schiller, On Grace and Dignity
combined in his philosophical-poetological designs, conducted with a gesture of continuing, and perhaps even outdoing, Kant’s initiative of aesthetic anthropology. His essayistic study of Kant culminated in the famous and well-received work Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen [On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters], which continued and enlarged upon some aspects that had been developed in Ueber Anmuth und Würde. All the 27 letters of the Ästhetische Erziehung were published in 1795 in three installments, in the magazine Die Horen, which was also edited and published by Schiller himself. This most important contribution to anthropology, which continues the work of Kant, was composed by Schiller for Prince Friedrich Christian von SchleswigHolstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, in gratitude for his financial support in sending Schiller a gift of money when he was sick, could no longer keep up with his teaching and was therefore without the money earned from the tuition fees and therefore without an income. From February to December 1793, Schiller wrote to the prince the so-called ‘Augustenburger Letters’ Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. These letters were destroyed in a palace fire in Copenhagen in February 1794, although they were preserved for posterity in a
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transcript, the existence of which was unknown to the Prince. Shocked by this loss, the Prince asked Schiller to write the letters for him a second time. Schiller complied with the request and published his newly composed, most important aesthetic essay Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen 1795 in Die Horen.46 Schiller’s idea of aesthetic education is to make the contemporary state, which he calls a state of necessity, superfluous. Schiller demands that future human beings be given a complete education that develops all their sensual and rational powers, instead of a simply one-sided, technical and practical education. The aesthetic education of the human being, as envisaged, aims both at the development of aisthesis – the training and sensibilisation of the faculty of the senses in the Greek sense of the word – as well as at aesthetic development in its modern meaning of educating the sense of beauty and the beautiful. In brief, Schiller called for the development of all faculties, if possible, the intellectual as well as the sensual ones, through the mediating power of the ludic drive, which is not a drive in itself, separate from the source of reason and its formal drive, and from sensibility and its material drive. Schiller proves himself to be a Kantian in continuing with the dualism of the material and formal drives and in maintaining the two sources of intuition and concept. The ludic drive is play because it represents the connection of the formal and the material drive and has to produce a successful balance of the powers of reason and sensibility. Just how the development of all faculties is to be effected through the ludic drive is elaborated in more detail by Schiller in a model which he presents in letters 9 to 23.47 Evidently Schiller’s ludic drive, which mediates between the material and formal drive, owes something to Kant’s free play of the imaginative powers and reason. Kant used free play to explain why the experience of the beautiful is not based on a sensually operated feeling but on an intellectually operated one. In Schiller’s aesthetic education, the two drives represent tendencies to onesidedness in human education, where sometimes the sensual nature is supressed by the rational nature and sometimes it is the other way round. Aesthetic education aims at establishing a balance, through which the natural and rational powers and strivings of the human being can be developed in a balanced relation. Schiller writes of a reciprocal action of the material and formal drives, a term which, as he expressly emphasises, he found in Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre [Foundations of the Whole Doctrine of Science] (1794/95). Since Schiller agrees with Kant that the basic drives derive from different sources, their reciprocal action cannot be produced simply and immediately. On the material and formal drives, or the sensual and the rational drives, he writes:
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It is true that their tendencies contradict each other, but what is worth noting is the fact that they do not do so in the same objects, and what does not meet cannot collide. […] They are therefore not created as opposites by nature, and if they appear to be so when attended by demons, then they have only become so through a free transgression of nature, by misunderstanding themselves and confusing their spheres.48
The relationship of the two basic drives is imagined by Schiller as reciprocity, since, according to the two sources of sensibility and reason named by Kant, further sources are imaginable. That is why Schiller emphasises the fact that the mediating drive cannot be a further basic drive and that this becomes manifest in the manifold determinations which they pursue, when he writes: The sensual drive wants change to occur, so that time has content; the formal drive wants time to be suspended, so that no change can occur. That drive, therefore, in which both seem connected to each other […], the ludic drive, would therefore have been organised in order to suspend time within time, to reconcile becoming with absolute being, and change with identity.49
If the state is attained in which the ludic drive mediates the two basic human tendencies, then sensibility and form, with the help of life and figure, is mediated as “living form”, which becomes manifest as beauty. “After all”, as Schiller points out, “let us once and for all admit that the human being only plays when he is a human being in the full sense of the word, and he is only a complete human being when he plays.”50 Schiller systematically extends Kant’s concept of free play from the power of imagination and reason in § 9 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, which essentially determines the judgement of the beautiful,51 to a play of all human powers. Kant’s free play proceeds from the equally receptive and active power involved in beholding a beautiful object. Like the aesthetic state of active determinability in beholding a work of art, Schillers ludic drive transports one into a state of freedom. It is likewise the precondition for producing a work of art. “To bestow freedom through freedom is the basic law” of the aesthetic realm.52 The aesthetic freedom of the creative artist is the freedom which, according to Schiller’s aesthetic education, gives freedom, namely that which through the work of art can be transferred to the state of aesthetic, free determinability. The two longer essays on Schiller’s aesthetic anthropology, Ueber Anmuth und Würde and Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung, were conceived on the basis of Kant’s moral philosophy and aesthetics and were both highly esteemed and praised by Kant himself. A third essay, Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung [On Naive and Sentimental Poetry], was published in 1795/96, in which Schiller reflects on art with regard to the relationship between antiquity and the modern period. The relationship to Kant is here only given indirectly.
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Kant, a Rigorist in Moral Philosophy? It is not only today that complaints are made about the rigorism of Kant’s moral philosophy, they were even being made by his contemporaries. The moral subject acts freely and autonomously, yet nevertheless has to fulfil various moral obligations and obey the moral code, because that should be done which must be done. Schiller was the opposition spokesman who protested against Kant’s moral strictness. In his essay Ueber Anmuth und Würde, Schiller writes: In Kantian moral philosophy, the idea of obligation is presented with a harshness which frightens away all the Graces, and might easily tempt a weak understanding to seek moral perfection on the path of dark and monastic asceticism. However much the great sage may try to repudiate this misinterpretation, which to his cheerful and free spirit must be precisely the most outrageous of all, it nevertheless seems to me that by creating a strict and stark opposition between the two principles affecting the human will, he himself has been the cause of this (even if it could perhaps hardly have been avoided through his own intention).53
By “the two principles affecting the human will” is meant sensibility and reason. Schiller urges that human inclinations have to be educated in such a way that feelings which are appropriate to reason gain mastery over the unreasonable ones and in this way support the business of practical moral reason. From this he expects that the exercise of moral actions will be less of a battleground of contradictory human demands and drives, as Kant suggests, and that, instead, the human powers, unified in a state of inner equilibrium, if not quite in a harmonious play of forces, will seek the moral good. Neither reason nor sensibility should rule alone, but rather that “state of feeling in which both reason and sensibility – obligation and inclination – agree, the condition […] under which the beauty of play arises.”54 Enough evidence can be found in Kant’s moral philosophy to support Schiller’s allegation of rigorism, since Kant extensively discusses how the free, moral will has to be kept wholly free of sensual determinants. In the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft Kant states: “What is essential in every determination of the will by the moral law is that, as a free will – and so not only without the cooperation of sensible impulses but even with rejection of all of them and with the abandonment of all inclinations insofar as they could be opposed to the law – it is determined solely by the law.”55 It is therefore not sufficient to know in theory that free will has to determine action without the cooperation of the sensible impulses. As Kant says, the omnipresent inclinations have to be purposefully and consciously restrained from becoming involved with it, or creeping in unnoticed. This act of actively restraining sensual intervention
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evidently occurs by means of reason, which has to be defended by the pure rational determination of the will against the challenges of the inclinations. Kant gives no exact information about how reason can assert itself against the challenges of the senses. It is clear that it should do so. If it is successful, then – according to Kant’s understanding – there are various kinds of reaction possible, which are attributed, on the one hand, to self-love, and on the other, to selfconceit. According to Kant, self-love displays only weak resistance to a purely ethical determinant: “Pure practical reason merely infringes upon self-love, inasmuch as it only restricts it, as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love.”56 Kant interprets self-love as a natural sensible emotion, which nevertheless has no right to meddle in the business of reason. That is why its claims have to be constrained within moral limits again. In this case, Kant speaks of rational selflove. Kant now continues his reflections with a consideration of self-conceit. The very meaning of the word ‘self-conceit’ indicates that the subject of discussion involves distinctly more negative behaviour in ethical matters. Kant writes: But it strikes down self-conceit altogether, since all claims to self-esteem that preceded the agreement of the moral law are null and quite unwarranted because the certainty of a disposition in agreement with this law is the first condition of the value of a person (we shall soon make this more distinct), and any presumption prior to this is false and opposed to the law. Now, the propensity to self-esteem, as long as it rests only on sensibility, belongs with the inclinations which the moral law infringes upon.57
In the case of self-conceit, the discussion is no longer simply of a constraint or abandonment of inclinations through the use of reason, but rather of a “striking down” of emotions and claims. Self-love may be called reasonable, because it evidently “recognises” the demands of reason as appropriate and very easily allows itself to be put in its place. Self-conceit, and with it all the other accompanying inclinations, such as envy, greed and arrogance, prove to be “false and opposed to the law”, as Kant writes, when faced with the demands of moral reason. Kant asserts that it is “the moral law” that subdues self-conceit. This act of subduing by means of the moral law then produces two opposing emotions: But since this law is still something in itself positive – namely the form of an intellectual causality, that is, of freedom – it is at the same time an object of respect inasmuch as, in opposition to its subjective antagonist, namely the inclinations in us, it weakens selfconceit; and inasmuch as it even strikes down self-conceit, that is, humiliates it, it is an object of the greatest respect and so too the ground of a positive feeling that is not of empirical origin and is cognized a priori. Consequently, respect for the moral law is a feeling that is produced by an intellectual ground, and this feeling is the only one that we can cognize completely a priori and the necessity of which we can have insight into.58
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In the case of subduing these false pretensions of sensuality in opposition to reason and its law, the enforcement of reason is accompanied by two very different feelings. On the one hand, self-conceit undergoes humiliation, since its rights have been infringed. After all, self-conceit cannot measure its demands against those of the moral law and of reason. Kant assumes that self-conceit, when it succumbs, has to admit defeat in shame. However, according to Kant, moral law at the same time experiences respect for the fact that it has successfully asserted itself in determining free will. In the case of the the success of the moral law against false inclinations it may even become an “object of the greatest respect”. From the feeling of respect, Kant here expressly states that “it will be effected through an intellectual cause, namely through causality, which the moral law exercises with the determination of pure moral will”. Furthermore, Kant claims that this feeling is the only one which can be recognised a priori and agreed to as necessary. Using the claimed a priori recognition of the feeling of respect, Kant compares the status of this feeling to that of the moral law, thereby endowing the feeling with the moral dignity appropriate to the moral law. Moreover, Kant argues that determination of free will is by no means accomplished through respect, und that it does not offer support in judging ethical action or in justifying objective moral law. Rather, it serves “only as an incentive to make this law its maxim”.59 With “this law” must be intended the objective moral law. The feeling of respect is a consequence of the claim to power which the moral law makes in case of infringement of its commandments. In reaction to Kant’s clear preference for reason, it is Schiller’s intention in his essay Ueber Anmuth und Würde to investigate the two aesthetic feelings of the beautiful and the sublime that are treated by Kant in the Kritik der Urteilskraft for their moral value within an anthropology of the whole human being. The beautiful in human nature is for him a happy manifestation of the architectonic construction of the human form. The human being as a person, i. e. as a moral being, plays no part in that which nature bestows. Pure nature belongs solely to sensibility, as is also provided for by Kant’s two-branched doctrine of the sensible and the intelligible. Yet the person has a considerable part to play in maintaining that beauty, or, if this has not been bestowed by nature, the inner beauty. It is the inner moral behaviour of the human being which first endows the outer beauty with grace, or alternatively, in the case of a lack of external beauty, brings out that grace as inner beauty. “Beauty”, according to Schiller, “should be viewed like a citizen who dwells in two worlds, to one of which he belongs by birth, to the other by adoption; he receives his existence in sensible nature, and achieves his citizenship in the world of reason. This also explains how it happens that taste, as a capacity for judging beauty, treads a path between intellect and sensibility and combines these two natures, which scorn each other, into a felicitous harmony”.60 Schiller em-
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phatically reminds the reader that, as a person, the human being is a creature “which can itself be the cause, and indeed the absolute final cause of its state”. “The manner of its appearance is independent of the manner of its sensation and will, i. e. of the states which are determined by human beings themselves in their freedom, and not by nature in accordance with her necessity”61 Schiller summarises: Freedom therefore now rules over beauty. Nature gave the beauty of structure, the soul gives the beauty of play. And now we also know what we should understand by gracefulness and grace. Gracefulness is the beauty of the form under the influence of freedom; the beauty of those appearances which are determined by the person. Architectonic beauty is created by the author of nature, while gracefulness and grace are a tribute to their owner. The one is a talent, the other personally earned.62
“Grace”, Schiller elucidates further, “is always only the beauty of form moved by freedom, and movements which simply belong to nature can never deserve this name.”63 From this brief sketch of the determinants of the human being as a citizen of two worlds, it can be seen how much Schiller orients himself to Kant’s image of the human being, insofar as this is both an intelligible being and also a sensible being. That can also be seen in beauty, which Schiller conceives as a manifested form of the human being. This can simply be a natural appearance, yet it can also testify to a free, reasonable spirit. From an aesthetic perspective, Kant would agree, as far as art is concerned, and probably also as far as human beauty is concerned. When it is a matter of determining what is morally right, Kant sees a need for clarification of the true moral value, if not the need for correction. In a letter dated 5th October 1793, Johann Erich Biester, the editor of the Berliner Monatsschrift in which a few shorter, yet very significant articles by Kant were published, urged his author to respond in some way to Schiller, since in Ueber Anmuth und Würde the latter had “spoken very pulchritudinously about your moral system, namely that it resounds too much with the severity of obligation (a law indeed prescribed by reason itself, yet to a certain extent nevertheless a foreign law), while too little attention is paid to inclination.”64 While presumably different to what Biester had anticipated, Kant’s response to Schiller enables us to see that, although he was not willing to back down from the strict demands that he made on the autonomy of reason, he is at the same time favourably disposed towards Schiller’s idea of an aesthetic education of human beings as compatible with his own moral philosophy. Schiller’s idea of viewing the whole of humanity as one being, in which not simply reason needs to develop, but sensibility also needs to be educated so that inclinations can immediately contribute to helping reason act accordingly, seems not to have been lost on Kant. He responded to Schiller’s criticism in the second edition of the
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Fig. 3 (b): Kant’s reaction to ‘On Grace and Dignity’
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essay Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone], which was published in 1794. In a footnote, he praises Schiller’s “masterfully composed treatment (Thalia 1793, 3rd Part) Ueber Anmuth und Würde”65 and at the same time defends the moral rigorism of which Schiller had disapproved, falsely accusing him of a “Carthusian-like mood”, since he is of the opinion that he is in agreement with Schiller in the most important points. Kant emphasises to the poet that “grace” should not be added to the “notions of duty, precisely on account of its dignity”, since: The majesty of the moral law (as of the law on Sinai) instils awe (not dread, which repels, nor yet charm, which invites familiarity); and in this instance, since the ruler resides within us, this respect, as of a subject toward his ruler, awakens a sense of the sublimity of our own destiny which enraptures us more than any beauty.66
However, if Kant also demands that the determination of the ethical has to occur without the aid of a disposition which is influenced by a feeling for the beautiful, he nevertheless concedes that it would be desirable to embed a duty performed from a purely moral disposition within a context determined by beauty, dignity and grace. Kant explains the subtle difference as follows: Virtue, also, i. e., the firmly grounded disposition strictly to fulfil our duty, is also beneficent in its results, beyond all that nature and art can accomplish in the world; and the august picture of humanity, as portrayed in this character, does indeed allow the attendance of the Graces. But when duty alone is the theme, they keep a respectful distance. If we consider, further, the happy results which virtue, should she gain admittance everywhere, would spread throughout the world, [we see] morally-directed reason (by means of the imagination) calling the sensibilities1 into play.67
According to this, the sole business of reason is to establish the morally correct maxims of action. However, if a sensually determined agreement then occurs as a consequence, Kant regards this not only as unharmful for the purely moral disposition, but even as beneficial for it. Kant then continues with his reflections, emphasising the value of a sensually determined, yet positive attitude to one’s duties, in contrast to an attitude dominated by negative feelings: Now if one asks, what is the aesthetic character, the temperament, so to speak, of virtue, whether courageous and hence joyous or fear-ridden and dejected, an answer is hardly necessary. This latter slavish frame of mind can never occur without a hidden hatred of the law. And a heart which is happy in the performance of its duty (not merely complacent in the recognition thereof) is a mark of genuineness in the virtuous disposition of genuineness even in piety, which does not consist in the self-inflicted torment of a repentant sinner (a very ambiguous state of mind, which ordinarily is nothing but inward regret at having infringed upon the rules of prudence), but rather in the firm resolve to do better in the future. This resolve, then, encouraged by good progress, must needs beget a joyous frame of mind, without which man is never certain of having really attained a love for the good, i. e., of having incorporated it into his maxim.68
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These lines speak for themselves. Kant emphasises the independent autonomous determination of the will of a moral action, yet above and beyond this agrees with Schiller that an inner attitude, which – according to Schiller’s demand – develops and moves a human being as a whole, is thoroughly useful to the virtue of a human being, and helps to establish a moral disposition in general. Success in learning to improve is far more likely if the moral law is encountered with a positive inner attitude. In the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Kant differentiates between, on the one hand, the sensual attitude of self-conceit, and on the other (healthy and reasonable) self-love, which has to be put in its place by the moral law, in order not to meddle in the determinations of reason. It would therefore be worthwhile developing and reinforcing healthy self-love, in order to do justice to Schiller’s demands. These would be thoroughly compatible with Kant’s principle, even if he himself had not made any proposals concerning it in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals] or in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Of course, if one looks at Kant’s Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre [Metaphysical Principles of Virtue] of 1797, then one naturally presumes that the dispute with Schiller left definite traces behind. After all, Kant was developing here a doctrine of virtue in which he took his own perfection as the goal of ethics, a goal which at the same time is also a duty. He differentiates the duty of virtue to achieve physical perfection as “the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends set forth by reason”69 from the “cultivation of morality in us”70 This formulation makes one feel as if one has been referred straight back to Schiller, who in the fourth of his Ästhetischen Briefe [Aesthetic Letters] writes: Although, in a one-sided moral evaluation, this difference disappears; for reason is satisfied only if its law applies without condition: but in the complete anthropological evaluation, where the form and also the content count, and the living sensation has a voice as well, the same will come into consideration all the more. Although unity may promote reason, nature provides manifoldness, and both legislations lay claim to the human being. The law of the former is imprinted on him by an incorruptible consciousness, the law of the latter by means of an indestructible feeling.71
It may seem surprising that, for Kant, both physical and moral perfection are only imperfect duties, whereas Schiller regards legal obligations as perfect duties. For a human being, a perfect duty and direct obligation is therefore to act in accordance with the moral law, i. e. to act legally, at least as far as the external form is concerned. To act from a true inner moral inclination can only be a imperfect duty, especially since the insight into whatever the actual motives for an action might be is often obscured, as Kant emphasises. A moral inclination cannot be imposed from outside, but rather always results from inner freedom
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and autonomy. On the one hand, Kant remains true to his doctrine of virtue, which he expressly calls ethics, and true to his stringency in moral philosophy ; on the other, he seems to take account of Schiller’s plea in Ueber Anmuth und Würde and in Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, in now avowing that both the physical and the moral human being have to be perfected. How much Schiller may be not only criticising Kant, but also pursuing his own basic ideas, can be seen from the section on “Dignity”, which he describes with the following words: “Just as grace is the expression of a beautiful soul, so dignity is the expression of a sublime inclination.”72 According to Schiller, the sublime inclination is necessary when duty and inclination do not agree so easily, because strong emotions in a human being’s sensible nature overcome his or her soul. In order to arm oneself against the emotional attack, it is necessary to have dignity, and where reason triumphs over sensual demands, people assert themselves in their sublimity. In dignity, therefore, the spirit behaves within the body as a ruler, because here it has to assert its independence of the imperious drives, which without it proceed to action and would gladly escape from its yoke. In grace, on the other hand, the spirit rules with liberality, because here it is the spirit which makes nature act, and finds no resistance to triumph over.73
Whoever expects to find that this section on the sublime and on human dignity contains reflections on the theory of tragedy, because they are familiar with Schiller’s earlier shorter works Ueber die tragische Kunst, [On Tragic Art], Vom Erhabene [On the Sublime] or Ueber das Pathetische [On the Pathetic],74 will be disappointed. In his earlier writings, Schiller elaborated the fact that the object of tragedy is the suffering human being, who heroically puts up inner moral resistance to that suffering and therefore proves himself worthy of freedom as a moral being. The whole essay Ueber Anmuth und Würde can be read as Schiller’s application of the anthropological turn to Kant’s moral philosophy. The central consideration of this essay is that, according to Schiller, the sensual human being can never quite abandon himself to sensibility, whether he is afflicted by sensual emotions, or whether he is the actor : “Dignity is required and it is displayed more in suffering (padûr); grace more in conduct (gdor); for only in suffering can the freedom of the emotions be revealed, and only in action can the freedom of the body be revealed. ”75 According to Schiller, the rule applies “that the human being should do with grace all that can be performed within his humanity, and do with dignity everything which requires him to transcend his humanity in order to perform it. Just as we demand grace from virtue, so we demand dignity from inclination.”76
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Schiller’s Conception of the Tragic Based on Kant’s Feeling of the Sublime The short works which we owe to Schiller the dramatist form a context of their own. Adopting Kant’s conception of the sublime, and taking the tragic as their subject, they are intended for their own time. Schiller wrote several essays on the subjects of the pathetic, the sublime and the tragic before and during his period of intense study of Kant. Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet [The Theatre Viewed as a Moral Institution] was published in 1785 in the Rheinische Thalia, even before he had begun reading Kant more intensively. The article Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen [On the Reason for Taking Pleasure in Tragic Subjects] was written during the transitional phase and derives in part from Schiller’s lectures of 1790. The work must have been interrupted by his severe illness of 1791. This was the period when he first became preoccupied with Kant, and this influenced the article, which eventually appeared in the Neue Thalia in 1792. Ueber die tragische Kunst formed a direct continuation of the preceding article and was published in March 1792, also in the Neue Thalia. This work led Schiller on to the essays Vom Erhabenen and Ueber das Pathetische, which were published in the Neue Thalia in 1793. Finally, further shorter essays on the philosophy of art were written within the context of Schiller’s later dramas. Among these is the work of collaboration between Schiller and Goethe Ueber epische und dramatische Dichtung [On Epic and Dramatic Poetry], which was begun in 1797 within the context of the Wallenstein-Trilogie and was completed in 1799. Ueber den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragödie [On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy] appeared in 1803 as the preface to Braut von Messina. Furthermore, Schiller left behind as part of his estate Tragödie und Komödie [Tragedy and Comedy] in the form of notes. The fact that Schiller developed his concept of tragedy from Kant’s theory of the sublime in the Kritik der Urteilskraft might cause one to assume that Kant had already made a connection between the sublime and the tragic. This assumption can only be confirmed by a few passages, those which Kant wrote on the relation of the tragedy to the sublime in the above work. It is far less Kant and much more Schiller, for whom a concept of the tragic based on Kant’s theory of the sublime became a central philosophical concern, as is reflected in Schiller’s writings on the theory of tragedy. A brief historical outline shows that aesthetic considerations of the beautiful have gone hand in hand with those of the sublime ever since Nicolas Boileau, in the mid-17th century, drew attention to the essay Trait¦ sur le sublime (1764), On the Sublime (peri hypsous, Gr.; de sublimate, Lat.) by Pseudo-Longinus. It was then also adopted by Kant in his Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und des Erhabenen [Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sub-
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lime], dating from 1764. Kant is not very original in it. However, in the Kritik der Urteilskraft the beautiful and the sublime undergo a unique systematic interpenetration. According to Klaus Berghahn,77 after its discovery, the sublime enjoyed a steep career trajectory in the theories of the German poets and philosophers, being used, for instance by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock as a feature of epic and lyrical poetry, in Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750–1758), in Moses Mendelssohn’s Betrachtungen über das Erhabene und das Naive in den schönen Wissenschaften [Observations of the Sublime and the Naive in the Fine Sciences] (1758) and in Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeiner Theorie der schönen Künste [General Theory of the Fine Arts] (1771–1774), an essay which was of great significance for Schiller ; the sublime stood for great, elevated poetry of a creative, passionately enhanced power of imagination. It is to Schiller’s great credit that he translated Kant’s doctrine of the dynamic sublime into dramatic art, as Berghahn underlines: “In his theory of tragedy he [Schiller, VLW] also goes beyond Lessing, who had rejected the sublime for the drama, since it seemed not to fit into his doctrine of the ‘means to an end’.“78 Two passages can be found in Kant’s essay Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und des Erhabenen, dating from 1764, where tragedy is mentioned as a manifestation of the sublime. The first one is to be found in the second paragraph “Von den Eigenschaften des Erhabenen und Schönen am Menschen überhaupt” [‘Of the Qualities of the Sublime and the Beautiful in Human Beings in General’]. Kant writes: In my opinion, tragedy is distinguished from comedy primarily in the fact that in the former it is the feeling for the sublime while in the latter it is the feeling for the beautiful that is touched. In the former there is displayed magnanimous sacrifice for the wellbeing of another, bold resolve in the face of danger, and proven fidelity. There love is melancholic, tender, and full of esteem; the misfortune of others stirs sympathetic sentiments in the bosom of the onlooker and allows his magnanimous heart to beat for the need of others. He is gently moved and feels the dignity of his own nature. Comedy, in contrast, represents intrigues, marvelous entanglements and clever people who know how to wriggle out of them, fools who let themselves be deceived, jests and ridiculous characters. Here love is not so grave, it is merry and intimate. Yet as in other cases, here too the noble can be united with the beautiful to a certain degree.79
The second passage is to be found in the fourth paragraph, entitled “Von den Nationalcharaktern, in so ferne sie auf dem unterschiedlichen Gefühl des Erhabenen und Schönen beruhen” [‘Of National Characteristics, insofar as they Depend upon the Differentiated Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’] but is only mentioned as a reference here. On 18 and 19 February 1795, Goethe and Schiller exchanged views about their readings of Kant’s Beobachtungen. Goethe asked: “Are you familiar with the
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Kantian observations on the feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime from 1771? [in the 3rd edition, VLW] It would be an agreeable essay if the words Beautiful and Sublime didn’t form part of the title at all and occurred even more rarely in the little book itself. It is full of the loveliest remarks about human beings and one can see his principles already beginning to germinate.”80 Schiller replied the following day : “What you wrote about Kant’s little essay made me remember, while I was reading it, that I had felt the same. The elaboration is simply anthropological and in it one learns nothing about the final causes of the beautiful. But as a physics and natural history of the sublime and the beautiful it contains some fruitful material. For such serious material it seems to me that the style is rather too playful and flowery ; a strange flaw for a book by Kant, who is once again very comprehensible.”81 Plain words by both the poets, who strike at the heart of the matter. Yet the two of them wrote these comments at a time when they had already brought their reading of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft to maturity. It is curious that there is little or no mention here of the differences or development in Kant’s thought (see above: “his principles already beginning to germinate”). In the Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant develops the differentiation of the feelings of the pleasant, the beautiful and the good into a typology of feelings. The first is a simple empirical feeling, the second is a feeling that can be called intellectual, yet which lacks a concept, while the good is an intellectual feeling which at the same time is based on a concept. Kant assumes that all further feelings will follow this basic pattern. The sublime belongs to the type that has been developed with the beautiful. Schiller makes this classification very much his own. In Kant’s “Allgemeine[n] Anmerkung zur Exposition der ästhetischen reflectirenden Urtheile” [General Remark upon the Exposition of the Aesthetical Reflective Judgement] in the Kritik der Urteilskraft there can be found some remarks that have crept in, according to which the description of turbulent movements of feeling cannot be claimed to be sublime without further examination, insofar as it does not describe a consciousness of strength and decisiveness which has an intelligible cause: But even stormy movements of mind which may be connected under the name of edification with Ideas of religion, or – as merely belonging to culture – with Ideas containing a social interest, can in no way, however they strain the Imagination, lay claim to the honour of being sublime presentations, unless they leave after them a mental mood which, although only indirectly, has influence upon the mind’s consciousness of its strength, and its resolution in reference to that which involves pure intellectual purposiveness (the supersensible). For otherwise all these emotions belong only to motion, which one would fain enjoy for the sake of health.82
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Here, Kant emphasises that “turbulent movements of feeling”, i. e. emotions, cannot be described as sublime if they are connected with some idea or thought. Many feelings are in fact culturally influenced, that is, they are linked to ideas. According to Kant, the sublime is therefore not simply a movement of feeling which is connected to some thought or other, but rather one which is specifically connected to such thoughts as can promote morality. Kant continues: Many a man believes himself to be edified by a sermon, when indeed there is no edification at all (no system of good maxims); or to be improved by a tragedy, when he is only glad at his ennui being happily dispelled. So the Sublime must always have reference to the disposition, i. e. to the maxims which furnish to the intellectual [part] and to the Ideas of Reason a superiority over sensibility.83
This passage shows that one can only then describe a tragedy as sublime if its content is related to the morality of reason and its supra-sensible cause, which is also confirmed by a further passage in § 52 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, “Von der Verbindung der schönen Künste in einem und demselben Producte” [‘Of the Combination of Beautiful Arts in one and the same Product’], where Kant writes: Even the presentation of the sublime, so far as it belongs to beautiful art, may combine with beauty in a tragedy in verse, in a didactic poem, in an oratorio; and in these combinations beautiful art is yet more artistic. Whether it is also more beautiful may in some of these cases be doubted (since so many different kinds of satisfaction cross one another). Yet in all beautiful art the essential thing is the form, which is purposive as regards our observation and judgement, where the pleasure is at the same time cultivation and disposes the spirit to Ideas, and consequently makes it susceptible of still more of such pleasure and entertainment. The essential element is not the matter of sensation (charm or emotion), which has only to do with enjoyment; this leaves behind nothing in the Idea, and it makes the spirit dull, the object gradually distasteful, and the mind, on account of its consciousness of a disposition that conflicts with purpose in the judgement of Reason, discontented with itself and peevish.84
As brief as these considerations of Kant’s may be on the relationship between the tragedy and the sublime, they nevertheless reflect the core of what Schiller intended with his conception of the sublime. Schiller continues regardless. Kant elaborated new theories of the genres of individual arts, yet not of tragedy. Schiller’s early shorter essays Ueber die tragische Kunst, Vom Erhabenen and Ueber das Pathetische85 form an integrated context of their own. They arose from 1791 onwards. In them, Schiller developed his ideas of the tragic on the basis of Kant’s conception of the dynamic sublime. Schiller’s essay Über die tragische Kunst was published in 1792 in the Neue Thalia. The “results” which Schiller gathered together there on the tragic were based on Lessing’s theory of tragedy and Kant’s moral philosophy, and were elaborated as the conditions of a tragic emotion as follows:
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Firstly, the object of our compassion must belong to our genre, in the absolute sense of the word, and the plot in which we shall participate must be a moral one, i. e. conceived as pertaining to the subject of freedom. Secondly, the suffering, its source and its degree, must be conveyed to us in full, by means of a sequence of connected facts, and namely thirdly sensibly actualised, not by means of description but directly envisioned, and represented by the plot. All of these conditions are unified and fulfilled by the art of tragedy.
Schiller continues: Tragedy would accordingly be poetic imitation of a contextual series of occurrences (a complete plot) which depicts us as human beings in a state of suffering, and has as its intention the arousing of our compassion.”86
This shows that Schiller sees himself as belonging to the tradition of Lessing’s interpretation of the definition of tragedy found in Aristotle’s Poetics – yet integrated with Kant’s moral philosophy of freedom. Schiller is seeking, with Kant and beyond Kant, a philosophical answer to the question of the cause of pleasure in tragic subjects. According to Schiller, this cannot be because the human being takes pleasure in the fact that others are suffering. Tragic subjects produce, like the sublime according to Kant’s explanation, a feeling of dejection and a feeling of elevation. In this the feelings of the sublime and of respect concur, and according to Kant they are experienced prior to the moral law. The sympathy which is felt for the tragic fate of the heroines and heroes makes one feel dejected; on the other hand, one feels elevated by the moral resistance with which this ineluctable fate is borne with dignity. In that lies the essential moment of pleasure to be found in tragic presentations in art. Translated by Peter Waugh
Franz Grillparzer – Approaches to Kant by Gabriele Geml Anyone who knows Franz Grillparzers’s dramatic work and the wealth of relationships to be found in the characterology of his figures, will hardly be surprised by the insight that Grillparzer took a lively interest in philosophical and psychological issues. Throughout his lifetime he explored the subject of philosophy, even if he would not pass up an opportunity to make fun of it with scornful remarks.87 Although it was initially the aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), in particular, whose writings greatly impressed Grillparzer, in later years Kant became his decisive reference: “Everything that I read in philosophy increases my respect for Kant”, Grillparzer writes in 1832.88
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The sentence does have a polemic background, yet at the same time it can also stand for itself, alone. Grillparzer wrote it as part of longer notes, and it contains a hint of sarcasm, under the immediate impression of reading Hegel. In the process, Grillparzer’s dislike of what he was reading leaves one in no doubt that the remark is at any rate as much a criticism of Hegel and of idealist philosophy as an evaluation of Kant. Nevertheless, the sentence can very well be quoted on its own: Grillparzer’s notes leave one in no doubt that he especially valued Kant’s philosophy.
Fig. 4: Josef Kriehuber, Franz Grillparzer (1841)
Born on 15. 1. 1791 in Vienna, to a mother who was a singer and a father who was a lawyer, Grillparzer enjoyed his first success as a writer at the age of twenty-six, with the play Die Ahnfrau. [The Ancestress], which was premiered at the Theater an der Wien in 1817. An important part in the success of the play was played by Grillparzer’s mentor, the Theatersekretär (‘theatre secretary’/ director) Joseph Schreyvogel (1768–1832). On the one hand he motivated Grillparzer to write it, and on the other he was responsible for its dramatic presentation. The year after that, Grillparzer’s play Sappho, which was premiered at Vienna’s Burgtheater, became a huge audience success, for which Grillparzer was awarded a series of public honours; these included the offer of a position as dramatist and an invitation to a personal reception with Prince Metternich (1773–1859). However, subsequent to this heyday of his fame, Grillparzer’s works repeatedly aroused the suspicion of the censor and the
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state authorities. Even Die Ahnfrau had had to be defended by Schreyvogel against the opposition of the censor. It was certainly not least in order to be able to promote Grillparzer’s works more effectively that Schreyvogel himself applied for a job at the censorship authorities and from January 1818 to November 1825 worked there in the function of an “assistant censor for literature”, in addition to his main occupation as Theatersekretär.89 Some of the dramas by Grillparzer which were premiered under Schreyvogel’s direction included Die Ahnfrau (1817), Sappho (1818), Das Goldene Vließ [The Golden Fleece] (1821), König Ottokars Glück und Ende [King Ottokar’s Fortune and Fall] (1825), Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn [A True Servant of his Master] (1828), as well as Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen [The Waves of Sea and of Love] (1831). Grillparzer’s early short story, Das Kloster bei Sendomir [The Monastery of Sendomir], was also published by Schreyvogel, in 1827/28.90 The number of larger works which Grillparzer published on his own after Schreyvogel died in 1832, shortly after his dismissal as Theatersekretär, is extremely limited. The last play to be performed under Schreyvogel’s management was Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, which was put on in 1831. The play, which is among Grillparzer’s greatest works, was at the same time his first drastic failure with the theatre-going public, and was taken off the programme after only a few performances. In 1833, the romantic opera Melusina was premiered in Berlin. The libretto had been composed by Grillparzer at the request of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), although the latter has not composed the music for the play anymore, which Grillparzer had sent to him in 1823. The opera was eventually composed by Conradin Kreuzer (1780–1849) in 1832. In 1834 Der Traum, ein Leben [The Dream, A Life], which Grillparzer had already completed in 1831, became a great success. In contrast, Grillparzer’s sole serious venture into the field of comedy, Weh dem, der lügt! [Woe Betide the One Who Lies!], premiered in 1838, was a debacle for him, and its sensational failure led him to turn his back on the theatre. Libussa, Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg [A Brotherly Quarrel in Habsburg] and Die Jüdin von Toledo [The Jewess of Toledo], which were all sketched out and elaborated in rough during the period of his first friendship with Schreyvogel, were only published posthumously from Grillparzer’s estate, and premiered in 1872. An exception was the fragment Esther, which was staged for the first time in 1868, while Grillparzer was still alive. His poems were published in many places, including almanacs, magazines and newspapers, although no collected edition was published during his lifetime, since he refused to approve the relevant plans to do so.91 After 1852 he wrote hardly any poems at all. His autobiography, which had been composed in 1853, was published posthumously, as was a collected edition of his epigrams. A later work, which had escaped Grillparzer’s rigorous self-censorship and was published in 1848, was the short story Der arme
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Spielmann [The Poor Minstrel]. Like almost all of his larger, later works, Der Arme Spielmann was written over a long period of time and underwent a great many interruptions; the first written notes for it had been made as early as 1831.
Fig. 5: Josefine Wessely as Hero in ‘The Waves of Sea and of Love’, Burgtheater Vienna (1885–1887)
Proceeding from Grillparzer’s massive self-doubts and the strictness of his self-censor, which certainly even overshadowed the official censor, one may congratulate Grillparzer posthumously on two counts: on his acquaintance with Schreyvogel, who managed to bring Grillparzer’s works to the stage before they entered the relentless grinding mill of Grillparzer‘s doubts; and on the circumstance that Grillparzer, on the basis of his legal training, was not financially dependent on literary success. After completing his law studies (1807–1811), he
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embarked upon a career as a civil servant in 1813, became director of the archive of the financial administration in 1832, and retired as a privy councillor in 1856. Despite his journalistic abstinence, the awards that he received accumulated in the last decades of his life, and Grillparzer became, among other things, a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and an honorary doctor in Leipzig. Various reports of course indicate that, on account of his self-critical disposition, the wind was hardly taken out of his sails at all by the honours. Although Grillparzer studied at a time when Kant’s philosophy was excluded from Austrian universities as a subject of instruction, and reference could only be made to it for polemic purposes, he nevertheless came into contact with Kant’s philosophy while he was still a student. His philosophy professor, Franz Samuel Karpe (1747–1806), is described by Grillparzer in his Selbstbiographie [Autobiography] as “a pedant, although not in the usual sense, but as an actual figure in a comedy, as if Il Dottore from the Italian commedia dell’arte were embodied by him”.92 Evidently Karpe took the official line concerning the university’s approach to Kant very seriously, since, according to Grillparzer, according to Grillparzer, Karpe’s analyses repeatedly culminated with the complacent interjection: “Come here, O Kant, and disprove me this proof!”93 Grillparzer may have had a rather less farcical encounter with Kant’s philosophy during his study years when he was away from the university, in the house of his friend Josef Wohlgemuth: in a scientifically ambitious circle of friends, various writings were discussed, “above all”, as it is written in Grillparzer’s autobiography, “Kantian philosophy, which at that time was new for us, and for the study of which the son of the house was well-equipped with a wide variety of polemic pamphlets and commentaries”.94 Which of Kant’s works Grillparzer came into contact with in this setting and how earnestly the discussions were carried on, can only be surmised, yet it is said that the choice of writings was nevertheless very precise: “Above all, as jurists, we enjoyed Kant’s natural law, in which Fichte then also played a role.”95 Concerning the seriousness of those early “scientific variations”, Grillparzer noted: “We founded an academy of sciences in the weekly gatherings that we held, and essays were presented. However, in order that the matter did not become too earnest, we founded, secondarily, a Journal of Folly […]. We were rather short on these written essays in our academy”.96 From this background there emerged, in 1808, Grillparzer’s text, Das Narrennest [The Nest of Fools], only a fragment of which remains, which is certainly more about having fun with friends than being a work that makes any artistic claims. However, the name of Kant already occurs in that document, even if it does so in a thoroughly abstract manner, namely as the inventory of a library.97 If Grillparzer’s early encounters with Kant are characterised by comic elements, his first substantial preoccupation with Kant’s writings occurs under the auspices of a precisely reversed situation. It is essentially mediated by Schreyvogel, whose
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Fig. 6 (a): Note by Franz Grillparzer on his understanding of Kant in ‘Aesthetic Theory’ (1837)
mission it had become to tear Grillparzer away from his depressive self-doubts and to urge him to write and publish. In 1817, a few weeks after the fulminant success of the premiere of Die Ahnfrau, Schreyvogel noted in his diary : “13th March. Night – First I tormented myself with Grillparzer, who is a hypochondriac” and then shortly afterwards, “15th March. Night. – I have given Grill-
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Fig. 6 (b): Note by Franz Grillparzer on his understanding of Kant in ‘Aesthetic Theory’ (1837)
parzer the main works of Kant. Perhaps he can find some reassurance in them.”98 The therapeutic connection through which Kant’s writings reached Grillparzer doubtlessly remained significant for his reception of Kant and he probably returned quite frequently to Kant’s works when he wanted to calm himself down and, to use one of his favourite phrases for self-evocation, “to gather himself
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together”.99 The “purifying” effect which Kant’s lucid analysis of the faculty of pure reason might have had upon Grillparzer in his phases of sorrow may also be comprehended by the affinity which he felt with Kant’s language. Thus it is written in an entry from 1820, the closer consequences of which for Grillparzer’s linguistic style have, as yet, hardly been taken into account at all: Everyone who wishes to devote himself to literature, even if only that of belles-lettres, should study Kant’s works, and namely, quite apart from the content, simply on account of their strictly logical form. Nothing is more appropriate for accustoming oneself to the lucidity, selectiveness and precision of concepts than this study, and it must be obvious how necessary these characteristics are to the poet.100
In all probability, it is not least the legal atmosphere of Kant’s writings that made them more accessible to Grillparzer, since it conveyed to the writer, who was both the son of a lawyer and a jurist himself, a sense of intellectual belonging. In general, it is not only the clarity of the conceptual distinctions that exudes a juristic atmosphere in Kant’s writings; the concept of the law also has an important role to play in them, and as far as Kant’s linguistic images are concerned, a predilection for legal metaphors definitely catches one’s eye. The great esteem which Grillparzer had for Kant’s language might shed a new light on the former’s own language, which has sometimes been criticised for its bare punctiliousness and sobriety.101 Regardless of this esteem for Kant’s language, Grillparzer immediately sensed the urge to translate Kant’s elaborations into a personal understanding. In particular, Grillparzer read the Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement], which fascinated him more than any other of Kant’s works, in a very active manner, searching for reformulations, as he acknowledges in his notebooks. The theoretical writings which Grillparzer composed on various subjects have been partially organised thematically by his publishers. The convolute “Zur Ästhetik” [‘On Aesthetics’] is especially illuminating for Grillparzer’s reception of Kant.102 “Kant’s purposiveness without purpose, and agreement of knowledge without any concept at all, in elucidating beauty, I understand roughly as follows: …” is how, for instance, a longer note, from 1820/ 21, begins.103 The style of the writing is typical of the manner of Grillparzer’s reformulating reading, even where the notation does not refer so explicitly to his work of translating the ideas. A later note, from 1837, provides information about the insistence of his preoccupation with the Critique of Judgement: Kant’s definition will remain true forever : beauty is that which one likes without interest. All poetry is based on the idea of a higher world order, which can, however, never be completely comprehended by reason, and so can never be realised, and from which only the feeling is granted […] now and then grasping a part by intuition. Purposiveness without purpose as Kant expressed it, looking deeper than any philosopher before or after him.104
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In his monograph Grillparzer und Kant, Fritz Störi has documented some external indications of Grillparzer’s reception of Kant. Störi dates the start of Grillparzer’s intensive study of Kant’s writings to the middle of 1819. In 1820, Grillparzer acquired the Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Perspective] and the Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement] for his own library.105 For him, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] was not as engaging as the other two books, even though he did make an intense study of it as well.106 In Störi’s opinion, Grillparzer studied Kant’s practical philosophy least of all, although Störi emphasises that this can only remain a supposition. On the basis of Grillparzer’s diary entries, it does however become clear that Grillparzer did not study Kant’s moral philosophical writings in the same detail, nor with the same thirst for knowledge, that he studied Kritik der Urteilskraft. Nevertheless, it would not only be rather strange if the playwright had dispensed with the potential for dramatic excitation inherent in Kant’s moral philosophy ; it would furthermore make one wonder why Grillparzer’s mentor Schreyvogel would have remained without any influence on Grillparzer precisely in this aspect of Kant, since it was one of the most important ones for Schreyvogel. In decisive respects, the literary canon of Grillparzer displays distinct parallels to the canon of Schreyvogel. This certainly cannot be traced back only to the insightful influence of Schreyvogel, but must also be traced to common preferences. Thus, for example, they shared a love of Pedro Calderûn de la Barca (1600–1681), a circumstance in which their acquaintance and collaboration played a decisive role. Furthermore, there were several further agreements; Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Kant were at the centre of their admiration; Kant’s idealist successors and the Romantic literature aroused a common heated dislike. In particular, Grillparzer was biased against Schelling and Hegel, and Grillparzer’s reserve towards Hegelian philosophy would not change even though he had once got to know Hegel personally on a trip to Germany in 1826 and had found him quite pleasant: “I found Hegel as pleasant, understanding and reconciliatory, as I subsequently found his system abstruse and dissatisfying.”107 Nor did Grillparzer particularly value Fichte, from what he had heard about him, although on the other hand he could not help but discover, to his surprise, important similarities between his own views and those of Fichte.108 If one takes into account the overwhelming significance which Kant’s moral philosophy had for Schreyvogel, then one might well presume that it would have taken a certain amount of effort, to say the least, for Grillparzer to ignore it. Correspondingly, one also finds a strong resonance of Kant’s moral philosophy in Grillparzer’s writings. Some inspiration which Grillparzer has quite evidently received from it has been presented by Störi, and a series of further authors have subsequently referred to the rich echo of Kant’s moral philosophy and philosophy of religion to be found in Grillparzer’s work.109 As
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impressive examples may be listed, for instance, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, the comedy Weh dem, der lügt!, as well as Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn [His Master’s Loyal Servant]. Some apparent divergences between Kant’s and Grillparzer’s attitudes to moral philosophy are unavoidable, due to the discrepancy between their basic approaches – Kant’s transcendental approach on the one hand, and Grillparzer’s empirical, world-bound approach on the other. Since Grillparzer presents the rational demands of morality as being entangled with real – and that widely means guilt-stricken – life circumstances, what is decisive for him is the forgiving, world-bound perspective of generosity (Güte), in addition to the good (das Gute) as a pure rational principle. Along with the deliberate orientation of good will towards the future, the charitableness of the acquiescing capacity to forgive becomes a cardinal virtue. Tragic catastrophes happen in Grillparzer’s dramatic thought in particular where the figures have become ideally hardened towards the real demands of their surroundings, whether because they could no longer forgive, or had become abstractly fixated on an idea – in itself good – and in doing so ignore all the concrete requirements of life which are always already burdened with culpability. The latter is, for example, the case in Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn, in which Bancbanus, who remains loyal to the king, attempts – against all the real odds and putting aside his personal interests – to fulfil his duty with as few concessions as possible, yet in doing so – unwillingly – he causes a massive calamity. However, the gesture of that tragedy is not simply accusatory or didactic. What makes Grillparzer’s plays attractive is that he draws his characters with great sympathy and – like a psychologist who understands people coming from a variety of contingencies – excuses them in an insightful way. Faced with the misunderstanding of some spectators and readers, Grillparzer came to the defence of his Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn, even if it was retrospectively : “One has accused the play of being an apology of slavish subjection; yet I had in my mind the heroism of those who are true to their duty, one heroism as good as any other.”110 Grillparzer’s plays repeatedly warn of the dangers of an idea of morality that is conceived too abstractly or too absolutely, which has become hardened toward the tangible demands of the rest of the world, but also towards personal feeling. Quite early on, he saw the threat of a “morality” that is emancipated from compassion and inclination, for example in the concerned words of Libussa: The old bonds of being grow loose, to the unmeasured the fair is bound, yes, even Gods stretch and grow and blend, becoming a giant god; and universal love shall it be called. Yet you share your love with the universe, little remains for individuals or neighbours,
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till only hate remains whole in the breast. Love loves objects close at hand and to love all is no longer feeling, what you judge to be sensation is but thought and thought shrinks you to a word, and for the sake of the word you will hate, persecute and kill – […]111
Fig. 7: Viktor Tilgner, Franz Grillparzer, Burgtheater Vienna (1988)
For Grillparzer, that rightful morality which is capable of being generalised should be complemented and restricted through compassion, love and empathy. In the drama Die Jüdin von Toledo are to be found the following lines: “May virtue make him not only worthy of respect, / No, but loveable too. That protects against much.”112 He became vehemently opposed to every kind of moral rigorism, even rigoristic misinterpretations of Kant’s moral philosophy. His own approach to Kant’s practical philosophy was from the outset influenced by the
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later perspective of the Kritik der Urteilskraft and the views formulated there about natural beauty and the sublime, about the sense of life and the sensus communis. Grillparzer’s autonomous, conscious subject is sensitive and receptive to the finely spun web of relationships, through which it is connected to the environment. In a note on the feeling of the beautiful, Grillparzer writes, around the years 1820/21: Does not the eternal discord of the moral and the sensory nature, of will and conscience in this moment [of the feeling of beauty, GG] seem balanced? […] Do you not feel your affinity with the being below you, and with something above you? Is it not as if invisible threads were spun out from within you, and in unsuspected relations did bind the whole world?113
This same impression of a heartfelt connection between the rational, perceiving ego and its world gave rise to an untitled poem, composed two decades later, the last lines of which contain a variation of the well-known words at the conclusion of the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” KpV, AA V, 161). Apart from Kant’s “starry sky” and “moral law”, Grillparzer draws from the imaginative world of the concluding paragraph the concept of “connection”, to which Kant refers to no less than three times in succession in the passage. In Grillparzer it runs: For there is something, however far away you are, that weaves around you an invisible web, so that, when you love, you look up to the stars, And behold it subduing you like the law.114
The etymological and semantic contexts of the German concepts of duty (Pflicht; i. e. the moral law) – weave (flechten) – spin (umspinnen) – web (Netz) – connection (Verknüpfung) can only be indicated here. Certainly, Grillparzer was inspired by Kant to conceive of freedom in the sense of an intertwining and connectedness with the world. Of course, Grillparzer brings out the pragmatic dimension of the moral sphere and the beneficial success of the action, placing them above the integrity and purity of motives of the good decision. In subtle grammatical shifts, he asserts the regulative character of practical reason as presented by Kant in the sense of an imperative. For instance, in a poem dating from 1823, there is a significant shift of the verb forms: ‘The eternal spirits look on and are sacred, / Yet man should act and be good.’115 The fact that, the idea of freedom, is more a matter of practical appeal to the autonomous subject than of an objectively verifiable state, is something that has been recognised more clearly by Grillparzer, drawing on Kant, than it has by some contemporary researchers. A sentence, attributed to Grillparzer, which has been passed down
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from the year 1843, summarises his approach to the world, stretched between an understanding psychology and the ethical claims of self; it is a maxim which perhaps could rightly lay claim to the title of a categorical imperative in Grillparzer’s sense: “Since human freedom is one of the undecided questions, we should wish to watch over ourselves, as if we were free, and excuse the others, as if they were not.”116 Translated by Peter Waugh
Fig. 8: Rudolf Weyr, Carl Kundmann, Carl Hasenauer, Franz Grillparzer memorial (f.l.t.r. ‘The Ancestress’, ‘A Dream is Life’, ‘The Fortune and Fall of King Ottokar’, ‘Sappho’, ‘Medea’, ‘The Waves of Sea and Love’), Volksgarten Vienna (1889)
Joseph Schreyvogel – Kantian Moral Philosophy as the Art of Living by Gabriele Geml Although hardly known today, Joseph Schreyvogel, who was for many years director of the Hoftheater, played a decisive role not only in the Viennese Enlightenment but also in the mediation of Kantian philosophy in pre-1848 Austria. Schreyvogel was a journalist, writer and art dealer, before becoming, during the period between 1814 and 1832, dramaturgical director of the Vienna Hoftheater (Hoftheatersekretär), the position in which he exerted his greatest influence. Although, in his function as ‘theatre secretary’, Schreyvogel was subordinate, on the one hand, to changing aristocratic superiors, and on the other to the public censor, the selection and production of the plays to be performed were nevertheless essentially his responsibility. During his 18-year period of office, he re-
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established the international fame of the Hoftheater (later Burgtheater) by ensuring the provision of a classical repertoire; he played a key role in defining the development of dramatic art in pre-1848 Austria, and in particular acted as the mentor of Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), whose plays he staged with the very best casts.
Fig. 9: Joseph Schreyvogel, contemporary print from a watercolor portrait by Capeller (before 1882)
In his youth, Schreyvogel had at first embarked on a study of law, in the course of which he completed his “obligatory years of philosophy” from 1783–1786. It was probably not least his psychological instability which prevented him from finishing his studies. In 1788 Schreyvogel underwent a serious mental crisis – a disposition, which would cause him problems throughout his life. It was also a disposition which was very closely connected with his reception of Kantian philosophy. For instance, Schreyvogel’s first intensive encounter with the latter came in that inauspicious year of 1788, while he was recuperating from his crisis in the spa town of Baden near Vienna. Considerably later, at the start of the year 1811, he remembered that time in a diary entry : I am reading Kant’s moral writings for my own instruction and edification. Kant made a great contribution to the recuperation of my mind twenty years ago. Yet how did it happen that his morality, with which I was well acquainted and understood, had such so
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little influence on my behaviour? – In the case of wisdom, as he himself says, it is less a matter of knowing than of doing.117
This diary entry, taken together with other notes written by Schreyvogel, not only suggests that his preoccupation with Kant can be dated back to 1788, and that he had evidently read Kant’s writings very shortly after they were published,118 but also gives a clear indication of the pragmatic focus of his reception of Kant. Schreyvogel asserts the primacy of practical philosophy also for Kant’s philosophical system. He notes, for instance, in March 1811, in the course of reading Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals]: “The whole endless building constructed by this man seems to be founded solely on the justification of true morality”.119 With regard to his personal fascination with Kantian philosophy, Schreyvogel records: “It is not idle speculation, but rather the living spirit of morality which appeals to me in these writings, and certainly the repeated study of them will not remain without a beneficial influence on my mind and character.”120 In 1788, during his curative stay in Baden, Schreyvogel made the acquaintance of Amand Berghofer (1745–1825). This Austrian thinker, that Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) compared with Rousseau, was evidently most enamoured by Kant’s philosophy.121 “No-one in the world, whether in ancient or modern times”, Berghofer wrote in later years, in his Literarisches Vermächtnis [Literary Legacy] “has perhaps substantiated the dignity of reason in such a way as he has”.122 It is highly probable that Schreyvogel’s more detailed studies of Kantian philosophy received a decisive impulse from his friendship with Berghofer. What is sure, at any rate according to Schreyvogel’s reminiscences, is that in 1788 “the study of the rational sciences” – whereby it is definitely Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] that is intended – served Schreyvogel as an essential “remedy for his mind”. This function remained an important aspect of his approach to Kantian philosophy, whereby in subsequent years Kant’s practical philosophy became a guiding star and essential support for his unstable mind.123 The importance of Kant’s philosophy for his personal development was described by Schreyvogel himself, very literally, as a matter of capital importance. In one of the numerous diary entries on Kantian philosophy for the year 1811, it is written: “In the first period of my self-salvation, Kant had a great deal of influence on my powers of thought; now, since it is not simply a matter of the preservation of life, but also a matter of the foundation of my character, he will be even more useful.”124 Before Schreyvogel intensified his reading of Kant by an impressive amount in 1811, in order to develop the “culture of the moral disposition” within himself, and to become “at one and at peace” with himself, and before, in 1814, he became director of the Vienna Hoftheater, a position which he held for 18 years, he first
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had to face a rather changeable course of life after he had overcome the crisis year of 1788.125 In 1793 he became friends with the Viennese writer and journalist Johann Baptist von Alxinger (1755–1797), whose high regard for Kantian philosophy is also well documented.126 From early 1793 until July 1794, Alxinger published the Österreichische Monathsschrift [Austrian Monthly Journal], which took as its orientational model the Berlinische Monathsschrift [Berlin Monthly Journal], the central organ of the German Enlightenment. Kant also published in it. According to Alxinger’s programme, the Österreichische Monathsschrift was intended to be “an Austrian critical journal” with “moral, political and dramaturgical content”.127 Schreyvogel was one of the first and most influential contributors to the magazine. Apart from a number of articles and a dramatic sketch, Die Eiserne Maske [The Iron Mask], that remained – like so much of his work – unfinished, Schreyvogel published an essay in der Monathsschrift which appeared in the March issue of 1794, entitled Der Glaube an Vorsehung nach Grundsätzen der Vernunft. Gegen die Vertheidiger des Wunder- und Aberglaubens [The Belief in Providence According to Rational Principles. Against the Defenders of Miracles and Superstition]. It took as its subject the Kantian philosophy of religion – at a point in time when Kant’s essay Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone] had already been banned in Austria.128 Not least on account of that article, the Monathsschrift came under the scrutiny of the censor and was closed down just before a large-scale wave of arrests occurred as part of the discovery of the socalled Jacobin conspiracy in July 1794. Schreyvogel, who had been publicly accused by his adversary Felix Franz Hofstätter (1741–1814) of having revolutionary intentions, then set off, together with Alxinger, on a longer tour of Germany in early autumn 1794. The motive of flight at least played a part in this, even though it may not have been wholly at the forefront.129 Whereas Alxinger soon returned to Austria, Schreyvogel extended his travels to a two-year stay in Jena. With a letter of recommendation from Alxinger, he had introduced himself to Christoph Martin Wieland in October 1794, and the latter then became one of Schreyvogel’s closest persons of reference during his time in Jena. In his Teutschen Merkur [German Mercury], Wieland published so-called “excerpts” from Schreyvogel’s epistolary novel Der Teutsche Lovelace [The German Lovelace] which was influenced by the work of Samuel Richardson (1689–1761).130 Although, during his sojourn in Jena, Schreyvogel continued with the work of elaborating Lovelace, the publication of the excerpts was not followed by a completion of the book; a fate which befell no small number of his literary works. Tending to remain in the background, Schreyvogel during his time in Jena also worked on the Allgemeinen Jenaer Literaturzeitung [The Universal Jena Literary Journal], which was published by Christian Gottfried Schütz (1747–1832).131
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With Schütz and Wieland, two more people had entered Schreyvogel’s life who shared a closer connection to Kantianism. In 1785, Wieland’s daughter had married Carl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823), who had fled Austria, and whose important popularising essay Briefe über die Kantische philosophy [Letters on Kantian Philosophy] had first been published in Wieland’s Merkur in 1786, before appearing in book form a few years later. Along with Reinhold, Schütz was one of the most significant authors to present Kant’s philosophy to a broader public.132 Schreyvogel had close connections to Schütz and his wife during his Jena period, and even accompanied the couple on a summer trip.133 Schreyvogel also came into personal contact with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805). In a letter to his brother, dated 14 December 1794, a few weeks after his arrival in Jena, Schreyvogel calls the circle of people “who I can more or less count as my friends here in Jena and Weimar : […] Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Schütz, Schiller, Fichte, Mrs. Schulz, Böttiger, Hufeland, Bertuch, Krauß, Woltmann.”134 The qualification that he was “more or less” known to these people justifies the selection, which certainly included relationships of varying intensity. For example, the possible existence of personal contact between Schreyvogel and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), or Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) has not met with any positive response in research. Schreyvogel’s diaries, which were edited by Karl Glossy, yet only begin in the year 1810, they do not offer any evidence that these friendships had existed beforehand. In autumn 1796, Schreyvogel returned to Vienna, an important reason for which was possibly the illness of his mother, who died a year later. Once again, he experienced a serious psychological crisis.135 In the years 1802–1813 Schreyvogel worked as an art dealer and associate partner for the renowned Kunst- und Industriecomptoirs zu Wien [‘Art and Industry Office in Vienna’], which had a warehouse in Vienna’s Kohlmarkt, specialised in copper prints and artistic prints, but also distributed maps and sheet music. Schreyvogel’s customers included Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), who had his Fourth Symphony, the Coriolanus Overture and the String Quartet op. 59 published by the office.136 In March 1813, Schreyvogel’s art dealership went bankrupt, an event which was at least partly caused by the general economic crisis in the Hapsburg Empire, and the devaluation of the currency in 1811, although Schreyvogel exercised further strict self-criticism. The economic collapse – Schreyvogel had lost his whole fortune, which had previously been not inconsiderable – was followed by his own psychological collapse in the late summer of 1813.137 However, having acquired a good reputation as an art dealer, Schreyvogel managed, at the beginning of 1814, to obtain that position which would prove to be his most influential one: following an offer from Count Ferdinand von Plffy (1774–1840), he started work in spring 1814 as a Präsidial-Sekretär der k.k.
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Hoftheater [‘General Secretary of the Imperial-Royal Court Theatre’], a position which he kept, with slightly changing job descriptions and under various superiors, until 1832, the year both of his unappreciative dismissal, and, a short time afterwards, of his death. The volume of work done by the Hoftheater secretary must have been enormous. For instance, a description of his duties, dating from the year 1815, states that he had to ensure that “a new play would be presented every 14 days, both [sic] in the city and on the [River] Wien”, for which purpose he was instructed to find appropriate new publications.138 Schreyvogel’s services to Viennese theatre life are distinguished by two things. On the one hand, he was responsible for establishing a classical repertoire. In particular, he promoted the work of Goethe and Schiller, presented in versions that were true to the original, which he manoeuvred past the Austrian censor. The work of Schiller, especially, had for a long time only been performed in Austria in heavily ‘reworked’, i. e. altered, versions, on account of their frequently political content; in the decade between 1795 and 1805, Schiller’s works had been axed completely from the repertoires of public theatres in Vienna, as a result of tighter censorship. Schreyvogel taught himself Spanish and English and translated works by Calderûn and Shakespeare for the Viennese audiences. Although Shakespeare had been performed in Vienna ever since the 1770s, Schreyvogel’s productions must have signified a massive step forward from earlier adaptions of Shakespeare for Austrian theatre, which probably allowed few conclusions to be drawn about the original.139
Fig. 10: Carl Postl, The old Burgtheater
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Secondly, Schreyvogel became a key patron for a generation of Austrian authors. His most important and likewise most favoured prot¦g¦ was, without a doubt, Grillparzer. Schreyvogel was not only a major motivator and critic for Grillparzer, ensuring that this young author’s plays were performed on stage with the best casts and with as few cuts imposed by the censor as possible, he was also the one who may have provided the decisive impulse for Grillparzer’s lifelong study of Kantian philosophy.140 In Grillparzer’s plays, as in the works of other authors, Schreyvogel frequently made severe and sometimes delicate interventions; partly in order to avoid the complaints of the censor in advance, and partly in consideration of practical stage directions and audience effect. A quite considerable part of Schreyvogel’s life’s work was connected to his commitment to Viennese theatre, even if it is work which has, to a large extent, only come down to us indirectly and anonymously. Within the framework of the given principal dates of his biography, Schreyvogel also worked on his own literary and journalistic works. Special mention should be made of the magazine Das Sonntagsblatt, which Schreyvogel founded in February 1807 and edited under his pseudonym Thomas West until December 1808. Das Sonntagsblatt was based on the model of English moral weekly journals, in particular the Spectator, edited by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729), and brought Schreyvogel a reputation as a journalist and critic that extended far beyond the borders of the monarchy.141 Apart from his work as a journalist, Schreyvogel left novels and a slim but not insignificant dramatic oeuvre of sketches. Schreyvogel’s literary works have only found very limited, individual entry into the annals of literary history, although some authors have asserted in particular the significance of his work as a novelist for the development of Austrian literature.142 Remarkably enough, Schreyvogel seems to have had a thoroughly divided relationship to literature. For instance, up to a quarter of the total number of books contained in the inventory of his library were evidently connected to his work as theatre secretary, namely they were dramas and comedies (72 books). On the other hand, there seems to have been a significantly small number of novels in his library, and there were no more than two volumes of poetry at all. Schreyvogel’s obstinately fractured relationship to literature and perhaps to art in general is recorded in his diary. Thus for a man who, only a short while later, would become and remain the decisive man in Viennese theatre life for almost two decades, remarks such as those recorded in October 1811 seem provocative: “Novels and the theatre have without doubt caused a great deal of damage in the world.”143 The cause of Schreyvogel’s displeasure can of course be specified; Schreyvogel objected to the degenerate state of the theatre repertoire and the “moral indifference” of literature, and resolved to counteract the perceived failings, of which he accuses, in particular, at contemporary Romanticism,
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through his own work: “I shall not write, and still less have it published, before I know […] the great ancients […] and Kant’s system of morality perfectly.”144
Fig. 11: Schreyvogelgasse, Vienna
Schreyvogel’s work as a writer manifestly moved between the genres of literature, philosophy and autobiography. Apart from his work at the theatre, what increasingly dominated and focused him was the endeavour to find a moral philosophy to live by – an endeavour which was at any rate greatly stimulated by his desperate search for a stabilising self-therapy. Against this background, it finally becomes less surprising that the library left by this important man of the theatre may indeed have had hardly any novels and no poetry, since for all that, it contained more than twenty titles by and about Kant – a number which can be corroborated by Schreyvogel’s diaries, in which he meticulously documented his reading, at least for some of the years.145 In 1811/12 – Schreyvogel is at this time still working as an art dealer – he intensified in an apparently manic way his reading of Kant’s works, with the aim of working his way through the whole Kantian system and in particular Kant’s moral philosophy in order to comprehend it inwardly.146 If nothing much came of Schreyvogel’s projects beyond the state of an enthusiastic declaration of intention, in this case it is definitely different. He not only read, in a very short space of time, all three Critiques, but also several other works by Kant, and
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although he was never far from completing his project, he would then repeat his reading for the purpose of gaining a more profound understanding: 15 January […] Evening. – I have read through the Critique of Practical Reason for the second time (within approximately 6 weeks) and I believe that, it will become completely understandable to me after a third and fourth reading, which I shall therefore also undertake in the course of the next two or three months. In the meantime I shall once again take up the Doctrine of Virtue, then the Doctrine of Law and Religion and shall refrain from all other reading.147
As with Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) and Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), Schreyvogel’s reception of Kant is profoundly connected with aspects of “mental dietetics” and the motive of self-therapy.148 Schreyvogel, who clearly loathed his own intense swings of mood and constantly recurring emotional slumps, recognised in Kant’s moral philosophy not least a medium of rational self-regulation and character stabilisation. In his efforts to train a “culture of the will”,149 Kant’s moral philosophy became for him a genuinely practical project. The statement that Schreyvogel comprehended Kant’s practical philosophy as a practical task, may seem tautological, yet it is perhaps less self-evident than it may seem at first glance. For Schreyvogel, who initially (and then repeatedly) toyed with the idea of writing a work of moral philosophy himself,150 the theoretical project became increasingly secondary to the practical exemplariness of living a good life. One of Schreyvogel’s reflections from the end of the year 1811 concerns what is certainly a sore point in moral philosophy : Is it to be wondered at that (in the state of my mental development at that time) my first acquaintance with the writings of Kant had so little lasting influence on my character, since these writings, even though they have been explained, contended and defended, in the 25 to 30 years during which they have been so diversely read in Germany, they have not been known to have caused, even among their most avowed supporters, any conspicuous changes of mind, and thus, as far as one can see, have brought about absolutely no observable revolutition [sic!] in the ways of thinking and in morality, I do not wish to say of the people, but even only among the teaching classes? – Does this testify against Kant or against his readers and successors?151
The answer, for Schreyvogel, is obvious; he had hardly anything critical to say against Kant. He himself did not want to think about writing any more until he had “become truly wiser and more virtuous”: – “Enough has happened, perhaps too much, to make the teachings of Kant accessible; in the future, too, a great deal will also be done, without me doing anything more. The world has more need of examples than teachers, in order to be awoken from its immoral slumber.”152 Undeniably, self-doubt and the knowledge of his own predisposition and capabilities played a part in Schreyvogel’s reflections on giving practice the primacy :
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[1811] 5 May. Morning. – May I, should I ever occupy myself with poetic work again? – I believe not. My talent for it is not so exceptional that I can produce something of true, imperishable value. Moreover, this kind of work does combine least well with the strict exercise of duty and the sober development of reason which is my great goal. […] I do not know at all whether the art of writing poetry does not thwart morality and the true culture of reason, and whether Plato did not have reason in banishing the poets from his Republic. […] My aesthetic culture can be of service to me at any time for more useful works, as for a mediocre play or novel. – My own life shall be the work of art, which I will try to execute with the greatest possible perfection.”153
It is not too much to say that Schreyvogel’s diaries, with regard to their discussion of Kant’s philosophy, as also with regard to his endeavour to find an ethical form of existence, represent a unique document in cultural history and psychology. The primacy of practice in them is consistently striking, even when viewed from an epistemological perspective. In a self-addressed record, Schreyvogel writes in his diary : ”To lay the foundations of a thoroughly good will in yourself, that is the supreme task, which you have to do for yourself. You are still so far away from doing what is good out of obligation that even the idea of obligation is not yet purely and clearly established within you.” – “Dream no longer, act.”154 With regard to the discussion of Kant, the diaries from the two years 1811/12 are very remarkable indeed; afterwards, the explicit references diminish and other functions of the diary come to forefront again, alongside moral self-understanding. Apart from Kant, Schreyvogel read an impressive array of other philosophical authors. In particular, the philosophy of antiquity appealed to him, and he underlined its closeness to real life, which was what also attracted him, for example, to Socrates, Aristotle, Plutarch and the Stoics: “The ancients proved their philosophy in life, not simply at school.”155 Schreyvogel read Montaigne and Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Hume, Garve and Schelling. Yet time and again he returned to Kant, though certainly not without refreshing his fundamental judgement while doing so: “All other philosophers, with whom I have become acquainted up till now, are more or less just witty wafflers in comparison to Kant.”156 Translated by Peter Waugh
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Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben – Kant and the Prehistory of Psychotherapy in Austria by Gabriele Geml Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) The Vienna psychiatrist, writer, education politician and once much-read popular philosopher Ernst Maria Johann Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, son of k. k. Hofrat (imperial/royal court councillor) Ernst Karl Friedrich von Feuchtersleben, was born in Vienna on 29 August 1806. The young boy appeared to be sickly and likely to grow up with a weak constitution, and following his mother’s death in summer 1807 he spent his early years with a wet-nurse in the country. This experience of rural life, close to nature, came to an abrupt end in 1813, on his enrolment at the Theresia Academy (Theresianische Akademie), whose restrictive rules were at times very oppressive for the young Ernst.157 Instead of taking up the political career that would have befitted a young man of his social class, in 1825 Feuchtersleben commenced the course of study for a medical degree. And rather than completing his degree within the five years usual at the time, he also attended lectures on philosophy, literature, philology, aesthetics and art, learned Turkish and Persian, read Spinoza, Voltaire, Herder, Humboldt, Goethe and doubtless Kant, wrote verse and essays, and moved in the Bohemian circle of friends around the composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828).158 The years of 1833–34 marked a turbulent phase in his life, with his graduation, his father’s suicide and his marriage to the former waitress Helene Kalcher, with whom Feuchtersleben, according to his friend Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), went on to enjoy the “model” of a happy marriage.159 Within just a few years Feuchtersleben became one of Vienna’s most respected figures in the field of medicine and psychiatry. After initially opening a medical practice, in 1844 he became Secretary of the Imperial and Royal Association of Viennese Physicians, and in 1844 Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vienna. In 1845 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1847 he was appointed ViceRector of medical and surgical studies. In 1845 Feuchtersleben published in book form his Vorlesungen über ärztliche Seelenkunde [Lectures on medical psychology], in which he distanced himself from a purely physiological understanding of medicine in favour of a psychodynamic view of illness. His Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde [Textbook on medical psychology] can be regarded as the first psychiatry textbook to appear in Austria, and was translated into several languages, in particular in England becoming the basis for the teaching of psychiatry.160 The term “psychosis”, which literally denotes a diseased state of the psyche (psyche¯/-osis) was introduced for the first time in this work.161 Feuchtersleben was a significant pioneer of psychosomatics and psychother-
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Fig. 12: Joseph Axmann, Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben
apy,162 although it was some time later, around 1870, that these terms as such were coined in England and the Netherlands.163 Feuchtersleben’s ideas on psychiatry had already gained a high public profile some years before in a popular philosophy work entitled Zur Diätetik der Seele [On the Dietetics of the Psyche], which was originally written for his personal use, but unexpectedly became a best-selling book on its publication in 1838, going through more than fifty editions in the nineteenth century.164 This makes it all the more surprising that Feuchtersleben’s name became forgotten already in the second half of the nineteenth century, and virtually completely unknown in the twentieth. Feuchtersleben scarcely rates a mention in accounts of the history of psychotherapy. An unfortunate exception to the oblivion into which his works and achievement had largely fallen was the considerable attention focused on Feuchtersleben in the lead-up to the Second World War, with the aim of “showing that Austria had produced a great psychiatrist long before the ‘Jew’ Freud”.165 Along with his work in the medical domain, Feuchtersleben was active in
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educational policy and social reform areas. One of his main concerns was the need to reform the institutions then still known as “lunatic asylums”. He based his efforts on the approaches taken by two French psychiatrists, Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and Jean-Êtienne Esquirol (1772–1840), who had insisted that the “insane” should no longer be treated as prison inmates, but rather than patients. Among other recommendations, Feuchtersleben sought monitoring for medical practitioners and nursing staff, in order to prevent violence and abusive treatment, good remuneration for the staff, and the architecturally attractive design of psychiatric facilities. Instead of structures giving the impression of being hermetically sealed off from the surrounding environment, such as the ‘lunatics’ tower’ (Narrenturm) in Vienna, opened in 1784 as the world’s first special facility housing the mentally ill, Feuchtersleben urged the building of structures with a friendly appearance, after the style of the private sanatoria already existing at the time, with gardens, and enclosed by trenches and hedges rather than walls.166 He also took up the cause of reform of the education system. In 1847 he published an Entwurf zur Grundlage des öffentlichen Schulwesens [Sketch of a foundation for the public education system], calling for free, universal school education, better training and remuneration for teachers, the separation of church and state, and new subjects of instruction such as natural history, anthropology (Menschenkenntnis), singing and gymnastics.167 Throughout his life Feuchtersleben pursued his interest in literature and philosophy, wrote poems, essays, critiques and aphorisms, and was also active as a publisher. Not long after his graduation, he published a volume of poems (1836), followed by the collections of aphorisms Beiträge zur Literatur, Kunstund Lebenstheorie [Contributions on the Theory of Literature, Art and Life] and Lebensblätter [Leaves from my Life] (1841). In his latter years he compiled a multi-volume collection entitled Geist deutscher Klassiker [Wit of German Classics], which brings together the maxims and aphorism of what today might appear to be a somewhat unlikely assemblage of writers, comprising Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Hippel, Klinger, Lessing, Lichtenberg, Wieland, Bentzel-Sternau and Jean Paul. In 1843 he published the poems left behind in the papers of the estate of his friend Johann Mayrhofer (1787–1836), who had lived with Schubert in 1818–21 and remained the composer’s closest friend up until his death. Feuchtersleben also took an interest in the works of another artist from the circle around Schubert, the painter Moritz von Schwind (1804–1871), writing a “cycle of cheerful verses” for some hand drawings by Schwind. These appeared in 1844 under the title Almanach der Radierungen [Etchings Almanach]. His mother’s early death, sickly health in childhood, and the often oppressive experience of life at boarding school, may have predisposed Feuchtersleben to depression, with which he struggled throughout his life. The last year of his life in particular was marked by this spectre. In 1848, the year of the revolution,
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Fig. 13: Moritz von Schwind, A Schubert Evening at the Home of Ritter von Spaun (1868)
Feuchtersleben as Vice-Rector for the medical course had espoused the interests of the students, with only lukewarm support from the medical faculty. It was Feuchtersleben who on 20 March 1848 first proclaimed, on behalf of the university faculty, the “freedom of teaching and learning” that had been demanded by the students, and was subsequently enshrined in the State Basic Law of 1867, thereby initiating a decisive step towards the reform of the Austrian education system.168 At the beginning of summer 1848 there were public calls for Feuchtersleben to be appointed as Minister of Education. His own reaction was one of caution, saying that he was willing to commit to the reforms, but had no wish to be Minister in his own right. These conflicting aspirations led to the creation specifically for Feuchtersleben of the position of Undersecretary in the Ministry of Education. This meant he did not have to take political responsibility for the ministry, which was nominally entrusted to Freiherr von Doblhoff.169 However, Feuchtersleben’s efforts for the reforms were very soon paralysed by the postrevolutionary riots. A climate of violence spread through the city, which Feuchtersleben, given his weak constitution, felt unable to deal with. Like a considerable number of other Vienna residents, he fled the city at the beginning of October 1848, resigned as Under-Secretary and moved to his brother’s home in Aussee, in the grip of deep depression and self-doubt. When he returned to Vienna in the second half of November, the political reaction had set in, the medical faculty had withdrawn its support from Feuchtersleben, and he was now forced to resign his academic position, just as he had already given up political office. He regretfully noticed that there was little prospect of any further opportunity for service in any capacity commensurate with his knowledge and
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talents; in the precarious circumstances in which he now found himself there was no sign of the official recognition for which he so desperately yearned, and no chances presented themselves.170 Feuchtersleben died on 3 September 1849 in Vienna.
A Psychotherapeutic Reading of Kant Given the wide range of his works and the extent of his former popularity, there has been remarkably little reference to Feuchtersleben’s achievements in publications after his death. As a prelude to the little that has been published about him, there is a brief text by Franz Grillparzer, written at the request of Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863). Following Feuchtersleben’s death, his widow had asked Hebbel to commission an edition of Feuchtersleben’s collected works, which he published in 1851–53 in seven volumes, omitting the “purely medical” writings, but including a brief biography. Grillparzer’s short essay appeared for the first time in 1853, in the final volume of the edition arranged by Hebbel.171 Interestingly, this earliest summary of the life and work of Ernst von Feuchtersleben already highlights the importance of Kantian philosophy for Feuchtersleben’s thought. In his recollections, running to about four pages in all, Grillparzer’s account of the intellectual influences on his friend’s thinking is very sparse. Only two names are cited: Goethe and Kant. Grillparzer’s essay praises Kant’s thought as a “philosophy of humility”, and discerns an affinity with Feuchtersleben’s style of thinking: Almost no field of human knowledge remained foreign to him [Feuchtersleben; GG]. When it came to philosophy, Kant was his man. This philosophy of humility, which puts the humble ‘I do not know’ at the very summit of its system, and takes as its point of departure a ‘given’ that neither admits of nor requires proof, and is fully satisfied if it succeeds in reconciling the logically correct, meritorious and useful with that ‘given’; and which by the very fact of setting limits on human thought enables presentiment and sensation to fill the gaps so created as religion and art – Kant’s philosophy was the one for him. His readiness to build bridges between physiology and psychology is probably understandable in that light.172
It is difficult to reconstruct exactly which texts of Kant Feuchtersleben read, or when he read them. He was clearly particularly receptive to Kant’s practical philosophy. In his Autobiographische Mittheilungen für die K. K. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien [Autobiogaphical Notes for the Imperial and Royal Academy of Sciences in Vienna] of 1849, Feuchtersleben refers to an “unforgettable” philosophy professor, who led to his becoming “enraptured with the speculative problems of thought”. These words refer to Bonifazius Busek, a vigorous supporter of the Kant critic Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), and
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it can be assumed that it was through Busek that Feuchtersleben first came into contact with Kantian philosophy.173 Further valuable insights into Feuchtersleben’s reception of Kant’s writings can be gained from an article that appeared on 3 June 1848 in Sonntagsblätter in the wake of the March revolution, which called for the rapid filling of the vacant position of Minister of Education, and emphatically recommended Feuchtersleben for the post. The article’s author, the physician and Sonntagsblätter editor Ludwig August Frankl (1810–1894), was a highly influential figure in Viennese social and cultural life, who later became Director of the Vienna Music Society (Musikverein), Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Vienna, founder of the Hohe Warte association for the blind and honorary citizen of Vienna, and was knighted as Ritter von Hochwart. One of the arguments advanced in his emphatic call for Feuchtersleben to be appointed as minister was the fact that Feuchtersleben had the courage “to study not Austrian philosophy, but rather the works of Leibnitz, Kant, Schelling and Hegel”.174 As well as clearly illustrating how the situation of philosophy in Austria was fundamentally transformed in 1848, the thoughts expressed by Frankl show that Feuchtersleben was recognised as a known expert in German philosophy. In Feuchtersleben’s works, Kantian philosophy entered into a remarkable alliance with the discipline of medicine, as illustrated by the prominence given to Kant in Austria’s first psychiatry textbook, published in 1845, Feuchtersleben’s Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde [Textbook of medical psychology]. The index of names lists 23 references to Kant, and these are just the places where he is explicitly mentioned by name. Kant’s ideas also feature in the work on many other occasions, where they are taken up and modified by Feuchtersleben without explicit reference. The only names with more references are those of Karl Wilhelm Ideler (1795–1860) and Johann Baptist Friedreich (1796–1862), both professional colleagues in the field of psychiatry. The Freie Vorträge über ärztliche Seelenkunde [Free Lectures on Medical Psychology] that preceded the book’s publication were an initiative created by Feuchtersleben. Feuchtersleben himself later saw these lectures as a significant innovation, and one of his most successful achievements. His Autobiographical Notes comment as follows: I could not but be aware […] of the state in which the study of medicine had been placed by the slumber of philosophical education from the old system on the one hand, and the over-excitement of a unilaterally realistic approach to medicine belonging to the modern day on the other. The source of a rescue from this position was clear to me; and I silently formed the thought that by cultivating a field that until then had been lying completely fallow in our country, that is to say higher medical education, it would be possible to pave the way anew for such education, upon which path, by taking advantage of a specific interest that has recently arisen on the public agenda, a more rational form of endeavour could again be introduced. In 1844 I started to offer free
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lectures at this university on medical psychology, with the aim not only of preparing to some extent those individual listeners who were contemplating the possibility of later devoting themselves to psychiatry for this entirely neglected field, but also of meeting the need for a higher form of education and stricter scholarship among those medical practitioners who still felt that need, and of awakening that need among those who had never felt it. […] I cannot judge the impact of those lectures. But it is certain that they were attended in great numbers, and also met with decided approval in wider circles, with the reawakened interest in and increased concern for the mentally ill and asylums for the insane.175
While Kant’s name is not specifically mentioned, the first contrast, drawn between the “slumber” of the (obsolete) philosophical system on the one hand and the “over-excitement” of the realistic approach to medicine on the other already recall Kant’s twofold critique of dogmatism and scepticism, and Kant’s metaphor of “dogmatic slumber”.176 By “the slumber of philosophical education” Feuchtersleben was probably referring to the basic course of philosophy within the degree course, in which Kantian philosophy was essentially omitted. In their critical edition of Feuchtersleben’s writings, Hedwig Heger and Barbara Otto noted that Feuchtersleben’s holistic psychiatric approach “provided a balancing force […] in the then prevalent conflict of orientations between ‘somaticists’ and ‘mentalists’”, and that Feuchtersleben recognised “in Kant’s critical cognitionbased concept of science and the rapidly developing field of experimental psychology the two initial threads for a future medical psychology, which it was now a matter of tying together”.177 In Germany, psychiatry had enjoyed a period of significant development in the first half of the nineteenth century, whereas the situation of theoretical and practical psychiatry in Austria left much to be desired, as Feuchtersleben pointed out. As late as 1844, the year in which Feuchtersleben started his series of lectures, the leading German institutional reformer Heinrich Damerow (1798–1866), in the journal he edited, Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie [General Journal for Psychiatry], complained with regard to the Hapsburg empire that: “The imperial city still lacks any adequate institution for the treatment and care of the insane commensurate with its merit and the outstanding quality of its other institutions. […] Vienna at present does not have a single leading figure in the field of psychiatry”.178 It should be noted that in 1845 Damerow reviewed his criticisms from the previous year, following the publication of Feuchtersleben’s Textbook.179 As a contrast to the anatomical and mechanistic approaches of psychiatry at the time, and as a dynamic supplement to them, Feuchtersleben’s approach may be characterised as humanist, psychodynamic and anthropological. After a historical section on the development of psychiatry to date, the “Textbook” comprises a detailed section on physiology, analysing not just the brain and the
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nerves, but the human faculty of representation, feelings of alacrity and reluctance, self-awareness and sympathy with others, the feedback effects of feelings on the body, desire and impulses, and sleep and dreams, and generally aims to provide a dynamic understanding of psychosomatic interactive effects in “man” as a complex system. Another noteworthy feature is Feuchtersleben’s concern for differentiation: there are sections in the textbook devoted to “differences among people”, and their “individual differences”, discussing social variables such as upbringing, social strata and occupation, and addressing character-related, gender-specific and genetically determined factors.180 Put in terms of today’s concepts, it could be said that what Feuchtersleben describes in his Autobiographical Notes as his concern to achieve a “higher medical education” and “more rational endeavours” in medicine, was related largely to the development of a bio-psycho-social model, which for the sake of therapeutic considerations was also given a moral philosophical aspect. The therapeutic section of the Textbook followed those on physiology, aetiology and pathology. Its approach is based on the philosophy of faculties and a clear cognitive orientation, in that it includes among therapeutic means those that are available through the individual’s awareness, memory, imagination, intelligence, feelings and will. Significant inspiration for this part of the Textbook came not only from Kant’s key works on the critique of reason, but also from a short occasional piece by Kant, written at the request of Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762–1836), entitled Von der Macht des Gemüths durch den bloßen Vorsatz seiner krankhaften Gefühle Meister zu sein [On Mental Strength through the Mere Intent of Mastering one’s Morbid Feelings]. It combines with Grundsätze der Diätetik [Principles of Dietetics] to form the third section of Streit der Facultäten [Conflict of the Faculties], which is the Streit der philosophischen Facultät mit der medicinischen [Conflict of the Philosophical with the Medical Faculty].181 As might have been expected, Feuchtersleben was especially fond of these explications of Kant, and refers to them several times in his writings.182 While Feuchtersleben was completely open to the possibility of physiologically-based treatments, his concept of psychiatry derives not only from the brain, but also from the individual’s intellectual life; he advocates cognitive therapy for mental experience and highlights the value of precise self-knowledge for mental health.183 Self-knowledge, self-activity and self-restraint are regarded by Feuchtersleben as prophylactic means for maintaining mental health. Ethical, enlightened awareness and medical aspects are all intertwined in this process: The ability of mental energy to be a prophylactic means against psychoses is already evident from the fact that the energies of the functions and organs in general, hence in this case those of the function of thought and the organ of the brain, each help to develop and enhance the other. From this it follows that the individual affected is not only able to contribute to prophylaxis, but indeed must accomplish the best part of it.
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Fig. 14: Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Dietetics of the Soul, Valere aude! [Dare to be healthy!] as a variation of Kant’s motto Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!]
The basis of prophylaxis is therefore as follows: self-knowledge (practical, rather than metaphysical inward brooding); its essence is self-mastery. Accordingly at this point, on the outer frontier of the medical domain, we are truly cast into the domain of ethics. And indeed, just as Schiller, in the physiological context, recognises virtue as the spiritual aegis of mental health, […] Esquirol comes to the same realisation in the pathogenetic context, based on psychiatric observations.184
With his close integration between morality and mental health, already an essential element in Diätetik der Seele [Dietetics of the Soul], Feuchtersleben assigns to practical philosophy a real-life, pragmatic sense in accordance with Kant’s writings on moral philosophy and enlightenment.185 This is also emphasised in connection with Feuchtersleben’s reception of Kant by Herbert Seidler, the initiator of the critical edition of Feuchtersleben’s writings. In a lecture delivered by Seidler 1969 to the Austrian Academy of Sciences as part of the effort to secure their support for his publication project, he provides a brief
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outline of the intellectual atmosphere at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Austria as a backdrop, and accentuates “Feuchtersleben’s anti-idealistic stance” and his this-wordly orientation towards “the whole person”. But Seidler immediately adds the following: However, all this paints a one-sided intellectual picture of Feuchtersleben, since it is important to note that he was strongly marked by German idealism, particularly Kant and Goethe. In fact, a closer examination shows that he places Kant in sharp contradistinction to his successors, scarcely ever emphasising the cognitive determinations that are given within us, but rather stimulated above all by Kant’s method, by sober, clear reflection, by the struggle for the true paths of cognition. And Feuchtersleben seeks to interpret this method as the drive to master this world. This represents a significant modification of German idealism, and a genuinely Austrian one, in the sense mentioned earlier [i. e. the this-worldly focus; GG].186
The way in which Feuchtersleben aspired to derive from Kantian motifs a “drive to master the world” is also evident in his modified reception of Kant’s concept of “duty”. In Feuchtersleben’s dietetic world view the concept of duty is a central one; in one of Feuchtersleben’s poems it is called the “highest of all concepts”, and he returns to it with commensurate frequency in his works.187 Feuchtersleben’s efforts to integrate psychology or psychopathology on the one hand with moral philosophy on the other according to his “dietetics” are dominated by the therapeutic perspective – as a philanthropist and sufferer from depression himself, Feuchtersleben is devoid of any punitive notion of judging mental illness as a weakness from the point of view of morality ; his approach is rather to seek the therapeutic effects of the individual’s moral dispositions, from a humanistic perspective. He follows Kant in avoiding any reductionist breakdown of moral principles into mere functions of utility. According to Feuchtersleben, a certain purity and autonomy of moral principles is rather required, to allow a salutary self-transcendence and release from selfish aspirations. An impression of the manner in which Feuchterleben’s “dietetics of the soul” have adapted the concept of duty as set out in Kant’s moral philosophy is provided by a poem he published in 1843: The heart assailed and sorely troubled Has many soothing phrases heard, But real peace and consolation Comes from a single, solemn word. Duty, done with resolution, This only will stay true to thee; It alone heals all thy sorrows, It alone can make man free. Strength and wisdom, light and peace Spring from duty done as taught –
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Hark! Resounding in a whisper The judgment of the world’s great court!188
The more we are familiar with the humanistic impetus imbuing Feuchtersleben’s works, the less likely we are to associate the concept of the “world’s great court” introduced at the end of the poem with any ominous connotations. Feuchtersleben’s theory of morality clearly has no place for fearsome visions or judgemental misanthropy. It is rather a constructive theory that helps us to help ourselves, proceeding from its author’s own experience, and sympathising with its reader. I have […] always regarded distraction, the benefits of which are so often cited, as a very dubious means for the healing and prevention of illnesses of the mind as well as of the body, and believed that on the contrary, concentration (the will focused on the individual’s own activity) is the likely source of rescue or protection in such cases […] Any who object that they lack the strength to give themselves a direction I would urge to place themselves in a situation where they must do so; any of us can do this. This is the beginning, and the rest takes care of itself. If I have nothing to occupy myself with, and no desire to take up any particular activity, in the interest of my healing I can still resolve to offer my capacities to the state or any other entity in such a way that I am forced to work under certain agreed conditions. And in this way I overcome my vacillating between different possible decisions by taking the first, best option that presents itself, thereby cutting short the process of choosing; in so doing I destroy the melancholic turmoil of my tormenting thoughts by immersing myself, even against my inclination, in a different turmoil – that of lively, social interaction, in which the duty of sociability […] generates a happy mood in me, first as a superficial veneer, then fully and genuinely.189
As a psychologist, Feuchtersleben had not only a specific interest in the relationship between duty and inclination, but also the ability to look behind concepts as formulated by thinkers and into the inner motives of their thoughts. An aphorism along these lines in Lebensblättern [Leaves from my Life] (1841), reminiscent of the style of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) – born only a few years later – sheds a diplomatic perspective on the dispute between duty and inclination that had raged loud and long in German philosophy : ‘Virtue’, says Schiller, ‘is merely the inclination towards duty.’ ‘Virtue’, say Kant and Goethe, ‘is merely the victory of duty over inclination.’ ‘Virtue’, says Jean-Paul, ‘is not cold duty, but love hovering above it, like the eagle over even the highest mountain.’ So do even the brightest and best not know what duty is? Or are they all perhaps saying the same thing, while appearing to contradict one another? I think the latter is the case. All development is a struggle, a battle; in that battle the concept of duty has to overcome inclination; in the course of our training and education a quiet inclination towards duty is formed; and at the summit of that education, that which we ought and that which we will are joined in blessed harmony.190
Translated by John Jamieson
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Friedrich Schlegel’s Reception of Kant During his Time in Vienna by Guido Naschert Friedrich Schlegel’s early romantic philosophy used to be explained as being primarily derived from his preoccupation with the scientific doctrine of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. However, this old model has clearly begun to lose weight and a growing body of opinion has recently emerged that emphasises the “central importance of Kantian philosophy for Schlegel’s philosophical beginnings”191 and highlights the fact that, when he was young, he “was a pupil in the school of Kant”.192 It is now high time to take this aspect into account, particularly in view of the years spent by the youngest of the Schlegel brothers at the universities of Göttingen und Leipzig, a period which has long been neglected by research.193 After all, Schlegel had already acquired his basic knowledge of critical philosophy long before he came into contact with the philosophy of Fichte, and the high esteem in which he held the former inevitably (also) influenced him in his judgement of the latter. Furthermore, in trying to understand his reception of Kant, great insight is gained from being able to judge its accuracy on the basis of a knowledge of the constellation from which it derives. In the 1790s it was a matter of some importance whether, for example, one came from the Tübinger Stift and had become involved in speculative idealism, or from the universities of Göttingen and Leipzig and had been associated with the Enlightenment there. It is therefore high time to consider the possibility of undertaking a complete reexamination of the early reception of Kant by the young Friedrich Schlegel. For the Leipzig phase, closer attention must also be paid to the influence of Carl Leonhard Reinhold’s Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt a New Theory of the Human Power of Representation] and Ernst Platner’s Philosophische Aphorismen [Philosophical Aphorisms]. Nonetheless, they should not be over-emphasised when making a general characterisation of Schlegel’s early philosophy. Schlegel was not a Kantian. He himself once described the special features of his early thought as follows: “From complete sjept/o [absolute scepticism] (theoretical and moral) – the only thing that I could adhere to was intellectual enthusiasm, as the divine positive of intellectual life […]. This intellectual enthusiasm rapidly expanded to include an enthusiasm for Platonic vs[philosophy] in its essence; yet for Kantian vs[philosophy] in its form, with regard to the Imperatives and the Fictions.”194 In essence Plato, in form Kant! Such a retrospective self-interpretation should be treated with caution. After all, Schlegel’s understanding of enthusiasm, which was oriented to Plato, is charged with ontological significance. It is interpreted not as a simple (self-)intoxication of the subject, but rather as the experience of the infinite
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Fig. 15: Josef Axmann, Friedrich Schlegel (1829)
ability to become (conscious) as an eternally self-transcendent process. Since the Kantian dualisms and boundaries of knowledge are thereby ignored, Schlegel’s philosophical project already positions itself as anti-Kantian, and this aversion to Kant and his pupils continues to increase in the course of Schlegel’s biography. Only the early study of Kant is characterised by an antagonism in which, on the one hand, Schlegel adopts Kantian arguments (not least in order to be able to keep up with the justificatory demands of critical philosophy), while on the other hand he transfers them to an overall framework directed against Kant. Friedrich Schlegel’s later receptions of Kant are free of this antagonism. With his “first principles”, Schlegel sought to prove that “philosophical enthusiasm” is a necessary condition of philosophising (see for instance his 1796 review of Jacobi’s Woldemar). However, applying Kantian standards, it could only have been treated as a subject of empirical psychology, as had been the case with anthropologically oriented Kantians and the tendency to criticise religion (for example, Carl Christian Erhard Schmid or Friedrich Carl Forberg). Schlegel regarded the psychology and anthropology of the late Enlightenment, with which he was most familiar, as insufficient, since its “enthusiasm” content, the infinite, once again became turned into a question of empirical knowledge. In
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order to obtain an assurance of the absolute, however, there needs to be an assumption of a higher kind of knowing, such as an intellectual intuition, a revelation or a Platonic anamnesis, and such an assumption is also connected with a notion of spirit that transcends the Wolffian differentiation between psychologia rationalis and psychologia empirica. The fact that early Romantic “enthusiasm” could not be placated by means of the regulative ideas and fictions of Kantianism may also be illustrated by a familiar meaning-critical argument. The notion that the infinity of the world is only an idea, which can be derived from the unlimited self-transcendent structure of reflection, even though in reality the world is not infinite at all, presumes that the world can be different to the way that we have to conceive it. However, precisely this claim is difficult to present in a plausible way. Schlegel’s “first principles”, drawn up in Jena in 1796/97, conceive the idea as follows: the world, which is conscious in the ego, should evolve infinitely because we cannot want it to be any other way. To want something different would entail setting limits to the desire for knowledge, limits which have not yet even become known, or have already been reflectively transcended as such. The “enthusiasm” which, in aesthetic or scientific knowledge, accompanies this idea, therefore aims for an infinite realisation of the world and not simply for a subjectively conceived imagination of it. This should be called to mind as an essential point, one where Schlegel begins, quite early on, to diverge from Kant in principle. If one then continues to question what has been retained and what has changed in his understanding of the absolute, from his early Romanticism to the late (Catholic) philosophy, one finds indications that the issue addressed here, namely the difference between enthusiasm and reverie, which derived from the late Enlightenment, subsequently underwent a change after the earlier ideal of “philosophical enthusiasm” had been supplanted by a piousness inspired by “fervour”. The search for the right way to determine the true love of God, as opposed to false mysticism, forms a continuous leitmotif of Schlegel’s philosophy as a whole.195 However, to differentiate a true, “critically” examined “enthusiasm” that is linked to reality, from simple reverie, requires not only systematic speculation, but also, complementarily, and above all else, historical knowledge and education.196 Between his projects in classical studies dating from the 1790s and his research into the medieval period and the orient at the start of the 19th century, his historical criticism of “enthusiasm” and the love of God changed decisively. Moreover, his notion of revelation also underwent change – occasioned by the studies of Jakob Böhme that he made in Paris, by the pressure to address the problem of the unsolved individual metaphysical questions which had simply been displaced in the early Romantic phase (origin of the idea of the infinity, origin of language), as well as by his encounter with Catholic theology and
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piousness. Kant played only a subordinate role in this process of transition. After all, on the question of the higher mode of knowledge of the absolute, Kant had nothing to offer. The transition from the early to the late philosophy did not occur as a break. Schlegel even managed to claim that his public conversion to Catholicism in 1808197 constituted a logical step, emphasising to Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858), for instance, that even before his conversion he had “neither concealed nor denied the fact that he had long been Catholic in the true and pure sense.”198 That was by no means intended ironically, since an intellectual openness towards “Catholicism” actually already belonged to the early Romantic concept of a new religion emerging from a combination of confessions.199 In his Cologne lectures, entitled Die Entwicklung der Philosophie in zwölf Büchern [The Development of Philosophy in Twelve Books] (Cologne 1804–1805), Schlegel once again summarised the most important aspects in which he was critical of the philosophies of the Enlightenment. His preoccupation with some of these aspects dated back to the early period of his studies, and in dealing with them he subjected Kant to a less than flattering appraisal.200 When he subsequently moved to Vienna in 1808,201 he finally left this phase of his study of Kant behind him. If he did return to Kant thereafter, it was only in order to use him as an example, to elucidate the wrong direction taken by the philosophy of the Enlightenment in general, and to praise those thinkers who had shown the path that lay beyond Kant. Occasionally – for instance, within the framework of his lectures Über die neuere Geschichte [On Modern History] (given in 1810, printed in Vienna in 1811) – there is a positive emphasis on that moderate element of critical philosophy which opposed the radical Enlightenment: “However, what is good about Kant’s philosophy is that it does at least counteract the blatantly atheistic spirit and influence of the new French literature.”202 In his dispute with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, which was made public in his review Über F. H. Jacobi: Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung [On F. H. Jacobi: Of Divine Things and their Revelation], published in the first volume of the Deutschen Museum [German Museum] in 1812, Schlegel played off Jacobi’s “emotional revelation” against his own historically-oriented concept of revelation. In his argumentation there may be discerned an echo of the earlier criticism of reverie that he made in 1796, even if the response to the question of how and whereby the study of history can lead to a true love of God has here been decisively transformed. In this context, he once again attests that Kant’s philosophy was only convincing in its polemical and destructive elements, yet Kant, due to his confusion of understanding and reason, had not been in a position to “understand the divine things which are higher than any reason.”203 Likewise, in his essay Der Philosoph Hamann [The Philosopher Hamann] (1812), he writes: “Without doing any injustice, one can probably not deny that Kant was honestly
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seeking the truth, and that he at least fumbled around laboriously for it in the twilight zone between unilluminated reason and common experience. However, before he could himself arrive at a solution and some kind of satisfaction, before he had even come close to the source of truth, he already wanted to master that which he had barely understood, and presumptuously erected a domineering doctrinal system. Even in this conflicting process there lies sufficient reason for the fact that his otherwise well-intended undertaking was so totally misguided.”204 Such utterances – and still others may be adduced, right up until the Philosophie des Lebens [The Philosophy of Life] (Vienna 1828) – display no striving whatsoever to arrive at an adequate understanding. In his Viennese period, Schlegel is no longer interested in learning anything from critical philosophy. Rather, it has become a benchmark in the history of philosophy of the previous century, now only to be brought into the discussion of his own notion of historical criticism and deduction of the “Catholic” point of view. This approach simultaneously served to combat the contemporary influence of critical philosophy. For that reason, his reception of Kant in the Viennese period has a predominantly instrumental and cultural-political character, and dispenses with any argumentative refinements. The early complexity of his perception of Kantian theorems has worn thin, and been replaced by greatly simplified argumentative patterns. Even at the start of his development, Schlegel had not been an original interpreter of Kant. Mostly, he had only gathered together, in an eclectic manner, the arguments which were already in circulation. If there is anything at all to be gained from the late Kant polemics of this Romantic philosopher, then it might perhaps be the fact that they illustrate the constancy of his convictions in a most definite way. They continue, in the simplest manner, the essential metaphysical repudiation which had predominated from the outset. Translated by Peter Waugh
Adalbert Stifter and the Philosophy of Kant by Max Beck Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868) Adalbert Stifter205 was born the son of the linen weaver and flax merchant Johann Stifter and his wife Magdalena in Oberplan (Bohemia) on 23 October 1805. His father died in a work accident in 1817. At the age of 13 he entered the grammar school at the Benedictine monastery in Kremsmünster (Upper Austria). Here, in spite of the censorship of the day, he encountered the philosophy of Kant through Johann Michael Leonhard’s textbook Systematischer Religionsunterricht für
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Kandidaten der Philosophie [Systematic Religious Instruction for Candidates of Philosophy] and Joseph Calasanz Likawetz’s Elementa philosophiae [Elements of Philosophy].206 Leonard’s book remains consistent with the ecclesiasticalChristian point of view even though he was open to critical philosophy.207 Likawetz makes more direct reference to Kant, but nevertheless he also attempts to provide a philosophical underpinning of church dogma.208 Use of these textbooks was discontinued four years after Stifter completed his schooling, presumably because of the references to Kant.209 After he left school, Stifter moved to the Landstrasse district in Vienna and enrolled as a law student at the university there. He financed his studies by working as a private tutor, and had previously given private lessons in Kremsmünster. The Law School was split into two factions at that time: the conservative faction of Franz von Egger, and the progressive faction of Vinzenz August Wagner.210 The latter wanted “to refute the metaphysical sources of the law, but explained it as the emanation of human reason on the one hand, and sovereignty of the people on the other”211 – and drew strongly on Kant. Interestingly, it was Egger, the conservative professor, who was the one who inspired Stifter and under whom he sat his best exam.212 In the end Stifter switched to studying mathematics and the natural sciences, but left university without a degree. During his years of study he made his first attempts at writing, which was for the most part influenced by Goethe and Jean Paul. His first short story, Julius, appeared in 1828, though it remained unfinished. In the period that followed Stifter tried to find a position as an official teacher, but without success. After his many unsuccessful attempts to court Fanny Griepel he married the milliner Amalia Mohaupt in 1835. Stifter was also known for his work as a painter. His most well-known paintings are Blick auf die Wiener Vorstadthäuser [View of Viennese Suburban Houses] and Die Ruine Wittinghausen [The Ruins of Wittinghausen], both dating from 1839. Stifter’s first great literary success was the novel Abdias (1842). In the following years, narratives such as Brigitta, Der Hagestolz [The Bachelors] and Der Waldsteig [The Forest Climb] were published in almanacs and magazines. A frequent allegation made against Stifter is that he portrayed nature in a sentimental way, and so “it might seem that Stifter would go down in literary history as the Biedermeier poet of beetles and flowers”213 as W.G. Sebald so aptly puts it. An example of this can be found in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Alte Meister (1985), in which the art critic Reger delivers a seemingly absurd tirade, page after page of it, about Stifter’s descriptions of nature: “Stifter ist nichts als ein literarischer Umstandsmeier, dessen kunstlose Feder selbst da die Natur und naturgemäß dadurch auch den Leser lähmt, wo sie in Wirklichkeit und in Wahrheit lebendig und ereignisreich ist. Stifter hat auf alles seinen Kleinbürgerschleier
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Fig. 16: Adalbert Stifter
gelegt und es beinahe erstickt, das ist die Wahrheit.” [Stifter is nothing more than a literary fusspot, whose artless pen paralyses Nature and then of course in turn the reader, whenever in reality and in truth it is something that is alive and eventful. Stifter has drawn his petit bourgeois veil over everything and practically throttled it – and that is the truth.]214 Arno Schmidt is also well known for his contempt of this “weird Austrian” Stifter215 – as one of his fictional characters, puts it: “Even his most ardent fan would have to admit that he can’t be counted among our humourists; he would nod all the more enthusiastically when Stifter is called a great describer of landscapes (and I would gladly nod in agreement; in that respect he was very skilful indeed.)”216 In 1848, the Year of Revolution, Stifter was elected as deputy to the Frankfurt National Assembly by his district and also at that time moved to the Upper Austrian town of Linz. Eventually in 1850 he was appointed as District School Inspector for elementary schools. In 1857 his famous ‘coming-of-age’ novel Der
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Nachsommer [Indian Summer] appeared, and Witiko in 1865–67. 1863/64 he became ill with cirrhosis of the liver and his health steadily deteriorated. On 26 January 1868 he committed suicide by severing his carotid artery with a razor. He lost consciousness and died two days later.
…“after Kant’s Heart” According to Walther Dörr, “Stifter would have been the German poet after Kant’s heart.”217 This is what he wrote in 1952 in Mitteilungsblatt der Adalbert Stifter Gesellschaft München [Bulletin of the Adalbert Stifter Society, Munich] on the occasion of the publication of the Kleinen Schriften [Collected Papers] in the Insel edition of the Gesammelten Schriften [Collected Works]. It is an amazing assertion, given that Kant was certainly not the philosopher after Stifter’s heart, even though he occasionally showed implicit reverence towards him. Stifter was not a Kantian, nor did he take into account any other particular philosophy, something that can be taken as “proven with certainty” as far as research on Stifter is concerned.218 To those who scoff at Stifter’s work, the assertion virtually amounts to a condemnation, as they see him exclusively as a garrulous, reactionary Nature poet of the Biedermeier period, and do not take into account his own progressive disposition at the time, and in fact drew on Kant’s philosophy of the Enlightenment. These trends are less apparent in Stifter’s literary works than in his texts on politics, law and aesthetics. Stifter was apparently not inspired by Kant’s epistemology.219 There is the odd place in his writings which is reminiscent of Kant, but the relevance in each case is questionable. For example, in Feldblumen [Flowers of the Field] (1841) he writes: “In front of the concave mirror of our senses is a virtual image of a world that God alone truly knows.”220 This reference was on the one hand linked in literature with Kant’s concept of the “thing-in–itself” [“Ding an sich”], but also on the other hand with Jean Paul and Plotin.221 In one of his letters Stifter writes about mathematics in a way that suggests that he knew of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]: “But it (belief) is no longer belief for me, but a truth, like the truths of mathematics; but even more so, for the truths of mathematics are only laws according to our laws of reason.”222 Whether Stifter had studied Kant’s transcendental philosophy cannot be proven, and thus it remains unclear whether he is drawing on this. However, it has also been argued – for instance by the historian Heinrich von Srbik – that Stifter’s world view is derived directly from Kant’s philosophy.223 Stifter’s object-concept has even been linked with that of Kant and Goethe.224 The German philologist Moriz Enzinger takes the view that Stifter’s familiarity with
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Kant did not stem from any direct source of knowledge, but owed more to the clich¦s of contemporary popular philosophy, which often concurred with Kant’s reflections.225 There is absolutely no doubt that Stifter was indebted to Kant’s ideas, but we cannot say with complete certainty whether this knowledge was acquired directly or indirectly. Stifter’s prose is often typified by the “scrupulous observation of the tiniest of details”,226 which can exhaust the reader, however his lesser known occasional writings reveal some surprises. These are characterised by a brief description that brings the poet directly to the essential point without any digression: law and aesthetics instead of beetles and flowers. In 1850 Stifter published an article Was ist das Recht? [What is the Law?] in the newspaper Der Wiener Bote [The Viennese Messenger]; it provides a good example for studying the assumed influences of Kant in his writing. In it Stifter aimed to describe those governmental and legal doctrines that “are recognised as indisputable legal doctrines”.227 This paper is not so much an attempt at producing his own philosophy of law and state, but an eclectic collection of contemporary enlightened theorems that have some similarities to Kant’s reflections. At the beginning of the 1950s Walther Dörr bemoaned the quality of contemporary research on Kant and criticised “the sterility of all those interpretative arts in the writings of the new Kopernicus” and saw that Stifter’s poetry offered “a new path to discovering our ‘wise one’ – something he apparently hankered after during his lifetime – coming from ‘the mind of a poet’”.228 The answer to the question of whether Stifter deserves to be conferred the title of Kant’s “poet of the heart” lies in the article Was ist das Recht? [What is the Law?], which was widely circulated in the Mitteilungsblatt [Bulletin]: Man has come into the world as a human being; he has a free will which he can use to do well and be happy, but also to ruin himself. To this end he has a conscience which impels him without exception to develop his pure humanity : that is, to become as good and perfect as any human being can be. His conscience never ever gives up on this; it establishes this requirement always and at all times as a law, which is why it is referred to as the moral law, and it is necessarily fulfilled through one’s own strength, not by means of outside support.229
The influence of Kant’s conception of personal autonomy is clearly evident in this passage, but the ideas could just as easily be derived from popular philosophy. It even makes mention of an “imperative”, but this is more reminiscent of the Golden Rule than of Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “As the most important law, it could be expressed in this way : refrain from any action that would harm another in their individual personhood, that is in their striving for moral perfection. Our Saviour and Teacher, Christ, once said thus: ‘Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself. ’”230 If this were the message of Kant’s
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Kritiken [Critiques] “from the mind of a poet”, then it would obviously go against the orthodoxy of Stifter’s interpretation of Kant. For Kant warns in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals] about the confusion between the Golden Rule and the Categorical Imperative: “One should not think that the trivial statement quod tibi non vis fieri [do unto others as you would have them do unto you] could serve as a guide or principle.”231 For this “cannot be a general law”, for it “does not contain the reason for duties towards oneself, not only duties of love towards other people (for some would rather that others would not do good towards them, if they can only exceed to show them good deeds), in the end not the guilty duties towards one another”.232 In any case, it is doubtful that Stifter was interested in offering us an exegetical presentation of Kant’s philosophy.
The “Gentle Law” The Preface of the short story collection Bunte Steine (1853) [Colourful Stones] is one of the few places where Stifter develops a philosophical doctrine. The preface was prompted by a polemic by Friedrich Hebbel who describes Stifter as an “overvalued minor talent”.233 Stifter responds to the reproach that “I focus on the small things and that my people are always ordinary people”234 with an explanation of the great and the small in the history of nature and mankind: The wafting of the wind, the trickling of water, the ripening of grain, the ebb and flow of the sea, the greening of the earth, the brightness of the sky, the twinkling of the stars – all these things I consider to be great. The sudden violent thunderstorm, the lightning that splits open houses, the storm that drives the ocean breakers, the mountain that spews out fire, the earthquake that shakes up the land – these things I do not consider to be greater than the other phenomena; in fact I consider them to be smaller, as they are merely the effects of a much higher law of nature.235
The one-off occurrence of a natural phenomenon is, according to this, simply a symptom of a higher law. Just as one-off natural occurrences are determined by a higher order, so is the history of mankind regulated in a similar way, which is just as effective as the laws of nature. For example, to continue the analogy of the storm, the emotional attitude of a person is only a small manifestation of the “great” law that prevails: As it is in external nature, so it is in the internal nature of the human race. Living a just and simple life, governed by the intellect, and with self-control, effectiveness in one’s social circle, admiration of beauty, linked to a serene and composed death – these things I consider to be great. Violent changes in mood, terrible raging anger, the desire for revenge, the passionate spirit that strives for action, then sketches it, changes it, destroys it, and in the excitement often throws his own life away – these I do not
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consider to be greater but rather smaller phenomenon, as these things are in effect only the manifestations of individual and one-off forces, like storms, fire-spewing mountains and earthquakes. We must try to seek the gentle law that leads the human race.236
In this analogy between the history of nature and mankind, Stifter sees the “gentle law” as the regulating principle on the side of mankind, the law “that states that the existence of each person should be revered, respected and unimpeded by anyone else, that each person should be able to follow his own higher life path, can experience the love and admiration of his fellow human beings, that he can be respected as a shining jewel, in the way that every person becomes a shining jewel for others.”237 All human beings are subjected to this law by necessity : “This law exists where people live together with other people, and it manifests itself when people interact with others.”238 But even in this instance, opinions vary greatly as to the possible influences of Kant. Peter A. Schoenborn maintains that the Preface “owes much to Herder”;239 Sepp Domandl, however, thinks that the connection to Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment] cannot be overlooked.240 Walter Benjamin regards Stifter’s “moral world” as “being indistinguishable from the Kantian moral world.”241 Domandl impressively draws attention to a great deal of detailed concurrence between Stifter and Kant, ranging from the obvious similarity in the concept of laws, to similar imagery in the description of natural events.242 Much zeal could be applied to finding further comparisons between the texts of Stifter and Kant, but this might well give the false impression that Stifter’s writing is firmly in Kant’s mould. It remains unclear whether Stifter read Kant’s works in the original – but the instances [discussed here] attest to the Enlightenment-influenced stance of the allegedly conservative Nature poet, Adalbert Stifter. Translated by Linda Cassells and Max Beck
Kant’s Literary Legacy in 20th Century Austria by Christoph Leschanz and Violetta L. Waibel Following the examination of the somewhat tortuous paths of the reception of Kant’s ideas by Austrian writers and poets in the 19th century, we now have to consider whether Kant and his philosophy have retained their significance in Austrian literature in the 20th century and beyond. And indeed there are a number of prominent literary figures, such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke and Daniel Kehlmann, who refer directly or indirectly to Kant, and have engaged with his
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philosophy. In some cases these references to Kant have largely escaped public and research attention, while in others they have long been thoroughly explored. As indeed was to be expected, the poets and authors discussed in this volume approach Kant’s philosophy in very different ways. The literary reception of Kant in the 20th century is very diverse, and difficult to reduce to a single common denominator. The Second World War is a very significant dividing line, with an immeasurably greater impact on literary life than that of the First World War. It divides two generations of authors, who seem at first glance to be poles apart, in spite of some commonalities revealed by closer examination. The poets and writers discussed in this volume can be assigned either to the “pre-War generation” (Robert Musil, Karl Kraus, Egon Friedell, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka), i. e. the “Old Austrians”, who grew up and were socialised in the dual monarchy period, or to the “post-War generation” (Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, along with Franz Schuh and Daniel Kehlmann as representatives of more recent generations). The Second World War is also a dividing line in terms of the reception of Kant’s philosophy. The literature of the “Old Austrians” is very different from that of the post-War generation. Indeed, for the older generation of authors even to speak of “Austrian literature” is problematic – this was rather a “literature in Austria”, since while all of the writers discussed here were born within the territory of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy, this by virtue of its nature as a multi-national state was the home of many and varied nationalities. This type of “Old Austrian” is perhaps best exemplified by Franz Kafka, as a Germanspeaking Jew from Prague (at that time the most important economic and cultural centre of the monarchy alongside Vienna and Budapest). In other words, it is important to remember that all those poets and writers who produced their works before the Second World War were born as citizens of a multi-national empire that collapsed after the end of the First World War. While this volume discusses Kant’s literary following in Austria, it has to be kept in mind that this is a search for clues and traces conducted from the perspective of present-day Austria. A writer’s attribution to one state or the other is at times simply not possible. It should also be noted that these contributions on Kant’s literary legacy are limited to literature written in German. This brief historical digression may serve to provide an understanding, or at least an inkling, of the complex of forces from which these literary works were produced. In the case of the “Old Austrians” it was significant that Austria, with Vienna and Prague as its cultural centres, formed the opposite pole to the German Reich with Berlin as its capital. Their view of Kant was therefore that of a “south German” or “Austrian” looking at a “north German”. The struggle for cultural supremacy between Vienna, Prague and Berlin had been a fact of life
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since 1871, when Berlin, through the establishment of the German Reich, suddenly also became the centre of a large European state.243 There is more than this to the attitudes of the “Old Austrian” writers towards Kant and his philosophy, but this factor and its importance have to be borne in mind with regard to the pre-War generation. Kant went through phases of being regarded as the “typical German philosopher”, or of being propagated as such, including from within the German Reich, so for most Catholic, or often Jewish, Austrians, he was a Prussian and a Protestant. Accordingly their view of Kant is not like that of many German writers, who see him as a compatriot, but a significantly more distanced and complex view. This is far less applicable to the post-War generation – the opposition between Austria and Germany since the 1950s has been completely different from that in the time around the First World War and before the second conflict.244 Yet a certain distance vis--vis Kant and his thinking can still be seen in the post-War generation. The significance that Kant possessed in the 19th century for supporters of the rationalists in Austria in their opposition to Romanticism disappeared virtually without trace in the 20th century, however. In many cases it is not Kant’s philosophy that left its mark in the works of writers in Austria, but rather an interest in his persona. A trait shared by both generations of authors is the freedom of their treatment of Kant’s life and works. None of the poets and writers discussed in this volume can be said to be a kindred spirit and empathetic interpreter of Kant in the same way as the German poets Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Hölderlin, for example. None of the writers in 19th or 20th century Austria have closely identified themselves with Kant’s works. The tendency is rather to take selected, often key, components, which become productively assimilated and modelled. Kant is seen as a great thinker and philosopher, but in this role often becomes an emblem for philosophy as such or man’s ability to think rationally. Even if none of the writers discussed can be described as a Kantian, several of them can be shown to have read his works with close attention. The perspective on the great philosopher taken by the Austrian (or Old Austrian) authors is often a satirical one. His status as a pillar saint of German philosophy and human reason is not infrequently parodied or even criticised. “I never finished reading Kant, but life goes on, and I feel much relieved”,245 wrote the young Robert Musil, for example, during his student years. Friedrich Nietzsche was the philosopher with the strongest influence on Musil throughout his life, and even his reception of Kant was imprinted by his reading of Nietzsche’s works. Accordingly Kant appears in Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [The Confusions of Young Törless] (1906) merely as the great thinker whose theories fail to reveal themselves to the young Törless. Instead of struggling valiantly to understand Kant’s works, he gives up the attempt relatively quickly. Rainer Maria Rilke’s involvement with Kant emerged only via his
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interest in spiritualism and his acquaintance with the baron Carl Freiherr von Prel, so here again there is no clear substantive interest in the content of Kant’s works or close engagement with them. The situation is rather different for Egon Friedell. Kant clearly had a greater impact on him than on Musil or Rilke. In this regard Friedell can be seen as the exception to the rule. His intensive engagement with Kant, particularly for his Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [Cultural History of the Modern Age] (1927–1931), stands in marked contrast to the pointed, at times satirical approach taken by some other writers in Austria. Kant is also referred to repeatedly in the works of Karl Kraus, and even appreciated – which is less than typical of Kraus’s attitudes towards philosophy and philosophers – but Kraus as a satirist and linguistic critic was mainly concerned with preventing or combating what he saw as a dubious kind of reception of Kant at the time. For Karl Kraus in Fackel it was not Kant’s philosophy that was to the fore, but rather the way in which it and Kant’s persona were often exploited and distorted for inappropriate, nationalistic and war-mongering purposes. To counter this form of instrumentalisation, Kraus also refers to Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden [On Perpetual Peace], which Max Brod also read and studied. Brod’s friend Franz Kafka also had a considerable familiarity with Kant’s works, although he could not be described as a Kantian. Here again we find a certain distance, in many cases preceded by a close and careful reading of the works. Kant also plays a role in the works of writers working in Austria after the Second World War. This is clearly evident in Ingeborg Bachmann and her novel Malina, where he is both referred to and quoted. However the most prominent treatment of Kant is beyond doubt Thomas Bernhard’s comedy Immanuel Kant, where the philosopher even gives the play its name. This raises the completely false expectation that the comedy will deal seriously with Kant’s persona or philosophy. Yet Bernhard’s protagonist Immanuel Kant is far removed from the “real” Kant. The relation towards Kant is here one of clearly stated negation. Kant may be seen in the Kant on stage, yet it is both “him” and very much “not him”. We are caught up in a strange game of attraction and repulsion vis--vis Kant. Bernhard has brilliantly succeeded in distilling into verbal form in his play a generally prevalent attitude towards Kant in Austria. The work can probably be read as code for the subcutaneously acting attitude of Austrians towards Germans, and more specifically for the attitude of poets and authors towards possibly the greatest German philosopher, i. e. Kant. Franz Schuh and Daniel Kehlmann too cannot be seen as significant exceptions to this Janus-like relationship towards Kant. The contributions gathered here investigate the ambivalent role played by Kant and his philosophy in literature in Austria in the 20th century from a range of perspectives. As we have seen, while Kant and his works are not a central
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presence, Kant does have a role, and it is striking that his name, and often his philosophy, are to be found in the works of the leading and most important writers and poets of this period. This also applies to very recent works, suggesting that before long we will also be able to discuss Kant’s literary legacy in the 21st century. Translated by John Jamieson
Kant and Karl Kraus by Max Beck Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Karl Kraus246 was born on 28 April 1874 in Jicˇn, Bohemia, the ninth child of the paper manufacturer Jakob Kraus and his wife Ernestine. In 1877, the family moved to Vienna. There he enrolled at the Law Faculty in 1893, but without attending any lectures. In 1894 Kraus switched his studies to philosophy and German literature but ended these in the summer of 1897 without completing a degree. An explicit concern with Kant’s philosophy cannot be proved during this period of time.247 In his early years he wrote literature reviews, for example for the magazine Die Gesellschaft or Wiener Literatur-Zeitung [Society or Viennese Literary Magazine]. He also tried his hand at being an actor and lecturer. In 1896 he published Die demolierte Literatur [Demolished Literature] in a brochure. This was a polemic against the so-called Wiener Kaffeehausliteraten. It was reprinted in several editions and was therefore read by a larger public. The text polemicizes against the so called Jung-Wien: Peter Altenberg, Hermann Bahr, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Kraus had himself initially participated at their meetings in Cafe Griensteidl. In 1899 the satirical magazine Die Fackel [The Torch] appeared for the first time. It was published by Kraus until his death. In 1902 he published the essay Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität [Morality and Crime], in which he criticizes the Austrian justice. In particular, he complained about the criminalization of individual sexuality and of the judicial system’s interference with matters of personal privacy. All his life he fought against the defense of conventional sexual morality by the judiciary. His magazine documented numerous cases of such investigations and trials for adultery or homosexual acts. In 1910, Kraus released one of his highly influential literature reviews, the polemical Heine und die Folgen [Heine and the Consequences]. In this article he criticised Heine as an “ornamentalist” and accused him of “having opened the corset of the German language so wide that any shop assistant can now play with its breasts”.248 Kraus
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Fig. 17: Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora), Karl Kraus (1908)
was of the opinion that Heine had imported the “French disease“.249 Kraus was not referring to syphilis, but to the flowery language of the feuilletonists. During the First World War Kraus mainly fought against the war propaganda. In 1915 he began working on the anti-war drama Die letzten Tage der Menschheit [The Last Days of Mankind]. Various extracts and versions were published until 1922. An essential part of the drama is based on quotations from contemporary speeches, newspaper articles and other sources: “ The most unlikely conversations that take place here have been reproduced literally ; the most glaring inventions are quotes.”250 In the last year of the war the two most important of the few definite references to Kant appeared in the work of Kraus. The first such reference appeared in 1918 in Ein Kantianer und Kant [A Kantian and Kant] and Zum ewigen Frieden [On Perpetual Peace]. In February 1936, he published the last edition of Die Fackel. On 2 April 1936, he held the last of a total of 700 readings in Vienna. He read texts of his own, but also from other authors such as William Shakespeare and Johann Nestroy. These readings were held in Vienna,
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Prague and Berlin. Only a few recordings from these lectures are existent.251 Kraus died in Vienna after a short illness on 12 July 1936.
Die Fackel “What is planned here is nothing more than the drainage of a huge swamp of empty phrases.”252 This was the opening announcement in the first edition of Die Fackel, which appeared at the beginning of 1899 and within ten days had reached a print run of 30,000 copies. “[There will be] no bragging about ‘what we are going to start up’; it is more a matter of ‘what we are going to finish off ’ – this is the emergent theme for the journal.”253 The “agenda” for attacking the sensational journalism of the day – Kraus refers to the “newspaper hacks” – ensured that Die Fackel, with its blood-red covers, would stir up controversy well beyond Vienna. The battle against the “press hack[s]”254 and those “glib apprentice feature writers”255 was not without its consequences. In the ninth edition of the journal Kraus provides a sobering “statement” on the progress of the “drainage” process: “Anonymous defamatory letters: 236; Anonymous threatening letters: 83; Attacks: 1”.256 Several guest authors wrote for the journal in those first years, including Else Lasker-Schüler, Peter Altenberg and Erich Mühsam. But by 1912 Kraus was writing all the articles himself. In 1931 Walter Benjamin provided a brilliant summary of the linguistic criticism in Die Fackel when he wrote: “The sort of hackneyed phrase that Kraus targeted so relentlessly is like a trademark that enables the communication of a thought, just as a set phrase, like an ornament, conveys the collector’s value.”257 Kraus does not sneer at bad style, but points out the mistaken ideology that lies behind the use of such clich¦d language. This is linguistic criticism as a criticism of ideology, not a cultural-critical diagnosis of a “decaying language”, nor a xenophobic enmity towards anglicisms. “Those who use German correctly can still do so using foreign words; and those who cannot, only end up causing damage more broadly.”258 When it comes down to it, people “should not talk about cretins when they really mean idiots.”259 Kraus prefers to leave the defence of a “German” language culture to the Nationalists, who, however, have a remarkable lack of knowledge of the very language they defend: “Thinking like a German and expressing yourself in German are two different things.”260 Kraus finds an ally in the architect and critic Adolf Loos (Ornament und Verbrechen [Ornament and Crime], 1908): “Adolf Loos has made it his life’s work to insist that a chair is a chair, a fork a fork, and a house a house.”261 Kraus fights the same battle on the linguistic field. A news item is a news item and nothing fancy : “Feature articles, opinion pieces, filler items – now the riff-raff can use these to “fill their homes with decorative poetic devices.”262 Kraus does
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Fig. 18: Karl Kraus, First edition of ‘The Torch’
not regard the German language as something that is deficient, but simply bemoans its misuse. He does not simply promote a fixation with grammatical rules for the sake of the rules themselves, but wants to preserve the distinguishing features of expression. One of his aphorisms encapsulates his relationship with the language: “The German language is the deepest of all, and German speech the shallowest.”263 This stance on language would often give rise to the reproach of his being “merciless”, something Theodor W. Adorno convincingly refutes in an article he published in Der Spiegel in 1964, when he argues the case for the potential of linguistic satire as an inherent criticism of ideology. “He [Kraus] is reproached for being unsympathetic by people with mediocre ethics, when in fact it is society that is being unsympathetic. Society, then as now, uses sympathy as an excuse whenever it would be a human duty to leave behind all sympathy.”264 Kraus’s ambitions for language were realised in Die Fackel. The texts are mostly free of any typos,265 and if any slipped through, they would be corrected by Kraus
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in the next edition. Kraus’s achievements in the field of corrections are impressive: he would even stop the printing press because of the structure of a particular sentence, knowing that everything already printed would have to be pulped.266
Kant in Die Fackel “I keep away from philosophy because I have the feeling that this is where the worst things happen, day in, day out.”267 Kraus wrote these words in 1910, and yet in spite of typical statements like this about philosophy, it is possible to detect an astonishingly positive impression of Kant in his writing. The Königsberg philosopher, along with Arthur Schopenhauer and Søren Kierkegaard, belongs to a small group of philosophers who are bestowed absolute respect by Kraus (at least the relevant statements would suggest this) throughout the 922 editions of Die Fackel, which come to over 20,000 pages, with their criticism of the slipping standards of language, of corruption, of a moralising justice system and of military German. But what is even more astonishing is that the relationship between Kraus and Kant has barely been investigated until now.268 Irina Djassemy writes that “Kant’s motto: ‘Have the courage to use your own reason!’”269 could also be “the motto for the entire journal of Die Fackel”.270 Kraus implicitly refers to Kant’s “concept of self-determination and to the practical imperative”.271 One has to be an enlightened subject so as not to be led astray by hollow words and idle chatter. However, Kraus’s satirical writing often reveals that the modern subject does not always end up being enlightened, in an emphatic sense. And so Kraus, in his polemic against the language, used Kant’s practical imperative and “thus drew attention to it once again”,272 as Gerhard Scheit neatly puts it. The fact that Kraus refers to a handful of philosophers does not mean that he had any systematic interest in their philosophy. He draws on Kant in particular to defend his position against the vulgar references of newspaper hacks and politics. In 1901 Kraus quotes a politician from the Deutschen Fortschrittspartei [German Progressive Party] by the name of Ludwig Vogler : “Kant published a critique of pure reason. In the Reichsrath [Parliament] I will pursue a politics of pure reason.”273 Vogler’s embarrassing comparison is exactly the opposite of Kant’s statement of concepts, “which must exist completely a priori and independent of experience”274 – something someone like Ludwig Vogler would presumably never have heard of. “And so the sort of politics we would have under the leadership of Dr Vogler would for example be completely free of any experience that the last twenty years can offer us.”275 The essence of Kraus’s
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satire is apparent here: the punch line derives from the discrepancy between the quoted statement and its own pretensions. Kraus defends Kant passionately against the use of his philosophy in war propaganda. For if “when retreating unnoticed by the enemy Kant quotations are somewhat hesitatingly used in German speeches” then not only will “Krupp” be replaced by “Kant, but Wolff would even replace Solf”.276 The popular depiction of Germany as the nation of “Dichter und Denker [poets and philosophers]” is refined by Kraus, who observes all the warmongers, in the phrase “Volk der Richter und Henker [the people of judges and hangmen].”277 He particularly had in mind those insipid contemporaries, who liked to refer to the “nation of philosophers”, but whose verbal and written comments showed them up and revealed them to be the opposite. Die Fackel is full of examples of this. Kraus even points the finger at journalists who, when reporting on German war crimes, refer to the fact that “this is the people that produced Luther, Beethoven and Kant. They are as innocent of this as they are of the atrocities ascribed to them”.278 The triad of “Luther, Beethoven and Kant” here symbolises a code for the German identity, but with any related content removed. One of the clich¦s in popular criticism of Kant is that this “great thinker” seldom left the small world of Königsberg. And so Kant is portrayed as a narrowminded person. Egon Friedell (1878–1938), one of the well-known guest authors in the early years of Die Fackel joined its editor in defending Kant against this accusation of him having a limited perspective – it is not something that you could put down to the lack of any travel experience, since “it has rarely been observed that the education of a truly educable person would suffer in any way from lack of travel”:279 “Kant, who never ventured beyond the vicinity of his hometown, knew […] more about the world and its conditions than all those who have circumnavigated the world”.280 “Experiencing” what is “foreign”does not automatically lead to knowledge or to shedding resentment. Kraus defends Kant against his supposed narrow-mindedness as depicted by the newspaper hacks. For example, in a general article about an “autumn trade fair” in Königsberg he writes: “An art exhibition which runs concurrently with the market has the interesting theme of ‘art and the dealer’, which explores how artist and dealer rely upon each other, and which hopefully will give both of them a better understanding of their interrelationship.”281 The collaboration of “art and merchant”, that is of aesthetics and economics, is detestable to Kraus. And what is true for him would also have been true for Kant: “If Kant were alive today he would surely leave this city for the first time.”282
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Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden The text of Perpetual Peace (1795) is one of the most influential of all Kant’s texts and even today still infuses political and philosophical debate, particularly in matters pertaining to international law. Compared to the scope of what is covered in the three Critiques, the text provides an overview that is easily understood as it is presented in the form of a fictional treaty. It consists of six “Preliminary Articles”, three “Definitive Articles”, addenda and appendices. It even contains a severability clause as well as a “Secret Article”. By giving it the subtitle Ein philosophischer Entwurf [A Philosophical Sketch] Kant makes it clear that this is definitely not a purely political or legal essay, but that it deals with a significant philosophical consideration that is affiliated to his transcendental philosophy. For example, the discourses on rational law, published later in the Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Rechtslehre [The Metaphysical Foundations of the Theory of Law] are significant in this regard, as Kant here delineates positive law on the one hand and the ‘classical’ natural law on the other. In other words, the “perpetual peace” is not derived from legal positivism, but relies on a priori rational conditions. The essay was published in time for the Michaelis Fair in 1795, and just a few weeks later it was out of print. Kant’s publisher in Königsberg, Friedrich Nicolovius, reprinted it the same year, and by the spring of 1796 it had already gone into its sixth printing.283 At this time many pirated editions of the essay were in circulation – interestingly also in France where an official edition was published in 1796.284 It is not clear whether the context for the essay was based on concrete historical facts. It is possible that the Treaty of Basel (5 April 1795) between France and Prussia prompted the publication of the essay.285 However, this theory is much disputed in the research. Kant himself never made any claims in this regards. The lofty title is taken from the “satirical inscription” on a “Dutch innkeeper’s sign, on which a graveyard was painted”.286 The “Preliminary Articles” criticise various infringements of the law which stand in the way of peace. The articles do not describe a utopian world, but are based on the here and now. They are directed at political protagonists, that is, at governments and other bearers of office.287 Those whom Kant particularly had in mind were the “heads of state who would never tire of war”.288 Three of the articles were to be implemented immediately, others could endure a delay : “Yet some of them are of the strictest sort (leges strictae), being valid, irrespective of differing circumstances, and require that the abuses they prohibit be abolished immediately (Nos. 1, 5 and 6). Others (Nos. 2, 3, and 4)” need not necessarily “be executed at once, so long as their ultimate purpose is not lost sight of”.289 The six articles are as follows:
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1. “No treaty of peace shall be held valid in which there is tacitly reserved matter for a future war.”290 2. “No independent states, large of small, shall come under the dominion of another state by inheritance, exchange, purchase or donation.”291 3. “Standing armies (miles perpetuus) shall in time be totally abolished.”292 4. “National debts shall not be contracted with a view to the external friction of states.”293 5. “No state shall by force interfere with the constitution or government of another state.”294 6. “No state shall, during war, permit such acts of hostility which would make mutual confidence in the subsequent peace impossible: such are the employment of assassins (percussores), poisoners (venefici), breach of capitulation, and incitement to treason (perduellio) in the opposing state [etc].”295 The three “definitive articles” then set out three legal systems as a foundation for “perpetual peace”: civil law, national law and universal law. These systems are directed at the decision-makers who are responsible for the system of law and the system of government.296 What is remarkable is that Kant had reservations about a world sovereign power in the form of a world state. Instead he argued the case for a league of nations. The definitive articles are as follows: 1. “The civil constitution of every state shall be republican.”297 2. “The law of nations shall be founded on a federation of free states.”298 3. “The law of world citizenship shall be restricted to conditions of universal hospitality.”299 Kant designates this division as “necessary in relation to the idea of perpetual peace”.300 The natural state is one of war, and so a state of peace has to be established: “For if only one state were related to another by physical influence and were yet in a state of nature, war would necessarily follow, and our purpose here is precisely to free ourselves of war.”301 This goes to show that Kant does not harbour any utopian sentiments about mankind’s natural state, which for him is a state of war. The teleology of nature forces mankind into a legal situation, as explained in the first supplement “On the Guarantee for Perpetual Peace”, as follows: “The guarantee of perpetual peace is nothing less than that great artist, nature (natura daedala rerum). In her mechanical course we see that her utilitarian aim is to produce a harmony among men, out of their discord and even against their will”.302 Nature thus compels men to engage “more or less in legal relations”.303 The law of reason and the teleology of nature make “perpetual peace” possible. The purpose of the essay on peace is therefore to explain the law, by means of which the state of war can be transformed into a lasting form of peace.
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Fig. 19 (a): Karl Kraus, Perpetual Peace, in: The Torch (1918) [Karl Kraus, Zum ewigen Frieden, in: Die Fackel (1918)]
Kraus’ Reception of Zum ewigen Frieden “Through the gates of hell of today and the here and now / he dreams on faithfully of a perpetual peace.”304 Of all of Kant’s writings, it is Perpetual Peace that Kraus particularly reveres. And so in his poem of the same title he writes: “Never did eyes, overcome with tears, / read words like those of Immanuel Kant.”305 An opponent of war, Kraus appears to have found in Kant’s pacifist blueprint an ally in the struggle against the prevalent war propaganda of the First
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Fig. 19 (b): Karl Kraus, Perpetual Peace, in: The Torch (1918) [Karl Kraus, Zum ewigen Frieden, in: Die Fackel (1918)]
World War and against the ill–considered reports of the “newspaper hacks”. Interestingly, preceding the poem is an unreferenced quote from another essay of Kant’s, namely Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis. [On the Proverbial Saying: All is Very Well in Theory, but No Good in Practice].306 Of course in Kraus’s writing there is no systematic discussion of the positions taken in the writings of Kant – in Adorno’s words “in spite of his unique poems about Kant, he did not exactly have much of an inclination for philosophy”.307 Adorno writes that “Kraus was careful not to blithely draw up a concept of freedom to counter the prevailing dreadful state of affairs.”308 In this sense, Kraus appears to be interested in Kant’s ideas of “perpetual peace” – as a practical approach, in the face of the horror of the First World War, that is obligated to the
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Fig. 20 (a): Karl Kraus, A Kantian and Kant, in: The Torch (1918) [Karl Kraus, Ein Kantianer und Kant, in: Die Fackel (1918)]
law. Once again Kraus places Kant’s supposed narrow-mindedness on a broad intellectual “plane”: “Once a dwarf reached for the stars. / His earthly realm was just a kingly mountain [Königsberg].”309
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Fig. 20 (b): Karl Kraus, A Kantian and Kant, in: The Torch (1918) [Karl Kraus, Ein Kantianer und Kant, in: Die Fackel (1918)]
“In order to prevent any misunderstandings, I declare that I did not intend the following sayings to be used as examples of my categorical imperative: ‘attention!’, ‘quick march!’, ‘get stuck in!’, ‘keep going!’.”310 This is the closing
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statement of the 1918 article Ein Kantianer und Kant [A Kantian and Kant], written by “Kant m. p.”. The double-columned text has speeches from Wilhelm II on the left side, with extracts from Perpetual Peace on the right. Neither sources are referenced: Kraus is more interested in juxtaposing the war propaganda of a “Kantian” and Kant himself, and by contrasting the two, to demolish and even eradicate the propaganda,311 as he does in Die letzten Tagen der Menschheit [The Last Days of Mankind]. In this play Kraus’s alter ego “The Grumbler” announces: I will make a very compelling comparison – how this Kantian wants to rely totally on his supporter on high, and how Kant admonishes him to give up what he is doing because it contradicts the moral thought of the father of humanity so much, and because he would do better to beg for heavenly mercy for the great sins of barbaric war. I will soon put this […] to the test in a Berlin lecture theatre and present it as ‘A Kantian and Kant’.312
In his speech Wilhelm II tells of the “heroic deeds of our troops” and the “successes of our great commanders”313 referring to the German philosophy of the Enlightenment. These supposedly originated “in the final analysis in the moral forces, in the categorical imperative, which have been instilled in our people through rigorous education”.314 Kraus places this opposite quotes from Perpetual Peace, which represents exactly the opposite point of view. But even here there is no systematic discussion of the text. Kraus shows his reverence for the content of Kant’s writing in a montage of quotes. And he does not overtly rebuke the emotionally charged speech on moral grounds. By highlighting the disparity to the cited source, it becomes clear what is propaganda and idle talk. Translated by Linda Cassells and Max Beck
Kant, Rilke and Spirits Always at the Ready by Christoph Leschanz and Philipp Schaller Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Rainer Maria Rilke was born as Ren¦ Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague on 4 December 1875.315 At that time Prague was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although his mother came from an upper class family, his father had to cut short a promising military career for health reasons and found work with a small railway company. Rilke himself, according to his own accounts, grew up in lower middle class circumstances.316 From time to time Rilke received financial support from his Uncle Jaroslav (and then from his daughters, Rilke’s cousins, after the uncle’s
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death in 1892).317 His parents chose a military education for their son. From 1886 Rilke attended the Militär-Unterrealschule [Junior Military Academy] in St Pölten, and then from 1890 he attended the Militär-Oberrealschule [Senior Military Academy] in Mährisch-Weißkirchen (Hranice), as would his fellow writer Robert Musil a few years later.318 And so the young Rilke, at the turn of the century, fell into “the mill of a military education that focused on drills and obedience, and left no room for the individual needs of a young person.”319 By 1891 he had successfully sought “permission to leave the Senior Military Academy.”320 In July of the same year the now fifteen-year-old wrote to his mother, telling her he was now “a fully-fledged writer”.321 On the 10 September a poem by Rilke appeared for the first time in print, in the Viennese newspaper Das interessante Blatt [The Interesting Paper].322
Fig. 21: Rainer Maria Rilke (1906)
In the years that followed there were further poem and prose pieces, as well as the first publications of some pieces (for example Feder und Schwert [Feather and Sword], 1893, Leben und Lieder, Bilder und Tagebuchblätter [Life and Songs, Pictures and Diary Entries], 1894, Larenopfer [Offerings to the Household God Lar], 1895) – some in newspapers or journals, some self-published.323 He did not complete the studies he began in 1895 at the Carl Friedrich University in Prague,
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nor the studies he embarked on later in Munich and Berlin. During this time Rainer Maria Rilke was establishing himself as a writer and poet throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the German Reich. (The first time his name appeared as Rainer Maria Rilke was on 15 September 1897 “below the translation of Fernand Gregh’s poem ‘La brise en larmes’ [‘Breaking into tears’] in the Wiener Rundschau [Viennese Reporter].)324 There followed stays in Berlin and Paris as well as several trips through Europe (Italy, Russia, Scandinavia, France). One of the acquaintances Rilke made at this time was with Lou Andreas-Salom¦, with whom he had a passionate love affair. This affair later developed into an “intimate friendship. She remained his confidante right until the very end of his life; he could discuss his most personal problems with her and confide in her about his worries and anxieties; he turned to her when he did not know what else to do.”325 Quite independently from this relationship, Rilke married Clara Westhoff on 28 April 1901. On 12 December the same year Rilke’s daughter Ruth, his only child, was born. Rilke’s unsettled life of travel, which began in the late 1890s, continued until the end of his life, and was interrupted only during the period of the First World War. Among other things, he worked as a secretary for Auguste Rodin (1905) and came to know a most diverse range of the greatest intellectuals of his time (and with some of whom he maintained a regular correspondence until the end of his life). In June 1907, for example, he met Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan Zweig in Vienna. The latter arranged, among other things, for Rilke’s transfer to the War Records Office in Vienna during the First World War.326 Rilke’s creative process was always marked by major crises. But in spite of this, further significant works, such as the Sonnete an Orpheus [Sonnets to Orpheus] and the Duineser Elegien [Duino Elegies], appeared. Rainer Maria Rilke died on 29 December 1926 from leukemia in Switzerland.
His Reading of Kant in Friedelhausen (1905) No obvious or direct allusions or references to Immanuel Kant or to his works are to be found in Rilke’s fiction. And so it is hardly surprising that there is essentially no body of research devoted to the poet’s relationship to the philosopher. The only things that could point to Rilke’s engagement with the works of Kant are two statements in his vast correspondence, which are admittedly several years apart. The later of Rilke’s two statements about his reading of Kant dates from 1905. On 6 June Rilke received an invitation to Meudon from the French sculptor and illustrator Auguste Rodin. While waiting for his upcoming departure to France, where he worked for several months as Rodin’s secretary, he wrote to Countess
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Luise von Schwerin (1849–1906) to thank her for the time he was able to spend at her castle in Friedelhausen, where he had been working on his poetry cycle das Stunden-Buch [The Book of Hours], and to let her know that he had just received the final page proofs for the new work. He mentioned the proofing process and then added the comment: “this afternoon we had our regular lesson on Kant, and on this last day finished the book we had undertaken to read.”327 “We” included the natural scientist Jakob Uexküll (1864–1944), the sonin–law of the Countess, whose acquaintance Rilke had made in Friedelhausen. We cannot tell from the letter which of Kant’s books he had finished reading in this mutual “lesson”. But it might be assumed that they had a common interest in Kant’s Dritte Kritik [Third Critique], given that Uexküll’s area of expertise was biology and his engagement with philosophy would have been prompted in particular by his interest in the philosophical contemplation of its theoretical foundations. Uexküll came from the Baltic region and had begun studying the works of Immanuel Kant when he was younger, especially his conception of space and time, as developed in the Erste Kritik [First Critique] and so for him, Kant’s theories played a central role, especially when considering living beings in the context of their environment. Rilke later read Uexküll’s work Theoretische Biologie [Theoretical Biology] (1920).328 Since we can only speculate on the actual subject of Rilke’s and Uexküll’s mutual reading of Kant, further speculation about possible influences on Rilke’s work would appear to be misplaced. But some further speculation is possible as far as the first of the two statements about Kant is concerned.
A Reading of Kant as Announced in Letters (1897) When Rilke finished his Book of Hours in the late summer of 1905, he had stopped working on another project: his only novel – Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge [The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge] – which he had begun writing in 1902 after being so impressed by his first visit to Paris, and which he did not finish until 1910. One, if not the single, theme of the novel is the change in the way the protagonist perceives the world and everyday things, as occasioned by the experience of transience and death. In this context a phenomenal realm comes up for discussion which one would not usually relate so much to Kant as the realm of the cognition of the sensual, visible world and its living beings. Nonetheless, it was out of his interest in this realm that Rilke wrote to the Bavarian Baron du Prel in 1897 (seven years before he began writing his Malte novel in 1904), telling him about his reading of a particular work by Kant: concerning the realm of the occult. Rilke was just beginning to establish himself as a writer and poet and was living in Munich
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when he wrote his letters on 16 and 18 February to Dr Carl (Karl) Baron du Prel (1839–1899), in which he confessed his interest in spiritism – which was the recipient’s area of activity : “Now I will also read Kant’s ‘Träume eines Geistersehers’ [Dreams of a Spirit-Seer]”.329 It is fairly likely that the young writer did in fact go on to read Kant’s Träume eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik [Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics] (1766), having announced he was going to do so. Rilke’s remarks about his personal reading programme, which included du Prel’s book Das Rätsel des Menschen [The Mystery of Man] (1892) and Spiritismus [Spiritism] (1893) can be understood in the context of du Prel’s attempts to bestow on spiritism a certain critical and philosophical appeal as a science, and thus to elevate its status as something to be taken seriously – hence du Prel’s emphatic references to Kant. The idea of connecting Kant’s philosophy with spiritism may well seem strange today, but in the last decade of the 19th century it appeared to be a plausible and serious line of inquiry, as demonstrated by the educationalist Karl Kehrbach (1848–1905), who published Kant’s writings and commentated on the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]: Kehrbach also published a brochure entitled War Kant Spiritist? [Was Kant a Spiritist?]330 As early as the 1860s Kant’s writings (along with those of Schopenhauer who was the subject of much discussion among du Prel’s Munich circle of friends at the time) formed a site for du Prel in his search for information about questions that were preoccupying him. These questions, as summarised in a biographical portrait of the Baron, had to do with the “meaning of religion, of history and evolution of the world and its people”.331 As late as 1896, not long before Rilke wrote to du Prel, he had published an essay on Kant und Swedenborg [Kant and Swedenborg] in his journal Die Zukunft [The Future].332 It would seem that Kant was prompted to write his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer after engaging with the writings of the Swedish medium, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), who was well known in the 18th century ; in his work Swedenborg expands upon his knowledge of the secrets of the spiritual world and its relationship to the inhabitors of the sensory world. Kants text appeared in 1766 – just a few years before his critical phase began, which culminated firstly in 1781 with the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. At this point it would be interesting, if not necessary, to debate at length the position that Kant takes up against this precursor of the theories of spiritism as far as certain phenomena of consciousness are concerned, and to place it in relation to what his critique of reason would later impart on this matter. However, this is beyond the scope of the present paper. It is simply suggested here that as far as Kant’s position on this matter is concerned, du Prel was basically wrong in claiming Kant as an authority on spiritism.
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Fig. 22: Immanuel Kant’s ‘Dreams of a Spirit-Seer’, as edited by Karl Kehrbach
Du Prel was convinced that Kant came close to a mystic world view in his precritical work. He never minded the fact that Kant, for his part, mocked Swedenborg in such a way that his [Kant’s] Dreams, given interpreters’ understanding of the work, border on being reduced to a mere polemic against one particular person, as far as its objective and substance are concerned.333 Nonetheless, du Prel was of the opinion that he had shown “Kant himself to be a mystic during the critical period”334 (something he not only asserted but even considered he had proved in his work The Mystery of Man, which Rilke had read and absorbed), and by publishing the new edition of Kant’s Vorlesungen über Metaphysik [Lectures on Metaphysics] he considered himself to have informed the world about Kant being a mystic. These lectures by Kant were originally published by Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz (1772–1838), but they were lost for several decades and were finally passed on by Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) to du Prel for publication. In the section of the lectures dedicated to psychology, du Prel thought he could detect a Kantian doctrine on “pre-existence” and “immortality”, which
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justified him making use of Kant’s terminology for spiritism and allowed him to interpret the transcendental subject essentially as “transcendental being”. He alleges that Kant differentiates between two halves of being in people, and that he espouses the metaphysical hypothesis that there is a spiritual soul that exists independently from the body, a hypothesis that was capable of being proven empirically through the occult sciences and their advances in research on phenomena such as somnambulism. Since the transcendental subject manisfests itself mainly in actions that are carried out unconsciously, it is possible “to prove through somnambulism that we are already spiritual beings and that this half of our being is not affected by death.”335 According to du Prel, somnambulism attests to our “penetration into the spiritual world”,336 and so we recognise “in spiritism the foreign spirits, the penetration of the spiritual world” into our own world. Thus, according to du Prel, the expansion of our knowledge in the realm of the supernatural was a matter of scientific progress – as though Kant had shown us the limits of sensory experience only for the time being, and could go no further because of the limits of supernatural techniques and methods: “it is possible that transcendental knowledge, which we actively acquire as somnambulists or passively receive as mediums, could become conscious knowledge; that is, it could pass into the consciousness of the senses, and if we can transcend that threshold, which forms the borderline between the two people of our subject [the physical person and the immortal soul] we might experience the world of spirits.”337 With Kant in mind, the baron makes the following inferences: The world on the other side, and our other-worldly transcendental existence, lie just beyond the threshold. Pushing the threshold beyond its usual limits is further proof that the phenomena of somnambulism and spiritism are capable of adapting, at least in the biological future, namely by means of resetting the threshold. Thus Kant’s intuitive assumptions would be empirically confirmed today. It is therefore irrefutable that Kant would have been a spiritist today ; he already was one, to the extent that he could be one at this time.338
As we will soon see, the great Arthur Schopenhauer was also partly responsible for du Prel’s rather bold interpretation of Kant.
Spiritism Before and Within the Critique – Productive Misunderstandings In his interpretation of the alleged mystical doctrine in the critical work of Kant, du Prel frequently refers to Kant’s pre-critical essay Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, and focuses rather selectively on certain statements. In this text Kant deals with the sensibility of our perception and cognizing, and sees this as the very thing that
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separates our cognizing, and thus ourselves, from beings that are remote from us in time and space. When he argues that this [sensibility] is the obstacle to our being able to make contact with or be in communion with these beings, he is not at this stage expressly combining it with that later implicitly critical constraint, which links all cognizing inextricably to our sensibility. In this pre-critical essay Kant thus understands things, as they exist independently from our sensory intuition and therefore outside space and time, not just as thought-things. He considers, albeit tentatively, that they could stand in a relationship to one another that is unknown to the disjunctive conditions of space and time. In the end this assumption is justified by the fact that, according to the concepts of classical metaphysics, an immaterial spiritual principle underlies all living beings: All these immaterial natures, I say, whether they exercise their influences in the corporeal world or not, and all the rational beings who are, accidentally, in an animal state, here on earth or on other terrestrial bodies, while they may be vivifying gross matter now or in the future, or may have done so in the past, nevertheless form, according to these conceptions, a communion in conformity with their nature. And this communion would not rest upon the conditions by which the relations of bodies are limited, but distance in space and time, which forms in the visible world the great cleft severing all communion, would disappear.339
Kant does not discount the possibility of a certain type of supernatural knowledge in his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, even though his deliberations on this matter are later markedly qualified and ironic. Spirit apparitions could represent a type of improvised way of making explicit the actual spiritual influences of that “spirit world”340 through the power of our imagination, which we can only make sense of in this way as beings of the material world. In Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Kant already categorises “metaphysics” as “the science of the boundaries of human reason” and explains that “In this case I indeed have not accurately defined the boundaries; but I have indicated them for the reader so far that, after further consideration, he will find himself able to do without such vain investigations about a question the data of which he has to seek in a world different from that of which he is sensible.”341 From this we can see that Kant is not yet at the point of supporting his critical engagement with Swedenborg on the basis of an indisputable and established knowledge of unknowing, as he did for the first time in his Critique of Pure Reason. Instead, as he openly admits, he simply bases it on an indifferent unknowing. Kant is accordingly so consistent – something that Swedenborg himself (from the stories he tells and are told about him) gives Kant some credit for – when at the very beginning of the piece he remarks that it “is just as much a silly prejudice to believe without reason nothing of the many things that are told with an ap-
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pearance of truth, as to believe without examination everything that common report says”.342 The lenience with which the pre-critical Kant dealt with what was told with an appearance of truth, can at least be seen as leading to a weak defence of Schopenhauer. For it is basically hard to understand why Schopenhauer believed he was able to detect “virtually a factual confirmation”343 of Kant’s theories and Kantian critical philosophy, of all things in the supernatural expansion of our knowledge beyond the boundaries of intuition. Schopenhauer’s line of argument draws strongly on the phenomenon of clairvoyance. He explains this in his publication Parerga und Paralipomena [Parerga and Paralipomena (Minor Works and Remnants)] (1851) in a chapter entitled “Versuch über das Geistersehen” [“Essay on Spirit-Seeing”], which was one of the themes whose treatment he considered to be suitable for the essential purpose of his philosophical writings which he had been pursuing since 1819: namely the confirmation of the validity of his philosophy, published that year in his major work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Idea]. In this work he claims to confirm the viewpoint already voiced by Kant by embedding it in a metaphysic that is founded on the concept of the will. Schopenhauer makes the following comment in his “Essay”: The exaltedly miraculous and simply unbelievable nature of somnambulistic clairvoyance – unbelievable until it was substantiated by the agreement of hundreds of the most credible testimonies – to which it is revealed what is concealed, absent, remote, indeed, what still slumbers in the womb of the future, at least loses its absolute incomprehensibility when we consider that, as I have stated so often, the objective world is a mere phenomenon of the brain; for it is the order and conformity to law of this world, based on space, time and causality (as functions of the brain) that to a certain degree are eliminated in somnambulistic clairvoyance. For as a result of the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of space and time we understand that the thing it itself, hence what is alone truly real in all appearances – since free of those forms of the intellect – does not know the difference between near and far and between past, present, and future; hence the separations based on those intuitive forms prove not to be absolute, and to present no insurmountable barrier to the mode of cognition under discussion, that which is essentially modified through the transformation of its organ.344
We can check exactly what the critical Kant is supposed to have said about the question of clairvoyance in the Critique of Pure Reason, in the chapter on the principles of pure intellect, where he writes: A substance which would be permanently present in space, but without filling it (like that mode of existence intermediate between matter and thinking being what some would seek to introduce), or a special ultimate mental power of intuitively anticipating the future (and note merely inferring it) or lastly a power of standing in community of thought with other men, however distant they may be – are concepts the possibility of
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which is altogether groundless, as they cannot be based on experience and its known laws; and without such confirmation they are arbitrary combinations of thoughts, which, although indeed free from contradiction, can make no claim to objective reality, and none, therefore, as to the possibility of an object such as we here profess to think.345
Just like du Prel, Schopenhauer falls behind Kant’s critical position, although we must assume that, unlike the Bavarian baron, he realised it would be preposterous to attribute to the critical Kant a theory of the soul (in the sense of spiritism) – otherwise there would be no critical Kant. Ultimately, more than one comment against such a theory can be found in Kant’s major epistemological work. Moreover, the entire chapter “Von den Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft” [“The Paralogisms of Pure Reason”] leaves absolutely no doubt about Kant’s position on this matter. Even if we wanted to deny this knowledge, the following comment by Schopenhauer hardly allows for the possibility that he too is a spiritist: “All previous explanations of spirit apparitions have been spiritualistic; and as such they are subject to Kant’s critique in the first part of his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer” and he then immediately goes on to stress that “here I will attempt an idealistic explanation. –”346 In spite of this Schopenhauer pretends that some metaphysical considerations of the pre-critical Kant, which Kant refuted later after his critical turn, are views expressed in his [Kant’s] critical philosophy. These views are then presented as an idealistic basis for explaining the ability to see into the future, and the possibility of expanding our knowledge beyond the boundaries of sensuality.
The Indifferent Passage of Time of Another Way of Seeing So we have a fairly precise idea of the unusual circumstances in which Rilke might have been reading Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer – if in fact he really did read it. When Rilke declared in a letter to du Prel that he would be reading this, he also claimed to be familiar with those passages of Schopenhauer that du Prel referred to: I have […] read through your copies of ‘The Mystery of Man’ and ‘Spiritism’ and through these profound works was quickly led in medias res. I remembered several of the quoted passages of Kant and Schopenhauer, and the other problems that were led to a clear solution have often preoccupied me.347
Rilke had obviously concerned himself quite independently with Kant and Schopenhauer before he became acquainted with du Prel’s rather unusual claims about their thinking. August Stahl, the Rilke researcher, points out that this piece of information,
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and several others, contradict a remark that Rilke made later about having neglected a broad engagement with significant philosophers during his youth. As to which of Schopenhauer’s “quoted passages” were referred to – Stahl considers they might be his parapsychological texts because of du Prel’s reference to these: his “Essay on Spirit-Seeing” and the “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Premeditation in Personal Fate” (as well as Parerga and Paralipomena (Minor Works and Remnants)) and also the chapter “Animal Magnetism and Magic” (Über den Willen in der Natur [On the Will in Nature], 1836 and 1854).348 Trying to match the passages from Kant which Rilke maintains he “remembers” would appear to be less rewarding. Since he yet merely intended to read Dreams of a Spirit-Seer [and did not actually do so], there is not much room for speculation. As far as the two works that Rilke refers to are concerned, du Prel basically only quotes from the earlier essay of 1766 and the lectures of 1788, recently published by du Prel himself and which Rilke could only have known through du Prel’s new edition. Otherwise the only other mention by du Prel is of the text Von der Macht des Gemüts [Power of the Mind] (1798). Du Prel only refers to the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena in order to reference the Kantian provenance of the terminology of transcendental subject that he misappropriates, without giving a factual explanation of any of the passages. Rilke’s understanding of the transformation of life and world experience and of writing itself finds expression in his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as well as in his poetry ; and, as Priska Pytlik demonstrates,349 it can be attributed, among other things, to the execution of that false but rather creative interpretation of Kant, which du Prel, the expert on spirit-seers, released into the world and that was inspired by Schopenhauer. In Rilke’s work the spiritist ideas about a potential expansion of knowledge into a spiritual world beyond the constraints of sensory boundaries, which prevent us from perceiving all beings that are remote from us in space and time is a poetic appreciation which appears to be far more attractive than the form in which du Prel presents it. The classification of Rilke’s prose work as a novel is effectively questionable because of its shape. Instead of a narrator who develops a coherent plot, the reader is confronted with Malte’s seventy-one rather associative, if not dissociative, sequential journal-like notes, which in places come close to prose poetry. Nevertheless, it quickly becomes all the clearer that Malte, who comes from an aristocratic Danish family, is stranded in the new cosmopolitan world of modern Paris and does not know how to find his way around. No matter how he tries to adapt to the city, he feels like someone who has been “cast aside”.350 But at the same time he stands out from all the others, who share this fate of beeing cast aside in this modern world; the fact that he comes from another world does not
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allow him to emerge seamlessly in the new, modern world, with all the oppressiveness of its existence. Because he comes from another world, Malte is different from those wretches who see him as one of them; he is predestined to perceive this world, into which he has been cast aside or rather tossed away, through the sensitive eyes of a poet. Inevitably, he experiences it in terms of the dissolution of familiar meanings and the disappearance of everything he had known and become fond of. Under these circumstances, the only escape, the last possible prospect – paradoxical, absurd or superhuman as it might seem – is to establish an altered attitude towards death and a re-evaluation of dying, disappearance and transience. This promises to offer nothing less than a complete transformation of how things, and life itself, are perceived, as well as the opportunity for a new approach to writing. According to this attitude, death is not understood to be the end of life, but the requirement for its rigorous transformation. It therefore also requires that the fear that emanates from death is overcome. In this regard, Malte, who would continue to struggle with this notion, recalls not without reason his aged maternal grandfather, Count Brahe, who would cause utter consternation in Malte’s father when, with a degree of masterful pleasure, he would introduce the incredulous son-in–law to one of his ghostly ancestors roaming around his estate. He knew to acknowledge her presence with complete peace of mind. In Malte’s notebooks the unconventional character of Count Brahe stands for the abolition and conquest of those boundaries that are set by time. He is described as follows: He had no notion of the passage of time; death was a minor incident which he ignored completely and those who were lodged in his memory continued to exist and their dying altered nothing whatsoever. Several years later, after the old man had died, he was described as having maintained the stubborn notion that the future and the present were one.351
In a remarkable way the aged count must also have possessed that capability (the potential of which Schopenhauer attempted to explain through Kant’s doctrine of idealism), in as much as his gaze lay “open to the far distance, and even to slumbering in the bosom of the future”. The potential of another layer of reality, which implies “a completely different perception of all things”, a “transformed world” and a “new life full of new meaning”352 is a theme – if not the core one – which emerges in Rilke’s novel. It permits another way of writing, since it also challenges the ingrained security of accepted meanings. As Pytlik has demonstrated, du Prel’s spiritist beliefs, which were developed through a rather idiosyncratic assimilation of Kant’s philosophy, found their way into the literary innovations that Rilke knew only too well how to create. It is true for his novel, but also for his poetry. Pytlik also locates a relationship to the
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programmatic idea of the “Weltinnenraum” [inner space of the world] which typifies Rilke’s poetry and which is evoked in his poem Es winkt zu Fühlung fast aus allen Dingen [Everything Beckons Us to Perceive It] (1914). This inner space of the world is linked to the pursuit of a community of all possible people, beings and things, where the separation of space and time is overcome.353 The shift in the sensory threshold described by du Prel, which is characterised by the loss of everyday awareness and the proximity of death as a transition into the realm of the spirits, would appear in some ways to be significant in terms of overcoming this. It is therefore not too reckless to want to understand Rilke’s interest in spiritism through the existential, aesthetic and poetological intuitions and aspirations that Malte also expresses in his notebooks. The development of the du Prel-like ideas about spiritism which Rilke echoed is therefore heavily inspired by the former’s preoccupation with Kant’s philosophy, even though this stemmed from a complete misunderstanding of Kant and quite wrongly assumes that Kant (at least the critical Kant) shared the same ideas. Kant had a two-fold influence on the form of spiritism du Prel promoted and which Rilke studied and carefully considered: firstly, [this spiritism] drew on those reflections that Kant presented in the Dreams [of a Spirit-Seer], that belonged to the pre-critical phase; and secondly, it drew on the determinations on the spatial and temporal forms of intuition through the senses which Kant developed in his principal work and which Schopenhauer then interpreted, or misinterpreted, with reference to clairvoyance. In both instances the prominent meaning is that space and time according to Kant impose limiting conditions on our cognition, in so far as they separate us from the infinitude of all things that do not exist in spatial or temporal proximity to us, because they are the intuitive forms of sensibility on which our understanding in all cognizing relies. What remains to be said about Rilke’s relationship to Kant’s philosophy? The author has his character Malte declare: Despite all my fears I am yet like a man standing in the presence of something great and I recall that previously, before I began writing, it was often like this inside me. But this time it is I who will be written about. [The meaning of this sentence: “Aber diesmal werde ich geschrieben werden” rather seems to be: I am going to be transformed by an act of writing that will be performed by something or someone else using me, PS] I am the impression that will be transformed. Oh it would only take a little for me to understand it all and give it my assent. Just one step more and my abject misery would become bliss.354
If it is true that Malte saw his grandfather as providing some sort of example in his dealings with the spiritual world, then he does so as a poet when he looks to his grandfather, because of this ability, to try to integrate death into life. A poet
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would however never be reproached by Kant (the correctly understood Kant, not the du Prel version), who would not raise the same accusation against a poet that he would raise against a philosopher who were to use a spirit-seer as his model, because in that case the philosopher would inevitably have to be classed as a dogmatic metaphysician. So if something of Rilke’s own attempts at a new way of writing are in fact expressed in Malte’s thoughts about writing, he distinguishes himself just as much from du Prel as does his literary creation. Du Prel was not a poet but a metaphysician who modelled himself on the sighting of spirits. His main concern arose from the attempt to provide a metaphysical foundation for the activity of spiritual media and thus to gain recognition in the public sphere among the scientifically-minded – something he attempted to achieve through a rationalist theory which he thought was capable of empirical validation. He thus regarded Kant as his predecessor in this respect, in the sense that he saw him as a metaphysicist pursuing the same positive intentions as Swedenborg. In this he was essentially deluded, and we can assume that Kant would have warmed more to Rilke’s literary realisation of du Prel’s (and Schopenhauer’s) distortions of his own philosophy than to du Prel and Schopenhauer themselves.
Another Way of Seeing and Writing: New Literature, Not Old Metaphysics Rilke’s novel was inspired by the thinking of a movement that attempted to establish an epistemological basis for its philosophy of a supernatural, mystical worldview that derived from Kant’s theories. In reality, however, it was based on a type of metaphysics that had been superseded and which Kant had left behind – and using his name serves as nothing more than a rather fraudulent label. In no way, however, can the result of this inspiration be read as a literary endorsement and a variation of this ultimately rather shallow attempt to kindle the extinct belief in a fading worldview, on the apparent basis of rationality. Thus there is no reason to see The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as a literary advertisement for an antiquated metaphysics and the worldview it represented. The fact that Rilke, irrespective of his literary abilities (or more likely because of them), was completely unsuitable for the writing of military propaganda eventually became evident when he was called up for military service at the beginning of 1916 and went to Vienna for six months, where other literary figures such as Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hoffmannsthal and Karl Kraus took this rather delicate poet under their wing. Zweig successfully attempted to secure a position for Rilke in the War Records Office, overseeing what was known as the “Dicht-Dienst” [“writing service”], also known as “Heldenfrisieren” [“the dolling up of heroes”]. (Zweig felt motivated “puisqu’il est un de nos premiers poets
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– pour tout l’art allemand . . .” [“because he is one of our foremost poets – for all of German art”].) However, Rilke proved to be completely incompetent in this service, even though the plot of his most successful story, Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke [The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke] (written in 1899) is set in the Austrian Turkish Wars. Instead of reconstituting the latest war history in novelistic fashion, he provided the necessary grid for the military honorarium units (wages lists), which apparently meant using his own particular “aesthetic sense” to draw horizontal and vertical lines on paper.355 Additionally, Rilke as a poet was probably not interested in participating in du Prel’s philosophical struggle against materialism and for a pseudo-scientific mystic world view and for metaphysics. He was only interested in the latter from an aesthetic point of view because it offered an opportunity for a different kind of seeing and writing. Something similar might be said about du Prel as a person and as the “chief of German spirit-seers” since “everybody who talks to him has to take the strangely captivating stare of this short baron with them into their most sinister dreams”.356 That is why The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge cannot be seen as some sort of spiritist metaphysics disguised in literary form. Rather, they are an independent and original literary exploration of the opportunity offered by our perception of the world and of our attitude to it, which is exactly what this form of metaphysics failed to do: instead of attributing an individual transcendental being to the ghostly and to dreams, in order to reassure us by means of an apparent rationalisation process, it is more concerned with the sort of perception that can only be proved through withstanding fear, accepting dreams and ghosts as they are, whereby they are simply not denied the reality, which they have in any case along with their individual existence that is due to them in our world: The existence of the horrible in every atom of air. You breathe it in without being able to see it, but it condenses inside you, becomes hard, assumes pointed geometrical forms among your organs; for all the torments and horrors that happened in places of execution, in torture chambers, madhouses, operating rooms, under the arches of bridges in late autumn: all this has a tenacious permanence which endures for its own self and depends, jealous of everything else that exists, on its own terrible reality. People would like to be able to forget much of it but sleep runs its file softly over the furrows of their brains, though dreams can drive sleep away and retrace the pattern.357
Translated by Linda Cassells
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Traces of Immanuel Kant in Friedell’s Work by Elisabeth Flucher Egon Friedell (1878–1938) Egon Friedell, whose real surname was Friedmann,358 was born on 21 January 1878, the second child of the Jewish factory owner Moritz Friedmann and his wife Karoline Eisenberger. After the death of his father in 1889, Friedell lived with his aunt in Frankfurt/Main, where, considered a notorious troublemaker, he was expelled from school after three years.359 In the following years he was transferred to different schools. In 1897 in Heidelberg, he received private tuition and attended lectures by the Neokantian philosopher Ernst Kuno Fischer, who was lecturing in Heidelberg on the history of philosophy at the time. It was this encounter that filled Friedmann with enthusiasm for Kant, Fichte and Romanticist thinkers.360 Friedell passed his high school exams only after his fourth attempt in 1899. In the same year, he had come of age and was able to receive his share of an inheritance. He used the money he had inherited to buy a tenement in Gentzgasse in Vienna. After moving to Vienna, he immediately enrolled at the University of Vienna in the department of philosophy. In 1904 he wrote a doctorate under the guidance of Friedrich Jodl, entitled Novalis als Philosoph [Novalis as Philosopher]. A short time later, his dissertation was published by the Bruckmann Verlag in Munich, using, for the first time, the pseudonym Friedell – the result of a misspelling of his real surname, Friedmann, in the title.361 From this time on, he exclusively used this pseudonym which was recognized officially in 1916 as his formal surname. Already in 1897, Friedell had removed himself from his Jewish roots, by converting to the Protestant faith. In the following years, Friedell wrote theatre reviews for newspapers and appeared on different Viennese cabaret stages: in the “Nachtlicht” and in the “Hölle”. He was also artistic director of the newly founded “Fledermaus” for one year in 1908. Friedell’s career led directly from his studies of philosophy straight into becoming a cabaret artist. Friedell describes this bizarre career evolution in his satirical play Goethe. Eine Groteske in zwei Bildern [Goethe. A Grotesque in Two Pictures]. In the play, the young student says: “I want to become a doctor of philosophy so incredibly much so that I will be able to perform at a cabaret.”362 It was probably while attending one of Friedell’s cabaret performances that Karl Kraus noticed his brilliance as a cabaret artist. Beginning in 1905, Kraus published six of Friedell’s texts in a row in his journal Die Fackel. Inner disputes led to an early estrangement between Kraus and Friedell. They held contrary views on the daily press and on the theatre business for example. While Kraus represented a minimalist theatre style concentrating on language, Friedell admired Max Reinhardt and was, in general, a fan of grandiose costumes.363 Another reason for the cooling of their relationship may have been, that Kraus soon
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Fig. 23: Edith Barakovich, Egon Friedell (1931)
became disenchanted with the literary circle around Peter Altenberg who was a close friend of Friedell’s. In 1913 Friedell made Max Reinhardt’s acquaintance in Berlin while he was performing at the Linden-Kabarett in Berlin. Thereafter he was engaged by Reinhardt as an actor at the Deutsches Theater where he played the role of the Roman emperor in George Bernhard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion in his own Viennese adaptation of the play. From 1924 on, Friedell was a permanent member of Reinhardt’s ensemble at the theatre in Josefstadt in Vienna. As a sign of his gratitude and admiration Friedell dedicated his book Die Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [A Cultural History of the Modern Age] to Max Reinhardt. During the First World War, Friedell published various articles which, even if they did not particularly like the war, at least approved of it. Starting in 1915, he gave lectures at the Urania theatre in Vienna which were in accordance with German nationalist views and with the war propaganda of the time.364 Friedell
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wrote, for example, the following remark: “Because in the life of peoples war has a similar meaning to that of fever in the life of a single person […]The current war also has a similar meaning.“365 In the first years after World War I, Friedell found himself in a difficult financial situation due to the inflation of the period, so that in 1922 he had to sell his tenement. He was also forced to write more theatre reviews in order to maintain himself. In those years Friedell developed a production technique for his texts which used parts of old texts again for new ones.366 As a result of this procedure, many of his texts appeared more than once in different contexts. His Cultural History of the Modern Age for example consists of many elements of his older texts. Apart from that, Friedell was eager to get many of his texts published. During his lifetime 22 of his works were published by 15 different publishing houses.367 Friedell wrote for more than 17 different newspapers and journals,368 among them Die Fackel, the Weltbühne, Die Schaubühne, the Neue Freie Presse, the Merker and the Freie Deutsche Bühne. In 1924 Friedell’s financial situation stabilized due to his permanent tenure at Reinhardt’s “Theater in der Josefstadt”. From this time on he could concentrate on his project of a Cultural History of the Modern Age, three volumes of which appeared in the years 1927, 1928 and 1931 published by Beck Verlag in Munich. Because, in 1935, Beck was no longer allowed to publish any further works of Friedell due to the Nationalsocialist regime’s Anti-Semitism, his Kulturgeschichte Ägyptens und des alten Orients [Cultural History of Egypt’s Land and of the Ancient Orient] only appeared in 1936, published by Phaidon in Switzerland. On 16 March 1938, only a few days after Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany, while SA storm troopers were searching for him in his apartment, Friedell committed suicide by jumping out of a window. The exact motivation for this act remains unclear because he apparently had the opportunity to flee from Vienna in time.369 The unfinished manuscripts of the Kulturgeschichte Griechenlands [Cultural History of Greece] and the Reise mit der Zeitmaschine [The Time Machine] were published posthumously. Since 1937 Friedell had been working on plans for two other works, a Geschichte der Philosophie [History of Philosophy] and an Alexanderroman [Novel on Alexander the Great]. Both of them remained as sketches.
Kant in Friedell’s Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit There are numerous references to Kant, both direct and indirect, in the writings of Friedell. Often they are anecdotes from Kant’s life, or they mention Kant among a list of philosophers, poets, scientists or politicians. So as far as Friedell’s presentation of Kant is concerned, it is revealing to look at what other great
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intellectuals he aligns with the philosopher. For there is no doubt that he rated the “cold dissector of the intellect” as a great, if not one of the greatest men.370 He thus names Plato and Kant among the greatest philosophers, and places them beside Homer and Dante as the most significant epic poets.371 He rates Kant as one of the three most important German philosophers, along with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.372 Nonetheless, Friedell voices his opposition to any mindless adulation of geniuses, since the very names of such revered persons then just become a “meaningless badge”.373 Such clich¦d thinking produces terms like “Goethe the Olympian, Schiller the burning young genius, [and] Kant the destroyer of everything”.374 Friedell himself is anything but cautious with the notion of genius. Thus he compares Kant’s genius and imagination with the political talents of Bismarck: “I am in favour of the imagination of any Newton, any Kant, and Bismarck.”375 In his essay Der Dichter [The Poet] Friedell argues against the preconception that intellectual people are incompetent when it comes to practical things, and cites Kant as an example; for although he earned a mere “beggar’s pension” he was able to convert it into a “considerable income” through “clever transactions.”376 Friedell justifies his viewpoint as follows: “Why should a given measure of organisational strength and psychological acuity – attributes usually associated with the dramatic arts or the critique of reason – suddenly dissipate when it comes to trade or politics? The army captain, the playwright and the businessman all share the same basic theme.”377 In the same essay Friedell maintains that both Bismarck and Kant have something in common with a poet: “The poet excels through the ability to respond to a stimulus in a more complex, richer and more intense way. He has a more heightened and highly suggestive sense of apperception. In other words: he has more inner resources. This is what Kant, Shakespeare, Bismarck and Helmholtz all have in common.”378 For Friedell, Kant, Gauss and Newton379 are all connected just as meaningfully as Napoleon, Ibsen and Kant.380 However, elsewhere Friedell denies that Kant has any of the attributes of a poet: “Kant by contrast was no poet, but a pure thinker, probably the purest that has ever lived; what he offers is not the individual interpretation of an artist, who conquers us through the sheer force of his imagination, but the universal formulation of a researcher who conquers us through the power of his sagacity and his gift for observation.”381 Another aspect of Kant that Friedell appreciated was his excellent writing skills: “[as an author] he could express himself fluently, concisely and appealingly, and could even be highly amusing.”382 However, in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] Kant had quite deliberately chosen a different, drier style of delivery, which “always stuck rigidly and objectively to the point, without making even the slightest of allowances for the reader.”383 Friedell was of the opinion that Kant’s “characteristic terminology, combined
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with his old-fashioned, convoluted and cumbersome method of presentation […] put many people off the study of philosophy”,384 but he still admired the ingenious writer in Kant. In the Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [Cultural History of the Modern Age] Friedell analyses the relationship of Schiller and Goethe to Kant. According to Friedell, we don’t need an explanation as to “why this [Schiller, EF] became one of the most brilliant and sympathetic pupils of Kant – whose philosophy had no other purpose than the creation of our knowledge – and why Goethe declared that he could not understand Kant.”385 Friedell’s answer to this can be found in the passage before the extract quoted here where he describes Schiller as dynamic and Goethe as static. Friedell analyses this in a simplistic way, when he says that Schiller is interested in history and creates “everything from himself”.386 Whereas Goethe is almost exclusively interested in nature and is a poet first and foremost, as well as a “dramatist of private affairs”.387 There is another reason why, according to Friedell, Goethe did not “become a disciple of Kant’s philosophy, which of all philosophies had the best foundation, and this clearly had personal and religious reasons”.388 Goethe could never have been a follower of Kant’s theories, since Kant’s theories contained such monumental and far-reaching thinking that you either accepted or rejected the whole system, and since the assumptions within the system were so carefully argued and woven together that if you accepted one assumption you had to accept them all. You therefore cannot be convinced by Kant’s theories, instead you have to be “converted” to them.389 Science is thus put on the same level as a belief system, since for Friedell science is no more provable than any other way of looking at the world. “If you take science seriously, then it becomes a belief, a religion”.390 Friedell evidently compares the effect of Kant to that of Darwin, when he writes: “It is telling that most of the supporters of Darwinism were atheists”.391 A religious mindset in a one sense presupposes a disposition towards a scientific system. It is still unclear exactly which religious conviction, according to Friedell’s thinking, was best disposed to Kant’s philosophy. The revolutionary aspects of Kant’s philosophy are crystal clear to Friedell, and yet he describes the effect of Kant’s Critique of Reason as “a revolution of huge, terrifying proportions. It shakes up the whole world. The very worst of fevers could not match the frightening effect of reading these sobering paragraphs”.392 What Friedell recognises in Kant’s work are those momentous, shattering and enlightening qualities. But by the same token, he sees the philosopher as a thinker who follows the discipline of his own system, and who lets himself be drawn into dishonesty through this systematic way of thinking. In contrast to Kant, he describes Georg Christoph Lichtenberg as a thinker who was “too honest to be a systematist”.393 Friedell’s criticism of philosophical systems is most probably influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche wrote in his Götzendämmerung [Twilight of the Idols] “I distrust all systematists and give
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Fig. 24: Commemorative plaque for Egon Friedell, Vienna
them a wide berth. The will to a system represents a lack of honesty.”394 As far as Friedell was concerned, the basic premise of every system was “the work of making things fit in and smoothing things over”,395 which is why he had a slight preference for the style of Lichtenberg, who for him was the exact opposite of Kant. “The dogged energy with which Kant erects a towering systematic structure on the foundations of his new discoveries of the science of the soul is a substantial intellectual achievement in itself; but it also conceals a lot of selfdenial, and a renunciation of complete freedom in his thinking – a renunciation that was nothing short of heroic and something we do have to admire.”396 Every time he makes a distancing criticism of Kant he always returns to being an admirer. Although it was Friedell’s view, as quoted in the last paragraph, that there is a destructive and frightening quality to the Critique of Reason, we have to be mindful that he qualifies this viewpoint in other passages; for example Friedell frequently makes contradictory statements, something that can be regarded as typical of his way of thinking. According to him, a critique not only has a subversive power, but, just as importantly, it is also productive in a scientific sense: There is nothing ‘subversive’ about criticism, for it simply dismantles its object and then recreates it before the eyes of the observer in a more lively and comprehensible way. This is how the concept of criticism, ever since Kant, has entered the consciousness of the educated. He and his followers provided the very first solid foundations of
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the various sciences. His Critique of Reason made human reason rational and human knowledge cognisable for the first time.397
We can assume that Friedell first became familiar with the works of Kant in 1897, since this was the year that Friedell began his early studies in philosophy under Kuno Fischer in Heidelberg. Friedell must have read a number of Kant’s works because he also refers to Kant’s “lesser writings”, not just to the three Critiques.398 It is difficult to differentiate the various phases of Friedell’s preoccupation with Kant, since Friedell often interwove older works into newer ones, with the result that any attempt to establish the chronology of Friedell’s texts proves to be difficult.399 Friedell deals most extensively with the Critique of Pure Reason in the Cultural History of the Modern Age, and although he just summarises it broadly, he does so in a precise and informed way. Friedell considered Kant’s unique achievement, and the factor that bestowed real depth to his work, to be a “form of imagination, the likes of which had never before emerged anywhere in the world, at least not to this extreme, even absurd, extent”.400 With his remarkably striking gift for expressing his considerable imaginative power, Kant not only managed to describe in a most realistic way the geographical properties of particular places that he had never seen, but also to describe territories “that not one single person had ever seen before. This territory, which only he was able to discern clearly and precisely, was human reason”.401 Unlike Heinrich Heine’s satirical image of Kant as the destroyer of everything and the disguiser of everything (which draws on Moses Mendelssohn’s moniker of “Kant the destroyer of everything” to make its punch-line),402 Friedell emphasises the basic concordance of the first two Critiques. The Critique of Pure Reason smoothed the path for the postulates in the Critique of Practical Reason. For Friedell, Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason represents the continuation and fulfilment of his theoretical critique, since it allows scope for the belief in the ideas of “God, the soul, freedom and immortality”.403 Friedell is of the view that Kant’s philosophy is “unassailable in its main positions. However, in certain places […] it is not without contradictions and ambiguities”.404 Friedell considered Kant’s transcendental idealism to be unassailable, but regarded some of the details to do with his theories on space and time, as well as the discourse on the thing in itself, to be problematic. In the Cultural History of the Modern Age Friedell makes two notable musical comparisons. In the first he describes Kant’s Prolegomena as the “piano score”405 for the Critique of Pure Reason. In the second he introduces the section on Kant with a reference to the premiere of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo. The premiere was performed in 1781, the same year as the first printing of the Critique of Pure Reason – and so this cannot have been a mere coincidence, given that it was the
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first of Mozart’s operas in a “secular format”.406 For Friedell, making comparisons between philosophical works and works of art was nothing unusual. In another passage in the Cultural History, in the section on Heinrich Ibsen, Friedell develops a cryptically condensed juxtaposition between Ibsen’s Ghosts and Sophokles’ Oedipus: “There is a similar relationship between the cosmogony of Hesiod and Darwin, between Plato’s idea being the primal origin and Kant’s idea being the ultimate objective.”407 Friedell sees a difference in the “dialectic” process, as it is manifested on the one hand in the construction of Oedipus Rex, and on the other hand in the “experimental” process, which he considered to be typical of the Modernists.408 Kant’s Critique of Judgment appears in a rather humorous way in one of Friedell’s articles, entitled Kritik der Natur [Critique of Nature], which was published in 1913 in the Berliner Tageblatt [Berlin Daily]. Friedell jokes in the article that he is currently working on a post-doctoral thesis called the Critique of Nature, which “of course derives from the field of aesthetics”.409 However, Friedell’s Critique has nothing at all in common with Kant’s Critique of Judgment, apart from how it is applied – namely to beauty and to nature. Friedell does not differentiate between the aesthetic and the teleological power of judgment, and the humour arises precisely from this lack of differentiation. Friedell approaches various objects of nature as an art critic would, with the intention of proving them to be ugly, and criticises the antiquated taste of the “producer” – in other words the taste of nature or the creator : “For example, certain things should simply cease to be made, as they conflict directly with the aesthetic needs of the public of today. Nature should understand that it has to focus on the needs of its customers. You can’t force things, and a well-established company like this ought to know that.”410 After remarking that the taste of “the run down professors of aesthetics”411 still had far too much influence on our own taste, and required an “almighty” beauty based on old principles, he ends the essay with a further allusion to Kant: “And just between us – I am also against the rose. But I will be careful not to say that too loudly, because it has the backing of the entire press.”412 Translated by Linda Cassells and Elisabeth Flucher
Kant in the Work of Robert Musil by Christoph Leschanz Robert Musil (1880–1942) Robert Musil was born on 6 November 1880 in Klagenfurt and he died on 15 April 1942 while in exile in Geneva.413 He is amongst the most important Aus-
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trian writers of the 20th century. Above all, the reason for this is his incomplete magnum opus The Man without Qualities [Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften], a book which Musil worked on from the middle of the 1920s until his death.
Fig. 25: Robert Musil in his study in exile in Geneva (1941)
The young Musil spent his early youth in Steyr. After the appointment of his father as Director of Mechanical Engineering at the German Technical University in Brno (1890),414 the family transferred their residence to Moravia. In 1892 Robert Musil entered the Eisenstadt Military Academy (in preparation for a later career as an officer). Two years later he left the Technical Military Academy in Vienna,415 turning his back on a military career and he began to study engineering at the German Technical University in Brno. This followed a one-year volunteer training stint as a Lieutenant in the Austrian Royal and Imperial Army. Musil first began reading Kant in 1902,416 but stopped for a period and eventually began again later.417 For Musil, the most important influence in philosophy was the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, which he began to read in 1898 at the age of eighteen.418 Some years later, when he was twenty-two and looking back on his first reading of Nietzsche he noted on 8 May 1902: “Today borrowed
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two large volumes of Nietzsche from the Franzens Museum. Spontaneously sacred mood, as I first read him! How would he affect me this time?!” A week later he wrote, “Fate: That I for the first time received Nietzsche in my hand at the age of eighteen. Right after my exit from the military. Right at this time in my development.”419 In 1903 there was a new reorientation of the then young engineer and reserve officer. In the Winter Semester of 1903 the twenty-two year-old began to study philosophy and psychology (with minors in mathematics and physics) at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin,420 a study which concluded with his writing on a thesis entitled Contribution to the Evaluation of the Teachings of Mach [Beitrag zur Beurteilung der Lehren Machs] under the supervision of Carl Stumpf, the founder and leader of the Institute for Experimental Psychology in Berlin and also a student of Brentano. As regards Musil’s period of study, Karl Corino writes “What he alone perceived of the lectures and exercises is unknown because there is no trace of it in his study book, accompanying writings or notes etc.” Indeed it is certain that in the period of Musil’s study of philosophy “he attended quite a number of lectures on Kant’s life and teachings and on the Critique of Pure Reason”.421 During his time in Berlin, his first semi-autobiographical novel The Confusions of Young Torless [Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß] was published. A section of this book portrays the young Torless, as a student at a Royal and Imperial military school, engaged in a debate concerning the writings of Kant. The great success of his first novel encouraged Musil to strike out on a career as an independent writer. After his return to Vienna in 1911 Unions [Vereinigungen] was published. With the outbreak of World War I, during which Musil served first as an officer on the Austrian-Italian front and then as editor of a soldier’s magazine from 1916 onwards, following a severe illness, Musil remained an independent writer until his death. After the war, the general financial crisis made further activity as a writer possible only with financial support, first from the Musil Society of Berlin and then from the Viennese Robert Musil Fund.422 In the 1920s and 30s Musil published various writings including in 1921, The Romantics [Die Schwärmer]; in 1928, The Blackbird [Die Amsel] and in 1935, The Remnants of a Lifetime [Nachlaß zu Lebzeiten]. However, he mainly worked on his novel The Man without Qualities, the first volume of which appeared at the end of 1930. The first part of the second volume followed in 1932, with the remaining fragments being published posthumously. In August 1938 Musil and his wife left Austria during its annexation by Nazi Germany. From then on he lived with financial difficulty in exile in Switzerland, where, having been almost completely forgotten, he died on 15 April 1942.
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Musil between Kant and Nietzsche All of Robert Musil’s writings, but especially his major work Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, which remained unfinished at the time of his death, are distinctive because of their many different theories and intellectual propositions. Alongside psychology, philosophy plays a key role in Musil’s thinking as well as his writing. Musil began his studies in philosophy and psychology in 1903 at what was then known as the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and successfully completed his studies in 1908. Without any doubt the most important and most influential philosopher for Musil was Friedrich Nietzsche, whom Musil himself regards as his “starting point”.423 But Musil’s engagement with philosophy by no means stopped there. A certain preoccupation with Kant can, for instance, be detected in several of Musil’s works. His first novel, Die Verwirrung des Zöglings Törleß (1906) is a particularly good example, but so is his paper On Stupidity which he gave in Vienna on 11 and 17 March 1937 and once again on 7 December that year, and which was Musil’s “last discrete publication during his lifetime”.424 There is even a mention of Kant in The Man without Qualities, albeit a minor one.425 “On closer examination of the works of Robert Musil, what is striking is […] a preoccupation which frequently contains a critical engagement with the philosophy of Kant.”426 Even Musil’s discussions on art and aesthetics drew on Kant’s theories – for example Musil’s Skizze der Erkenntnis des Dichters [Sketch on the Knowledge of the Poet] (1918), where he deals with “Kant’s division of philosophy into ‘nature philosophy’ and ‘moral philosophy’”.427 Musil’s first diary entry about Kant can be seen in his diaries and notebooks of 1902. Here we read: “I have not finished reading Kant, but I continue to live feeling reassured and I am not afraid of dying of shame, because I know someone else has already understood the world completely. There are truths, but there is no single truth. I can quite easily assert two contradictory things and be right on both counts. One should not weigh one idea up against another – each has a life of its own. See Nietzsche.”428 His reading of Kant429 was briefly interrupted, and resumed a few months later in June of the same year.430 In this very first diary entry it is obvious that Musil’s thinking was influenced by Nietzsche, but the importance of Nietzsche for his reception of Kant and his engagement with Kant’s work should not be overlooked. It is “important to note that Musil read Nietzsche before he read Kant and Mach, and so his position on Kant and Mach was influenced by Nietzschean standards of judgment.”431 In some ways Kant and Nietzsche were polar opposites, as far as Musil’s thinking was concerned. This is made abundantly clear in his essay Franz Blei, of June 1918, in which he writes: “Kant can be true or false; Epicurus or Nietzsche are not true or false, but alive or dead.”432 For Musil both philosophers had two completely different
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approaches to the world; but of the two of them it was Nietzsche who remained most meaningful to Musil throughout his life. The path to knowledge and to a new life, at least to a new understanding of life (both of these are central themes in Musil’s work, especially in The Man without Qualities) is embodied more through Nietzsche than through Kant. In a paper on Nietzsche and Kant, written about 1901/1902 (so perhaps before his first entries on Kant)433 Musil declared that no truths had been recognised, for, as he noted, “if Kant had truly recognised the truth, then he would not have built any philosophical system on it. If truth can be expressed by such a means, how must the world then appear? We dissatisfied ones would have taken over Kant’s perspective a long time ago, otherwise we would never have been able to bear our lives up until now. […] He was a brooder and an analyser, but he could not produce a unified world view.”434
Kant and Törless – The Military Student and the Great Philosopher In 1906 Robert Musil published his first novel, The Confusions of Young Törless. Drafts for this novel go back as far as 1902.435 The young Törless in Musil’s novel, which has strong biographical overtones, has been educated in a military academy. “To have been brought up in the academy at W. was a great recommendation and opened many doors in the social circles of high society.”436 But after just a short time at the institution, the young student begins to feel uneasy. The rich inner life of Törless stands in bold contrast to the austere life in the military academy. Musil describes his search for intellectual answers in the greatest of detail in his work. Törless appears to be intellectually superior to most of his companions. Only a few seem to share his intellectual interests and curiosity about life and the world. As he searches for answers, the protagonist touches on Kant’s philosophy, and as the novel evolves, comes into conflict with Kant’s thinking. Even Musil’s debut novel The Confusions of Young Törless offers a wealth of insights and perspectives relating to the philosophy of Kant. Not only is the Critique of Pure Reason woven into the novel, but more importantly the Critique of Practical Reason is integrated into the tension points of the narrative.437
The pretext for young Törless’s first engagement with Kant are imaginary numbers in mathematics, which pique his interest, but also leave him searching for any convincing answers. “What is truly remarkable,” the young student remarks in a conversation with a school friend, “is that you can still calculate with imaginary or even impossible values like these and still come to an actual result!”438 In order to escape this dilemma of reality and unreality Törless turns
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to his mathematics professor, who can only give him a rather unsatisfactory answer to his question.439 However, Törless doesn’t let it go and then the professor searched for one final convincing argument in order to bring the matter to a close. On a small table lay a special edition of Kant’s works. The professor lifted it and showed it to Törless. “Look at this book – this is philosophy ; it contains all the elements that determine our negotiation. […] But”, he smiled, as he noticed Törless immediately opening the book and leafing through it, “leave that aside for now. […] It is probably far too difficult for you at the moment.”440
Although Törless was advised not to pursue any further reading of Kant, as his philosophical writings were considered too complex and difficult for the young alumnus, he ignored this recommendation. Instead, this first encounter with Kant’s works is a trigger for the wish to gain a closer understanding of the philosophical ideas that had been presented to the young student as the solution to all problems, for “Törless could only imagine that the problems of philosophy had been solved through Kant, and from then on it had remained a pointless exercise to try to do so, just as he also believed that after Schiller and Goethe there was no point in writing”.441
Fig. 26: Military middle school in Eisenstadt (Burgenland), postcard (around 1900). The boarding school in Musil’s The Confusions of Young Törless is an analogy to this school which the author attended.
The boarding school in Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß is an analogy to this school, which the author attended. Thus for Musil’s protagonist Törless, the encounter with Kant is “first and
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foremost an encounter with a name”.442 Törless knew Kant, but not Kant’s philosophy. Kant therefore belongs in the category of great names, such as Goethe and Schiller, who were considered saints in their field and thus unassailable. The books written by these great names were “at home […] in the cupboard with the green glass doors in Papa’s study, and Törless knew that they would never be opened, except to show them off to visitors. It was like the Holy Shrine of a godhead.”443 The experiences in the novel of the young Törless reflect how Kant was taught in schools at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Musil’s description can therefore be seen as a contemporary critique of the educated bourgeois engagement of the time with authorities [on these matters] that were deemed to be irrefutable. An actual critique is uncalled for ; it was all about absorbing and applying the old values that were widely accepted at the time. However, things did not stop there for the young Törless with this first encounter with Kant, for his interest was aroused by the expectation that the world could be explained through the philosopher’s writings. From that point onwards he sought a closer understanding of these philosophical theories; but this would very soon lead to disappointment, since a certain disillusionment crept in soon after the first superficial engagement with the writings. The very next day he had a bitter disappointment. That morning Törless had bought himself a cheap edition of the book he had seen at his professor’s place, and he began reading it in his first study break. But because of all the brackets and footnotes, he did not understand a word of it, and when he painstakingly followed the sentences with his eyes, he felt as though an old bony hand was unscrewing his brain and removing it from his head.444
At first Törless stubbornly kept going, but all his attempts simply failed and, totally disillusioned, he finally set Kant to one side. One could say that Kant’s strict systematization kept the young Törless from glimpsing the “truth”. One day he was conversing with one of his fellow students about these problems, and the student responded: “These incredibly clever adults have completely spun themselves into a web, with each mesh interweaving with the next, so that the whole looks like a natural miracle; but nobody knows where that first mesh that holds everything together really is.”445 Kant, to whom Musil refers elsewhere as the “great systematizer of this epoch [by which he means German Classicism, CL]”446 offers not a glimpse of any solutions. Kant was just a “brooder and an analyser, but he could not produce a unified world view.”447 In the same sketch Musil points to the major difference between Kant and Nietzsche when he says: “If N. were to have built a system out of his aphorisms, how baseless it would have been. It is apparent in the continuation of his thinking in his followers. One should not weigh ideas up against one another.”448 What is clearly discernible
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here is what would develop into the idea of the Möglichkeitsmensch [“person of possibilities”], something that would emerge later in The Man without Qualities. This “person of possibilities” does not for example say : this or that happened, will happen, must happen; instead he wonders: this could, should or might happen; and when someone explains something to him and says it is what it is, then he thinks: Well, it could probably have been quite different.449
Törless is nonetheless quite a long way off this concept. Confusion and disappointment are the main things going on for him. The constructs of reasoning in mathematics and philosophy clash with the reality of his life and he cannot find a way out of this situation – not even through Kant, who just makes everything more complicated. Moreover, Törless does not want to understand the world through science, he wants to understand something in himself. He is dealing with something natural in himself which he cannot quite grasp.450 Once again, this can be detected in later passages in The Man without Qualities that take up those thoughts again: Like the young Törless in The Man without Qualities, or Ulrich who appears later in the novel, Musil commits himself to a form of reasoning that requires a negotiation of thought processes, rather than a form of reasoning that relies on a judgmental intellect. These thought negotiations nonetheless have some latitude in that they are still oriented towards the categories of possible cognition, but negate any rigid claims to causality in the sense of cause and effect.451
Instead of turning to Kant again, Törless brings his engagement with his philosophy to an end, and so the “episode with Kant” after a brief time “is almost completely overcome.”452 In the end Kant and his philosophy do not lead Törless to any great revelation, nor do they offer any answers to the questions that are so pressing to him. Instead, the young student in the story experiences philosophy more as a bitter disappointment, because it cannot offer him the solutions he is seeking. What is, moreover, striking is that during the writing of the novel the author himself also abruptly turned away from Kant, even noting, as mentioned at the beginning of this article: “I have not finished reading Kant, but I continue to live feeling reassured.”453 Even here there are similarities between Musil and the protagonist of his novel, although one does have to be careful not to attribute this circumstance to the other with haste or exclusivity. The fact that the protagonist stops his reading of Kant was not necessarily caused by Musil no longer reading Kant. Such a simplification falls well short of the mark. However, there is no doubt that Musil was engaged with Kant’s writing, and even if he eventually rejected it, this is no reason to underestimate its importance. His rejection of it was perhaps inevitable, because “for Musil philosophy as a science of systems was a way of
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limiting cognition.”454 Musil’s preoccupation with Kant was an important building block in establishing this view which runs through Musil’s major later work, The Man without Qualities like a thread. Translated by Linda Cassells and James Garrison
Franz Kafka – The Forgotten Peace by Caroline Scholzen On 14 March 1916, in the middle of the First World War, the Prague author and journalist Max Brod published an article about Kant’s essay Zum ewigen Frieden [Perpetual Peace] in the newspaper Die Schaubühne [The Stage]. In it he recommended that readers return to this “little booklet” to have their minds refreshed with the contents, because it was full of genuine insights and, observed afresh, apparently had great relevance today ; they would do well “to listen to such words, as they sound quite incredible today”.455 Brod makes comparisons between Kant’s descriptions of “political moralists” and the current war policy, noting pointedly : At this time it seems that all war mongers are of the opinion that the current political considerations have nothing whatsoever to do with ethics; ethical principles are just used to put a gloss on diplomatic notes; and the statesman who has anything other than his unashamed brutal advantage in mind is seen as a fool not to be taken seriously. […] Meanwhile, everywhere you look, that particular sense of a humanity that extends to the supra-national and supra-state appears to have slipped into oblivion. And now if we turn to the steadfast words of the venerable Kant, he declares that ‘political maxims do not proceed from the expected benefits of their implementation and the felicity of each individual state, but rather from the pure concept of legal duty – no matter what the physical consequences might be’.456
On 27 October 1917 Franz Kafka attended a lecture in Komotau given by his friend Max Brod.’457 A letter which has not been preserved from Felice Bauer written to Kafka that same month must have included a quote from Kant’s Friedensschrift [Zum ewigen Frieden, Perpetual Peace]. In the critical edition of Kafka’s letters, published by Hans-Gerd Koch, the editor makes the assumption that in her letter Felice Bauer gave a summary of the first of the Preliminary Articles of Perpetual Peace, which reads as follows: No peace agreement should be valid when material is secretly withheld for use in a future war.458
Kafka replied to this letter on 16 October 1917, and would appear to make reference to this sentence when he writes at the end of his letter :
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Fig. 27: Franz Kafka
I have no knowledge of Kant, but the sentence should only apply to peoples; it has barely any relevance to civil wars or ‘interior wars’; in these cases it is the kind of peace that would only be of interest to ashes [of the dead]. – Franz459
Fig. 28: Letter, Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer on 16 October 1917
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By “Kant” he must be referring metonymically to this particular essay, and we can assume the denial of any knowledge of Kant is just an unexpected pun, since Kafka did in fact know the works of Kant. His reading of Schopenhauer and his participation in the Hugo Bergmann study group supports this assumption, as does the “book lists” he made of his library, in which he entered: “Kant Philosophical Paperback Collection”.460 The status of these book lists is however unclear, since Kafka compiled listings of this sort “for a variety reasons”. Jürgen Born, a literary studies expert, offers the following explanation for Kafka’s library cataloguing. “Some [lists] were carefully compiled, some were sketchily noted or given in a letter.”461 In the extract of the letter quoted above, it is nonetheless possible to work out that Kafka was familiar with Kant’s Peace Project: Kafka’s sentence structure uses the same ambiguous expression “perpetual peace” as Kant uses in the opening of his essay Perpetual Peace. At the very beginning of the essay Kant refers to the fact that he has taken its title from a “satirical” sign outside a public house. When discussing the contemporary political situation he criticises the “heads of state who cannot get enough of war” by questioning the validity claim of this “heading”.462 In his commentary to the 6th Preliminary Article he uses the ambiguous expression “perpetual peace” when arguing for a ban on any war of extermination, when he says: “perpetual peace would only be truly found in the vast graveyard of the human species.”463 The construction and commentary of the Preliminary Article is based on the acceptance of two different states of law existing at the same time – the natural state of law in the changing interrelationship between nations, and the civic law that exists within individual nations.464 Kant argues for example in his Rechtslehre [Metaphysical Elements of Justice: Part I of The Metaphysics of Morals] that “natural law transitions into civil law”;465 however in his short statement on Kant, Kafka questions the transition of states of law that Kant set out. To Kafka the jurist, a two-pronged state of law is not only a “questionable Pleonasm”, but a wish “to be turned to ashes”. Kafka expands the question posed by Kant on the validity claim of “Perpetual Peace” by including “inner wars” and “civil wars”. Unlike Kant, Kafka does not take it as a given that the basic premise for “Perpetual Peace” rests on a republican constitution. By means of a literal concretising of the phrase “Perpetual Peace” he queries the fact that Kant, in the Preliminary Articles of his essay on peace, appears to have forgotten the anthropological prerequisites of human beings, which Kant himself prescribed as necessary for the development of civil society. It would be easy to overlook in this brief section of the letter that Kafka uses the expression “inner wars” in inverted commas; by doing so he acknowledges that this is a quote from Kant, and at the same time emphasises the semantic unity of the term “inner wars”, thereby giving it a particular emphasis. Kafka might have been alluding here to another meaning of “inner wars” while still maintaining his reference to Kant.
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The concepts of “inner and outer war” and “inner and outer peace” were used by Kant himself.466 In Perpetual Peace and in the Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht [Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View] he argues that the “inner war” is a type of war through which nature guarantees the establishment of a republican constitution and a civil society.467 This “inner war” is the result of the “unsocial sociability of human beings”, which Kant expands upon in the Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View : The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men. By ‘antagonism’ I mean the unsocial sociability of men, i. e., their propensity to enter into society, bound together with a mutual opposition which constantly threatens to break up the society. Man has an inclination to associate with others, because in society he feels himself to be more than man, i. e., as more than the developed form of his natural capacities. But he also has a strong propensity to isolate himself from others, because he finds in himself at the same time the unsocial characteristic of wishing to have everything go according to his own wish. Thus he expects opposition on all sides because, in knowing himself, he knows that he, on his own part, is inclined to oppose others.468
In Perpetual Peace Kant regards this antagonism, which is a pre-condition for establishing a civil society, as a legal problem to be solved through the division of powers; on the other hand, in the Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View he considers a “complete” solution to the tension between isolation and sociability to be “impossible”.469 Coming close to a solution is something Nature requires; but man remains “an animal which, if it lives among others of its kind, requires a master.”470 Kafka not only expanded this statement, but rewrote it in 1920 in some brief untitled notes: “The animal wrests the whip from the master and whips himself in order to become master, and knows not that it is all a mere fantasy that comes from a new knot in the strands of the whip.”471 This rewriting critically points out that, as a general basis of law, man internalises the master, who, according to Kant, “will break his will and force him to obey a will that is universally valid, under which each can be free.”472 The “war” between sociability and unsociability, between community and ownership, is for Kafka an inner war, for the individual internalises what is forbidden and what is binding in society.473 Joseph Vogl, the literary and cultural theorist and historian, regards Kafka’s clever retort about Kant as delineating two “end points and blind spots of civic moral philosophy : on the one hand is the depletion of the individual by universal law, and on the other hand is the unfulfilled demand for self-assertion.”474 According to Vogl, Kafka constantly raises questions about individuality in his writing, “which escapes the juxtaposition of the individual and society, but resists the resolution of this difference.”475 A frag-
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ment of writing from the year 1916, written in the style of a constitution, thus begins with the words: “Every person is idiosyncratic and is called upon to act on the strength of his individual idiosyncrasies, but he also has to find pleasure in these idiosyncrasies.”476 A person’s right to individual idiosyncrasies is demonstrated by a scene in Kafka’s fragmentary novel Der Verschollene [The Man Who Disappeared]. Kafka worked repeatedly on this novel from 1911–1915. The main protagonist, Karl, has an interview with the “Nature Theatre of Oklahoma”, which advertises on its poster that everyone is welcome. The application process takes place on a race track and turns out to be an identification process in which two hundred legal offices require documents for the candidate’s current job. Karl has no identity card and is sent from one place to another. He is constantly assured that he has no need to feel unsettled, because the theatre has a job for everyone.477 In the last office he is accepted without further ado by the “clerk” who has the “upper hand”478 over the theatre’s director. Even the name “Negro”, which Karl gives as his own, is written into the registration book.479 The clerk in the last office, where Karl finds “refuge”,480 accepts someone who has not been authenicated during the procedure as Rossmann (Karl’s surname [literally translates as “horseman”]). In this scene, where a Rossmann is given the name “Negro” on a racecourse, Kafka demands the absolute right to hospitality, something which can no longer be guaranteed through being a member of a family or a nation.481 He thus promotes a concept of “hospitality” which is at odds with that developed by Kant as a condition of the law of world citizenship – remarkably by limiting this right to a right to visit. In the third definitive article of his essay Perpetual Peace, Kant writes the following: It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabitant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have [.]482
What Kafka had in mind was a society in which people are hospitable to each other without the need for formal contracts, which only run the risk of containing covert egoistical provisos. The writer Oskar Baum, who was a close friend of Kafka’s, tells of a visit he and Kafka made to Kafka’s sister in Zürau, and of a plan Kafka had to write “a small fantastical story”: A man wishes to establish a sort of gathering of people who come together without being specifically invited. People see, talk to and observe one another but without knowing each other. The gathering focuses around food, where each person can choose for himself according to his personal taste, without it being bothersome to anyone else. You can turn up and leave again as you please, you are not obliged to any landlord or host, and you are quite genuinely welcome at all times. At the end of the story this weird idea actually
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Fig. 29: Franz Kafka, drawings
becomes a reality, and the reader then realises that what this attempt at providing some relief for the lonely has brought about – is the inventor of the first coffee houses.483
Many scenes in Kafka’s work are set in unsociable public houses, and Kafka keeps introducing strangers to these houses to allow them entry. However, the unknown person without any papers is given short shrift, and it is made abundantly clear to him (as in Kafka’s last, unfinished novel, Das Schloss [The Castle]) that: “hospitality is not our custom here; we have no use for visitors.”484 For Kafka you cannot respond to the hostile tension of the mutual observation with a right to hospitality, the regulation of which requires a basis of understanding and identity. Before and during the First World War, Czech, Austrian and German journalists and artists focused on a version of Kant’s philosophy,
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criticising contemporary natural sciences and the political ideologies of Liberalism – but Kafka’s reading of Kant went further than that.485 Rather, Kafka attempts to redefine Kant’s concept of “hospitality” in his work. He faces the “inner wars” by writing relentlessly about the communication between people who meet each other in an unprejudiced way, without either of them assuming the role of observing the person opposite them. On 27 January 1922, four years after the end of the First World War, Kafka writes in his diary : The remarkable, the mysterious, perhaps even the precarious or the liberating consolation of writing: leaping out of murderers’ row – action/observation, action/observation – so that a higher form of observation is achieved; a higher, not a more acute, form of observation; and the higher and more unattainable it is from murderers’ row, the more unpredictable, joyful and steep is its path.486
It is not difficult to acknowledge the relevance of Kafka’s literature; however, it seems that “nowadays”, especially on the borders of Europe, the ideas of “supranational and supra-state humanity and morality”487 (for the sake of which Max Brod called for a rereading of Kant) still remain largely forgotten. Translated by Linda Cassells
The “Decline” of the Prague Circle by Caroline Scholzen “We’ll now move on to Kant’s critique of pure reason, which is really a critique of pure unreason.”488 According to Max Brod, this is how at the beginning of the last century, “raising his index finger with a ‘delicate’ smile”, Professor Anton Marty began his introduction to Kant’s philosophy at the Charles University in Prague in the context of his annual lecture course on the philosophy of history. Max Brod recalls a transcript from the lecture course that was circulated among students, in which the introduction to Kant’s philosophy contains a note: “Laughter.” In reaction to this laughter, “surprised once again by it every year, the Professor raised his eyes from his manuscript and was mildly pleased.”489 Anton Marty, who had been offered a chair at the Charles University in Prague in 1880 and who continued to teach there until 1913, had studied with Franz Brentano in Würzburg.490 According to Brod, he showed “unconditional loyalty” towards his teacher Brentano. Brod claims that Brentano and Marty acknowledged “only very few” philosophers, “who were considered to be Brentano’s predecessors and whose works were studied diligently.”491 Kant was clearly not one of them as Brentano regarded Kant’s philosophy as carrying a “core” of “doom.”492 Apparently, Kant’s philosophy had also triggered the “decline” of philosophy in modern times.493 In Marty’s seminars, a circle of “Brentanists” soon began to
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form.494 Apart from the “Brentanists”, in the summer semester of 1902 a certain Franz Kafka and a lady named Berta Fanta, who ran a salon in Prague, also attended one of Marty’s lectures.495 Unlike Kafka, who due to his disappointment with German studies in Prague soon ceased to attend lectures in the humanities and in philosophy496 and from the winter semester 1902/03 onwards solely focused on his legal studies, Berta Fanta describes Georg Gimpl as someone who was caught very soon by the enthusiasm for Brentano that emanated from the closer circle of colleagues and disciples around Marty. […] It wouldn’t be long until Prague would call into existence a loose association of devotees to the Master’s works, who would dedicate themselves solely to studying his teachings and who would initially gather primarily at Fanta’s salon at the Old Town Circle or at her summer residence, a villa in Podbaba.497
The reading and study groups met at Fanta’s house at the same time as the already established discussion groups that gathered at Caf¦ Louvre.498 While Caf¦ Louvre hosted the “representatives of the German university”, whose discussions were determined “almost exclusively”499 by the teachings of Franz Brentano, the evenings in Fanta’s house were characterised by openness towards other sciences: As if in compensation, what was ‘tabu’ at the Louvre (Kant, the theory of relativity) casually became the centre of attention in the more private, unofficial environment of Fanta’s house […]. Caf¦ Louvre and Fanta’s old […] town house and pharmacy ‘Zum Einhorn’ at the Old Town Circle: These were two stages that may have hosted some of the same actors (not all, just some), but whose repertoires were chosen according to very different principles.500
The areas of science that were dealt with at Berta Fanta’s salon ranged from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity – he was also among Fanta’s guests – to Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy.501 In addition, in 1910 a new reading and study group formed around Samuel Hugo Bergmann, Berta Fanta’s son-in–law. A friend of Kafka’s at grammar school, Bergmann had at the time already submitted his postdoctoral thesis for his habilitation at Charles University. However, there was a delay with his habilitation, due to the low regard in which Brentano held Bolzano’s writings.502 Bergmann was planning to apply for positions at other universities and founded his own study circle in order to prepare for the areas of philosophy that would be prevalent at other institutions. Unlike Kafka, who rarely attended this study circle, Kafka’s friends Max Brod and Felix Weltsch regularly went to the readings.503 Bergmann’s study circle was a meeting point for several circles of writers, philosophers and journalists, which Max Brod subsequently called the “Prague Circle” and at the centre of which he positioned himself.504 Brod describes the evenings with Bergmann as follows: Under Hugo Bergmann’s guidance and with Felix Weltsch’s particularly lively participation, we read out, page by page, the books ‘Prolegomena zu einer künftigen
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Metaphysik’ (‘Prolegomena to a Future Metaphysics’) and then ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ (‘Critique of Pure Reason’). We did not read further until all that had been read had been thought through and understood. […] Some things, however, were only excerpted, but it was the duty of each single person to privately read the ‘omitted’ parts in extenso. Reading these two books took up our Tuesday evenings for two full years. Then followed a year of reading Fichte’s ‘Wissenschaftslehre’ (‘Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre’), then another year of reading, more fleetingly, Hegel’s ‘Phänomenologie des Geistes’ (‘Phenomenology of Spirit’). Never in my whole life had I studied so thoroughly and with such joy as I did at Fanta’s house. Bergmann’s always superior and thorough instructions were the main reason for my pleasure.505
Franz Brentano and Anton Marty are outraged about their promising disciple Bergmann’s new philosophical interests and his study circle.506 Bergmann’s study of Kant is soon addressed in Brentano’s and Bergmann’s correspondence. Brentano tries to refute Bergmann’s analyses recurrently and at length. In addition, he makes it very clear to him that his interest in Kant will have consequences for his professional development.507 He regards the study of Kant as “a contagious disease”,508 which can be nothing but harmful for a “young man.”509 In other letters, Brentano regrets Bergmann’s deviation “from the path of true scientific research.”510 In his final letters, he tries again to convince Bergmann of the fact that Kant “has paved the way for the subsequent degeneration of German philosophy and that Kant is essentially to be held responsible for it.”511 Furthermore, he accuses Bergmann of creating a new “disaster.”512 Initially, Bergmann politely fends off this criticism, but he soon develops more self-confidence and criticises his teachers more directly.513 Holding on to his interest in and engagement with Kant’s philosophy, Bergmann will later, as rector of the University of Jerusalem, translate Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason (1947)] and Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment (1960)] into Hebrew together with Nathan Rotenstreich. Translated by Katharina Walter
Ingeborg Bachmann – The Language of the Heavenly Bodies by Caroline Scholzen The nameless female “I” figure514 in the novel Malina makes a list of reading material from her study years which begins with the Critique of Pure Reason; she matches the works she has read with a wattage statement indicating the extrinsic turnover of energy per timespan for reading those works. According to this register, the reading of the Critique of Pure Reason scored 60 watts, “Kafka, Rimbaud and Blake” 25 watts and “Freud, Adler and Jung” 360 watts. Notes and
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Fig. 30: Barbara Ruppel, Transformation – Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, medal, silver casting (2007)
scripts, on the other hand, were marked in degrees rather than in watts.515 Unlike reading works that have already been written, when it comes to generating writing, it is not the turnover of energy delimited by space and time that is significant, but rather the thermodynamic equilibrium stating the ambient temperature. In order to keep on calculating this equation, a “degree of having to think”516 is reached at the end of the novel which escalates and becomes lifethreatening for the “I” figure. At the end of Malina Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason once again is connected with the necessity of thinking and the heightened danger for the thinking “I”. Before dealing any further with this connection, however, it should be pointed out that Kant’s writings are not mentioned specifically anywhere in Malina, apart from in the list of readings alluded to above – which in itself is syntactically dynamic because of the Icarus-like participial constructions without a subject. It is still legitimate to discuss Bachmann’s analysis of Kant’s philosophy and its literary implementation, which cannot be found in direct references but in literary quotations that – as Bachmann repeatedly emphasised – have the character of dialogues. By referencing extracts from her story Das dreißigste Jahr [The Thirtieth Year], her Frankfurter Poetik Vorlesungen [Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics] of the Winter Semester of 1959/1960, and her novel Malina which appeared in 1970, an attempt will be made in the following article to grapple with this analysis. As the nameless female “I” figure of the novel Malina explains (because there is another authorial voice in the novel Malina in addition to the main protagonist who narrates in the first person, we cannot refer to a first-person narrator), shortly before the viva exam for her doctoral thesis, she prevented a fire in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna:
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Fig. 31: Heinz Bachmann, Ingeborg Bachmann (1962)
In the morning […] all the embers spilled out of the oven at the Philosophical Institute, […] it was burning and smoking terribly, I didn’t want a fire, I tramples the embers with my feet, the stench stayed in the institute for days, my shoes were singed, but nothing burned down. I also opened all the windows.517
Although it was agreed that Kant’s philosophy would be covered in the exam (which began on time in spite of the fire), the exam took a turn “still quite far from Kant himself”.518 In order to steer the exam interview towards the agreed topic, she had to ask an “anxious question” about the “problem of time and space”.519 She was not aware at that time of the huge meaning this question would hold for her from then onwards. She stresses that later she “never did solve”520 the “problem relating to time and space”, and she could only determine the unit of time for what she was explaining under “tremendous duress”.521 She labelled this unit as “today”, even though she is convinced that one had to destroy everything immediately : Actually, anything written about Today should be destroyed immediately, just like all real letters are crumpled or torn up, unfinished and unmailed, all because they were written, but cannot arrive, Today. Whoever has composed an intensely fervent letter only to tear it to shreds and throw it away knows exactly what is meant by ‘today’.522
The “I” figure even harbours “deepest sympathy” for the mailman Otto Kranewitzer, who for months instead of delivering letters, hoarded them in his flat.
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She regards it as being to Kranewitzer’s moral credit that the recipient’s timebound requirement to communicate something and to reach someone, was not revealed to the fading embers in the schematised and temporal form of mediated thinking.523 Ingeborg Bachmann’s literature stems from these very extreme efforts, in which the individual, when faced with the indifferent general form of logical-conceptual language, tries to make themselves perceptible as a separate voice and to say something particular.524 According to Bachmann the “I” finds no support either in the world or in its concepts of this world. In Bachmann’s story The Thirtieth Year, she writes: Thoughts are not halted and there is no tool for their extension. It is all the same, too, whether one flies left or right through space, since everything is already flying, the earth for instance, and if flight is in flight it is all the better that it flies and rotates, so that we know how very much it rotates and that there is nothing to hold onto anywhere, not in the starry sky above you…525
In this extract it is not just the famous “starry sky” that is one of the two things which, according to Kant, engages contemplation “more often and persistently”,526 but it is contemplation itself that is labelled as without a foothold. In her Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics Bachmann explains that a speaker at a distance of only ten meters can be “a galaxy away” from another “I”.527 This distance is grossly exaggerated through the “physical disappearance of the speaking person”528 in the media of the relaying of their speaking, so that there remains “only” a sentence “of an ‘I’ without liability”,529 without any guarantee that the specific individual speaker really exists.530 According to Bachmann, one has to exert oneself, despite and by means of the anonymous generality of the existing “bad” language and to manoeuvre this in the direction of another language, which has “as yet no governance”.531 By twisting a quote from Kant, Bachmann develops and illustrates her conviction of language’s capacity for inversion: immediately after the extract quoted above, the voice of the narrator in the story The Thirtieth Year refers to the figure about whom she is narrating as “you”. In this “you”, she further maintains, flows a “stubborn, sticky mush of old questions that have nothing to do with flying, and launching pads”532 in which one can steer the rudder “only jerkily and hardly perceptibly”.533 Here Bachmann is referencing the “helmsman’s art”534 as postulated in Kant’s philosophy, however she no longer bases these on “definite principles”535 or orders, but on an abrupt/sudden transformation of one’s own thinking and speaking. As the narrative voice in The Thirtieth Year puts it, instead of stirring up the inner “mush of old questions”,536 one has to adopt a “secret of rotability”537 in language that belongs to the outer world, through which there always remains a different way of moving on and in the “old” mush. The narrative voice calls upon her main protagonist to take this sudden change in direction. At this point the enforced inversive form of
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language actually serves to illustrate this request, since the inner (that is, the “you”) form of her figure’s narrative voice appears to address the individual reader of this story. The “secret of rotability” is thus not found through an attempt at philosophical justification, but through the mediation of indeterminate general language, which is determined by each individual speaker and each individual recipient. As far as Bachmann is concerned, the internal space of the “I” (which according to Kant is found in moral law) remains artificially illuminated, as long as the general “I” is not addressed as a defined “you”, and established through this form of address as a living and active voice in the outer world. In her Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics, Bachmann refers to the “I” as a “heavenly body” which we always have to navigate towards, even when “its position and path are never quite clear and the composition of its core is unknown”.538 While she takes the “I” from its alleged space and attaches it to the “heavenly body”, recalling Kant’s famous quote,539 the rotability of the opening of Nietzsche’s essay Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne [On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense] is also tested. That single minute after which the star of “clever animals”540 then “grew cold”, with which Nietzsche begins his essay, Bachmann then turns back on the “I” while releasing the “core” of this “I” in exactly the opposite direction and identifies it as something that is externally composed. Ultimately for Bachmann, self-knowledge is relevant only with respect to when the speaker can be heard, since literature is determined by a thought which “with language and through language wants to achieve something.”541 While Kant describes linguistic signs as “characters” that mean nothing or as “guardians” of concepts,542 Bachmann insists, on the contrary, on the character of these “characters” and on the significance of their guardianship, for what they are capable of protecting in spite of general and indifferent signs or gestures. She explains it as follows: There is no final statement. The miracle of the ‘I’ is that it lives wherever it speaks; it cannot die – whether it is beaten or in doubt, without credibility and mutilated – this ‘I’ without liability! And when no-one believes him, and when it does not believe itself, one has to believe him, it must believe itself, just as it begins, as it has its say, detaches from the uniform chorus, from the silent gathering, whoever it may be, whatever it may be. And it will have its triumph, today and forever – as the placeholder of the human voice.543
According to Bachmann it is the vitality of an “I” behind every written and spoken word that remains “without reason”, that cannot be recognised, and represents the limits of that thinking. The principium reddendae rationis of the “principle of sufficient reason” – the imagined objectivity of beings always as a “delivered” reason – for Bachmann, who wrote her dissertation on Heidegger,544 is not a “principle of being” (as it was for Heidegger) under which the being
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“remains without reason”.545 She makes a stand against speech that strives for cognition over a being that could be found separately and “in itself” in language. Moreover, she tries to protect the unjustified mutual justifications of the person being addressed from destructive inquiries and invasive attempts at justification. The fact that people respond “without reason” and attempt to bring about [something] is for her reason enough for the human being – a reason without a reason, a “heaven as abyss”,546 in which you cannot be incinerated. The main characters in her later work especially develop an undreamt of indifference towards any attempt at wanting to understand through concepts or even judge them using set phrases. They confront the indifferent linguistic forms of expression towards a particular speaker with an equally stark indifference. In this way they protect themselves from being dominated by their own concepts which they have to use in order to speak of themselves and to talk. In one of her last poems Bachmann has the lyrical “I” ask sceptically whether his thoughts should be arrested and brought to a “lit prison cell of the sentence”;547 and one striking feature of the “I” figure in the novel Malina is her self-assuredness towards her language. The “I” figure struggles in her dreams for her right to her own life.548 In a dream her father locks the “I” figure in a prison cell and attempts to take away her sentences. In this he is unsuccessful: Crouched in a corner, without water, I know my sentences won’t leave me and that they are mine by right. My father looks through a peephole, […] he’d like to stare my sentences away and take them from me, but in the greatest thirst, after my last hallucinations, I know he is watching me die without words, I have completely hidden the words inside their sentence, which is forever safe and secret from my father, so tightly do I hold my breath. My tongue is hanging out, but it does not reveal a single word.549
With this game of hide and seek and of words, veiling her sentences in the sentence of reason, the “I” figure, in a sentence cell in a prison, sticks to her sentences “without reason”. Even when she is imprisoned in her language, she does not allow her thoughts to be taken prisoner. At the same time she is completely indifferent to whether people understand her or what they think of her.550 She knows that she is alive so long as someone wants to reach her, so long as someone gives her a reason to exist without reason. For the female narrator this someone is the reader, whereas for the “I” figure it is her lover. From then on she tries to discourage her lover from declaring their relationship is over : “[I shake my head and lie down beside him,] gently stroking his face, without stopping, so that he has to pause to think about it, straining, so that he won’t find the words for the end.”551 The “I” figure wants nothing whatsoever to do with him, with the groundlessness of human love and the capacity for relationships; she wants to know she is protected from every “little nuance of meaning”. However, before she refuses
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those inquiries in her last meeting with Ivan, she reads the following sentence in a book whose title is not given: It is pointless to feign indifference in the light of such research, the results of which cannot but touch human nature.552
The reference here is to a quote from the Preface of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, reproduced in its entirety (something very unusual for the novel). In the quoted piece Kant refers to the “complete indifferentism”553 that metaphysics is met with in the arena of “endless contests”554 between dogmatics, sceptics, and empiricists. He defends mankind’s striving for knowledge as “a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks – that of self-examination”.555 By contrast, Bachmann appears to demand something different with this quote and the way it contrasts with the scene of the last encounter between the lovers: it is not knowledge and cognition that is to be an object, but human communication, something “human nature cannot be indifferent to”.556 Whereas later the “I” figure does not attempt to hide her sentences, but rather Ivan’s letters, it is her flatmate Malina who is reading the Critique of Pure Reason. The same sentence from the preface is quoted once again. While Malina reads, he tries to fake indifference towards the purpose of the “I” figure hiding Ivan’s letters. However, he does not succeed in doing this, and he then performatively confirms Bachmann’s “twisting” of the Kantian claim: he does not probe, does not ask for reasons, nor does he remain indifferent to the “I” figure’s last quest for a reason through the letters of her lover. He closes the book straightaway and asks the “I” figure if she is ready.557 She answers that she is, since she has not only finished hiding Ivan’s letters, but she has also finished telling unjustified needlessly justified stories about herself in everyday language. Now, since she can no longer call her lover, and he no longer tries to contact her and she is no longer given a reason without reason, she becomes the object of her own speaking, is captured by her own concepts and is in danger of murdering herself: I stand in front of the stove and wait until the water starts to boil, I fill the filter with a few spoonfuls of coffee and think and am still thinking, I must have reached a point where thought is so necessary it is no longer possible, I pull my head back, I’m so hot because my face is too near to the hot plate on the stove.558
But she can still prevent the fire, just as she did in the Department of Philosophy in Vienna. She does not burn and turns the switch on the stove back to zero. Unlike the main protagonist in the short story The Thirtieth Year, the “I” figure does not break down because of her thoughts.559 She is not in danger of being incinerated in the form that that generally prevails over her, but rather figures as an “I” that can be in her linguistic-conceptual prison by means of telling the
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story of her relationship. In the very moment that the “today” of this relationship dissipates (and with it her definitive statement of reasons), she asks Malina to take over her story.560 He represents with his name the novel in which she can tell [the reader] about herself. The novel is, nonetheless, a composition of general concepts, which exists indifferently in relation to the many moments of “today” in which it will be told and read until its end. And so Malina destroys and hides everything that could reveal any trace of an individual “I”. When Ivan wishes to speak with the “I” figure one more time after all, Malina refuses to make her accessible and denies her existence. Ivan’s investigations come too late and are pointless. Translated by Linda Cassells
Thomas Bernhard’s Immanuel Kant by Sebastian Schneck Thomas Bernhard was born on 9 February 1931. His early childhood years were spent with his grandparents, with whom he moved in March 1935 to Seekirchen near Salzburg. He later portrayed these as the happiest years of his life. His grandfather, Johannes Freumbichler, became his central reference person and his spiritual and intellectual mentor. Through Bernhard’s youth, the family environment was defined by the literary vocation pursued passionately, but unsuccessfully, by his grandfather. This childhood idyll came to an end in January 1938 when Bernhard’s mother took him to live with her in the small Bavarian town of Traunstein, with some consolation from the fact that his grandparents moved soon afterwards to the neighbouring town. This marked the beginning of a series of traumatic experiences in state education and youth institutions, culminating in autumn 1941 when he was sent for a few months to a Nationalist Socialist “home for difficult children” in Thuringia. From 1943 he lived in a boarding school, the Johanneum-Internat in Salzburg, where he attended the Hauptschule, graduating in summer 1945. After a year at the Humanities Academic Secondary School [Humanistisches Gymnasium] he was not moved up to the next class, and left school in April 1947.561 He then started a commercial apprenticeship with the grocer Karl Podlaha in one of Salzburg’s less reputable districts: My grandfather had been my instructor in solitude and self-reliance, whereas Podlaha taught me how to get on with other people […]. With my grandfather I had attended a ‘school of philosophy’ at an ideal (very early) age, whereas Podlaha […] provided a school on the largest possible scale, in absolute reality. These two ‘schools’ from my early years defined the course of my future life, and, each supplementing the other, they remain the foundation of my development to this day.562
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His apprenticeship came to an abrupt end in January 1949, on his admission to the regional hospital with a stubborn chill ailment. This developed into a lung disease from which he was never entirely free for the rest of his life. His grandfather died unexpectedly on 11 February 1949, at a time when Bernhard himself was embarking on a two-year odyssey through a succession of hospitals and sanatoria.563 He then resumed the quest for an education and a career, first by learning the craft of journalism as a freelance reporter for the Demokratisches Volksblatt newspaper, and then, from October 1955 to June 1957, by successfully completing a course in the drama seminar of the Salzburg Mozarteum, in the subject of directing.564
Fig. 32: Thomas Bernhard
But Bernhard’s educational path was essentially not an institutional one. On the contrary, he experienced state schools as institutions designed to curb the pupils’ spirit and instil an attitude of unthinking hierarchical obedience. He attributed his success in gaining entry to the world of culture in spite of this offence to his spirit to his admiration for his grandfather, and the inclination towards culture the latter had stimulated in him. He had awoken the young Bernhard’s interest in philosophy, and continued to define his philosophical agenda into adulthood. It was his grandfather who introduced Bernhard to the
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worlds of reading and thought from which he later drew the characters in his works throughout his literary career: Being acutely aware of everything that my grandfather had pointed out and drawn to my attention, I can describe that time with him as the only real school from which I had any benefit, leaving its imprint on me for my entire life, because it was he and no other who taught me what life was, and familiarised me in its ways […]. All the knowledge I have can be traced back to this man who defined my life and existence in every way, who himself had been through the school of Montaigne, as I then went through his.565
Bernhard weaves Kant’s name into the description of his amazement as a child at the sight of his grandfather’s library, crammed into his exiguous study. The names of three philosophers in particular featured as portals, each in turn opening out into its own world: “Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer were familiar names for me, behind which a monstrous, awe-inspiring presence lay hidden.”566 So it is that protagonists repeatedly mention in Bernhard’s novels the names of authors or book titles, pointing up a significance not to be underestimated and sounding limitless depths of meaning, yet without any explicit reference in the context of the novel or suggestion that the reader should follow the thought of a particular philosophical work. The authors and books in question become charged with a magical potential of meaning, functioning as talismans or contact points for endless exploration and study.567 Bernhard confronts his readers with excessive, exuberant monologues from the perspective of the characters on the way of the world and the meaning of existence within it. Rather than being quoted from or referenced to external sources, philosophical thoughts are as if autonomously formulated by the characters themselves. At the same time, their speeches are strewn with gems that could just as easily have come from Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard.568 Bernhard’s ideas on the practical utility of philosophy can be found scattered through many different texts. Often being cast back on his own resources, he says, he had to be trained in the arts of “defence against all attacks, […] hindrance and frustration. My grandfather, my private philosopher, had laid the foundation in me for achieving this.”569 Reminiscences of his grandfather can be perceived in the failed intellectuals who are the central characters of Bernhard’s early novels. His grandfather’s life had been characterised by indefatigable, manic creative endeavour, spurning any contact with other people in the outside world. But his rejection of social contact and any gainful occupation was matched by their supreme indifference to his writings. Renouncing any material comforts, he duly condemned himself to a life of sitting at home writing, completely divorced from the doings of the world and cast back on his own resources, through wartime and into the post-war years. And his family was expected to subordinate their needs to these endeavours. The figure of Freum-
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bichler conveys a sense of a radical isolation from the world that also animates Bernhard’s early literary characters in particular. The relentlessly circular trajectories of the despairing speeches of the painter Strauch, the protagonist of his first novel, Frost (1962), and Count Saurau’s despotic rule over his family circle in Bernhard’s second novel Verstörung [‘Confusion’, English translation entitled Gargoyles], written in 1966, perfectly illustrate the thesis that a separate realm of creative fantasy can be held together only by dictatorial means.570 Similarly despotic traits are assigned to a character called Immanuel Kant, as the protagonist of the play of the same name, first performed in Stuttgart in 1978 under the direction of Claus Peymann. This character has finally made the decision to take a luxury cruise with his wife to America, as the only country with the medical expertise needed to save his eyesight. The famous professor of Königsberg, or rather his literary likeness, is obsessively concerned with his own health and that of his beloved parrot Friedrich. He tyrannises his faithful servant Ernst Ludwig, in a desperate effort to protect his mental health against the perils of the high seas and the adulation of his fellow passengers. All his precautions to safeguard the treasure of his intellect are ultimately to no avail, and when they finally arrive in America it is psychiatrists rather than ophthalmologists who are waiting to receive him. Even this brief summary of the play illustrates Bernhard’s approach of referring to the historical figure of Kant on the one hand and departing radically from his biography on the other. Rather than distancing the character from the historical figure, Bernhard’s method is to draw on a substrate of historical details to create an artificial character who is called upon to perform a range of representative functions. The author’s reliance on the biography of Kant as a historical figure in developing the character of his protagonist is seen in some of his essential traits, and also a host of small details. The character of Bernhard’s play shares with the great 18th century philosopher his profession and place of origin, Königsberg, plus an avid interest in meteorological observations. The neurotically obsessive nature of the hero’s attempts to keep to his daily habits while at sea recalls the punctuality of the real Kant, and the high store he set on keeping to his standard daily routine.571 The philosopher did indeed become senile in old age, and himself documented an eye disorder from which he was suffering.572 Bernhard’s drama is structured around elements of Kant’s biography, yet from the very first scene it is also perfectly clear that the protagonist is not identical with the great philosopher. The real Kant never married, his servant was not called Ernst Ludwig, and he most certainly could never have overcome his dislike of travel to make a trans-Atlantic voyage. Bernhard’s Kant has his parrot Friedrich as his most important pole of reference and the main focus of his concern. The parrot gives him reassurance that the voice of his reason will continue to resound after the loss of his powers as a
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creative intellect. The ironical refraction and distortion of the references to Kant reach a peak when Bernhard’s fictitious philosopher sees the mindless mimicry of a parrot as a fitting replacement speaker. He describes his parrot Friedrich as “the true philosopher in himself”.573 This is also reflected in the attitude towards philosophy displayed by the society caricatured in the play, with any form of scrutiny or interpretation of philosophical content replaced by blind adulation of its supposed author.574 This uncritical and undemanding attitude of the people the fictitious Kant encounters during the voyage means that the question of the authenticity of the philosopher is never even raised in the play. Philosophical thought becomes reified into a personality cult around the figure of Kant and the idolisation of Friedrich as his “memory”.575 In the words of the play’s protagonist: “It would not be taking any risk to send Friedrich out alone into the world’s universities [;] he would make a capital lecturer on everything I have ever thought [.]”576 This is how he sees his fame being preserved after his own intellectual powers have vanished. Once the listeners fall deaf to the challenge to process content for themselves – as per the real Kant’s Sapere aude! – it becomes a matter of indifference whether it is Professor Kant or the parrot Friedrich who delivers the lecture. They and Ernst Ludwig, the humiliated servant constantly being ordered around by the other two for their greater comfort, are praised by their fellow-passengers as “the intellectual trio”.577 Through this triple constellation and the social status of the three figures we see that the despotic reason, when turned back on itself, oscillates between the poles of ridiculous stupidity and callous barbarity. Bernhard lets the real Kant speak through the protagonist of the play by integrating sundry quotations into the fabric of the texts – but these are not taken from the major works for which Kant became famous. The author of the three great critiques is rather represented in the play with words drawn from the margins of his oeuvre, which are likely to be unfamiliar even to those well versed in Kant’s philosophy. Bernhard’s Kant takes the stage as a non-Kant, because he is married – and yet the very first words he utters come from one of the Königsberg philosopher’s early texts: “All possible stages of eccentricity, from the planets to the comets,”578 the on-stage character declaims. This is a fragment taken (almost) word for word from an essay by Kant as a young man, entitled Universal natural history and theory of the heavens. Bernhard deliberately confounds the audience’s expectations of a character called Immanuel Kant, by presenting words that originate from the real Kant, but which virtually no-one knows. Authenticity is enlisted in the service of alienation. Bernhard’s Kant also quotes from “his” works, but in a sense contrary to that intended by the original author : “I speak of the precise circular motion of the particles of the base material, although of the purposelessness of Nature, gentlemen”.579 This includes a verbatim quotation from the above-mentioned early work, but if we
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Fig. 33: Michael Maertens as Kant with parrot Friedrich at a photo rehearsal of a production of ‘Immanuel Kant’, Burgtheater Vienna (2009)
read a little further we find that, rather than underlining the lack of purpose in Nature, the author is rather weighing up its many different purposes against each other, and even granting the existence of a well-ordered divine plan. Bernhard uplifts fragments from another early text, entitled Thoughts on the true estimation of living forces. The work itself becomes Kant’s bedtime story in the play. He confesses that his wife “has to read his ‘New estimation of living forces’ aloud to him each night, admitting that “this is an absurdity on the high seas”, but “it makes the noise of the turbines easier to bear”.580 Bernhard adds a quotation from the original Kant text, which in this context reads as an explanation of this extraordinary behaviour : “The laws do not apply over all motions regardless of their velocity”.581 While at sea on a steamship, it seems, the reluctant traveller, tormented by seasickness, is subject to different laws: special circumstances require special measures. Bernhard’s montage strategy has the effect of blurring the distinctions between authenticity and fiction, with even reliably documented elements playing a part in creating a made-up character – a character who also plays subtle variations on other intellectuals portrayed in Bernhard’s works, not least his own grandfather. The name Kant also refers back to an element of the mental universe of these intellectuals, since his works are found in their libraries.582 Bernhard’s decision to put a character called Immanuel Kant on the stage is to be attributed to his habit, as mentioned above, of referring to philosophers in his
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novels and autobiographical works. In an interview he once described the significance of the thinkers he esteems rather perversely as follows: “They are history’s greatest comedians – Schopenhauer and Kant. So basically the most serious of them all. Pascal is another one, […] they are the great philosophers, laughing philosophers.”583 On the one hand this remark refers to the typical combination in Bernhard’s writing of existential gravity and an ironic and mocking lightness of touch, and on the other it makes it clear that for him the name Kant carries with it the entire retinue of other leading philosophers; their names are actually interchangeable, and their qualities can be mixed and matched as desired. In an interview on this play, Bernhard cheerfully admitted that he “could just as easily have used the name ‘Schopenhauer’” – but that Kant “stands above them all, […] that’s why I chose him”.584 Bernhard again highlights this unparalleled role of Kant in the history of philosophy in the novel Verstörung, with the claim that “no-one since Kant has been able to air out the museum”.585 Yet anecdotes of the real Kant’s punctuality and obsessiveness are also cited, so that his splenetic life style is also to the fore. Kant is an excellent strategic choice for Bernhard’s purposes. He finds the lines of the serious and the ridiculous already crossed in the philosopher’s works and biography, and extracts and arranges chosen morsels as his project requires. Kant plays a special role for Bernhard, but not a central one: references to his life and works are woven into the fabric of the Immanuel Kant with threads spun between Bernhard’s autobiography and his fiction. With his grandfather Bernard attended a school of philosophy that was of fundamental importance for the entire course of his life and work as an author. Philosophy is highlighted as a school of solitude. This is the context in which Bernhard discovered Kant, and the context that is activated when we in turn meet the figure of Kant in Bernhard’s works. But in contrast to his grandfather, Bernhard is able to find pragmatic escape routes out of isolation.586 The ability to laugh safeguards him from being deadly serious, and thereby delivered up to the laughter of others. The grotesque comedy character of a Kant whose light of reason is in the process of being extinguished provides a warning, through the irrational delirium of his self-reference, against the perils of studying too diligently in the classroom of solitude. Translated by John Jamieson
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Reception of Kant in Klagenfurt as Reflected in Two Contemporary Austrian Novels by Elisabeth Flucher In the 1790s, a Klagenfurt pupil of Kantian philosophy gathered together a circle of supporters of the Enlightenment, at a time when its ideas were being suppressed by the censorship of the Habsburg monarchy. Born in Klagenfurt in 1759, Franz Paul von Herbert was a patron of the arts and an industrialist who had arrived at his fortune by inheriting his father’s white lead factory. He had first travelled to Weimar in 1789 and while there had been made aware by Christoph Martin Wieland of the latter’s son-in–law, Carl Leonhard Reinhold, the author of Briefe über die kantische Philosophie [Correspondence on Kantian Philosophy]. Shortly afterwards, in 1790, Herbert had left for Jena, in order to study Kantian philosophy under Reinhold. In Jena, where he stayed until 1791, he became acquainted with Friedrich Schiller, Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, Johann Benjamin Erhard and Friedrich Karl Forberg, as well as with Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer. Some of these acquaintances then developed into friendships, as is recorded in numerous letters. When, in the course of the Jacobin trials of 1794, Herbert’s house in Klagenfurt was searched by police, the letters from Erhard and Schiller, among others, led to his downfall. Austrian censorship made it too hazardous for Herbert to maintain his contact with some of his friends in Jena, a number of whom were, to a certain extent, being supported by him financially.587 Even the trip to Italy which Herbert undertook together with Erhard, Baggesen and Fernow in 1797 was viewed with suspicion by the police. Baggesen, like Herbert, was a member of the Illuminati Order, which was disseminating Enlightenment ideas. When Napoleon’s invasion of Carinthia in 1797 was followed, shortly afterwards, by the restoration of Austrian sovereignty, Herbert left the country, initially for Switzerland. Franz Paul von Herbert took his own life in 1811, when he shot himself in Trieste. The novels Cant läßt grüßen [Greetings from Cant] by Alois Brandstetter and Das Mädchen im See [The Girl in the Lake] by Egyd Gstättner deal with two women from Franz von Herbert’s family circle. The novel Cant läßt grüßen, which was published in 2009, tells the story of Franz Paul von Herbert’s sister, Maria von Herbert. Like her brother, she had studied Kant’s philosophy, yet she had also written letters to the philosopher in Königsberg, asking him for his advice, since she was considering suicide on account of the desperate situation in which she found herself. Three of the letters which formed part of this correspondence have survived, namely those written by Maria von Herbert to Kant in the years 1791, 1793 and 1794, although Kant’s replies have not come down to us in the original. All that remains is a draft from Kant’s quill, in which he outlines a reply to Maria von Herbert.588
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In her first letter, Maria von Herbert describes her situation to Kant, who is a figure of great esteem for her : Great Kant. / I call to you for help as a believer calls to God, for consolation, or for confirmation of death, adequate for me were the reasons given in your works for future being, which is why I take refuge in you, only from this life I found nothing, absolutely nothing which could replace the goodness that I have lost, for I loved an object who in my sight encompassed everything, so that I lived only for him […], now I have offended this object through a tiresome lie, which I have now revealed to him, even though it contained nothing detrimental to my character, since I have no vice in my life to keep secret about, yet the lie itself was enough for him, and his love disappeared, he is a sincere man, which is why he did not deny me friendship and loyalty, yet that ardent feeling which led us unbidden to each other is no longer there, O my heart bursts asunder in a thousand pieces, if I had not already read so much of you, I would certainly have changed my life by force, yet I am prevented from doing so by the conclusion I needs must draw from your theory that I should not die on account of my agonising life, but should live on account of my being, now place yourself in my position and give me consolation or damnation, Metaphysics of Morals I have read complete with the categorical imperative, it is of no help to me, my reason deserts me where I need it most, a reply I implore you, unless even you yourself cannot act in accordance with your selfimposed imperative.589
On the one hand, Maria von Herbert’s letter speaks of her desperation, resulting from what is, in her opinion, the hopeless situation in which she finds herself, yet on the other hand it is a letter written by someone who is a knowledgeable admirer of Kant’s philosophy. As she writes in a subsequent letter to Kant, she has read all of his writings that have been published since The Critique of Pure Reason: “I had already felt myself quite corrected by the Critique of Pure Reason, yet I found that none of your subsequent writings were superfluous”.590 Maria von Herbert’s view of Kant’s practical philosophy may be presented as follows: Kant’s argumentation with regard to the postulate of the immortality of the soul seems convincing to her (“adequate for me were the reasons given in your works for future being”),591 so that she was presumably familiar with the Critique of Practical Reason, where the aforementioned postulate is to be found.592 However, she might also have derived the references to the postulated immortality of the soul from the Critique of Pure Reason, where in the preface to the second edition it is written: “Thus I cannot even assume God, freedom and immortality for the sake of the necessary practical use of my reason unless I simultaneously deprive speculative reason of its pretension to extravagant insights”.593 Having refuted a rational proof of the immortality of the soul in the chapter about paralogisms in the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant similarly writes: “Nevertheless, not the least bit is lost through, this regarding the warrant, or indeed the necessity, for the assumption of a future life in ac-
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Fig. 34: Letter, Maria von Herbert to Immanuel Kant in August 1791
cordance with the principles of the practical use of reason, which is bound up with its speculative use”.594 As a result of the consolation that she has gained from her study of Kant’s philosophy, Maria von Herbert expects Kant’s philosophy to supply her with an adequate answer to her question (“which is why I take refuge in you”).595 The fact that she turns to Kant is understandable insofar as her moral dilemma is connected to the problem of lying, a problem to which Kant gives a great deal of attention. Maria von Herbert presumably had in mind the corresponding passage from the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals]: “However, to inform myself in the shortest and yet most infallible way about the answer to this problem, whether a lying promise is in conformity with duty […] I soon become aware that I could indeed will the lie, but by no means a universal law to lie”.596 Maria von Herbert describes how, as a
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result of a lie, she has lost the trust of her friend and can now no longer see any sense in life and is considering suicide, yet from Kant’s writings has learned that suicide is ethically unjustifiable. For example, one passage in which Kant speaks out against suicide is to be found in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: “It is seen at once that a nature whose law it would be to destroy life itself by means of the same feeling whose destination is to impel toward the furtherance of life would contradict itself […] thus that maxim could not possibly be a law of nature and, accordingly, altogether opposes the supreme principle of all duty.”597 The significance that she accords to Kant’s argumentation in practical philosophy is immense, since it is, after all, Kant’s writings alone which have so far kept her from ending her life, as she describes. She refers to the Metaphysik der Sitten [Metaphysics of Morals] “complete with the Categorical imperative”, although by this she can only mean the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, since the Metaphysik der Sitten was only published for the first time a few years later, in 1797. Her accusation at the end of her letter contains a severe criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy, the fact that it is impossible to live according to his moral principles, above all by the categorical imperative. She asks Kant dubiously whether he has any alternative to offer her, or whether not even he himself is able to live in accordance with the categorical imperative. Kant wrote her a carefully considered reply, after having first asked the opinion of his friend Ludwig Ernst Borowski.598 In the draft of the letter, which may be regarded as a relatively faithful copy of the original,599 Kant differentiates between restraint and lying. Only the latter is morally reprehensible. Therefore, if it is a matter of a lie, then her friend’s mistrust is understandable.600 In his letter, Kant alternates between empathic understanding and maintaining distance. On the one hand, he agrees with Maria von Herbert that “friendship […] is the sweetest thing that human life may ever contain”. On the other hand, he attempts to console her with the fact that her friend’s affection would in any case “after the fleeting nature of the same […] have eventually disappeared of its own accord” if it were the case that the affection had been more “physical” than “moral”.601 Kant’s letter did not miss the mark: in a letter dated 1794, Maria von Herbert thanks him for the relief which his letter had given her. At the same time, she relativises her own moral misdemeanour, referring to Kant’s differentiation between restraint and lying, and classifying her own behaviour as simple restraint: You conveyed to me my own feelings so appropriately that, encouraged both by your goodness and by your precise knowledge of the human heart, I do not shrink from describing to you the further process of my soul. The lie, on account of which I complained to you, was not the cloaking of a vice, but rather simply an error of restraint committed in consideration of the friendship (still veiled in love) that had arisen at that time […].602
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Already in her letter of 1793, Maria von Herbert had announced that she would like to visit Kant in Königsberg, in order, among other things, to become further acquainted with the circumstances of his life and, for instance, to hear from him in person “whether for you it was also not worth the effort to take a wife or to devote yourself to someone wholeheartedly, and to propagate your likeness”.603 In 1794 she again expressed the wish to visit him. In the same letter of 1794 she begged Kant once more to give her his opinion, from an ethical point of view, about her thoughts of suicide, since he had paid no attention whatsoever to this subject in his writings. However, no reply was forthcoming.604 After carefully numbering Maria von Herbert’s letters himself, Kant sent them to Elisabeth Motherby, the daughter of a friend, so that the letters of the “little gusher” might serve her as a “warning about such errings of a sublimated imagination”.605 Maria von Herbert took her own life in 1803. The subject of the novel Cant läßt grüßen by Alois Brandstetter is Maria von Herbert’s correspondence with Kant. In it, Kant’s secretary, the fictional Amanuensis, writes a long letter to Maria von Herbert, in which, among other things he explains Kant’s drafted reply, putting forward arguments from the circumstances of Kant’s life, as well as from Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint] which is why, in his opinion, the “68-year-old celibate”606 is not the right addressee for Maria von Herbert’s solicitations. Alois Brandstetter was born in Aichmühl, Austria, on 5. 12. 1938. Taking German studies at the University of Vienna, he graduated in 1962 with a dissertation about Laut- und bedeutungskundliche Untersuchungen an der Mundart von Pichl bei Wels [‘Investigations into the Sound and Meaning of the Dialect of Pichl, near Wels’]. In 1962 he became assistant for Old German studies and linguistics at the University of Saarbrücken, where he habilitated with Prosaauflösung. Studien zur Rezeption der höfischen Epik im frühneuhochdeutschen Prosaroman [Prose Resolution. Studies of the Reception of Courtly Epic Poetry in the Early New High German Prose Novel] in 1970. From 1974 to 2007 he was professor of Old German language and literature at the University of Klagenfurt. He has published numerous novels. The novel Das Mädchen im See by Egyd Gstättner, first published in 2005, also deals with the history of the von Herbert family. The main character of the novel is the poetess Ottilie von Herbert, the great niece of Franz Paul von Herbert, who in 1847 met with an accident during a nocturnal journey across the Wörthersee and was drowned. The novel interweaves the story of Ottilie’s life with other tragic stories that have played out on the Wörthersee, including the illness of the composer Gustav Mahler and the tragic death of the poetess Ingeborg Bachmann. The novel is accompanied by Gstättner’s reports on his own state of health and his fear of death.
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Egyd Gstättner was born in Klagenfurt on am 25. 5. 1962, took German studies and philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt and wrote his degree thesis on the subject of Laterem Lavisti oder Perspektivierungsmetaphysik als Beitrag zur Kritik der reinen Wissenschaft [Laterem Lavisti or the Metaphysics of Perspectivation as a Contribution to the Criticism of Pure Science]. This was followed by the publication of many novels and plays. Moreover, Gstättner has written numerous articles for Austrian daily newspapers and has also worked for Austrian radio. Translated by Peter Waugh
Franz Schuh – Between Kantstraße and Hegelhof by Elisabeth Flucher Franz Schuh, writer of philosophical essays, culture journalist and literature critic, was born on 15 March 1947 in Vienna. There he attended the Bundesrealgymnasium in Diefengasse 19 in the 15th district. After leaving school in 1966 he began studies in philosophy, history and German literature. His studies in philosophy, in which Schuh was guided by Leo Gabriel, Johannes Mader and Erhard Oeser, were completed in 1975 with a doctorate thesis on Hegel and the Logic of Praxis. Retrospectively Schuh explained his great interest for Hegel as a student with the fact that it was fashionable at that time to study Hegel for political reasons: “We actually wanted to understand more deeply the writings of Marx, and whoever wants to do so, has to read Hegel.”607 Schuh appreciated Hegel mainly for his criticism of Kant: “But the greatest thing about Hegel for me is his criticism of Kant, by saying that his formalist account in terms of morality and the self-referring activity of the moral subject are not sufficient, because history is entering into the horizon of acting subjects.”608 And yet Schuh’s philosophical interests go way beyond Hegel and Kant. The references in his texts also lead to Aristotle, Nietzsche, Marx and Wittgenstein, among others. In a selfironic gesture Schuh takes distance from the image of his person which is promoted by publishing houses and the public, writing: “Embarrassingly I am almost-not a philosopher at all.”609 Franz Schuh wrote numerous essays, which were published in various editions, like Love, Power and Joviality. Essays, The Fantasized Exile. Essays and Heavy Reproaches, Dirty Laundry. In 1995 his novel The City Councillor. An Idyl was published in German. Moreover Schuh wrote several critical reviews and features for the radio and for newspapers. In 2008 his autobiographical novel Memoirs. An Interview Against Myself was published in German.
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Fig. 35: Roland Schlager, Franz Schuh (2009)
Many of Schuh’s essays take their starting point from places he visited or from people he encountered. It’s not incidental that most stories take place in Vienna and Berlin, as the author has lived in both cities for lengthy periods. Places play an important role in his thinking so that places are not a dispensable scenography, but can themselves inspire thoughts and associations. Names of places therefore are not always random. This may also be the case in Schuh’s poem Creation, in which Kant-Street is named: “And in my ears / traffic was rushing / on Kant-Street / to nowhere”.610 In these words there could be a lament about the fact that the spirit of Enlightenment is being drowned by the noises of civilisation. Schuh’s writing is hardly ever without irony. Playing with multiple meanings is, in Schuh’s case, a stylistic device. In his essay Caf¦ Hegelhof it is mentioned that Caf¦ Fichtehof is slowly becoming extinct, quite contrary to Caf¦ Hegelhof which is flourishing: “closed, without melancholy, there remaining only the discarded.”611 The essay continues its word games, possibly leading readers to think of Marx: “Sometimes I’d like to turn the Caf¦ Hegelhof upside down”.612 Schuh recognizes Kant mainly as the defender of human dignity. “It [dignity, EF] is the central issue of Enlightenment, during which the concept of human rights was invented.”613 Albeit according to Horkheimer and Adorno the project of Enlightenment is reverting into its opposite, Schuh explains that it is a project that needs to be pursued.614 If only “thinking by oneself” which Kant demanded
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wasn’t as difficult: “one can, one must, push the activity of thinking by oneself as far as to cast doubt on this ‘oneself ’, this ‘I’ as well – it is not master in its own house. But who will tell you – yes, again this ‘I’ which has lost its dominance. This, I think, is one of the paradoxes of philosophy.”615 Schuh continues the thought of Kant’s “ethics of conviction” by recommending any ethicist of conviction to take into account the consequences of actions as well: “the ethicist of responsibility is well advised, if he has a conviction and the ethicist of conviction, if he takes into account what his principles mean in praxis.”616 The “pathos” of the categorical of Kant’s moral philosophy easily “overshadows” the actions of everyday life.617 “The Germans, a German said once, have got the categorical imperative, but no manners, nothing for everyday life. And people, I would like to add, are showing their gratitude to Kant by confusing the categorical imperative with the hypothetical one all the time.”618 In this statement there seems to be hidden some of the pathos which Schuh ascribes to Kant. Schuh is not only familiar with Kant’s moral philosophy, but also with this epistemology. Kant’s famous dictum that “thoughts without content [are] empty and intuitions without concepts [are] blind” Schuh describes as “laconic”.619 He puts Kant’s deliberations in his Critique of Pure Reason into a new context, which can be called aesthetic or poetological: In a play one should understand what one sees and see what one understands. While the world is presented to us in this way, as a unity of intuition and concept, one has to create this world for the stage, so that it may create the impression of such unity (so that it creates the impression that there is a world on the stage).620
Schuh frequently and willingly uses Kantian terminology. Sometimes he does so in an ironic way : “That the unity of a person is linked to the unity of currency, may be a radical formulation of the link between money and personal life”.621 Sometimes though a serious discussion of Kant’s philosophy is intended, for example when Schuh laments the inhuman aspects of life: Even approved ends in themselves like art or even man are – this is proved by praxis – only approved as relative ends in themselves. The dignity of man is violable, and even in the civil game of the concept of ends and of a rationality of a system no end and no end in itself stay principally out of the game.622
Accordingly Schuh combines Kant’s philosophy of Enlightenment with a Marxist account. In Schuh’s view a Kantian position easily leads to a Marxist one, mediated by Hegel: “If self-determination is only related to the subject itself, it is, in Hegelian terms, not substantial. This is one possibility of getting to Marx.”623 While Kant, as a proponent of enlightenment, is close to Schuh’s heart, he is estranged by the idea of “pure” reason:
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I was oscillating in a pleasant way between those philosophies which speak from the heart and those which draw boundaries. It was a beautiful time; I was always concentrated on the right feelings and thoughts. But now that I realized for which reasons those philosophies answered my expectations, I laid the books aside with revulsion. My reading was driven by a need for purity, namely a purity, which doesn’t exist in real life and this need suddenly made me feel sick.624
Schuh’s relation to Kant, who for him is the philosopher of marked boundaries and of pure reason, is oscillating between confirmation and rejection. Anyhow, whenever there’s a chance to defend Kant against a wrong interpretation, Schuh will take it. In a review on Wolfgang Welsch’s book Homo mundanus – Beyond Modernity’s Anthropical Thinking Schuh describes the shattering of Kleist’s thinking, when, having encountered Kant’s philosophy, he understands the far reach of his Kopernican revolution: “The fact that each subject is itself involved in the constitution of the world, can frighten one at times.”625 According to Schuh, Welsch is wrong in believing that Kant is teaching the assumption that “man is the measure of everything“,626 an assumption which Welsch describes as anthropical and which, in his opinion, one has to get rid of. Schuh states polemically : “Had Kleist then read Wolfgang Welsch, at least he could have avoided his Kant-crisis.”627
Kehlmann’s Measuring the World – The Reinvention of an Era by Elisabeth Flucher The writer Daniel Kehlmann, born on 13 January 1975 to a family of artists, is now living in Vienna and Berlin. His grandfather was the expressionist writer Eduard Kehlmann, who also lived in Vienna, but it was only in 1981 when Daniel Kehlmann’s parents decided to move to Vienna. Kehlmann’s father is the stage director Michael Kehlmann and his mother is the actress Dagmar Mettler. In Vienna, Daniel Kehlmann attended the Kollegium Kalksburg and studied philosophy and literature at the University of Vienna. His final thesis in philosophy is entitled Schillers Theorie der Entfremdung. Eine Analyse der Abhandlung ‘Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung’ [Schiller’s Theory of Estrangement. An Analysis of the Treatise ‘On Nave and Sentimental Poetry’]. During the winter semester of 2005, Kehlmann lectured on poetry at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. He has written numerous novels, among which are Beerholms Vorstellung (1997) [Beerholm’s Presentation], Mahlers Zeit (1999) [Mahler’s Time] and Ich und Kaminski (2003) [Me and Kaminski (2008)]. In his novel Die Vermessung der Welt [Measuring the World], which was first published in 2005 and has already been translated into numerous languages, Daniel Kehlmann imagines an encounter between the mathematician Johann
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Carl Friedrich Gauß and the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt. In two parallel narratives Kehlmann describes the youth and professional adventures of these two excellent scientists. In the novel Gauß is soon recognized as a mathematical genius, but nevertheless needs to carry out field measurements in order to make a living, while the globally educated geologist and natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt sets out on an expedition to America. Kehlmann gives a detailed description of the somewhat different characters of both scientists and of the difficulties and challenges which they have to face during their scientific tasks. On the one hand we follow Humboldt in his adventures during his America-expedition and, on the other hand, we observe the adversities of everyday life which the astronomer Gauß has to face during his research into field measurements. Immanuel Kant plays an important, but not central role in Kehlmann’s novel. First a link is established between Alexander von Humboldt and Kant through Humboldt’s teacher Marcus Herz, who had been a student of Kant. Moreover, at many points in the novel, the intellectual closeness of Humboldt to Kant is highlighted. After finding his companion, the botanist Aim¦ Bonpland in an intimate situation with a woman, Humboldt reprehends him with a reference to Kant: “Man is not an animal”, Humboldt said. “Sometimes he is”, replied Bonpland. Humboldt then asked, if he had ever read Kant.“A Frenchman doesn’t read foreigners”, he replied. “He doesn’t want to discuss it”, said Humboldt. Later after another incident of this kind, and their ways parted.”628 Humboldt derives from Kant’s philosophy a principle of strict austereness and of a perfect engagement in science as the guidelines for his way of life. While he is visiting the mine Taxco, Humboldt offers suggestions for improving the safety and efficiency of silver mining, because there had been too many accidents. He is stunned by the indifferent reaction of the mine’s manager Don Fernando: “One has enough people”, Don Fernando said. “Whoever dies, can be replaced”. Humboldt asked him, if he had read Kant. “A little”, Don Fernando replied. But he had had some objections and he preferred Leibniz. He had German ancestors, which is why he knew all these beautiful fantasies.629 The humanistic attitude of Alexander von Humboldt is shaken repeatedly by the cruelty of his contemporaries, as the thought of the dignity of each human being is seen as only “beautiful fantasy” in the “New World”. While visiting the ruins of Teotihuacan, Humboldt discovers that the pyramids of the excavated city functioned as a calendar. So much civilization and so much cruelty, said Humboldt. What a combination! It seems like the opposite of everything that Germany stands for. Maybe it is time to return home, Bonpland said. […] For a while Humboldt looked into the stars of the night sky. Well, he said then. He is going to learn to understand these rocks which are layered in a frighteningly intelligent way, as if they were a part of nature.630
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In Humboldt’s view, as Kehlmann presents it to us, Germany represents mainly Kant’s philosophy of Enlightenment. In his Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose from 1784 Kant described the difference between culture, civilization and morals as follows: “To a high degree we are, through art and science, cultured. We are civilized – perhaps too much for our own good – in all sorts of social grace and decorum. But to consider ourselves as having reached morality – for that, much is lacking.”631 According to Kant, culture and civilization do not guarantee the morality of interpersonal human relations. Humboldt’s experiences in Kehlmann’s novel confirm these disillusioning insights of Kant. As if he was remembering Kant’s words of his admiration for the “starry sky above me” and the “moral law within me”,632 Humboldt looks up to the sky. Without dwelling on his disappointment with the amorality of the world for too long, he decides to confine himself to a description of the ruins as “a part of nature”. Humboldt finds his vocation in the exploration of nature, not in the moral improvement of the world – this is the tenor of Kehlmann’s description. In the presentation of the second protagonist of the novel, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauß, there are also several implicit references to Kant. The highly gifted scholar Gauß lacks patience for the intellectual weariness of his fellow men: Why were they thinking so slowly, so intensely and in such a troubled way? As if their thoughts were produced by a machine, which one had to actuate and by turning its crank, as if they were not alive and were not moved by themselves. […] At that moment he realized that nobody wanted to make us of his intellect. Men wanted calm. They wanted to eat and sleep, and they wanted you to be nice to them. They did not want to think.633
The outrage of the young Gauß, due to his fellow men refusing to use their intellect, reminds one of Kant’s essay What is Enlightenment?, in which Kant famously explains immaturity as the incapacity “to use one’s understanding without guidance from another”.634 Similar to the description of Humboldt’s character in Kehlmann’s novel is Gauß’s disillusionment with the amorality of the human conditions. He also reacts to this disillusionment with an urge to explore the world by means of science instead of improving it morally : “On his way back he asked himself, if there would ever come a day, when men were able to face each other without lying. But before something came to his mind, he understood, how one could represent each number as the sum of three triangular numbers”.635 Finally there is a description of a fictitious visit by Gauß to Kant’s home. At the front door Gauß is at first refused admittance by Kant’s servant Lampe. Only after several repetitions of his request is Gauß finally admitted entrance.
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Gauß followed him with hesitation through a short and dark corridor into a small room. It took him a moment until his eyes got used to the semi-darkness and until he recognized a window with closed curtains, a table, a chair and within it a motionless dwarf, wrapped into wool blankets: bulging lips, a projecting forehead, a sharp, thin nose. The half-opened eyes didn’t turn towards him. The air was so sticky that it was almost impossible to breathe. With a raspy voice he asked, if that was the professor.636
Already Kehlmann’s description of Gauß entering Kant’s room gives the impression that the meeting will not lead to a fertile conversation. Gauß meets an aged Kant, whose house is not pervaded by the spirit of Enlightenment, but in which, on the contrary, it is hard to breathe. Gauß criticises Kant’s doctrine of the forms of intuition in his Critique of Pure Reason and explains his view that Euklidian space is a fiction. “About only one thing he was sure: Space is wrinkled, bent and very strange”.637 Speaking about bent space is not the only anachronism which Kehlmann uses. Historical accuracy is not the methodical principle of his novel. Concerning the relationship between Humboldt and Gauß to Kant, the historian the historian of science Knobloch writes: “Humboldt admired him a lot, but Gauß had never been to Königsberg”.638 According to Knobloch, Kehlmann’s presentation of Kant is a “lÀse-majest¦ for philosophers”.639 Gauß’s fictitious meeting with Kant is further portrayed in the novel as follows: He [Gauß] hunkered down so that his face was opposite to the face of the little man. He was waiting. The small eyes were turning towards him. Sausage, Kant said. Pardon? Lampe should buy sausage, Kant said. Sausage and stars. He should also buy. […] A drop of spittle was running down his chin.640
Finally the relationship between Gauß and Humboldt is mentioned at one point in the novel, when both scientists meet in Berlin, where, in a conversation, Gauß raises the issue of the power of natural laws: “The true tyrants are the laws of nature. But understanding,” said Humboldt, “forms those laws! The old Kantian nonsense”. Gauß shook his head. “Understanding doesn’t form anything and understands little. Space is bending and time is stretching”.641 Kehlmann allowed himself many liberties in the depiction of these historical figures. In the novel he argues for this method, when, in an ironic twist, Humboldt says in the novel: He was working on a catalogue of the characteristics of plants and of nature that painters had to commit themselves to by law. Something similar was recommended for dramatic writing. He was thinking of lists of traits of important historical figures and authors who wouldn’t be allowed to part from these lists.642
In another passage in the novel Kehlmann shows his protagonists in a situation, in which Kant’s dictum of “I think”, which must be able “to accompany all of my representations”, is suspended.643 On a mountain expedition, Humboldt and
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Bonpland start to hallucinate due to a lack of oxygen and the beginning of altitude sickness. They consequently lose their sense of self and are in doubt if it is themselves who are thinking and speaking or somebody else: Bonpland realized, that he actually consisted of three persons: one who was walking, one who was watching the walking one and one who was constantly commenting on everything in a language nobody understood. […] Bonpland started to sing. First one, then his other companions joined in. Bonplan had learned the song at school and he was quite sure that nobody in this hemisphere knew it. Another proof that the two people next to him were real and not impostors was that nobody else could have taught them the song. Something in this argument seemed illogical, but he could not discover what it was. And in the end, it didn’t really matter because anyhow he had no guarantee that it was he who was thinking and not one of the other two.644
Kant and the Vienna Circle
Kant and the Vienna Circle – Who’s Afraid of the Synthetic A Priori? by Bastian Stoppelkamp The Vienna Circle was one of the most influential philosophical movements of the 20th century. At its centre was the idea of an empiricism revitalised by logic and mathematics, which can be seen as the origin of the modern theory of science and the forerunner of the analytical philosophy of language. In successive writings setting out its programme, the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle formulated a critical and constantly changing attitude towards Kant and Kantianism, which over recent decades has been the subject of debate by researchers: did the Vienna Circle aim to completely supersede Kant’s theory of cognition and philosophy of science, or rather to undertake a constructive review of those ideas? To address these and other questions, it is necessary to go back to the origins of the Circle in the 1920s and 1930s.
History of the Vienna Circle The appointment of Moritz Schlick to an ordinary professorship of philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1922 led to the formation of a community of philosophers and scientists with a strong interest in philosophy, who between 1924 and 1936 held regular meetings to debate issues of the theory of science and linguistic analysis.1 Along with Schlick, who at least nominally chaired the meetings, the nucleus of the circle comprised the social scientists Otto Neurath and Edgar Zilsel, the theoretical physicist Philipp Frank, the mathematicians Hans Hahn, Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel, and the philosophers Rudolf Carnap, Friedrich Waismann, Herbert Feigl and Viktor Kraft, all of whom, with the exception of Kraft, had also studied mathematics and physics. Over time, around them clustered a network of like-minded individuals and participants actively
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involved in the Circle’s ongoing development. The list of prominent names ranges from the Polish logician Alfred Tarski and the American philosophers Ernest Nagel and Willard van Orman Quine to Carl Gustav Hempel and Hans Reichenbach, who at virtually the same time had created a German circle committed to logical empiricism, known as the “Berlin group”.2 The Vienna Circle also maintained close, often distinctly problematic, relationships with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper.3 After a formative phase as a discussion circle (the “Schlick circle”), mainly focused on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Carnap’s Logischer Aufbau der Welt [Logical Structure of the World], at the end of the 1920s the Circle “went public”, as a philosophical movement, with the appearance of the manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [Scientific Conception of the World] in 1929. This was the first time that the group, as the “Vienna Circle”, publicly announced the nature of its programme, placing it within the context of the history of ideas.4 The same year saw the establishment of the “Ernst Mach Society”, as an open discussion forum with the objective of disseminating the Circle’s philosophy in the wider community, in order to contribute to social enlightenment and help build a more civilised society :5 “The scientific conception of the world serves life and is absorbed by it”, proclaimed the manifesto.6 These initiatives then gave rise to numerous publications. In 1930, in collaboration with the “Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy”, the Vienna Circle founded the periodical Erkenntnis (Cognition), which became the principal mouthpiece for logical empiricism in Europe. The publishers were Rudolf Carnap (on behalf of the Ernst Mach Society) and Hans Reichenbach (for the “Berlin group”).7 The two men were also personal friends. Many other periodicals also started to appear : Frank and Schlick jointly published Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [Writings on the Scientific Conception of the World], and Neurath edited a series called Einheitswissenschaften (Unified sciences), and later the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, which he published together with Carnap and the American pragmatist Charles Morris.8 In contrast with many other German-language philosophical schools and movements, the Vienna Circle early adopted an international and interdisciplinary approach. Following foundation conferences held in Prague (1929) and Königsberg (1930), for example, seven “International Congresses on Unified Science” took place between 1934 and 1941.9 In view of its social emancipatory and left-wing liberal stance, the Vienna Circle was viewed with considerable suspicion from the reactionary end of the political spectrum, particularly within the University of Vienna, where university politics were increasingly dominated by German nationalist and Catholic clerical professors and students from the beginning of the 1920s.10 Schlick’s appointment had already generated vigorous opposition.11 Jewish or socialist-
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inclined members of the Circle such as Edgar Zilsel or Friedrich Waismann were prevented from pursuing an academic career in Austria, and during the 1930s such marginalisation took a more radical form, as outright political and antiSemitic persecution.12 On the establishment of the Austrian Fascist corporative state in 1934 the “Ernst Mach Society” was dissolved. As a Social Democrat, Otto Neurath had to leave Austria. Herbert Feigl had already emigrated to the USA in 1931, and he was followed into exile by Rudolf Carnap (USA, 1935), Karl Menger (USA, 1937) and Friedrich Waismann (England, 1937). Hans Hahn died in 1934, and two years later Moritz Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University of Vienna by a mentally deranged student.13 Following the Anschluss and the start of the NS dictatorship in Austria, all the remaining members of the Circle, apart from Kraft and B¦la Juhos, fled to England and America, where many found a new personal and academic home.14 Kurt Gödel, Carnap and Feigl took up successful careers in the USA, and continued the cause of logical empiricism under very different auspices. Others, like Neurath and Zilsel, remained marginalised. None of them returned to live permanently in Austria. For many decades, the legacy of the Vienna Circle fell into oblivion, apart from a brief attempt at its revival by Viktor Kraft. It was only the historical research and civic society initiatives of Rudolf Haller, Friedrich Stadler, Elisabeth Nemeth and others that brought belated recognition in Austria of the Circle’s achievements.
The Basic Model of Logical Empiricism Contrary to the received view insistently propagated by Anglo-American philosophy over a period of decades, the Vienna Circle was not a single, hermetically sealed entity, but a community of very different intellectual temperaments and views of the world. This diversity of views was duly reflected in many intense debates, like the “protocol sentences” debate that has gone down in the annals of the history of philosophy.15 While it is difficult to formulate a single common denominator for the Circle’s philosophy, there were a number of fundamental philosophical tenets on which there was a large measure of consensus. These included in particular a scientific ethos, which assigned the sciences a role as an exemplar in terms of both cognition and social emancipation, and saw them as a force for a society’s enlightenment and democratisation.16 The Circle’s manifesto specifically talks of a scientific conception of the world, making a conscious and deliberate distinction with the world views (Weltanschauungen) that were widely propagated at the time.17 The philosophy of the Vienna Circle is usually referred to as “logical empiricism” (or “logical positivism”), both of which terms clearly express the nature of the group’s project. Drawing on the ideas of empiricists and positivists
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such as David Hume, John Stuart Mill and Ernst Mach, they saw observation and experience as the sole legitimate sources of cognition.18 Yet they did not go so far as also to derive the principles of logic and mathematics from experience. Herein lay the novelty of this new form of logical empiricism: in contrast to Kant, and referring to the works of Henri Poincar¦, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert, the Vienna Circle interpreted logic and mathematics as purely analytical systems of symbols, which did not refer to objects in the world, but rather set up rules on how those objects were to be spoken of. In line with the “linguistic turn” initiated by Wittgenstein, these empiricist and logical elements were ultimately distilled down to a linguistic distinction. On the one hand there were synthetic, a posteriori propositions, whose significance was measured by the extent to which they could in principle be verified by experience (verificationism),19 and on the other the analytical, a priori propositions of logic and mathematics, whose sense was determined by definitional statements, and which did not constitute autonomous sources of cognition. Any statement that could not be allocated to one or other of these categories was to be regarded from the perspective of logical empiricism as metaphysical and “meaningless”. The scientific conception of the world has no place for unconditionally valid cognition from pure reason, or for ‘synthetic a priori judgements’ such as those forming the basis of Kant’s theory of cognition, still less for the ontology and metaphysics before and after Kant. […] The basic thesis of modern empiricism consists precisely in this rejection of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition. The scientific conception of the world only admits experiential propositions on objects of all kinds and the analytical propositions of logic and mathematics.20
From this rejection of the synthetic a priori flowed a specific concept of science: in his Critique of Pure Reason Kant had sought to found the objectivity of assertions of the validity of science by declaring certain principles which represent apodictic forms of human cognition, placing them before all empirical perception of the world as preconditions of its possibility. These principles included Euclidean geometry, Galileo’s kinematics or Newton’s mathematics, which, as synthetic products of pure forms of thought and intuition, Kant saw as constituting the connection of theory and observation.21 As a result of the revolution taking place in the 19th and early 20th centuries in mathematics and the natural sciences, culminating in Einstein’s theory of relativity, the physical validity of these fields had had to be reassessed, causing a crisis of legitimacy for Kant’s foundation of scientific objectivity. The theory of science of the Vienna Circle offered some radical solutions in this regard. Through an extension of Wittgenstein’s “linguistic turn”, science was seen as a composite entity of propositions, of statements of theory and observations, with heated debate on how each of the two systems of statements were constituted, and how they were
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to be linked to each other.22 Some aimed to interpret and inductively verify theoretical terms and statements on the basis of empirical basic propositions, whereas others endeavoured to formulate a sharp distinction between pure, definitional aspects and empirical aspects of the formation of theories, so as to make the cognitive core of science transparent and render superfluous any a priori character of cognition as argued by Kant: Through the application of axiomatic methods to these problems, the empirical components of science are everywhere separated from the merely conventional components, content from definition. There is no place left for synthetic a priori judgements. The possibility of cognising the world is based not upon human reason imposing its form on material, but on the fact that material is ordered in a certain manner.23
On this basis the Vienna Circle developed a new understanding of the role of science, as formulated by Moritz Schlick in his programmatic essay Die Wende der Philosophie [A New Turning for Philosophy] (1930). Against Kant and the German idealists, he called for “an end to the chaos of systems and a fundamental new turning for philosophy”.24 He argued that philosophy was not a science, nor did it have its own language. Its task rather consisted in determining the significance of scientific statements: “Philosophy clarifies statements; the sciences verify them. Sciences are concerned with the truth of statements, and philosophy with what they actually mean”.25 Accordingly, any form of metaphysical ultimate foundation was excluded from the domain of cognition. As well as analysing language, philosophy was called upon to apply linguistic methods to advance the unity of the sciences. The goal of the “scientific conception of the world”, it was asserted, was “unified science”,26 as against both the separation between natural and social sciences propagated by Baden Neo-Kantianism and the idealistic concept of a ‘system of sciences’ mediated by philosophy. Along these lines Otto Neurath, in critical interaction with Rudolf Carnap, developed the idea of a physicalistic “unified language”. He also explicitly advocated no longer talking of “‘THE’ system of ‘THE science’” as a singular entity, speaking rather of “encyclopaedias of science”, following the example of the French Enlightenment.27
The “First Vienna Circle” and Kant The expulsion of virtually all members of the Vienna Circle led to a narrowing of perspectives after the Second World War. As described by Friedrich Stadler, Hans-Joachim Dahms and George Reisch, under the conditions of an existence in exile logical empiricism changed from a late-Enlightenment conception of the
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world into a philosophical position.28 Henceforth it was seen as the epitome of a purely formalistic philosophy, and this became the “received view” handed down over a period of decades. It is only in the course of philosophy research in the last 20 years that a more accurate characterisation of the specific context of the origins of the Vienna Circle has begun to emerge. As well as rediscovering the multiplicity of different positions and life paths of members of the Circle, researchers have also subjected the group’s attitude towards Kant, traditionally portrayed in a negative light, to critical scrutiny. Particularly important in this regard are the works of Michael Friedman, Alan Richardson, Thomas Ryckman, Alberto Coffa and Thomas Mormann, which have triggered a vigorous debate on the extent to which marked differences in attitudes towards Kant were of prime importance during the prehistory and formative period of the Vienna Circle.29 Part of the origins of the Circle of the 1920s and 1930s lay in regular weekly discussions held in Vienna from 1907 to 1912, to debate scientific and philosophical issues. These meetings were initiated by the future Circle members Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank, prompting Rudolf Haller to refer to this discussion group as the “first Vienna Circle”.30 Philipp Frank subsequently wrote about these meetings, and described what works they read.31 The points of reference for this “first Vienna Circle” were in particular the French conventionalists, Pierre Duhem, Henri Poincar¦ and Abel Rey, and the Austrian physicists Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. They were all “philosophising scientists”, who in the face of the crises shaking the foundations of physics and mathematics felt compelled to engage in theoretical reflection. And it was Kant’s a priori that became the critical point at issue. Whereas the essence of Kant’s philosophy had lain primarily in highlighting the constrained and objective character of scientific practice, the focus was now on examining the possible theoretical implications of the latency and manifest uncertainty of science. In this context the positivist Ernst Mach had reduced the scientist’s task to that of the economical description of observable phenomena. All theoretical principles operated as mere ancillary constructions, purely instrumental ways of organising and arranging experience, which in his historical and critical linguistic analyses Mach attempted to divest of any claims to ontological and a priori validity. In clear contradistinction to Kant, Mach spoke of “adapting thoughts to the facts and to each other”.32 The members of this “first Vienna Circle” revered Mach as a symbolic figure embodying the new scientific enlightenment.33 Through his linguistic criticism and consistently applied empiricism he had taken a fundamental step towards superseding the metaphysical conceptions of the world and science they saw as expressed in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. But here they ran into a serious problem: Mach’s positivist conception of science did not sufficiently capture the specific structural characteristics of the formation of scientific theories. By virtue of their formal character, the principles of theo-
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retical physics could neither be derived from experience, nor directly applied to it. This had the result of splitting theory from observation, and accordingly there was a risk of falling back into Kant’s apriorism. Philipp Frank later described this problem as follows: “We admitted that the gap between the description of facts and the general principles of science was not fully bridged by Mach, but we could not agree with Kant, who built the bridge by forms or patterns of experience that could not change with the advance of science”.34 A way out of this dilemma was found in the conventionalism of the French scientist Henri Poincar¦: “For us, he was a kind of Kant freed of the remnants of medieval scholasticism and anointed with the oil of modern science”.35 Poincar¦ was one of the first to recognise the implications of the development of non- Euclidean geometries.36 Even before Einstein he anticipated the possibility of describing physical objects with different geometrical frameworks. In contradistinction with Kant and Mach, he saw fundamental physical principles neither as economical empirical observations, nor as a priori apodictic judgements. Rather they were arbitrary conventions, definitional statements, which on the basis of the rules guiding research – such as the principle of simplicity – could be attached to experience in different ways. The interplay between the ideas of Mach and Poincar¦ led the members of the “first Vienna Circle” to a new understanding of science that was both flexible and reflexive, as described in exemplary fashion by Philipp Frank in his conventionalist interpretation of the causal principle and Otto Neurath in his methodology for the social sciences, among others.37 It is from this perspective that the critical focus on Kant can be understood. Against the background of the crises affecting the very foundations of physics and mathematics, he appeared as the epitome of a misguided, metaphysical combination of science and philosophy. From the perspective of the members of the first Vienna Circle, through his apriorism he had attempted to transfer speculative philosophy’s search for an ultimate foundation and a tabula rasa to the sciences, bestowing it with the claim of rationality (“pseudorationalism”).38 Admittedly the members of the first Vienna Circle were not able to ignore Kant – but this did not make their critique any less fundamental: the development of a forward-looking theory of science, as ultimately undertaken by the logical empiricism of the 1920s, called for a decidedly anti-a priori solution that could accommodate both the creativity of the formation of theories and the intractable nature of experience.39
The Kant Society in an ‘Un-Kantian Environment’ Neurath once described the cultural atmosphere of the first Vienna circle as an “un-Kantian environment”.40 He saw Austrian philosophy in the early 20th century as characterised by a spectrum of positions that were linked by both
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their science-focused orientation and their criticism of Kantian and idealistic school traditions. Along with Mach and Boltzmann, he was referring to Austrian followers of Bolzano and Herbart and the influential school of Franz Brentano. While these orientations played only a marginal role in German academic philosophy, in Austria they defined the intellectual climate.41 Of central importance for the formation of this philosophical milieu was the “Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna” established in 1888 by former students of Brentano.42 It continued to define the development of Austrian philosophy up until its politically motivated dissolution in 1938. Its association with the University meant that Society’s president was always an ordinary professor in the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Vienna, starting with the Herbartian Robert Zimmermann, followed by the empiricist Friedrich Jodl and former Brentano student Alois Höfler, and then the neo-Kantian Robert Reininger. In spite of its close links with the University, the Philosophical Society did not see itself as a specialist academic association.43 Its membership included representatives of a very wide range of sciences, such as the medical doctor Theodor Meynert, the classical philologist Theodor Gomperz, the art historian Alois Riegl and the physicist Franz Exner. The Society aspired to be a disseminator of scientific ideas and to communicate scientific knowledge to the wider community through weekly evening meetings devoted to philosophical and scientific topics. Under the presidency of Alois Höfler in the 1910s the main focus was on intense debates at the meetings. A brief presentation would be followed by a moderated debate, not infrequently continuing over several meetings.44 The importance of the Philosophical Society for the Vienna Circle’s development can scarcely be overestimated:45 Neurath, Hahn and Frank, i. e. the entire original nucleus of the Circle, had been actively involved in the Society since the early 1900s. The same applied to further members of the later Schlick Circle such as Viktor Kraft, Olga Hahn and Edgar Zilsel. Discussion evenings and lectures were organised in constant consultation with Alois Höfler : Philipp Frank, for example, spoke on the relationship between the mechanical and vitalistic conceptions of nature.46 Otto Neurath chaired a debate over several weeks on the “concept and scope of the a priori”.47 Kraft and Hahn were also directly involved in various publication projects of the Society.48 Through its close links with science and liberal culture, the Philosophical Society embodied an open, realityfocused intellectualism, which the Vienna Circle later endeavoured to adapt. During the 1920s there was a change of direction, with momentous consequences. Following the death of Alois Höfler, the presidency of the Society passed into the hands of the neo-Kantian Robert Reininger, recently appointed as an ordinary professor. Under his leadership the discussion evenings were discontinued, and the lectures were confined to purely philosophical topics.49 These restrictions culminated in 1927 with the incorporation of the Philo-
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sophical Society in the German Kant Society as the “Viennese local division”, a move consistently opposed by the Austrian members of the Vienna Circle. In response the “Ernst Mach Society” was formed two years later, largely with the aim of preserving the pluralistic character of Viennese philosophy. Reininger’s Kantian reorientation of the Philosophical Society is viewed in the literature as a significant stimulus for the increased socio-political openness and radicalisation of the Vienna Circle.50 According to Denis Fisette, the changes were driven by political motives, which also sheds new light on the sensitivity of the group’s attitudes towards Kant:51 Since the end of the First World War the University of Vienna had increasingly been transformed into a training ground for the German nationalist movement. This applied not only to the student associations, but also to many professors, deans and rectors, who joined forces to call for a numerus clausus for Jewish students and the political union of Austria with Germany.52 The members of the Vienna Circle strongly condemned this takeover of the University by reactionary forces.53 One of their opponents was Robert Reininger, who, as Klaus Taschwer has recently been able to demonstrate, belonged to a secret network in the Faculty of Philosophy from the early 1920s, whose aim was to obstruct the appointment and Habilitation of Jewish scholars and others with political views not to their liking.54 Reininger was also pursuing a similar agenda with the change of direction imposed on the Philosophical Society. In an address on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Kant Society in 1929 he argued as follows: Our decision two years ago to constitute ourselves as a local division of the Kant Society originated […] from a desire not only to be part of the great community of all German lovers of philosophy, but to have this visibly reflected in our structure […]: there has never been any specifically Austrian philosophy that would merit any comment on my part, only a German philosophy, to which we Austrians have made a contribution […] Yet for us Austrians these closest of all bonds with the largest association of German philosophers are more than just a practical collaboration. They are also a symbol of our indivisible intellectual and cultural unity with the whole of the German people, and therefore not only a practical and useful measure, but also significant as a small step on the path towards the realisation of an ideal that lives within all Austrians.55
Exactly what Reininger meant by this “ideal” was revealed in the last sentence of his address, in which he wished long life (Heil) to “philosophy in the great German fatherland”.56 The union with the Kant Society was intended to simulate and prepare the way for a (political union) with Germany. Through its critical attitude towards Kant and anti-idealistic stance, Austrian philosophy represented an obstacle on this path. Otto Neurath subsequently addressed this nationalistic excess and countered it with his own narrative. Against the notion of a German school of philosophy he advanced the thesis of a specifically “Austrian philosophy”, which had escaped the historical “Kantian interlude”.57 Neurath
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was clearly thinking of the Philosophical Society at the turn of the century, as a pluralistic and enlightened antidote to an ill-fated German “special path”, which had led from the reception of Kant to the unmitigated disaster of the Third Reich.58
Fig. 1: Reconstitution of the ‘Philosophical Society’ of the University of Vienna as a local group of the Kant Society (1927)
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From Neo-Kantianism to Logical Empiricism: Einstein as the Turning Point In contrast to their Austrian colleagues, the German members of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, had been socialised in a directly Kantian environment. After completing a thesis in physics with Max Planck in 1904, Schlick had studied psychology in Zurich with Gustav Störring.59 He was also in contact with Alois Riehl and the natural philosopher Erich Becher. All three were committed to a revisionist conception of Neo-Kantianism, which, at Riehl’s instigation, they decided to call “critical realism”.60 A similar intellectual itinerary had been followed by Rudolf Carnap, who at the beginning of the 1910s had attended lectures in Freiburg by the Baden Neo-Kantians Heinrich Rickert and Jonas Cohn.61 These close links with Neo-Kantianism have led researchers to describe Schlick and Carnap as Neo-Kantians, on the basis of their origins.62 However this appellation masks some complex theoretical constellations, as can be seen from Schlick’s intellectual engagement and discussions with Hans Reichenbach and Ernst Cassirer. The theory of science in Germany in the 1910s and early 1920s was dominated by the need to respond to Einstein’s theory of relativity.63 This was particularly the case for followers of Neo-Kantianism, which had dominated the philosophy of science in Germany since the middle of the 19th century. The special and general theories of relativity had shown the limited viability in physics of all the a priori standpoints of Kant’s theoretical philosophy : both Euclidean geometry and the principles of Newtonian mechanics no longer applied as apodictic forms of scientific cognition. The Neo-Kantians responded to this situation in a variety of ways. While some tried to immune themselves against the theory of relativity, others attempted to surpass “Kant plus Newton” with “Kant plus Einstein”. One of the latter was Ernst Cassirer, a philosopher teaching in Hamburg, who in 1921 published a monograph entitled Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [On Einstein’s Theory of Relativity].64 At the centre of this work was an attempt to make the aprioristic principles of Kant’s philosophy viable in the contemporary context. Cassirer confronted classical empiricism by taking the theory of relativity as confirmation of the idealistic structure of scientific cognition. Through his critique of the objectivity of space and time, he argued, Einstein had “provided the specific domain for the application and implementation of the standpoint of critical realism within empirical science itself”.65 The same applied for physics in general: the theory of relativity documented a further step in the historical process of superseding the reified concept of nature with purely functional modes of conceiving physical reality. In the effort to rescue Kant’s apriorism, Cassirer opted for a two-fold strategy. First, he interpreted the faculty of productive imagination as a regulative “idea of the unity of nature”,66 which as a “rule of the intellect” formed the historical, dynamic criterion of ongoing
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epistemic development.67 In comparison with Newton, he said, Einstein had not only contributed to a more comprehensive systemisation of natural laws, but also, through his insistence on the general co–variance of physical laws, had provided a “new grounding” of Kant’s idea of a unified nature.68 And secondly, Cassirer responded to Einstein’s critique of the physical separability and metric determinacy of space and time by divesting pure intuition of concrete, objective involvement, and subordinating it to the intellect as part of a set of “organising modes” (Ordnungsformen). In themselves, space and time fulfilled a purely definitional function, defining in topological terms what was to be understood by “spatiality and temporality” in general. It was only their “systematic combination” that made the transition to “actual empirical use” in accordance with Kant’s synthetic a priori.69 The latter was relativized by Cassirer to the extent that he conceived the metric form of the spatiotemporal organising mode as dynamic and variable, and therefore non-apodictic: “This ‘mode’, however, for the very reason that it represents the active and forming, genuinely creative aspect, has to be seen not as rigid, but as a living, moving mode”.70 Hence the regulative “idea of the unity of nature” corresponded to the qualified a priori of the organising modes, through whose scientific “individuation” the unity of thought became expressed as the unity of nature. A similar combination of Einstein’s theory of relativity and Kant’s apriorism was undertaken at the same time by Hans Reichenbach, a former student of Cassirer. In his monograph Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori (Theory of relativity and a priori cognition) (1920),71 Reichenbach’s agenda was to “save Kant from the Kantians”.72 Like Cassirer, his solution was based on a relativizing approach, as he formulated two quite different ways of interpreting Kant’s concept of the a priori. “It means on the one hand ‘apodictically valid’, ‘valid for all time’, and on the other ‘constituting the concept of the object’”.73 The first meaning was to be rejected, he said, in the light of contemporary scientific developments, but the second was to be retained, in order to safeguard the constructive aspect of the formation of theories. Reichenbach’s point was to interpret the constructive a priori as a purely theory-immanent framework, whose content could be revised and reconstituted through the transformation of scientific paradigms.74 For example, in classical mechanics geometry functioned as an axiomatic constructive principle, whereas in the context of the general theory of relativity it was viewed as an empirical hypothesis. Measured against his own time, therefore, Kant was fully correct in his a priori interpretation of Euclidean geometry, given the relativization of the a priori along these theorydependent lines. Even before his appointment at the University of Vienna in 1922, Moritz Schlick had written reviews of the works of Reichenbach and Cassirer that are today regarded as important milestones of logical empiricism.75 On the basis of
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his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [General Theory of Cognition] (1918) he was at this time regarded as one of the leading science theoreticians.76 Schlick also acted as the leading interpreter of Einstein’s ideas. As early as 1915 he published the ground-breaking essay Die philosophische Bedeutung des Relativitätsprinzips [The Philosophical Significance of the Relativity Principle].77 This was followed at the beginning of the 1920s by a further monograph and a series of articles. His philosophical career was grounded in the neo-Kantian environment of critical realism. In terms of the “critical” element, he saw the foundation of objective knowledge in the theory of cognition as the true task of philosophy. And as a “realist” he aimed to formulate a transcendental re-evaluation of Kant’s “things in themselves”, which he saw as the true domain of the subject-matter of scientific cognition.78 During his critical engagement with Einstein over many years, however, there was a change of perspective in Schlick’s thinking, which is first seen in his review of Cassirer’s work. In contradistinction to the positivist and neo-Kantian interpretations of the theory of relativity, Schlick here proposed the “third way” of a new empiricism informed by conventionalism. According to this argument, the theory of relativity did not corroborate either the a priori conception (Cassirer) or the sensualist conception (Mach) of physical principles: “Between the two there remains the empiricist view, whereby these constitutive principles are either hypotheses or conventions; in the former case they are not a priori (since they lack apodictic character), and in the latter case they are not synthetic”.79 A synthetic a priori as formulated by Kant was therefore just as superfluous as were all rescue attempts through relativization, since the connection of theory and observation could be made specifically by a consistent separation and division of labour between definitional and hypothetic elements. It was with this argument that Schlick later “converted” Hans Reichenbach to empiricism.80 But there is still more to this story, since in this empiricist conception of theory Schlick also perceived the foundation stone of a new kind of methodology in the theory of science: whereas the aim of NeoKantianism had been the transcendental reconstruction of scientific cognition, the task now was to examine its validity. Schlick found the criteria for doing this in Einstein’s criticism of the theory of the ether, in the postulate that “differences in what is real are to be accepted only where there are differences in that which can in principle be experienced”.81 Accordingly, a scientific theory could claim cognitive validity only if its hypotheses were in principle subject to verification by experience. This was also where Schlick’s central criticism of Cassirer’s attempt to rescue Kant’s a priori lay : the regulative “idea of the unity of nature” was kept so general that any halfway consistent physical theory could be reconciled with it, whereby Neo-Kantianism forfeited even “the possibility of a selection”, of a critical evaluation of claims of scientific validity.82 Einstein’s theory of relativity proved to be an intellectual watershed for Neo-
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Kantianism: whereas Schlick and Reichenbach turned towards logical empiricism, Cassirer developed his philosophy of culture based on “symbolic forms”. Michael Friedman has seen this as a missed opportunity for the modernisation of Kant’s philosophy of science, as Reichenbach and Cassirer had endeavoured to initiate in their works.83 This notwithstanding, Schlick’s historic achievement is not to be ignored. With his separation of definitional and synthetic judgements and his idea of the empirical verifiability of hypotheses, he played a major part in preparing the way for the later verificationism of the Vienna Circle. In comparison with the Austrian members of the Vienna Circle, Schlick’s intellectual journey can be seen as a two-fold narrative of emancipation: his path, like Reichenbach’s, took him past Kant, and also past his own former criticist stance. This process is not at all to be seen as a dialectic. On the contrary, the modern theory of science of the Vienna Circle was based not only on the important influences of Wittgenstein, Einstein and Mach, but also – quite specifically – on a critical and intensive engagement with Kant and Kantian philosophy. Translated by John Jamieson
Moritz Schlick – A Critical Stance towards Kant by Olga Ring Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) Friedrich Albert Moritz Schlick was born in Berlin on April 14, 1882 as the third and youngest son of a prosperous Protestant family. After graduating from the Luisenstädter Realgymnasium (a grammar school with an emphasis on science) in Berlin, he studied natural sciences and mathematics at the universities of Heidelberg, Lausanne and Berlin.84 Schlick graduated in Berlin under Max Plank with a thesis in physics Über die Reflektion des Lichts in einer inhomogenen Schicht [On the Reflection of Light in an Inhomogenous Layer]. After that he continued his scientific studies in Göttingen, Heidelberg and Berlin and started studying psychology for two terms in Zurich in 1907. During this time Schlick wrote his first book Lebensweisheit. Versuch einer Glückseligkeitslehre [Wisdom. Essay on a Theory of Happiness]. In 1910 Schlick attained his habilitation (a post-doctoral qualification) at the University of Rostock with his thesis Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik [The Nature of Truth according to Modern Logic].85 Between 1910 and 1916 Schlick frequently wrote reviews for the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie [Quarterly Journal of Scientific Philosophy and Sociology] edited by Alois Riehl, a neoKantian, whom Schlick knew personally and whose approach to the philosophy of science he admired.86 During these years Schlick was one of the first to deal
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with the philosophical implications of the Theory of Relativity formulated by Albert Einstein. who he met personally in 1911. This investigation resulted in an essay (1917) and a book, both entitled Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik. Zur Einführung in das Verständnis der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie [Space and Time in Contemporary Physics. An Introduction to the Theory of Relativity and Gravitation] (Berlin 1919, 4th edition 1922). In 1917 Schlick became associate professor in Rostock. During his time there he wrote his main extensive epistemological work Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [General Theory of Knowledge] (Berlin, 2nd edition 1925). In 1921 Schlick became professor at the University of Kiel, where he only stayed for one year because shortly after that, in 1922, he followed the call initiated by the mathematician Hans Hahn to the chair of Naturphilosphie [Philosophy of Nature] at the University of Vienna,87 which had been held by Ernst Mach before him. In Vienna, Schlick encountered a circle of like-minded philosophers like Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank.88 In the beginning, the members of what was later called the Vienna Circle gathered every now and again in private, but then started meeting once a week in the Department of Mathematics in Boltzmanngasse 5, where they held lively debates about the philosophy of science. In this context the lengthy discussions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus, of which extensive minutes exist, are of particular interest. The works and personality of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whom Schlick met personally in 1926, made a profound impression on him. As a member of the Society of Ethics and of the Ernst Mach Association, Schlick also worked in adult education in Vienna. Furthermore, he was on the advisory board of the Kant Society’s Viennese chapter, which had been founded on November 18, 1927 by Robert Reininger, who became its chairman, and replaced the earlier Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna.89 In November 1928 the Vienna Circle officially became an association, named after Ernst Mach, with Schlick as the chairman. In this role he edited the series Schriften zur Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [Writings on a Scientific World View] together with Philipp Frank. After Schlick had refused a chair at the University of Bonn in 1929 and had decided to stay in Vienna, the Ernst Mach Association showed their gratitude by publishing the programmatic essay Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis [Scientific World View. The Vienna Circle]. As a guest professor at Stanford University, Palo Alto, and at the University of California in Berkeley (USA) Schlick also published some articles in English in scientific journals. Schlick met a tragic, early death in the morning of June 22, 1936 when he was shot by his former doctoral student Hans Nelböck on what is called the “philosophers’ staircase” in the main building of the University of Vienna.90
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Fig. 2: Theodor Bauer, Moritz Schlick (around 1930)
Schlicks’s Epistemological Critique of Kant Moritz Schlick’s philosophical thinking evolved through his critical studies of Kant’s philosophy. His first in-depth encounter with this philosophy was as a student, when he was intensely engaged with Alois Riehl’s philosophy, who was a well-known neo-Kantian. Riehl’s realistic interpretation of Kant’s epistemology and particularly his main work Der philosophische Kritizismus [The Philosophy of Criticism] had a decisive influence on Schlick’s own approach to the theory of science.91 Schlick finally met Riehl personally in 1910 and visited him in his Berlin flat before his departure for Rostock.92 In his habilitation thesis Das Wesen der Wahrheit nach der modernen Logik [The Nature of Truth according to Modern Logic] (1910) presented at the University of Rostock, Schlick focused mainly on Husserl’s phenomenology. In this thesis he anticipated several important aspects of his later Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [General Theory of Knowledge]. Schlick saw himself as a follower of the Kantian tradition in the sense that he accepted the necessity of an interaction between the concepts of understanding and the forms of sensual perception during the cognitive proc-
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ess.93 However, he advanced a psychologistic and empirical epistemology that differed from critical idealism and was to a certain degree influenced by his participation in experimental-psychological tests run by Gustav Störring in Zurich.94 In the years between 1910 and 1916 Schlick wrote a series of relatively short philosophical articles and about thirty reviews for the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie [Quarterly Journal of Scientific Philosophy and Sociology]. Schlick was very much involved in this journal founded by Richard Avenarius in 1877. With Alois Riehl’s active contribution, this journal for scientific philosophy became a leading publication organ and attempted to bridge the gap between positivism and Neo-Kantianism. At the beginning of his career Schlick’s scholarly thinking was certainly close to the Kantian tradition and to the ideas of Neo-Kantianism, even though his approach was undoubtedly empirical and realistic. His reviews of Paul Natorp’s Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften [The Logical Foundations of Exact Science] (1911), Ludwig Goldschmidt’s Zur Wiedererweckung Kantischer Lehre [On the Resurrection of Kant’s Teachings] (1911), Max FrischeisenKöhler’s Wissenschaft und Wirklichkeit [Science and Reality] (1913) und Hans Cornelius’ Transzendentale Systematik [Transcendental Systematics] (1916)95 are good examples of articles written under the influence of Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism. As late as 1915 Schlick was still convinced that Kant’s epistemology and in particular his theory of time and space should not be completely dismissed, but should be aligned with the latest insights of empirical sciences.96 However, while he was working on his most ambitious piece of writing Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [General Theory of Knowledge] Schlick’s opinion began to shift towards an anti-Kantian position.97 One important reason for this shift away from Kantianism was the fact that Schlick had studied Einstein’s theory of relativity intensely for many years.98 In a highly critical review of Ernst Cassirer’s Zur Einsteinischen Relativitätstheorie [Einstein’s Theory of Relativity], a work in which Cassirer suggests extending one’s Kantian thinking beyond Kant by trying to combine Einstein’s theory of relativity with Kant’s philosophy, Schlick clearly refutes the idea that such a convergence might be possible: “Undoubtedly, Kant himself counted the axioms of Euclidean geometry and Galilei’s kinematics a priori among the synthetic principles constituting objects. […] Whoever accepts Einstein’s theory has to refute Kant’s teachings in their original form; as Cassirer emphasises several times, one has to take a step beyond Kant.”99 In his General Theory of Knowledge first published in 1918 and again in 1925, Schlick engages in a lengthy and critical discussion of influential contemporary concepts in the philosophy of science and in Kant’s philosophy and sets them against of his own philosophy, which aimed at a theory of science and can be interpreted as a nominalistic theory of concept formation based on psychology. Schlick primarily criticised the epistemological problems
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of Kantian philosophy such as the question of the conditions under which empirical sciences become possible and the corresponding question about synthetic a priori judgments, as well as the thing in itself and the relationship between psychology and logic.
Fig. 3: Floor panel with inscription commemorating Moritz Schlick at the location of the assassination, Vienna (1991)
Like Kant, Schlick defines cognition as judgment and sees cognition as creating structural connections in one’s unified consciousness between individual concepts denoting facts. He expresses the extent of his appreciation of Kantian philosophy by saying: “It was Kant who recognised – and even exaggerated – the extraordinary importance that the unity of consciousness has for the ultimate questions of cognition in all their depth.”100 Schlick also distinguishes, albeit in a different sense than Kant, between analytic a priori judgments and synthetic a posteriori judgments, Schlick sees analytic a priori judgments as definitions and in that sense “it becomes clear that Kant’s solution – if it were correct –would not be a great triumph of rationalism after all, because the insights we can still gain a priori according to this view do not have any concrete, material significance for individual problems in life and in research.“101 According to Schlick, synthetic a posteriori judgments are hypotheses that are valid because of experience: “if judgments based on experience were not valid, life and science itself would be called into question. […] What was correct about Kant’s idea that one could prove the validity of general propositions by means of experience is still relevant, as long as we define the concept of experience in a general enough way, in the sense as practical action and do not define proofs as logical deductions, but as real-life justifications.”102 Thus Schlick strictly rejects that synthetic a priori
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judgments are possible, which is something Kant very much wanted to prove. In a later article written in 1930 entitled Gibt es ein materiales Apriori? [Is there a Factual a priori], which contains a critical discussion of phenomenology in relation to Kantian philosophy, Schlick again elucidates his view of the problem of a priori judgments. Schlick considers it Kant’s great achievement that he has delimited and applied the concept “a priori” very clearly ; especially concerning analytic propositions:103 This conclusion is not weakened by the fact that the verbal form in which Kant clothed his definition of analytic propositions no longer satisfies us. […] Let us next ask by what way Kant arrived at an inseparable connection between the a priori and the formal. His point of departure was, of course, an amazement over the presence of synthetic and yet universally valid judgments in the exact sciences. […] For we are today of the opinion that the propositions of pure mathematics are not synthetic, while those of the science of nature (to which geometry belongs, in so far as it is conceived to be the science of Space) are not a priori. Our empiricism makes the assertion that there are no other a priori judgments than the analytic, or rather, as we prefer to say today, that only tautological propositions are a priori.104
Schlick refutes ontological dualism and grounds his refusal of the Kantian concept of the thing in itself on a psychology-based distinction between experience on the one hand and cognition on the other. He asserted: Here it becomes evident that Kant regarded the close connection created between the object and the observer by intuition as an essential aspect of cognition. This prevented him from exposing the problem of acquiring knowledge of the things in themselves as a mere pseudo problem. He believed that such knowledge made it necessary that “our intuition […] were perforce of such a nature as to represent things as they are in themselves” and declared that this was impossible, because the things “cannot migrate into my faculty of representation”. We, however, now know : even if this was possible, even if the things could become one with our consciousness, then we would experience those things, which is something completely different from cognizing them.105
In 1927 Schlick wrote to the neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer in reaction to the latter’s criticism of some of the main thoughts in his General Theory of Knowledge: It is basically true that my concept of the thing in itself is the same as Kant’s concept of the empirical ground, but this is not completely so, because the concept of appearances and the empirical object in Kant’s system do not seem to me to be free of contradictions. […] You rightly say that according to Kant the real reason for the distinction between empirical and transcendental being can be found in practical philosophy. Alas, I know this all too well! I do not like to talk about it, because this seems to be what is really scandalous about this philosophy. […] Kant’s idea of intelligible freedom, which Schopenhauer, for instance, praised as the deepest of all thoughts, seems to me – after most conscientious examination – to be simply unworthy of a true seeker of truth.106
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This is a reference to Kant’s moral philosophy, which also stood in the centre of Schlick’s critical interest in Kantian philosophy. Schlick’s ideas about ethics differ from Kant’s and he proposes a theory of pleasure and happiness based on psychology. Kant’s deontological ethics of duty was something he always opposed when dealing with moral questions. Therefore Schlick characterises Kant’s philosophy in his essay Fragen der Ethik [Problems of Ethics] as ethics based on commands without a commander : From this last proceeds Kant’s doctrine of the “absolute ought,” that is, a demand without a demander. One of the worst errors of ethical thought lies in his belief that the concept of moral good is completely exhausted by the statement of its purely formal property, that it has no content except to be what is demanded, “what should be”.107
Fig. 4: Drawing addressing Moritz Schlick’s assassination
In contrast, Schlick argues the case for a kind of ethics of “facts existing in the reality of human consciousness”, which he saw as a normative science offering descriptions and explanations and “furnish[ing] a hierarchical order of rules”.108 But even Schlick could not quite escape the high moral values of Kantian philosophy. Among the aphorisms published after his death at the request of his
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wife there is one opposing National Socialism: “National Socialism, which only allows human beings to exist for the sake of the state, is the direct opposite of Kant’s moral rule, which is most beautifully expressed in the words: “Never treat human beings as a means to an end, but always as an end!”109 What we can now conclude is that Moritz Schlick’s philosophical thinking can only be presented in the context of the problems and questions that have their origin in Kant’s philosophy,110 because detailed and highly critical studies of Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy dominated Schlick‘s philosophical work in various degrees of intensity throughout his entire life. Translated by Susanne Costa
Edgar Zilsel – Kant as an Ally by Olga Ring Edgar Zilsel (1891–1944) Edgar Zilsel was born in Vienna on 11 August 1891, the third and youngest child of the Jewish lawyer Jakob Zilsel.111 After matriculating from the Franz-Josef Gymnasium (now Gymnasium Stubenbastei, 1st District) in 1910, he began to study philosophy, mathematics, and physics at the University of Vienna which he concluded with a philosophy dissertation under the supervision of Alois Höfler and Adolf Stöhr.112 This thesis, which was to strongly influence the young Herbert Feigl, was published a year later as a monograph under the title Das Anwendungsproblem. Ein philosophischer Versuch über das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen und die Induktion [The Application Problem: A Philosophical Essay on the Law of Large Numbers and Induction]. After the end of his studies, Zilsel worked as an insurance actuary. In 1917 he took a position as a grammar school teacher.113 At this time he made his first contact with the school reform movement of the Social Democrat Otto Glöckel as well as with Ludo Moritz Hartmann of the popular adult education movement. Working in support of Glöckel’s school reform, Zilsel composed a series of writings on pedagogical programs, which, like his already existing dissertation, clearly refers to Kantian philosophy. Relevant are the two essays [Der einführende Philosophieunterricht an den neuen Oberschulen (1921) [Introductory Philosophy Teaching in New Secondary Schools] and Kant als Erzieher (1924) [Kant as Educator].114 In order to make popular education his main profession, Zilsel turned his back on his teaching career in 1923. From then on and for some two decades thereafter, working as a teacher of philosophy and physics, he held daily lectures at adult education schools [Volkshochschulen] in Ottakring, Simmering, Landstraße, Brigittenau, and in Leopoldstadt (all students belonged
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to Hartmanns “People’s Home” [Volksheim] (Association). In addition, he offered teacher training courses at the Pedagogical Institute of the City of Vienna.115 Zilsel never obtained academic tenure. In 1923 he tried to obtain his professorial qualifications with an academic historical study on Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffs [The Development of the Concept of Genius] submitted to the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Philosophy. The work was, in fact, withdrawn by him a year later. At this point, his earlier teacher, Heinrich Gomperz, as well as the philosophy professor Moritz Schlick, who had only recently taken over the chair in Vienna, advised him that, apart from continually positive evaluations from Ernst Cassirer, considerable objections were being raised within the qualifying commission.116 As already mentioned by Klaus Taschwer in an article,117 there was a familiar pattern involved: the two German nationalist professors, Robert Reininger and Richard Meister, who sat on the commission adjudicating Zilsel, belonged to an anti-Semitic network, the so called “Bear’s Cave” [Bärenhöhle], which had been active within the Faculty of Philosophy since the beginning of the 1920s. This group aimed at hindering the careers and teaching qualifications of Jewish and Social Democratic academics. By withdrawing, Zilsel thus forestalled certain rejection. Nonetheless, his writings, developed during this period, are today considered classic contributions to the history of ideas. Zilsel’s work became well known outside of the university domain, for instance, in the milieu of the Vienna Circle. Although there was a certain tension between his sociological, historical, and political interests and those of many members of the Vienna Circle, his role within the group should not be underestimated. Along with Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap he participated in the founding of the Ernst Mach Asssociation in 1928, which produced the central media organ of the Vienna Circle to the outside world.118 Additionally, as Friedrich Stadler has suggested,119 Zilsel acted as an important link between the Vienna Circle and other political and academic unions, such as the Viennese Social Democrats and the so-called “Gomperz Circle”. Zilsel experienced the 1930s as a creeping professional and personal catastrophe. As a Social Democrat under the Austro-fascist regime, he was removed from the Adult Education School Board in 1934 and had to return to his old profession as a grammar school teacher. After the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, Zilsel found himself exposed to massive persecution motivated by anti-Semitism and politics. He was an avowed and known opponent of National Socialism from the beginning. From 1933 he had publicly fought the legitimization of Nazism in universities and intellectual life in articles such as SA philosophiert [The Brownshirts Philosophize] and Das Dritte Reich und die Wissenschaft [The Third Reich and Science].120 All of this eventually
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forced Zilsel to emigrate. In 1939 he fled with his family, first to England and then to the United States, where, with the help of various sources of financial support, he again took up his academic historical research. Between 1940 and 1944 he published various articles in leading American academic journals on social and historical conditions in the development of the modern natural sciences which would be published thirty years later as a monograph entitled Die sozialen Ursprünge der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft (1976) [The Social Origins of Modern Science]. He then taught at Hunter College in New York and later at Mills College in Oakland, California. Despite these moments of fitting into the local academic culture, Zilsel was never able to recover from the experience of isolation and of the loss of his home. On 11 March 1944 he took his own life at his residence in Oakland.121
Mathematics and Epistemology Based on Kant Edgar Zilsel devoted his entire life to problems pertaining to the theory and the sociology of science in the humanities and in the natural sciences. The intensity of his preoccupation with Kant’s philosophy is documented primarily in his early writings and lectures, in which Zilsel mainly discussed the nature-philosophical aspects of Kant’s philosophy. This then led him to the question of the conditions in which modern sciences first emerged. Without doubt, Zilsel’s interdisciplinary work on this topic was pioneering, but only found the recognition it deserves relatively recently. In addition, Zilsel found an ally in Kant in socio-political and pedagogical matters and opposed a purely academic and limited interpretation of Kant’s work. In the context of nature-philosophical problems, Zilsel’s first book – based on his doctoral thesis of 1915 – deserves special mention: Das Anwendungsproblem. Ein philosophischer Versuch über das Gesetz der großen Zahlen und die Induktion [The Application Problem. A Philosophical Investigation of the Law of Large Numbers and its Induction] (1916). This work, which incidentally had a huge influence on the young Herbert Feigl when he wrote his dissertation Wahrscheinlichkeit und Erfahrung [Probability and Experience]122 under Schlick, can be seen in the context of the nature-philosophical debate about the concept of probability during this time. The question Zilsel posed was inspired by his job in an insurance company, where he worked as an actuary,123 is as follows: How and why can mathematical probability theory be applied to reality? In this book, and in particular in its appendix, this question is interpreted as a general philosophical and a specifically Kantian problem: “How can we define the undefined, how can we make the irrational rational, how can we apply logic, mathematics and science to the world?”124 To answer these question Zilsel fol-
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lows the approach first proposed by the Wuerzburg psychologist Adolf Fick in his essay Philosophischer Versuch über die Wahrscheinlichkeiten [A Philosophical Investigation of Probabilities]125 to solve the application problem in the light of the Kantian transcendental justification.126 The main task that Zilsel set himself can be interpreted as a search for the conditions in which knowledge that is created according to laws is valid. Zilsel’s theoretical basis, which he reinforces through Kant’s philosophy, is the convergence of the general laws of nature and the laws of human cognition. He argues that the philosophy of nature and epistemology cannot be separated: “If we want to engage in nature philosophy, the only thing we can do is to base the philosophy of nature on experience, on the knowledge about nature in general. This seems to me the much cited Copernican perspective that Kant called for in his Preface to the second edition of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason]. We have to consider the laws of nature as laws of knowledge. […] This methodological requirement seems to express the essence of Kant’s entire theoretical philosophy and it is a requirement that seems justified”.127 According to Zilsel, only postulates (e. g. mathematical axioms) can be considered a priori in the strictest sense, but concepts cannot. In keeping with the anti-psychological approach of Kantian philosophy, the a priori should be seen as a necessary condition for knowledge and not as an innate organisational category of our consciousness. Accordingly, the assumed manifold of nature is taken to be an a priori, i. e. a necessary condition of knowledge.128 These preliminary considerations, Zilsel says, enable us to solve the problem of induction. Kant too had realized the problem and dealt with it in several “obscure passages”,129 but he never did so clearly and explicitly. Kant discussed the application problem in the schematism chapter as the problem of the application of the categories to sensibility in general. According to Zilsel, however, several “obscure passages”130 in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and in Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment] indicate that he saw the application problem from a different point of view as well: when Kant talks about the capacity of power of reflective judgment, about the law of classification, and the regulative principle of judgment, he once more raises the question of the application of inductive logic, which he considered himself to have answered in the schematism chapter. Therefore these two approaches, Zilsel says, do not sit easily together.131 This means that Kant did not deal fully and explicitly enough with the application problem. On this matter Johannes Lenhard and Wolfgang Krohn argue: “It is precisely this conviction that he brought to his later methodological discussion of Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, of phenomenology and of NeoKantianism. It is the starting point from which he declares that if we are to deal
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with the application problem adequately we must not ignore the problem of induction.”132 The solution Zilsel proposes in the Application Problem, for which he used Southwest-German Neo-Kantianism as a methodological model (Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung [The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science]), is based on the discernibility and fundamental lawfulness of the world on the one hand, and on the fact of the actual success of natural sciences on the other. The solution is to accept that the law of large numbers, a basic statistical law of the time which states that “mass phenomena […] lead to (almost) constant averages”133 is the most fundamental and general of natural laws. This law is linked to the theories of the diversity and manifold of nature and the reciprocity of the content and range of concepts. Zilsel argues that throughout the history of philosophy, as far as the relation between content and range is concerned, “only Kant paid much attention to it and discussed it as ‘law of specification of nature’ in its genera and species in his introduction to the Critique of Judgment and in the appendix on dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason.134 According to Zilsel, these are the prerequisites that make induction possible.135 Johannes Lenhard and Wolfgang Krohn acknowledge this solution to the application problem as follows: “Basically, Zilsel continues to develop Kant’s epistemological view by setting himself the task of creating a philosophical epistemology based on the success of the natural sciences. However, he moderates Kant’s excessive assumptions and considers the law of large numbers, ‘the most formal of laws’ the key to argumentation. Given these ambitions we can sense, how important this work was for Zilsel: Only an achievement of Kantian dimensions could solve the application problem satisfactorily”.136 After the publication of the book, which was met with great interest and mixed reviews, Zilsel realized that there were certain theoretical weaknesses in his solution, being rooted – as it was – in Laplace’s probability paradigm, which by then had become obsolete. Yet the main Kantian question and the conditions necessary to solve it which he had formulated were not affected by these weaknesses, Zilsel claims.137 Therefore he tried in his later works to solve this central problem he had set himself by describing various ways in which the concept of law had been defined and applied in the sciences and in the humanities during the course of history. Of these later writings – which were founded on Zilsel’s interdisciplinary approach to researching the origins of modern sciences – the following are most worthy of mention: Die Geniereligion. Ein kritischer Versuch über das moderne Persönlichkeitsideal, mit einer historischen Begründung [The Religion of Genius: A Critical Study of the Modern Ideal of Personality, with a Historical Justification] (1918),138 Die Asymmetrie der Kausalität [On the Asymmetry of Causality] (1927), Geschichte und Biologie [History and Biology] (1931), Physics and the Problem of His-
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Fig. 5: Edgar Zilsel, The Application Problem: a Philosophical Investigation of the Law of Large Numbers and its Induction
torico-Sociological Laws (1941), Phenomenology and Natural Science (1941), Problems of Empirism (1941).139 A further example of Zilsel’s involvement with Kantian philosophy can be found in his political-ideological and pedagogical lectures and essays. Between 1919 and 1934 Zilsel worked with great enthusiasm in adult education. Among his many lecture topics there are five series of lectures that deal with Kant’s philosophy : Introduction to Modern Philosophy III: Leibniz and Kant (summer term 1919, Wiener Volksbildungsverein); Kant (winter term 1923/24, Volksheim Leopoldstadt), Introduction to the History of Philosophy IV: Kant and after Kant (summer term 1925, Volkshochschule Ottakring), and Reading Texts and Discussion about Kant and Post-Kantian Philosophy (summer term 1929, Volkshochschule Ottakring).140 In these lectures Zilsel tried to present the history of philosophy and the basic concepts and problems of Kant’s philosophy in simple language to his audience, who were mostly members of the working class.141
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These efforts must be seen in the context of Zilsel’s programmatic ideas about reforming how philosophy was taught in schools: We should not stuff pupils full of set ideologies, but should involve them in an honest, objective and fair discussion of those problems and concepts that enable young people to find a coherent response to the basic questions of nature, their own lives and human society suppported by the thinking of the past”.142 Zilsel also wrote an article in the journal Schulreform [Educational Reform] edited by Otto Gloeckel and Viktor Fadrus entitled Kant als Erzieher [Kant as Educator](1924) in which he “dealt extensively with Kant’s negative remarks about the educational system of his time”.143 Zilsel wrote: “Kant loathed the educational system of his time that was based on coercion and religious cults. What was necessary was ‘not a slow reform, but a swift revolution’, he thought”.144 In Zilsel’s eyes, Kant’s decisive role as an educator was “that Kant taught us to distinguish between the realm of facts and absolute values, that he taught us not to allow any dogma or fad to cloud our perception of facts and not to forsake our holy moral convictions, our respect for humanity, because of an external fact”.145 The name Kant also appears frequently in his articles for the leftist magazine Der Kampf [The Battle]. In his Philosophische Bemerkungen [Philosophical Remarks] Zilsel pleads against the limited interpretation of Kant common in academic circles, because “in the 18th century, until the age of 46, Kant published 11 ‘philosophical’ works and 14 treatises on earthquakes, wind, fire, the rotation of the earth and other physical, astronomical and geographical subjects. The great age of European philosophy was somewhat different from what modern textbooks would have us believe”.146 So the natural philosopher Kant is usually ignored in the conventional academic reception of Kant, which means that he is not discussed as a concrete historical personality, as a child of his time and as somebody who paved the way for modern scientific disciplines: “The close engagement with the pressing problems particular to that time not only gave momentum to the thoughts of classical philosophy, but this overall theory,which as yet remains undifferentiated forms the basis of our modern scientific disciplines.147 Therefore we can conclude that Kantian philosophy had a powerful influence on Edgar Zilsel’s philosophical, sociological and political thinking throughout his life. Translated by James Garrison and Susanne Costa
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Otto Neurath – Against Kant and the Special Path of German Philosophy by Bastian Stoppelkamp Otto Neurath, sociologist, economist, science theoretician and indefatigable mounter of projects, was born on 10 December 1882 in Vienna.148 His parents, Gertrud Kaempffert and Wilhelm Neurath, came from very different worlds: his mother was from a Protestant upper middle class family, while his father was raised in a poor, devoutly Jewish home near Bratislava, converting to Catholicism just before his marriage in 1881.149 As Professor of Economics at the College of Agriculture, and a scholar well-versed in many different fields, Wilhelm Neurath was part of the first generation of the Viennese social reform movement, producing a series of works censuring the disastrous consequences of unbridled economic liberalism.150 Otto Neurath would later espouse his father’s sociopolitical ideas. After completing his secondary education, in autumn 1902 Neurath enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he attended lectures in mathematics, natural sciences, economics and philosophy for the following two semesters. On the recommendation of the Kiel sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, whom he had met during the Salzburg University Weeks, he moved the following year to the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. Along with the courses of Georg Simmel and Friedrich Paulsen, here Neurath attended in particular the seminars of the economist Gustav Schmoller and the ancient historian Eduard Meyer, with whom he graduated in 1906, summa cum laude, with two simultaneously submitted theses.151 The first was devoted to the discourse and reception history of Cicero’s De Officiis, and appeared that same year under the title Zur Anschauung der Antike über Handel, Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft [Ancient Conceptions of Trade, Industry and the Economy] in Jahrbüchern für Nationalökonomie und Statistik [Annals of Economics and Statistics].152 The second study was on Kriegskunst als Teil der Erwerbskunst [The Art of War as Part of Successful Economics] in ancient Egypt.153 Both assessors recognised Neurath as an extraordinarily gifted scholar. Gustav Schmoller’s second assessment, for example, describes him as “a devourer of books and a hard worker such as I have seldom seen”.154 After completing his degree Neurath returned to Vienna in 1907. Up until the First World War he was lecturer in economics at the Vienna New College of Commerce.155 At this time he also established a discussion group on the theory of science, along with the mathematician Hans Hahn and the physicist Philipp Frank, which researchers now refer to as “the first Vienna Circle”.156 After a fouryear marriage with the German philologist and feminist Anna Schapire, who died in 1911 after giving birth to their son Paul, in 1912 Neurath married the
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blind mathematician Olga Hahn (sister of Hans Hahn), with whom he published several works on logic.157 Returning to the topic of his thesis, in the early 1910s Neurath developed his own “economic theory of war”, based on the idea that wartime conditions are not necessarily associated with negative economic consequences. Instead, emergency situations of this kind often require a more rational and planned distribution of goods, actually leading to an improvement in the living conditions of the social strata that are disadvantaged under a capitalist regime.158 Neurath’s studies on the war economy generated a considerable response at the time, and from 1912 he carried out research in the Balkan region funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.159 Following the outbreak of the First World War, after serving briefly as a soldier on the eastern front, in 1916 he was appointed head organiser of a “Scientific Committee for the War Economy”, set up on his initiative in the Austrian War Ministry. Together with other social scientists and later leading political figures such as Otto Bauer, Friedrich Herz and Othmar Spann, Neurath’s task was to monitor the state’s economic performance and suggest concrete economic policy measures in response to military developments.160 In 1917 he was also put in charge of the recently established War Economy Museum in Leipzig. In that same year he gained his Habilitation qualification as a lecturer in political economy at the University of Heidelberg.161 Like many of his generation, Neurath was politicised by the war, and in 1918 he joined the Austrian Social Democrats. It was now time, he declared in the foreword to his collection of essays Durch die Kriegswirtschaft zur Naturalwirtschaft [Through War Economy to an Economy in Kind] (1919), “to cease a life of contemplation and take up a life of practical deeds”.162 In spite of such declarations, throughout his life Neurath endeavoured to maintain a distinction between his political attitudes and his scientific convictions. He often described himself as a “social engineer” which soon led to some complications.163 After the war, Neurath, in the state of confusion of the November revolution, had assumed the presidency of the Central Economic Office in Bavaria, for the implementation in practice of his concept of “full socialisation” on the basis of a planned economy, as previously outlined in his writings on the war economy. When the Social Democrat government originally elected in Munich was ousted from office twice in succession by the Councils movement, Neurath remained in his position, so as not to jeopardise the implementation of his social policy plan. Following the routing of the Councils revolution he was sentenced to one-and-ahalf years imprisonment as an “accessory to high treason”. Through the intervention of fellow party members such as Otto Bauer and Ludo Moritz Hartmann, he was able to leave and return to Austria after just six weeks of imprisonment on remand (during which he wrote his work Anti-Spengler). He was however banned from entering Germany for seven years, and his authorisation to teach at
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Fig. 6: Otto Neurath
the University of Heidelberg was revoked. Accordingly Neurath’s academic career ended before it had really begun.164 On returning to Vienna, Neurath set about attempting to reconcile his socialist utopia of a community organised as a planned economy based on transactions in kind with the more reality-focused party line of the Austrian Social Democrats. The first opportunity to put his ideas into practice was with the Vienna housing movement, which had experienced a dramatic revival owing to the drastic shortage of housing and food supplies brought about by the war. As General Secretary of the “Austrian Association for Housing and Small Gardening”, Neurath played a leading role in forging the various municipal initiatives across political boundaries into a collective interest group, and with the assistance of architects such as Adolf Loos and Margarete Lihotzky secure their commitment to a joint economic programme.165 These efforts led in 1923 to the establishment of a “Museum of Housing and Urban Construction”, from which the “Economic and Social Museum” was created soon after, founded by Neurath and managed by him until its dissolution in 1934. It was on the basis of his museum activities that Neurath developed the ground-breaking method of “pictorial statistics”.166 The idea was to use standardised pictograms, which are
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now a routine part of our daily communication and visual guidance systems, to present complex political and socioeconomic information in as simplified and universally understandable a manner as possible. From the political perspective he regarded pictorial statistics as a didactic tool for worker education and the internationalist class struggle: “words divide, pictures unite” was his motto.167 In collaboration with the German graphic artist Gerd Arntz, over the next few years Neurath initiated a long line of spectacular pictorial pedagogical publications. In 1930, for example, a collector’s folder of around one hundred pictorial charts and diagrams was published, under the title Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft [Society and the Economy],168 which was praised by Kurt Tuckolsky in a review as a “masterpiece of pedagogical statistics”.169 Pictorial statistics were also attracting interest from abroad, prompting Neurath to set up his own “Mundaneum” association, with outposts in Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, New York and London, in addition to the head office in Vienna.170 Together with his friends Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank, during the 1920s Neurath became a leading member of the Vienna Circle, in which his socialist views and activism directed against conventional academic philosophy formed an opposite pole to the more moderate and bourgeois Moritz Schlick. Together with Hahn and Carnap, in 1929 Neurath drafted the Vienna Circle’s manifesto, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [Scientific Conception of the World]. The successful establishment of the “Ernst Mach Society” was essentially a Neurath venture. The same can be said of numerous publications and discussion meetings mounted by the Vienna Circle in the late 1920s, after entering its public phase. Rudolf Carnap later described Neurath as the “big locomotive” of the Vienna Circle, referring to both his organisational qualities and his physical size.171 However it is also important to note his intellectual and scholarly achievements: the anti-metaphysical, science-based, enlightened and emancipatory focus of the Vienna Group is in large measure attributable to Neurath’s ideas. His advocacy in favour of a physicalist and encyclopaedic “unified science” and his conception of a theoretical holism and falllibilism were milestones of logical empiricism.172 Neurath was an absolutely exceptional figure in terms of his enormous intellectual versatility, and has even been described by the historian of ideas William Johnston as “one of the most neglected geniuses of the 20th century”.173 The establishment of the Fascist corporative state in Austria marked the beginning, for Neurath as for many other members of the Vienna Circle, of a decade-long interregnum of flight and exile. As a prominent Social Democrat he came under the authorities’ sights as early as 1934. He only narrowly escaped his impending arrest by being in Moscow at the time in connection with his work on pictorial statistics.174 From there he continued his eventful odyssey to The Hague, where already at the beginning of the 1930s he had set up branches of his
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pictorial pedagogy project, in the form of the “International Foundation for Visual Education” and an outpost of the “Mundaneum”.175 Once his wife Olga and his Viennese collaborators Marie Reidemeister and Gerd Arntz had also moved to the Netherlands, Neurath resumed his work for the causes of popular enlightenment and unified science. To further advance the international dissemination of pictorial education, he gave it the brand name by which it is still known today : “Isotype” (International System of Typographic Picture Education). He also organised numerous collaborations and events. These included an extremely successful social history exhibition on Rembrandt and his time (“Rondom Rembrandt”), commissioned by “De Bijkenkorf”, a Dutch retail chain.176 He also worked on the internationalisation of logical empiricism: along with Carnap, Frank and Hans Reichenbach, he was involved in organising a total of five international congresses on the unity of science in the years between 1935 and 1939.177 At the preparatory conference in Prague in September 1934 he had formulated the methodological foundations in his much-admired lecture Die Einheit der Wissenschaft als Aufgabe [Unity of Science as a Task to Be Addressed].178 The conference held in Paris the following year resulted in the mammoth project, driven by Neurath together with Carnap and the American pragmatist Charles Morris, of an “International Encyclopedia of Unified Science”, to be published in 26 volumes. Neurath later submitted an article on the “Foundations of the Social Sciences” for the project,179 but the venture was discontinued early because of the Second World War and Neurath’s death. When the German Wehrmacht marched into the Netherlands in April 1940, Neurath’s activities were again disrupted. Together with his new life partner, Marie Reidemeister, he escaped to England at the last moment in a hopelessly overloaded rescue boat.180 His wife Olga had died in 1937 following a kidney operation. Because of their Austrian origin, Marie and Otto were immediately classified on arrival as “enemy aliens”, and interned for a total of eight months on the Isle of Man.181 Through the intervention of the English philosopher Susan Stebbing and following an open letter of protest from scientists such as Albert Einstein, in spring 1942 the couple were allowed to leave the internment camp. After marrying Marie, Neurath moved to Oxford, where in the ensuing years he gave his first academic lectures, at the renowned All Souls’ College.182 He also became involved, while maintaining a politic distance, in socialist ¦migr¦ circles.183 The inveterate organiser found the last project in his eventful life in the English industrial town of Bilston, which recruited him as an adviser and organiser of the now destroyed “red Vienna” for an ambitious urban development project. After a sudden stroke on 23 December 1945, the man once described by former Schlick student Marcel Natkin as “Vienna’s wittiest man”184 died with a smile on his lips.185 One of the common threads running through Otto Neurath’s intellectual
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biography is his vehement, unwavering criticism of Kant. The legend has it that he was given Kant’s works to read at an age when he was still playing with tin soldiers.186 His father was a fervent supporter of Kant’s Enlightenment philosophy, which he saw as the idealist foundation for a non-Marxist and anti-materialistic reform of society.187 While Neurath held firmly to his father’s social reformist ethos throughout his life, he became increasingly distanced from his liberal values. Rather than Kant, it was now Mach and Marx whose utopian potential he sought to activate. In the domain of the theory of science, already in his early writings he was aiming to supersede apriorism. On the socio-political front he attacked Kant’s categorical imperative, which on the basis of a Marxist reading he branded as an ideologeme of a bourgeois, pseudo-religious theory of morality.188 And not long before his death, while living in exile in England, Neurath blamed Kant’s ethic of duty for German ‘subservience’, and hence for the catastrophe of Hitlerism.189
“Don’t Read Kant or Schopenhauer – Do Science Instead” The anti-Kantianism of the Vienna Circle, which is regarded as proverbial even today, can essentially be traced back to the influence of Otto Neurath. A similar case may be made in support of the thesis that there is a specifically ‘Austrian philosophy’, which differs from the idealist-influenced German intellectual development of the 18th and 19th centuries in its empiricist and logicist character. This thesis, which was formulated by Rudolf Haller and William Johnston in the 1960s and 1970s, was likewise based on Otto Neurath’s ideas.190 As the organisational and programmatic driving force behind the Vienna Circle, Neurath globalised, to a certain extent, his own reservations against Kant and Kantianism, and in doing so became inextricably linked with both the image of the Vienna Circle and the history of Austrian philosophy in general. This form of deliberate manoeuvring in historical and intellectual politics culminated in Neurath’s famous formulation, widely quoted to this day, that modern Austrian philosophy had spared itself the “interlude with Kant”.191 We can imagine what exactly might have been meant by such an attribution on the basis of various programmatic texts written by Neurath in the late 1920s and in the early and mid-1930s. Of special significance among these is the essay Die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises und die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [The Development of the Vienna Circle and the Future of Logical Empiricism], published in 1936 and originally written in French, in which Neurath presented his views on the history of modern Austrian philosophy in concentrated form.192 In this article, published on the occasion of the Second International Congress for the Unity of the Science in Paris, which had been held in Paris the year before,
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is also to be found the ‘interlude thesis’, which supplies the heading for one of its sections. The primary motive behind it was to provide a broad overview, tracing the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle within the history of ideas. In Neurath’s opinion, the Circle’s philosophical and scientific world view was founded on a specific “Viennese atmosphere”, a special Austrian intellectual mood, which diverged in particular from German academic philosophy in essential points.193 Whereas, in Germany, the system philosophies of Kant and the German idealists had dominated the intellectual scene from the late 18th century right up until the 1930s, in Austria, the intellectual currents in philosophy had been established in the course of the 19th century, yet had, in their turn, played hardly any role whatsoever at German universities. These currents included, on the one hand, initiatives in both logic and the philosophy of language, such as the ones presented under the auspices of rationalism and realism, above all by Bernhard Bolzano, Robert Zimmermann and Franz Brentano. On the other hand, there also developed in Austria a generally broad reception of empiricism and positivism, which could be traced back primarily to the influence of specialised scientists such as Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann or Theodor Gomperz. In the case of Neurath, the two directions coalesce in the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, which is given credit for having historically connected logicism and empiricism and making them productive for each other.194 In brief: through the anti-metaphysical agenda of empiricism, the philosophy of language, which was speculatively and theologically oriented as a result of its origins, became transformed in Austria into a formal instrument of scientific analysis; conversely, empiricist philosophy liberated itself, with the aid of logic, from its psychologistic and reductionist conception of theory development in epistemology and science. The logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle is thereby taken literally by Neurath and spelled out historically-dialectally as a revitalisation of empiricism, undertaken with the aid of logic. Moreover, this is connected to an objective that leads one away from philosophy : logic and empiricism constitute the cornerstones of a future “scientific view of the world”.195 Neurath’s historical positioning of the Vienna Circle contains various implications concerning the relationship between German and Austrian philosophy. Despite all their differences, empiricism and logicism in Austria had, as a result of their origins, two elements in common: firstly, both directions appealed to philosophical lines of tradition which chronologically preceded German critical philosophy and idealism. In this context, Neurath mentions Descartes, Leibniz and David Hume as great reference figures who were of central significance. Secondly, Austrian philosophy was connected, above and beyond all currents, by a common scientistic and modernist orientation.196 Against the narrative counterfoil of the decline of German idealism, a new approach to the individual sciences was being propagated, with the aim of creating a new di-
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rection in philosophy. Evidence of this is provided not least by the sometimes rather harsh criticism of Kant written by such different thinkers as Ernst Mach and Franz Brentano197 According to Neurath’s historiographical analysis, Austrian philosophy, in comparison to German philosophy, appears to be, in a temporal sense, both a priori and a posteriori at the same time. It is equally precritical and post-idealistic, whereby Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Schelling were excluded as an interlude in the history of ideas. In later writings on Austrian philosophy, attempts were made to break Neurath’s narrative down epistemologically to the opposition between German subjectivism and Austrian objectivism.198 Particularly succinct in this context is Rudolf Haller’s formulation that Austrian philosophy “never underwent its Copernican revolution in Kantianism”.199 In his own work from the 1970s and 1980s, Haller drew far-reaching conclusions from this, interpreting Austrian philosophy as a homogenous und nationally independent current of thought, due to the fact that it distanced itself historically from Kant and the idealists.200 However, with regard to Neurath’s original thesis, this view fails to recognise the actual point: in Neurath’s opinion, the modern development of thought in Austria can neither be conceived as an independent national philosophy, nor as part of the German history of philosophy : “It is, on the contrary, appropriate to see the development in Vienna and in the other centres of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy as a chapter in the intellectual development of Europe; it is not rare to find the influence of the English and the French there, and events in Austria tend to run parallel to events in Warsaw, Cambridge and Paris, rather than to events in Berlin”.201 In this sense, Austrian logicism and empiricism are deeply rooted in the European Enlightenment. The works of conventionalists such as Duhem or Poincar¦, positivists such as Comte, Mill or Spencer, as well as American pragmatists such as William James or John Dewey, were extensively discussed in Vienna in the early 20th century. Moreover, in Vienna, as well as in other centres of the monarchy, some philosophers and philosophical tendencies were well-received, yet “did not achieve any success whatsoever in Germany and were dropped”.202 Examples of this were Wolffianism in the 18th century, as well as Herbartianism in the 19th century, which were recognised as official state philosophies in Austria, having endured far longer there than in their countries of origin.203 In contrast, Germany tended to follow a national hegemonic model, with orthodox idealist philosophies having dominated academic life – despite some crises – ever since Kant. For Neurath, it was precisely Kant who played a central role in all this, since his philosophy had opened up a kind of special national path, and left behind the heritage of European philosophical traditions. Neurath attempted to illustrate this in a very polemical way, by means of a comparison with Leibniz:
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In contrast to Kant, who never left Königsberg, Leibniz was well-travelled; above all, he was in contact with French, English and Dutch thinkers. His works, in particular his political works, perhaps reflect more ‘local colour’ than those of Kant, who tends to set himself up as a judge, empowered make general reflections on social and political problems; Leibniz tends to be much more representative of the western world than Kant.204
In this passage one has in nuce all the ingredients of Neurath’s anti-Kantian resentment: whereas the cosmopolitan Leibniz is set up as a demigod of the Vienna Circle at the heart of the European Enlightenment, Kant is degraded to a German ‘provincial prince’ and eradicated from the Enlightenment tradition. The formulation that Austria had spared itself the interlude with Kant is thereby not only a provocation for the history of philosophy, but also the central point in the articulation of a programmatic world view. The reasons for this can, in turn, be found in Neurath’s historical elaborations: in his opinion, the idiosyncrasies of Austrian philosophy were rooted in a socio-historically determined “simultaneity of the non-simultaneous”. In Austria, according to Neurath, one could incessantly stumble across “a strange to-and-fro between age-old tradition and the most modern experiments, between methodical suppression and unexpected tolerance”.205 As a consequence of what had been, in comparison to Germany, a long-lasting dominance by Catholic Church, as well as by an absolutist state, a jealous watch was kept over the orthodox classical philosophy in Austria.206 Anathemas were pronounced above all against Kantianism, and systematic attempts were made to suppress it, starting at the latest with the persecution of the Jacobins in the mid-1790s: “The prevalence of the Catholic world view allowed other comprehensive systems very little scope. Church and state combatted above all Kantianism, which was regarded as a child of the French revolution”.207 Whereas the Kantian and idealist philosophies in Austria were fiercely combatted as competitive systems, those currents focusing on linguistic logic and empiricism were largely promoted: through its close involvement with the specialised sciences, empiricism was widely regarded as being neutral in its world views, and was therefore able to create its own niches. It was a similar situation with regard to logicism, which moved within the institutional framework of the church in Austria for a long time, under the cover of a theology gradually developing its own potential in the analysis of language and in formalism. In this way, the reactionary climate in Austria had a modernising effect: church and state prevented an interlude with Kant, as well as with standard academic philosophy, and prepared the way for logical empiricism, via theology and the specialised sciences: “Now, not only were the means at hand to logically continue the empiricism of the individual sciences, but also, since there had been a liberation from traditional philosophy, to begin to develop an overall empiricist conception”.208
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Although, to this day, the fact has hardly been appreciated at all in the field, Neurath’s thesis about Austrian philosophy was, in the final analysis, founded upon a theory of secularisation which he had already presented at the end of the 1920s in his lecture Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [The Ways of the Scientific World View] (1929).209 This was, in turn, based on a very unconventional interpretation of Auguste Comte’s three-phase model of the philosophy of history. In Comte’s opinion, the development of human culture can be described in terms of three successive stages which follow a set pattern and are characterised by a process of increasing maturity : the childish age of theology is followed by the adolescent-pubertal phase of metaphysics, which in the end reaches its sublation and completion in the stage of maturity of positive science. In conscious reference to Comte, Neurath supplemented this three-phase model with a fourth, a ‘magical age’, which precedes the theological stage: “The way, beginning with magic, proceeds via religion and philosophy to materialistic empiricism”.210 In doing so, every phase has a special current of thought assigned to it: by being oriented towards the possibility of the manipulation and controllability of cultural and natural processes, the magical age represents an empirical approach to the world. According to Neurath, for the magician, just as for modern physicists and biologists, it is a matter of “connecting individual empirical elements”, a matter of “established, finite changes which are perceivable and therefore can be verified by anybody”.211 For Neurath, empiricism is thus not actually a philosophy at all in the literal sense of the word, but rather the basic natural form of the human world view. In the course of the Middle Ages, magical-empirical thinking was superseded by scholastic theology, which in the process became divided into two areas. On the one hand, there was the systematic project of scholasticism, which attempted to comprehend the divine order of the world theoretically, in the form of an absolute system. On the other hand, a nominalist project established itself within scholasticism, one which saw its task as being to critically examine, with the aid of logic, the truths of religious faith. In the course of the modern period, both aspects became secularised in different ways: under the influence of Lutheranism, Germany transformed scholastic systematics into the system philosophy of German idealism.212 From Kant onwards, theology’s claim to absolutism thereby became transferred to philosophy, before becoming, through holistic and systematic interpretations of language, knowledge, ethics and law, a phenomenon within society as a whole. “In this respect, the idealistic systems appear to be the successors of the scholastic systems; they take over their social functions, with an even greater variety of forms, since they now, after several corresponding modifications, serve as the basis for training civil servants, professors and even priests”.213 By contrast, in Austria, due to the long predominance of Catholicism, the systematic core of scholasticism remained constantly limited to the realm of the church; which is
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why science and society were able to evolve largely free of that “diffuse metaphysics”.214 For this reason, a school philosophy, in an idealistic and systematic sense, never established itself in Austria. Instead, there arose, via the individual sciences, a revitalisation of the originally magical empiricist attitude. On the other hand, nominalism became secularised as worldly language analysis, which involved distinctly fewer metaphysical implications than scholastic systematics, since the theological premises could be more easily separated from the dialectical consequences, and thence transposed into an “effective logical instrument as a residue”.215 The consequences of this secularising theoretical analysis of the different philosophical developments, was encapsulated by Neurath in the example he gave of his own experiences as a student in Vienna and Berlin at the start of the century : In Germany, philosophy played a much greater role in culture in general than in Austria, which is very Catholic and where the culture was generally much colder. In Austria, the young intellectual could any time find several theories which were interesting from a purely scientific standpoint; he found himself confronted by some long words (‘marginal utility’, ‘repression’, ‘over-compensation’); yet he didn’t hear those long ones which were really philosophical words, and which were commonly used in Germany (‘thing in itself ’, ‘absolute value’, ‘categorical imperative’ and others). In Austria, there always existed, alongside theology, a philosophy that was distinctly coloured by theology ; […] yet in Austria one found little evidence of that diffuse metaphysics whose seed sprouted in a thousand nuances on German soil.216
These lines at last clearly show the actual thrust of Neurath’s attack in the interlude thesis, with his anti-Kantian position, as well as his own philosophical views, emerging quite distinctly here. For Neurath, Kant is both the starting point and the symbol of the aberration of a new, modern understanding of philosophy with its roots in Germany, which has been spreading ever since the end of the 18th century. With the secularisation of theology causing a shift towards philosophy, the dogmas that had originally been declared truths of faith were relabelled as postulates of reason and coloured with the power of scientific validity. In this context, Neurath speaks of a “pseudo-rationalism”, as a core example of which he lists not only the a priori-ism of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, but also its moral doctrine.217 It is in this sense that he characterises, for instance, the categorical imperative as a “commandment without a commander”.218 In Neurath’s opinion, Kant therefore stood for a new and, as it is also written in the manifesto of the Vienna Circle, “concealed” form of metaphysics. A further problem lies in the social dominance of orthodox idealist philosophy. Metaphysical speculation was being diffused via science and university, right down to the last capillaries of society, right down to the everyday culture and language. Evidence for this is provided, for instance, by expressions that have become idiomatic, such as “eternal peace”, “absolute truth”, the “essential na-
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ture” of the people, the state, or science. Against this background, Neurath’s whole philosophy – particularly as far as the 1920s and 1930s are concerned – can basically be described as an attempt to undertake a fundamental revision of that metaphysical permeation of society. At the centre was the utopia of a “scientific world view”, which Neurath repeatedly used as an objection to Kantian thought. Instead of an a priori “system of science, there appears in his work a “unity of science as an assignment”.219 An essential element in this is the concept of a physicalist “unified language” (“Einheitssprache”), with the help of which the sciences can be brought into an encyclopaedic context in an anti-systematic way. Neurath’s physicalism has been widely misunderstood to this day in the writings. The reason for this lies – as described by Thomas Uebel, for example – above all in the fact that Neurath repeatedly reworked his original conception.220 His final re-formulation coincides with his work on Austrian philosophy, which cannot, by any means, be viewed as accidental: unlike the work of Rudolf Carnap, his colleague from the Vienna Circle, Neurath’s physicalism did not aim for a metrically or psychologically objectifiable scientific language, but rather an everyday jargon which should be purged of metaphysics, a “universal slang”.221 From this perspective, the historical propagation of German philosophy appears as a cultural impediment, which has to be overcome on the way to a scientific view of the world, in contrast to which the Austrian and “Viennese atmosphere” proves to be an ‘ideal launching pad’, on account of the anti-metaphysical character of its culture. However, Neurath’s revision goes still further : as he made clear in his comprehensive model of history, neither the original ‘magical’ empiricism, nor modern logical empiricism were philosophical tendencies in a literal sense. Rather, they mark the start and end of a general development in cultural history, in which philosophy represents only an intermediate stage. Behind the demand for a reversal of the development of Kantian and idealist metaphysics there lies concealed the universal postulate of a cultural transcendence of philosophy in general: The essential idea in our sketch of the development of the Vienna Circle was above all that metaphysical elements, which had been adopted relatively late by language, can also be eliminated from it relatively easily. Philosophy is replaced by work on a unified science, and the best model for our scientific ideal can no longer be ‘the system’, but rather the encyclopaedia, elaborated by means of the modern logic of science.222
In tracing Neurath’s analyses of Austrian philosophy, one discovers that their main point is that this is not a philosophy at all. In having been spared the interlude with Kant, the cornerstone laid for philosophy in Austria to attain its own historical transcendence. All the paths of cultural history thereby lead to Vienna, to the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle. In the youthful memoirs of Golo Mann, the famous historian, and son of Thomas Mann, is to be found an
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anecdote which is significant in this context. It describes Mann’s encounter, while he was still a young student at Heidelberg, with Otto Neurath, who – in the course of a lecture given to the assembled, predominantly humanistic audience – uttered the following anti-humanistic piece of worldly wisdom: “Don’t read Kant or Schopenhauer – do science instead”.223 Translated by John Jamieson and Peter Waugh
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) by Bastian Stoppelkamp Rudolf Carnap was born to Protestant parents on 18 May 1891 in Bergisches Land.224 His place of birth, Ronsdorf, which was formerly a stronghold of the labour movement, is today a municipal district of Wuppertal. His father, Johannes Carnap, came from a poor family of weavers and attained a certain degree of affluence as a merchant through his own efforts, being self-educated. He died when Rudolf was seven years old. His mother, Anna Carnap, came from a middle-class intellectual family and her father, Friedrich Dörpfeld, was an ardent Herbartian and a committed educationalist.225 In his autobiography, Carnap describes his family home as being “deeply religious”.226 He is said to have distanced himself from religion of any kind when he was still a youth, yet without relinquishing the ethical and humanistic principles of his parents’ faith. After the death of his father, the family initially moved to neighbouring Barmen. Later they moved again, to Jena, where Carnap took his school-leaving examinations in 1909. In the following year he began to study philosophy, mathematics and physics at Jena University. Among Carnap’s professors in philosophy were the Neo-Kantian Bruno Bauch and the mathematician Gottlob Frege, both of whom exerted a lasting influence on him.227 He attended lectures by Gottlob Frege on the still new discipline of formal and mathematical logic, which from that time onwards became central to his own philosophical interests. Although Frege was already advanced in years, he was still largely unknown in Germany at this time, and was avoided by both colleagues and students on account of the remoteness of his character. In the years leading up to the First World War, Carnap became Frege’s sole student (with the exception of an ageing major and a few reluctant fellow-students that Carnap managed to drag along with him), although he never exchanged so much as a word with him in private.228 Carnap first came into contact with Kantian philosophy through the NeoKantian Bruno Bauch. In 1912, on the advice of Bauch, he went to study at Freiburg for two semesters, in order to attend the lectures of Heinrich Rickert and Jonas Cohen in the environment of the Southwest German school of philosophy. After the war, Carnap wrote his dissertation, which was supervised by
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Fig. 7: Rudolf Carnap (1923)
Bauch, on the concept of space. This study was published in 1922 under the title Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre Heinrich Rickerts und Jonas Cohens [Space. A Contribution to Heinrich Rickert’s and Jonas Cohen’s Theory of Science] in the supplementary issue of Kant-Studien.229 Outside his studies, Carnap became active in the Free German Youth Movement.230 Together with the educational theorist Wilhelm Flitner, the Marxist Karl Korsch and the sociologist Hans Freyer, he became one of the leading members of the life-reform group called the Serakreis, which had developed around the Jena publisher Eugen Diederichs.231 At the same time, Carnap founded a local offshoot of the Deutsche Akademische Freischar [German Academic Voluntary Corps], which saw itself as the liberal counterpart to the typically chauvinistic and alcohol-fuelled fraternities of that time.232 It was against this background that, in October 1913, the First Free German Youth Day [Erster Freideutscher Jugendtag] was organised on the mountains of the Hohen Meissner, the idea behind it being to present an alternative perspective to that of the nationalistic centenary celebrations of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig. With the start of the First World War, Carnap’s passionate youthful aspirations came to an abrupt end. Despite being of a pacifist disposition, he vol-
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unteered for war service in August 1914.233 During the first years he served on various battlegrounds on the Eastern Front, was wounded several times and was later promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1917 he was transferred by the army to a scientific and technical institute in Potsdam, where he worked as a physicist on the development of a wireless telegraph. These years were extremely formative for Carnap: in his free time he studied Einstein’s theory of relativity and read Russell und Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica. Moreover, he became politicised through the war, initially sympathising with the USPD [Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany] of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Later he became actively involved in the Social Democratic movement.234 After the war, having completed his doctoral thesis under Bruno Bauch, Carnap moved to the vicinity of Freiburg in 1922. It was here that he took his first steps in journalism, and publishing two essays, entitled Über die Aufgabe der Physik [On the Purpose of Physics] (1923) and Über die Abhängigkeit der Eigenschaften des Raumes von denen der Zeit [On the Independence of the Qualities of Space from those of Time] (1925), in Kant-Studien.235 It was also during these years that Carnap became acquainted with Hans Reichenbach, who had just accepted a lectureship for physics at the Technical University of Stuttgart. In Reichenbach, Carnap encountered a kindred spirit: both of them were torn between philosophy and the natural sciences, and both were fascinated by formal logic and theoretical physics. Several pioneering projects eventually developed from this friendship: in 1923 they jointly organised a philosophical conference in Erlangen, which Carnap later described, not without pride, as “a small but significant step within the scientific philosophy movement in Germany”;236 in 1930, the two of them founded the journal for scientific theory Erkenntnis, which thereafter became the central publishing organ of logical empiricism. It was through Reichenbach that Carnap came into contact, in the mid-1920s, with Moritz Schlick, who helped him obtain his first university post. From 1926 to 1931 he taught as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Vienna. It was during this period that Carnap joined the Vienna Circle, playing a leading role in establishing it and determining its conceptual orientation. Together with Otto Neurath and Hans Hahn, he composed the manifesto Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [A Scientific View of the World] in 1929, with which the Vienna Circle made its first-ever public appearance, using it to officially announce its own anti-metaphysical programme of scientific emancipation.237 The year before had seen the publication of Carnap’s ground-breaking monograph Der logische Aufbau der Welt [The Logical Structure of the World],238 with which he had already habilitated in Vienna in 1925. Together with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, the Aufbau became a focal point of the conceptual discussions of the Circle in the years following its inception. Retrospectively, Carnap described his years in Vienna as one of the most “most exciting, pleasing and fruitful” times of his life:
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“My interests and my philosophical views coincided with those of the Vienna Circle more than with any other group that I have ever encountered”.239 In autumn 1931, through the mediation of the physicist and Einstein biographer Philipp Frank, Carnap became a lecturer in natural philosophy at the German University in Prague. By his own account, he led a “rather solitary life” there, even if the circumstances did actually benefit his own research.240 In 1932, his essay Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache [The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language] was published241 and two years later the study Logische Syntax der Sprache [The Logical Syntax of Language]242 Both of these works are today regarded as essential milestones of the linguistic turn in philosophy. With the emergence of the NS dictatorship, the political atmosphere among the German students and professors in Prague deteriorated, eventually forcing Carnap, as a committed cosmopolitan and socialist, to flee. In 1936, with the help of American intellectuals who sympathised with the Vienna Circle, such as the pragmatist William Morris and the logician Willard van Orman Quine, he emigrated to the USA, becoming an American citizen four years later. In 1937, Carnap began teaching as a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, where he stayed for the next fifteen years. His intellectual acclimatisation at the department of philosophy initially proved difficult. As a logical empiricist, Carnap found himself surrounded by historians of philosophy, whose approach – in contrast to the culture of open debate in the Vienna Circle – was almost monastic: “At some of the philosophical debates I had the eerie feeling of sitting among a bunch of medieval scholars with long beards and ceremonial robes”, Carnap wrote later, with Chicago in mind.243 However, with the increasing immigration of exiled European scientists and philosophers at the start of the Second World War, the initial rejection of logical empiricism in America changed and the general attitude became noticeably more positive.244 On several occasions, Carnap was invited to Harvard to lecture as a guest professor. From 1952 to 1954 he worked as a fellow at the renowned Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, where he had extensive discussions with the already aged Albert Einstein. After the death of his friend Hans Reichenbach, he took over his chair at the University of California in Los Angeles, a post which he occupied from 1954 to 1961. Apart from writing works such as Meaning and Necessity (1947) and various essays on inductive logic, Carnap maintained his socio-political commitment even in America: he actively supported the student and civil rights movements, as a result of which the FBI compiled a dossier on him.245 In January 1970, he travelled to Mexico, even though he was almost eighty years old, in order to agitate for the release of imprisoned Mexican philosophers who had been accused of Communist activ-
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ity.246 Rudolf Carnap died only a few months later on 14 September 1970 in Los Angeles. Translated by Peter Waugh
Kantianism in 20th Century Vienna by Kurt Walter Zeidler During the first third of the 20th century Kantianism in Vienna was represented by well-known philosophers such as the Kant scholar and untiring lexicographer Rudolf Eisler (1873–1926), the Austro-marxist Max Adler (1873–1937) and the religious socialist Oskar Ewald (1881–1940). At the University of Vienna, however, Kantianism could only put down roots after the downfall of the AustroHungarian Empire.247 Its representatives Robert Reininger (1869–1955), his student Erich Heintel (1912–2000) and the followers of both in the next two generations shaped the Department of Philosophy for decades. It is important to note here that the Kantianism of Reininger, who was an agnostic, was primarily oriented to Schopenhauer, whereas the practising Protestant Heintel focused on the philosophy of German idealism. In view of this, the debate with the “Vienna Circle” only plays a marginal role, even though the followers of the Viennese tradition of transcendental philosophy, which had been founded by Reininger, took over some of the basic ideas that Austrian Herbartianism of the 19th century had in common with neo-Positivism. Within Neo-Kantianism these basic ideas were advocated by Alois Riehl (1844–1924), and for this reason his life and the outlines of his realistic criticism will be discussed here first.
Alois Riehl (1844–1924) Riehl was born on the Riehlhof near Bozen as the son of an innkeeper on 27 April 1844. In 1862, after attending grammar school in Bozen, he began studying philosophy, geography and history in Vienna, Munich, Innsbruck and Graz. After earning a Ph.D. in Innsbruck (1868) he worked as a teacher in a grammar school in Klagenfurt and attained his habilitation at the University of Graz in 1870, where he first became associate professor of philosophy in 1873 and full professor in 1878. In 1882 he was invited to succeed Wilhelm Windelband in Freiburg (Br.), then went to Kiel in 1896, to Halle/Saale in 1898 and became the successor of Wilhelm Dilthey in Berlin in 1905. Riehl died on 21 November 1924 in Neubabelsberg near Potsdam. Alois Riehl is the main representative of realistic criticism along with Otto Liebmann (1840–1912).248 Using the realistic elements or rather problem di-
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mensions of Kantian philosophy as their starting point, the followers of this school of Neo-Kantianism discussed the central question of whether the form and the content of cognition could be identical (the affinity problem) not only in the context of natura formaliter spectata (nature as understood by the sciences), but also with respect to the empirical-psychological subject of cognition (problem of affection) and particular natural phenomena (problem of the ‘natural end (Naturzweck)’) as well. For this reason Liebmann and Riehl focused their research as much on methodological problems of psychology and biology as on methodological problems of the mathematical natural sciences. In his habilitation thesis entitled Realistische Grundzüge [Outlines of Realism] (1870), which contains “points of view […] that were developed by studying Herbart, Kant and Leibniz”,249 Riehl grounds realism on the “concurrence […] of the objective and the subjective” in sensation.250 Riehl hereby formulates the basis of a kind of realistic criticism centred on the concept of “sensation (Empfindung)” or “experience (Erlebnis)”, which was taken up by his student Richard Hönigswald and also by Robert Reininger. If “Sentio ergo sum et est”251 is the first and foremost principle of the “Austrian” strand of Neo-Kantianism,252 two other basic ideas based on Leibniz and Herbart have to be developed, which especially characterize Hoenigswald’s and Reininger’s thinking: their monadological approach (Leibniz) and their critical approach to language (Herbart). Irrespective of the latent Leibnizianism of Herbartian philosophy and the Herbartianism of “Austrian Philosophy” in the 19th century, both approaches are based on the idea that consciousness and being coincide in the sensation, raising an implicit demand for a “monistic” or “monadological” basis of philosophy. If the difference between subject and object is defined in line with this monadological approach to a theory of consciousness as the “abstract expression of a relationship”,253 then a language-critical analysis (in the broadest sense) of this abstraction becomes necessary as soon as the question arises as to how the relationship between subject and object can be determined methodologically. Another feature Riehl, Hoenigswald and Reininger have in common and which distinguishes them from other Neo-Kantians is their view (corresponding to their sensualistic approach) that Locke and Hume were precursors of Kant. Therefore they published widely on their research of English Empiricism.254 Finally, a fifth quality is that Riehl and Reininger – obviously as a reaction to Austrian clericalism – strengthen the autonomy of the moral individual in their writings on ethics255 and thereby promoted the early reception of Nietzsche in the context of their individualistic ethics.
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Robert Reininger (1869–1955) Robert Reininger was born into a family of factory owners in Linz on 28 September 1869.256 In 1888 he began studying philosophy, natural sciences (and law for some time) in Bonn (Jürgen Bona Meyer, Theodor Lipps), Heidelberg (Kuno Fischer) and Vienna (Robert Zimmermann, Adolf Stoehr). Reininger earned his Ph.D. in 1893 with the thesis Über Schopenhauers Kritik der Kantischen Lehre vom Objekt der Erfahrung [On Schopenhauer’s Critique of Kant’s Conception of the Object of Experience] under Robert Zimmermann and Theodor Vogt (subsidiary subject zoology). He attained his habilitation at the University of Vienna in 1903 and was bestowed the venia legendi for history of philosophy. In 1913 Reininger became associate professor and in 1922 full professor at the University of Vienna. He taught there until 1940. Between 1922 and 1939 Reininger was chairman of the Philosophical Society at the University of Vienna, which also was the Viennese local group of the Kant Society between 1927 and 1938. In 1922 Reininger became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna and full member in 1924. In 1940 he became a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Robert Reininger died in Vienna on 17 May 1955. Reiningers philosophy,257 which he himself characterized as monistic idealism, focuses on the problem of subjectivity both in epistemological and ethical terms. “In order to ground true morality on the autonomous will of the moral individual” he demands that ethical universalism (Kant) and individualism (Nietzsche)258 are combined in his ethics, and positions “everything that exists around the ego at the centre” in his epistemology.259 His early publications Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn und seine Theorie der Erfahrung [Kant’s Conception of the Internal Sense and his Theory of Experience] (1900) and Philosophie des Erkennens. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Fortbildung des Erkenntnisproblems [Philosophy of Knowledge. A Contribution to the History and Development of the Problem of Knowledge] (1911) are under the spell of realistic criticism and emphasize the anti-metaphysical stance of Kantian philosophy, which “refutes all problems posed only by their metaphysical interpretation in objective or subjective terms”.260 But with respect to the link between the problems of affinity and affection and the question – recently raised again by Husserl and Bergson – of how to determine the relation between psychology and transcendental philosophy, he soon gives up his strictly anti-metaphysical interpretation of critical philosophy. Ever since working on Das Psycho-Physische Problem [The PsychoPhysical Problem] (1916) and following Paul Natorp’s Allgemeine Psychologie [General Psychology] (1912), Reininger focused his thinking on the difference between the peripheral and central (philosophical) approach and on the primal experience (“Urerlebnis”): i. e. on the timeless immediacy of experience seen as
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Fig. 8: Günther Baszel, Robert Reininger, Arcade Court, University of Vienna (1967)
the original unity of subject and object.261 Here one of Schopenhauer’s basic thoughts breaks through, versions of which Reininger had written about many times earlier on in his notes written in 1893/94.262 This does not constitute a radical turn in Reininger’s thinking compared to his earlier publications, but more a change in his position on the “stepladder” of empirical cognition which he had erected between the “immediate experience and the judgment of experience”.263 While he had initially taken his standpoint on the uppermost step and had looked down the stepladder in an objectivating manner, he now places himself on the lowest step, the “immediate experience”, which becomes the “central ego-experience” or “primal experience”. However, he cannot overcome the tension between the “immediate experience and the judgment based on experience”: The “antithetics between formal perfection and reality”264 or between linguistic “intention” and “primal experience”265 cannot be resolved, which thwarts Reininger’s efforts to clarify the problem of affinity systematically as a “transformation” of the primal experience.266 His Metaphysics of Reality ultimately remains a “negative metaphysics”,267 which has the task to “rectify
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concepts” – as he stresses several times in response to Herbart in the second edition of Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [Metaphysics of Reality].268 By giving the fourth and last part of his main work the title “Metaphysics as Science and as Experience”,269 he confirms the co-existence of science and experience: he traces the question about the “and” between the words science and experience back to the unquestionable immediacy of the primal experience by putting the idea that our knowledge of the primal experience becomes an emotional experience in its own right at the end of his theoretical discussion (Metaphysics as Experience). At the same time he leaves the question open and delegates the answer to an infinite series of standpoints that surpass each other critically (Metaphysics as Science).
Erich Heintel (1912–2000) Erich Heintel was born in Vienna on 29 March 1912 as the son of a medical store owner. In addition to his academic activity he worked in his parents’ store until 1960. He began studying philosophy in 1931 and graduated in 1935 with the doctoral thesis Wirklichkeit, Wahrheit und Wert bei Nietzsche [Reality, Truth and Value in Nietzsche] with Robert Reininger. After his graduation with honours (sub auspiciis praesidentis) in 1936 and his habilitation with a thesis entitled Nietzsches ‘System’ in seinen Grundbegriffen [Basic Concepts of Nietzsche’s ‘System’] (1939) Heintel worked at the University of Vienna for some time and as an army psychologist. As he had been a member of the National Socialist Party (since 1940) he could only resume his teaching in the winter term of 1949. He became associate professor in 1952 and then was full professor at the University of Vienna between 1960 and 1982. In these positions he was deeply committed to the development of the department and to academic politics, taking his activity beyond the borders of his discipline and of Austria both in working groups (mainly with biologists and theologists) and in annual conferences (starting in 1964) in the Cistercian monastery Zwettl with philosophers from the Eastern bloc. The works of his numerous Ph.D. students and candidates for habilitation were published in the 22-volume series Überlieferung und Aufgabe. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte und Systematik der europäischen Philosophie [Tradition and Task. Studies on the History and Systematics of European Philosophy] he edited between 1965 and 1982 and in the Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie [Viennese Yearbook of Philosophy] edited by him between 1968 and 1986. He became a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1975 and a full member in 1978. After his retirement in 1982 he continued teaching until 1998. Erich Heintel died in Schneeberg in Lower Austria on 25 November 2000.270 Erich Heintel’s philosophy271 developed on the basis of Robert Reininger’s
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thinking through his continued interest in the problem of “existing transcendentality (daseiende Transzendentalität)”, for which he thought to have found the solution in Reininger’s concept of the “primal experience (Urerlebnis)”.272 Therefore Heintel does not only express a personal commitment when he commemorates his “teacher and friend with great respect and love”: Reininger – despite his exemplary life as a philosopher in which there was never a gap between theory and practice (as the ethos of the autonomous individual) – has shown me the way towards fundamental thinking by teaching me the meaning of the transcendental difference in its fundamental-philosophical sense, thus giving me insight into the major systems of the modern age. But Reininger’s transcendental philosophy was not neo-Kantian: for him ‘existing’ transcendentality always remained a problem beyond all the problems of ‘validity (Geltung)’ in transcendental logic.273
Robert Reininger tried to elucidate the problem of existing transcendentality by means of the distinction between a central (philosophical) and a peripheral approach and thus to avoid the complex of paralogistic problems resulting from the modern dichotomy of subject and object. He did so by re-interpreting Kant’s equation of transcendental idealism and empirical realism as the difference between the unspeakable reality of experience (“primal experience”) and the linguistic objectivations of intentionality ; in this sense Reininger remained a disciple of Schopenhauer for all his life. Erich Heintel for his part sees the very same problem as dialectic tension and therefore characterizes the “transcendental method in Reininger’s sense” summarily by saying that it ultimately “just [formulates] the fundamental dialectic of all human cognition between absolute certainty and the endless task of revision, between the original unity of thinking and being, and the tension that is expressed in every particular statement, even though it is grounded in this original unity” or “because it is grounded in this original unity, but is not this unity itself.”274 In brief, the difference between Reininger and Heintel is as follows: Reininger both sets up and thwarts this dialectic in the light of his distinction between central and peripheral approach (which has to be interpreted both in terms of Philosophy of Life and of criticism of language) although he tries to resolve and structure it in accordance with transcendental logic by means of the idea of a “transformation of the primal experience”. Heintel, however, in the light of the language-critical275 dimension of Reininger’s philosophy, sees the difficulties of implementing the idea of a “transformation of the primal experience” in a way that is compatible with transcendental logic all the clearer. Since he considers the internal aporetics of Reininger’s thinking to be a basic deficiency of transcendental philosophy, and thereby attributes the “basic dialectic of all human cognition” to all European philosophical traditions, the dialectic tension “between the original unity of thinking and being and […] every particular state-
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ment” becomes the tension between the ontological and the transcendental approach which have existed side by side and have at the same time opposed each other systematically throughout the history of philosophy. Limited as these approaches may be, they point to the unsolved problem of the mediation of Aristotelism and transcendental philosophy276 and hence to the problem of existing transcendentality.277
Rudolf Eisler (1873–1926) Rudolf Eisler was born in Vienna on 7 January 1873. He was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant and grew up in Paris, attended grammar school in Prague, studied in Prague, Vienna and Leipzig and earned his Ph.D. in 1894 with a thesis entitled Die Weiterbildung der Kant’schen Aprioritätslehre [The Further Development of Kant’s System of Apriority] under Wilhelm Wundt. He met Ida Maria Fischer in Leipzig and married her in 1896. Their daughter Ruth Fischer (1895–1961) and both sons, Gerhart (1897–1968), who later became a GDR politician and the composer Johannes (Hanns) Eisler (1898–1962) were born in Leipzig. In 1901 the family moved to Vienna where the professed atheist Rudolf Eisler hoped in vain for career at the university. In spite of his indefatigable activities as a private scholar, independent author and translator, he continued to need the financial support of his younger brother Armand, who ran a successful lawyer’s office. In 1907 Eisler became secretary of the Soziologische Gesellschaft [Sociological Society] in Vienna founded by his friend, the monist, pacifist, socialist and sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931) and belonged to the board of the society together with Max Adler, Rudolf Goldscheid, Michael Hainisch, Berthold Hatschek, Ludo Hartmann, Wilhelm Jerusalem, Josef Redlich and Karl Renner. Rudolf Eisler died in Vienna on 13 December 1926. Rudolf Eisler became famous mainly as a lexicographer : his Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe und Ausdrücke [Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Concepts] (Berlin 1899), a third edition of which was published in three volumes in 1910 entitled Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe [Dictionary of Philosophical Terms], his Philosophen-Lexikon. Leben, Werke und Lehren der Denker [Encyclopaedia of Philosophers. Their Lives, Works and Teachings] (Berlin 1912) and the Kant-Lexikon (Berlin 1930), published posthumously, have set lasting standards. Eisler’s systematic endeavours were less successful. Using “modern critical empirism”, i. e. the philosophy of Wilhelm Wundt and Alois Riehl as a starting point, Eisler requires a solid foundation for “critical metaphysics”, which would develop “Kant’s philosophy […] by supplementing the ‘transcendental’ method” with psychology to create a kind of “Ideal-Realism”, which complements the “abstract ‘impersonalistic’ view of nature of the sciences […]
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with the ‘day view’ of a ‘personalistic’, concrete and living world-view that respects the qualitative individuality of the factors of reality.”278
Fig. 9: Max Adler
Max Adler (1873–1937) Max Adler was born on 15 January 1873 as the son of a lower middle-class cloth merchant. He began studying law at the University of Vienna in 1891, founded the Freie Vereinigung Sozialistischer Studenten [Free Association of Socialist Students] and became a member of the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei [Social Democratic Workers Party] (SDAP). After earning his doctorate in law in
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1896 he first worked as a lawyer. In 1900 Max Adler began his extensive work in adult education and as an author. Between 1904 and 1923 he published MarxStudien. Blätter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus [Marx Studies. Journal on the Theory and Practice of Scientific Socialism] in Vienna, co-founded the Sociological Society in Vienna in 1907 and was the coeditor of the magazine Der Klassenkampf. Halbmonatsschrift Sozialistischer Politik und Wirtschaft [The Class War. Bi-monthly Magazine on Socialist Politics and Economics] (Berlin). In 1919 he attained his habilitation with the thesis Marxistische Probleme [Marxist Problems] (1913) in social science at the University of Vienna and became associate professor for sociology in 1920. Between 1919 and 1921 Adler was a member of the regional council for the social democratic party in Lower Austria and a member of the local council for the district of Wien-Floridsdorf in Vienna between 1920 and 1923. In 1934 he was arrested and imprisoned for a while by the right-wing Dollfuss government. Max Adler died in Vienna on 28 June 1937. Max Adler, the theorist of Austro-marxism,279 did not try to find a connection between Kant and Marx in Kant’s practical philosophy (as did Karl Vorlaender for example), but considered Kantian idealism the theoretical foundation of Marxism by interpreting the concept “consciousness-as-such”, which had gained doubtful prominence in Neo-Kantianism,280 as the basis of social thinking. In this way “socio-critical concepts” have “a transcendental foundation […], which means that the concept of the consciousness-as-such can show how these concepts become possible a priori”, because it demonstrates that “the formal ‘necessity of thinking (Denknotwendigkeit)’ in each individual consciousness has an indelible feature that – from the very beginning – puts all thinking into a relationship to society, a relationship that is the indispensable prerequisite for any special community in history.”281
Oskar Ewald (1881–1940) Oskar (Oscar) Ewald Friedländer was born in Bur-Sankt-Georg (Bfflrszentgyörgy, Borsky´ Sväty´ Jur) near Bratislava on 2 September 1881 as the son of the Jewish theologian and historian Moritz Friedländer. He grew up in Vienna, studied law after attending grammar school, then switched to philosophy and earned his Ph.D. in 1903 with his thesis Immanenz und Relativismus [Immanence and Relativism]. In 1909 he attained his habilitation in theoretical philosophy. Apart from working as an unsalaried lecturer at the University of Vienna (until 1928) he also taught at the adult education centre Volkshochschule in Vienna. During the First World War he served as an officer in the AustroHungarian army. In 1926 Ewald played a decisive role in the foundation of the
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Fig. 10: Max Adler’s speech on the centenary of Kant’s death
Bund der Religiösen Sozialisten (BSR) [League of Religious Socialists], published articles in their monthly magazine Menschheitskämpfer [Fighter for Humanity] and maintained close contacts to religious socialists in Switzerland and to their magazine Neue Wege [New Ways]. In 1938/39 he was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, but was released after international friends had pleaded for him. Ewald fled via Switzerland to Great Britain, where he died in Oxford on 25 September 1940.282 In his early writings Nietzsches Lehre in ihren Grundbegriffen (1904) [Basic Concepts of Nietzsche’s Philosophy] and Richard Avenarius als Begründer des Empirokritizismus [Richard Avenarius as the founder of Empiriocriticism] (1905) Oskar Ewald opposes relativism and subjectivism and tries – by referring to and transforming Kant’s systematics – to find the methodological foundation for a philosophy which could overcome the antagonism between epistemology and
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metaphysics, “between rationalism and empirism, apriorism and evolutionism, idealism and realism, dualism and monism”.283 The psychological sketches and culture-philosophical aphorisms that he published at the same time in his popular writings,284 however, are an indication that the man who was searching for salvation and God gained the upper hand over the epistemologist. The final sentence of his most successful publication Die französische Aufklärungsphilosophie [The French Philosophy of the Enlightenment] (1924), an ad-hoc publication, says this quite clearly : “The philosophy of the Enlightenment itself points to the necessity of a deeper spiritual and ethical-religious foundation, and fulfilling this necessity has become the irrefutable task of our age.”285 Translated by Susanne Costa
Kant, Kelsen and the Vienna School of Legal Theory by Sophie Loidolt Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Hans Kelsen was born on 11 October 1881 in Prague, as the oldest son of a German-speaking Jewish family.286 In 1883 the family moved to Vienna, where his father established a small lamp factory. Kelsen attended the Akademische Gymnasium classical secondary school in Vienna, where he took the Matura university entrance examination in 1900. His fellow-pupils included Ludwig von Mises, later to become a famous economist, and the two became lifelong friends. The young secondary school pupil Kelsen was a mediocre student, who preferred to absorb himself in literature, and even tried writing his own poems and short stories. According to his autobiography, the transition from belles-lettres to the sciences was presaged already in his “literary period”287 by an increasing interest in philosophical questions. While initially impressed by the materialist, natural philosophy view of the world, it was idealistic philosophy in particular that had the impact of a “deep emotional shock”288 on him. Kelsen was supplied with philosophical literature by an “older friend”, probably Otto Weininger, leading to his first contact with the works of Kant: “Under the influence of an older friend I became acquainted with Schopenhauer’s works, and started reading Kant, while I was still at secondary school. Rightly or wrongly, as the core of his philosophy I saw the idea of the subject which creates the object in the course of its cognition. Clearly, in this subjectivist interpretation of Kant, in the concept of the ‘I’ as the centre of the world, my self-consciousness, constantly wounded by
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the school environment and hungering for satisfaction, found the philosophical expression it needed.”289 Kelsen left secondary school with the intention of undertaking university study in philosophy, mathematics and physics. He says in his autobiography that throughout his life he regretted not following this plan. Instead, after completing his military service obligations he took up the study of law. However he described his first lectures in the Faculty of Law and Government as a “bitter disappointment”,290 so that he soon stopped attending most lectures and, again encouraged by Otto Weininger, devoted himself to reading works of philosophy. As he puts it, “Weininger’s personality and the posthumous success of his work had a major influence on my decision to work in the field of science and scholarship.”291 This first led to a thesis on Dante Alighieri’s theory of the state, during which he first became interested in questions of legal theory, such as the legal person, subjective right, and in particular the concept of legal maxims. He completed his legal studies in 1906 by graduating as Doktor juris. During ensuing periods of study in Heidelberg (1907/08 and 1908/09) with the well-known teacher of public law Georg Jellinek (1851–1911) and in Berlin (1910/11), Kelsen started work on his 700-page Habilitation thesis on Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre [Principal Problems of the Theory of Public Law].292 Although it was later acknowledged as the work upon which Kelsen’s theory of a “Pure Theory of Law” (Reine Rechtslehre)293 was constructed, the response to its publication in 1911 by Mohr Siebeck was largely muted. Interestingly, however, generous agreement with his ideas was expressed in an article entitled Die deutsche Philosophie im Jahre 1911 [German Philosophy in 1911] by Oscar Ewald, published in the periodical Kant-Studien. Ewald’s positive comments drew Kelsen’s attention to the parallels between his treatment of the will (of the state) in the context of law, and Hermann Cohen’s philosophy of pure will.294 Kelsen had previously mainly read the philosophers of the south-west German current of Neo-Kantianism, but now investigated more intensively the work of the Marburg Neo-Kantians, particularly Cohen, whose theory of cognition was “a lasting influence on me, although I did not agree on all points”.295 In July 1911 Kelsen received permission to teach general and Austrian public law, the philosophy of law and its history at The Viennese Faculty of Law and State of the University of Vienna. To earn his bread during this time he carried out a number of jobs in the legal area, including lecturing at the Export Academy, now the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and gave numerous lectures at the Vienna National Education Institute. He married Margarete Bondi in 1912, and two daughters were born to the marriage. From 1914 to 1918 he was on war service. He worked in the military justice system from 1915, rising to become personal legal adviser to imperial and royal War Minister Rudolf Stöger-Steiner in 1917. On his instructions, Kelsen devel-
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Fig. 11: Ferdinand Welz, Hans Kelsen, Arcade Court, University of Vienna (1984)
oped plans not only for a reform of the imperial army, but also a constitutional reform of the imperial monarchy. It was largely on the basis of these activities that he then worked as a legal expert for the State Chancellery (from 1920 the Federal Chancellery) in the years from 1918 to 1921, and had a significant involvement in drawing up the Austrian Federal Constitution of 1920, on a commission from Karl Renner. This work, particularly the formulation of a new concept of constitutional review, made Kelsen an important participant in
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drawing up the constitution that still today forms the core of the Austrian constitution. In July 1918 he was appointed as Extraordinary Professor of Public and Administrative Law at the University of Vienna, followed by an ordinary professorship in 1919, and he was Dean in the 1920/21 academic year. It was also during this time that Kelsen, in private seminars in his apartment in the 8th district of Vienna, built up the group that became known as the “Vienna School of Legal Theory”.296 Members of the group included Adolf Merkel (specialist in public and international law), Alfred Verdross (international law), Leonid Pitamic, later to become an ambassador of Yugoslavia, Fritz Sander, Felix Kaufmann and Fritz Schreier, all of whom as lecturers and in some cases subsequently as professors, carried out intensive research on legal theory and philosophical issues. From 1919 to 1930 he also sat as a judge of the Austrian Constitutional Court. The political controversy surrounding the law on marriage dispensations in which the Austrian Constitutional Court became embroiled and his related dismissal as a constitutional judge during the constitutional reform of 1929 prompted him to leave Austria in 1930 and take up a professorship in Cologne. He had also been the target of political and anti-Semitic hostility within and outside the university. Although he never belonged to a political party, Kelsen was regarded as a Social Democrat, and in terms of his general outlook he supported democracy and liberalism, and was an agnostic. His conversion in 1905 to Roman Catholicism, and to Protestantism (Augsburg creed) in 1912 is to be seen in the context of the benefits of assimilation in the Austria of the time. In Cologne he taught as Ordinary Professor of International Law, but in 1933, on Hitler’s seizure of power, he was one of the first professors to lose his position because of his Jewish origin and democratic and liberal outlook. A letter of protest from his faculty, signed by all his colleagues apart from Carl Schmitt, was to no avail. With much good fortune the Kelsens succeeded in fleeing from Germany, and since the University of Vienna was no longer prepared to accept him, Kelsen took up a fixed-term teaching position in Geneva at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales. In 1936 he was appointed to teach at the German University of Prague, but in view of the political developments, and again marked anti-Semitic hostility from the German students, he relinquished the position after three semesters. Kelsen and his wife emigrated to the USA in 1940. There he was a lecturer initially at the Harvard Law School (1940–1942), then at Wellesley College, and in 1943 he was given a guest professorship at the University of California in Berkeley, not in the Law School, but in the Political Science Department, since it was difficult to find an appropriate position for a jurist whose expertise was in the Continental European legal system within the context of the American case law-based system. In 1944 he
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prepared a report for the Office of Wartime in Washington D.C. on the status in international law of Austria and Germany after the end of the war, and in 1946 Washington again called on his services in the preparations for the Nuremberg trials. In 1945 he was appointed as a full professor at the University of California, and acquired citizenship of the USA. Following his retirement in 1951 he took up guest professorships in Geneva and at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, and was very active as a lecturer and public speaker, which took him back to Geneva and Austria, and also to South America. He received numerous honorary professorships and doctorates, including from Utrecht, Harvard, Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Vienna and New York. As part of a “reparation process”297 he was also rehabilitated at the University of Cologne in 1953 and awarded emeritus status. On the occasion of his 90th birthday the Republic of Austria created a foundation for the preservation of his academic achievements, the Hans Kelsen Institute in Vienna. Kelsen died on 19 April 1973 at Orinda, a small town near Berkeley, California. His ashes were scattered over the Pacific, as he requested.
Legal Philosophy Based on Kant Kelsen’s very first impression from reading Kant, of the subject creating the object in the process of cognising it, influenced his later conception of the cognition of law on the basis of a normative interpretation. Later he was also particularly impressed with the neo-Kantian “purity of method”, which he traced back to Kant: “It seemed to me that the purity of method essential for the science of law was provided by the opposition of ‘is’ (Sein) and ‘ought’ (Sollen) that was emphasised by Kant more than by any other philosopher. Accordingly Kant’s philosophy was a guiding star for me right from the start.”298 The “complete lack of exactitude and systematic foundations” that had already struck the young Kelsen in the legal science of his time, along with the “constant confusion of the positive law that is, with what – from some particular values stance – the law should be”, provoked an urgent need for a “clear separation of a theory of positive law from ethics on the one hand and sociology on the other”.299 Kelsen developed this doctrine of a Pure Theory of Law with the help of his “guiding star”, Kant, even if he was influenced to a greater extent by the Marburg neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. It may be noted in passing that the “Marburg school” of Neo-Kantianism tended to take a more logicistic path to reading Kant, as compared with the values and validity criticism stance adopted by the “south-west German school”.300 As a value-theory non-cognitivist and relativist, Kelsen rejected Kant’s doctrine of right as such.301 Kelsen’s objective is to place the legal positivism of the 19th century on a firm
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theoretical foundation, thereby “raising jurisprudence […] to the level of a true science, a social science”, whose results should be made to approach “the ideal of all science: objectivity and exactitude”.302 Hence Kelsen’s doctrine of a “Pure Theory of Law” heralds an intention to revolutionise the old legal positivism. The subject-matter of this new legal science is not an imagined and ideal legal order, but the one that presents itself here and now. There is a corresponding change in the understanding of what “law” is, in that it is detached from the idea of justice: “By lifting law up out of the metaphysical fog in which the doctrine of natural law has enveloped it, as something sacred in terms of its origin or idea, the Pure Theory of Law aims to understand it completely realistically, as a specific social technique.”303 Kelsen understands law primarily as a norm, as an “ought”, a rule. A legal system consists of a complex of norms, which more accurately form a system of coercive orders, created according to a supreme norm, the constitution. Law regulates human behaviour within a society by making that behaviour the content of a norm, and linking a coercive act to failure to follow that norm as a legal consequence (which is what makes it different from a moral norm304). The power that enforces the law is the state, which vice versa is in turn understood as a system of norms. In Kelsen’s view, the problem with the old legal positivism lies in the assumption that law – an “ought” – can be derived from the rules set down by the social authority – an “is”, which according to Hume is a logical fallacy. With a consistently applied methodological dualism, Kelsen therefore strictly separates “is” from “ought”, reality from value, ideal from appearance, as unrelated, essential opposites. So given that there are legal orders as “ought” systems, how are they possible? The answer is as follows: through the establishment of a fundamental prerequisite in the domain of “is” that creates the domain of “ought”: “The basic prerequisite from which all cognition of the legal order based on a constitution originates is the normative validity of that which the historically first constitution-giving organ uttered as its will.”305 Kelsen now sets out to understand this basic prerequisite more precisely, and thereby creates a scientific foundation for the cognition of law as a science of law. This is where the linkage to Kant’s theoretical philosophy becomes relevant, which Kelsen, following in the footsteps of the Neo-Kantians, interprets in the sense of an epistemological critique. His approach is to apply Kant’s transcendental method to the science of law, by formulating the conditions for the possibility of thinking positive law, in the same way as Kant’s categories of experience disclose the possibility of objects in nature. However the analogy must always remain a weak one, since the “basic norm” is not a condition of the possibility of objects of experience, that is to say indispensable for our coherent experience of the world, but merely a prerequisite for the science of law. The meaning of the word “transcendental” is therefore considerably diluted in this context, and “tran-
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scendental logic”, as Horst Dreier remarks, “in Kelsen’s thought […] shrinks to a mere acceptance”.306 Kelsen describes this analogy as follows: “Kant asks: ‘How is it possible to interpret without a metaphysical hypothesis, the facts perceived by our senses, in the laws of nature formulated by natural science?’. In the same way, the Pure Theory of Law asks: ‘How is it possible to interpret without recourse to meta-legal authorities, like God or nature, the subjective meaning of certain facts as a system of objectively valid legal norms?’”.307
Fig. 12: Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law. Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory
Intellectual conditions for the possibility (of the experience) of the “is” of nature are thus supplemented by intellectual conditions (of the experience) of the “ought” of positive law, although it is clear to Kelsen that only a hypothetical “ought”, never a categorical one, is accessible to cognition. This manner of proceeding is completely opposed to Kant’s own doctrine of right, built on practical reason, which provides a formal law for the determination of the
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“correct law”.308 It is also a highly individual application of the critical method in terms of Neo-Kantianism, since the effect is to sever completely the connection between law as it is and law as it ought to be.309 Kelsen completely separates the legal or normative interpretation of an event from the event itself. He asserts that the legal “significance” of an event is disclosed only through a “thought process”,310 in which, as if through the spectacles of the norm of the “schema of interpretation”, a new world, charged with new meaning, is created. Through this neat, precise separation of a “nature” (formed a priori through the transcendental schema of causality, hence through a “causal interpretation”311) from an as if superjacent “legal sphere” (able to be understood only in the contingent “as if” mode, and a posteriori), Kelsen attempts to formulate the domain of “objective normative interpretation” as the true domain of his research, so that the facts as they are will have no “influence” whatsoever on their legal interpretation. The manner in which an event is interpreted has nothing to do with the event itself, but only with the content of the schema of interpretation, the norm. However, for the interpreted meaning to be an “objective” one, i. e. for the normative world to reveal itself in the same way to each individual, the schema of interpretation must characterised by uniformity, as one and the same for all. According to Kelsen, it is precisely this objectivity and uniformity that must be created by a particular, always pre-existing mode of thought, which he calls the “basic norm”:312 “The function of this basic norm is to found the objective validity of a positive legal system, that is of the norms, posited by human acts of will, of a generally effective coercive order ; in other words, to interpret the subjective meaning of these acts as their objective meaning.”313 The faculty “transcendentally” contained within this mode of thought is seen as consisting in the ability first generally to see facts through “normative spectacles”, and hence “ought” relations, and secondly to differentiate the subjective normative interpretations that we can all make of the world from this or that particular socially effective order, and to attribute a hypothetic objectivity to that order. This makes it possible to grasp intellectually what constitutes a legal order, and only then does it become possible to analyse it as such. The basic norm is therefore the scientifically defined precondition structure that makes it possible for the rules of a social authority to be interpretable uniformly as objective “ought” rules. As a “mode of thought” or “quasi-category” of positive law, however, the basic norm has not only a transcendental function, but also a function in terms of hypothesis and form, and of methodological necessity. From a formal perspective, the necessity of a final and supreme form lies in the need to avoid the infinite regress suggested by the concept of a “stepwise legal order”,314 which always requires a higher norm as the basis of validity of the norm below it. Accordingly even the highest norms of a state’s legal order (the constitution) have to be referred back to a higher norm,
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which can no longer be a positive norm, but rather must simply be “accepted”. The basic norm is therefore fictitious and “empty” – a pure, empty, categorical “ought” that shifts everything else into a state of normative validity : this is the fundamental prerequisite for any normative cognition of a systematic nature to take effect. Given Kelsen’s strict methodological dualism, acceptance of the basic norm is indispensable in order to avoid a system rupture between “is” and “ought” – because in no circumstances can the validity of the constitution be derived from an “is”, for example the power of the sovereign or some such. Ultimately the function of the basic norm in terms of the validity hypothesis is to shift the rules of a social authority into an as if of normative validity, thereby making possible an exact and normative science of law. It also provides a formally unified focus for all norms of a legal order, that is to say it creates as the precondition of possibility – in the same way as Kant’s transcendental apperception – the uniformity of a given legal order, and therefore also has a descriptive function, by allowing the identification of individual legal orders and their description within a system. The Vienna School of Legal Theory, for which the common bond between its members, according to Fritz Schreier, was purity of method,315 i. e. keeping the science of law free from any admixture with other sciences, oriented itself, as Kelsen did, towards neo-Kantian theoretical precepts. Fritz Sander, for example, attempted to apply the transcendental method of the Marburg interpretation of Kant to the science of law, with the aim of “answering in the domain of law all the questions that Kant and the Neo-Kantians attempted to answer for the realm of nature”.316 And Felix Kaufmann and Fritz Schreier set out to apply Kant’s ideas, in conjunction with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, to the theory of law.317 Translated by John Jamieson
Kant and Phenomenology
Kant and Phenomenology in Austria by Max Brinnich and Georg Heller Phenomenology first established itself in Austria through the influence of Franz Brentano. His division of empirical psychology into an intentional philosophical form and a descriptive genetic one would set a precedent for Edmund Husserl’s well-known differentiation between noema and noesis. The School of Brentano included, apart from Edmund Husserl, Sigmund Freud, Anton Marty, Christian von Ehrenfels, Carl Stumpf, Alexius Meinong and others. All of these names are connected with promoting a distinct approximation of philosophy to the scientific method, which is typical for the phenomenological tradition within the sphere of influence of the Brentano School.1 The relationship of the phenomenology of Austrian provenance to Immanuel Kant displays some striking differences to the phenomenology of German origin. For instance, the work of Immanuel Kant was of great significance for Edmund Husserl, who was born in Austria, although he worked primarily in Germany. In contrast, Brentano tended to be rather critical of Kant. For Brentano’s pupil Meinong, too, Kant was not nearly as important an author as he was for Husserl, or even for Martin Heidegger. This fact is presumably due to the earlier censorship in Austria, which also covered the writings of Kant.2 Yet apart from the historical and political situation in Austria, it is also a general orientation towards the scientific method that led to the diminished significance of Kantian philosophy in Austrian phenomenology. A clear and distinct picture of this situation within the history of science is given by Kurt Fischer, who in consideration of Brentano’s appointment to the philosophical faculty of Vienna writes: The minister had discovered an excellent man for the job: a Catholic (thereby avoiding embittering the Catholics) who was furthermore a priest who had left the church and who supported the independence of philosophy from religion, and of theology from the
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church in general (which would suit the liberals), someone who was in favour of a philosophy which was independent of the natural sciences, yet which retained its connection with them. […] Brentano rejects German idealism, which of course enjoyed dominance over knowledge and life, over theory and practice. However, this philosophy of German idealism could never really get a foothold in Austria. The Emperor and the church had never rated it very highly. From their point of view, Kant had, on the one hand, cast doubt upon the reality of a divinely created world, since according to his doctrine we only perceive phenomena and not noumena. That met with complete disapproval. On the other hand, there was even less approval of the fact that Kant accorded human beings the possibility of self-determination, and even imposed upon them the duty to decide for themselves and become autonomous beings.3
In his professorial dissertation of 1866, Brentano was already attempting to develop his concept of philosophy towards an exact science, an aim which he would pursue throughout his life. Among other things, this preoccupation determined the impact that he had at the University of Vienna. For Brentano, Kant always represented an antithesis which it was necessary to transcend. This eventually led him to disparage Kant’s critical undertaking as a sign of the absolute decline of philosophy, which he did, for example, in his lecture Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand [The Four Phases of Philosophy and its Present State], given in 1894, one year before his departure from Vienna. This work places Kant, together with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, on one and the same level of philosophy, namely that of decadence.4 It remains a matter of dispute as to whether Brentano does justice to Kant with his criticism, and if so, then to what extent. Brentano’s pupils were also suspicious of Kant – with the exception of Husserl. It was Husserl who first promoted Austrian phenomenology’s enthusiasm for Kant, although strictly speaking that only occurred after Husserl had emigrated to Germany. In the period between the completion of his doctoral studies in Vienna (in mathematics) and his last visit to the federal capital, Husserl’s view of Kant underwent a considerable change. His earlier resentment of Kant gradually develops into a profound admiration of Kantian transcendental philosophy. In a note written in his personal copy of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] Husserl finally concludes that he has understood Kant better than Kant ever understood himself. His aim is to continue the thinking behind Kantian philosophy, which in his opinion was “unable to totally wrestle its way free of psychologism and anthropologism […]”,5 and to overcome its prejudices. A similar attempt to continue the thinking behind Kantian philosophy was also undertaken by Husserl’s German pupil, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was intensely preoccupied with Kant above all in the 1920s and 1930s, and looking back in 1973 even called Kant a “proponent of the question of being, as raised by [Heidegger himself]”.6 He was primarily interested in the
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Fig. 1: Vincenc Makovsky, Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, Arcade Court, University of Vienna (1996)
interrelations of existence and time in Kant, which give rise to the idea of existence as being-in-the-world. Heidegger therefore differs greatly from the aforementioned Austrian phenomenology, which was oriented towards the model of the natural sciences and raised questions relating to validity theory. This difference also characterised his conflict with the Austrian Richard Hönigswald, from whose perspective Heidegger’s philosophy does not get beyond “impressive word creations”.7 Between Hönigswald and Heidegger there existed a real academic enmity, which came to an abrupt end with Heidegger’s denunciation of Hönigswald to the National Socialists. Yet Hönigswald provides a good example of how the orientation towards a scientific ideal in Austrian philosophy could be linked to a high regard for Kant and even have a certain proximity to Husserl, yet not without distancing itself the phenomenology of Heidegger.
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As far as Austrian phenomenology is concerned, it remains to be said that practically none of Brentano’s pupils succeeded in establishing themselves academically in Vienna, where their roots were. Brentano’s influence was therefore severely limited. To a large extent, his pupils became influential outside his former places of influence. Kazimierz Twardowski made a great contribution to the standing of Lemberg University. Continuing in the philosophical tradition of his teacher Brentano, he interprets the latter’s logical objectivism as realism. In doing so, he prepares the way for another of Brentano’s pupils, Alexius Meinong, who worked primarily in Graz, and whose Theory of Objects eventually came to display a radical objectivism that provoked both Ernst Mally and Bertrand Russell to compose refutations. This brief sketch is intended to give a rough outline of the role that Kant played in Austrian phenomenology, from Brentano via Husserl and Heidegger to the beginnings of analytical philosophy. The epoch-making thinker Kant,8 who had been banned and suppressed in Austria for such a long time, is treated with mixed feelings in the early days of phenomenology. The spectrum ranges from total rejection by Brentano and many of his pupils, via Husserl’s ambivalent relationship to Kant and Hönigswald’s approach to historical problems, right up until Heidegger, who in Kant even saw a supporter of his own cause. Translated by Peter Waugh
Franz Brentano (1838–1917) by Georg Heller Franz Brentano (1838–1917) was born on January 16, 1838 in Marienberg bei Boppard am Rhein, in today’s Rhineland-Palatinate. The family of his father, Christian Brentano, had its origin in Brentano di Tremezzo in Lombardy, but had already been living for many years in Germany. Famous family members include the writer and poet Clemens Brentano (his uncle), the writer Bettina von Arnim (his aunt) and the social reformer Lujo Brentano (his brother).9 Franz Brentano grew up in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. Due to his mother’s influence, he received a strict Catholic education. Afterwards he studied philosophy in Berlin, Munich, Münster and Würzburg. Brentano submitted his dissertation On the Manifold Sense of Being in Aristotle10 in 1862 in Tübingen. Thereafter he dedicated himself to the study of theology in Munich and Würzburg. In 1864 Brentano was ordained a Catholic priest in Würzburg and achieved his teaching qualification two years later with his thesis The Psychology of Aristotle at the faculty of philosophy at the University of Würzburg. In Würzburg he held lectures mainly on metaphysics and the history of philosophy.11 During this period his most eminent students were Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty and Hermann
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Fig. 2: Franz Brentano (photograph from the last years of his life)
Schell. In 1872 Brentano became full professor at the University. Already in 1869 he became involved in the question of papal infallibility, which was later promulgated as dogma at the first Vatican Council in 1870. Amongst other factors, the declaration of this dogma led Brentano in 1873 to withdraw from the priesthood and to leave the Catholic Church.12 This also forced him to resign from teaching in Würzburg. In 1874 Brentano became full professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. His inaugural lecture dealt with the discouragement that prevailed in philosophy.13 In 1879, Brentano had to give up his Austrian citizenship temporarily in order to become a citizen of Saxony in order to be able to marry his first wife, Ida Lieben, who came from a rich and esteemed family in Austria. (AustroHungarian law forbade matrimony to men who had already been ordained priests of the Catholic Church). In consequence, he lost his job as full professor at the University of Vienna in 1880. Within the same year he obtained his teaching
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qualification again at the University of Vienna in order to become an assistant professor. Brentano would hold this position until he left Vienna in 1895, despite the fact that the faculty of philosophy continued to nominate him every year for the job of full professor unico loco. It was the repeated negative intervention of the Emperor which prevented Brentano from being appointed full professor for the next 15 years.14 Brentano’s most notable students in Vienna were: Christian von Ehrenfels, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, Alexius Meinong, Rudolf Steiner and Kazimierz Twardowski. Furthermore Brentano maintained an active correspondence with his old students from Würzburg.15 After his wife’s death in 1894 Brentano decided to leave Vienna. After short stays in Switzerland and Italy, he moved to Florence in the following year where he married his second wife Emilie Ruprecht in 1897. During the following years, Brentano’s eye-problems got worse. With his wife’s help, he continued to write and published numerous psychological and philosophical essays in his last years. After Italy began fighting in the First World War in 1915, he migrated to Zürich. Here, Brentano died of appendicitis, already completely blind, on March 17th 1917. After he was buried in Zürich, his remains were transferred in 1953 to the family crypt in Aschaffenburg. Brentano left behind numerous unpublished manuscripts, letters and notes. Alfred Kastil and Oskar Kraus, both students of Marty and Brentano, started to organise and gradually publish his posthumous works. When Kastil died in 1950, Franziska Mayer-Hillerbrand took over his work.16 There was an air of idealisation about him, as if he were no longer part of this world and as if he already partly lived in that higher world in which he so firmly believed and the philosophical interpretation of theistic theories which preoccupied him so much in this late time. The last image I caught of him back then in Florence has immersed itself in my soul the most profounding: thus he lives on in me forever, an image of a higher world (Edmund Husserl).17
Franz Brentano – Philosophy as an Exact Science by Georg Heller Woe betide the young man who has been introduced to scholarship by him [Kant, GH]! The more he feels indebted to him, the more he has in reality been harmed by him. Only when he realises how perverse that all is, will he be able to flourish in his studies. Franz Brentano18
Brentano strove throughout his life to set up the strictest possible logical proofs in philosophy. He believed that if philosophy wanted to be comparable with the exact sciences, it must be able to compete, even in terms of scientific claims. Brentano was convinced that science and scholarly studies always strive for the
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greatest possible certainty, that is, for absolute or, at least, highly likely certainty in their concepts. Brentano never gave up this thesis during his lifetime. He also emphasized in his inaugural lecture at the University of Vienna that philosophy had not yet become a science in the strict sense of the word.19 Brentano identified the strictly logical method of philosophy, which provides concepts with the utmost certainty, as “descriptive psychology”.20 Writings and lectures on descriptive psychology also characterized his time at the University of Vienna. The distinction between genetic psychology, which inquires into the development of states of consciousness, and descriptive psychology, which should “make a mental inventory by describing and classifying”,21 remains for Brentano and his students of the utmost relevance. Hardly a psychologist or an epistemologist of Brentano’s time could miss taking a stand on his descriptive analysis of consciousness.22 Brentano himself admits that genetic psychology is more complex than descriptive psychology,23 for which he had a preference, but bases his theory largely on the latter, in particular the phenomenology of consciousness.24
Fig. 3: Dean’s invitation to the memorial for Brentano and the unveiling of the bust of Brentano in the Arcade Court at the University of Vienna (1952)
The demand for a development of philosophy towards an exact science remains for Brentano the crucial goal of his research. Repeatedly he demands that a method better confirming to the laws of nature, based on the models of Newton and
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Lavoisier, be developed.25 He repeatedly fights against dogmata and the seemingly greatest insights of philosophy. For this purpose, he consciously borrows from the empiricist methods of Comte, Locke or Mill.26 Brentano wishes to constitute philosophy as a most exact science in the strict sense, situating “epistemological and methodological philosophy within the empirical sciences”.27 There is no choice: Either philosophy has to forego its name as a science, or it defines and proves its concepts by strictly analyzing them. Here, as well, there is no return, either to Hegel or to Kant, but it has to be built up again from the bottom up.28
The ideal for philosophy is the scientific method. The natural sciences, although not equipped with a uniform methodology, have in common the fact that they refer to intuition, induction and deduction. They also use mathematical methods, especially the theory of probability.29 According to Brentano, the insight into science’s primacy of method is nothing new to philosophy ; Plato, Aristotle, Albert, Thomas, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke and partially Leibniz, in part, had already recognized this and used scientific methodology as a method in philosophy.30 Brentano, who wanted to give philosophy the character of an exact science as early as 1866 in his habilitation treatise in Würzburg, was particularly impressed by the objectivity and the success of the scientific method. Therefore, the fourth thesis of his treatise is: “The true method of philosophy is nothing other than that of the natural sciences.”31 This method leads to an intersubjective, universally valid, practically relevant conclusion which still has to be confirmed through experience to be taken as the basis of new analyses. This is something the humanities seldom accomplish.32
Brentano continued to improve philosophy’s basic tools with the help of descriptive-analytical analyses. Using the empirical approach, philosophy was to achieve the greatest possible level of science. Thus he saw “German Idealism only from the viewpoint of degeneracy”.33 Brentano’s confrontation with various philosophers of German Idealism began during his time in Würzburg.34 Brentano’s most significant opponent remains Immanuel Kant primarily in the context of Brentano’s own transcendental analysis.35 Kant, although not named explicitly, is the implicit target of Brentano’s polemic comments [in the lectures of 1867, GH]. In the same manner as Aristotle argues against Protagoras, Brentano criticizes Kant, who represents an uncompromising relativism. It is not by coincidence that Brentano uses the expression ‘transcendental’ to explain the cognitional foundation of his metaphysics. He thus illustrates how Kant and his idealistic epigones deformed the term and tried to restore its traditional, pre-critical meaning.36
Brentano repeatedly uses Kant as his opponent in his lectures. In the two semesters of 1881/1882 at the University of Vienna, for example, he held “dia-
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lectical lectures” in which he explained and contrasted the most important writings of Hume and Kant.37
Four Phases of Philosophy During his time in Vienna, Brentano worked on his theory of the four phases of philosophy. On 28 November 1894 he gave a lecture to the “Litterarische Gesellschaft” with the title of The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State [Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand]. The lecture was a response to the book Der grundlose Optimismus38 by Hieronymus Lorm, which had been previously published by the Association. In his lecture, Brentano criticized “the deep respect for Kant, which is characteristic for our day”.39 He also illustrated the history of philosophy as a cyclical development of three periods (Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern Times), which in turn are subdivided into four phases of ascent and decline. Kant is placed in the fourth and most condemnable phase of modern times: the phase of decadence. For Brentano, Kant signifies the phenomenon of decline in philosophy par excellence. He is, along with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, at a stage of philosophy which has the following characteristics: the construction of philosophical dogmata, an abnormally increased fervor, the fiction of unnatural modes of cognition, the belief in principles without discernment, the claim of immediate intuition, the surpassing of the limits of cognition, and mysticism.40 It should be noted that Carl Stumpf wrote in 1919 in his Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano, that Brentano had already lectured in the autumn of 1866 on the four phases of philosophy. This was in Würzburg in his lecture Geschichte der Philosophie, which was Brentano’s first public lecture at the University of Würzburg. Stumpf also noted that Brentano had later personally told him that the idea had come him during his recovery from a serious illness during Easter 1860, when he claimed that: “philosophy had almost made him insane.”41 In Brentano’s lectures in 1894, Kant, as an epochal thinker,42 naturally received special attention. However, he turns solely against Kant’s doctrine and not against his efforts or intellectual power. He notes explicitly : In particular, one must not misinterpret my true opinion of Kant’s philosophy in those passages, in which I deal with this extraordinary thinker. Independently of what I say of his philosophical system, his achievements for the natural sciences, like those of Proclus for mathematics, remain untouched.43
This is all the more remarkable, as Brentano rarely finds such kind words in relation to Kant. According to Brentano’s accusation, instead of a scientific
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Fig. 4 (a): Franz Brentano’s request for reappointment as tenured professor, signed unanimously by the faculty with 38 votes (1880)
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Fig. 4 (b): Franz Brentano’s request for reappointment as tenured professor, signed unanimously by the faculty with 38 votes (1880)
philosophy, Kant has come up with a “philosophy of prejudices”.44 Brentano remains true to this critique throughout his life. He still writes after publication of his essay Nieder mit den Vorurteilen, ein Mahnruf im Geiste von Bacon und Descartes, sich von allen blinden a-priori loszusagen on 7 February 1904 to his scholar and friend Hermann Schell, that he had deliberately chosen this polemical title in order to take action against Kantianism.45 Kantian philosophy remains an anathema to Brentano until his death in 1917. But his radical rejection of Kant also shows that he cannot help but deal with him.46
A Priori Concepts Brentano is certain that “all our knowledge is based on experience”. Accordingly, there can be no a priori concepts of space and time, since only categories of empirical origin exist. Substance cannot be understood “as an a priori concept but as one abstracted from our experience”.47 All these objections to Kant – some with Aristotelian argumentation – do not mean for Brentano that a priori knowledge is impossible per se.48 Brentano merely sees enormous errors in the
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philosophy of Kant. For Brentano a priori perceptions or concepts do not exist within consciousness.49 Consequently, a priori perceptions of an infinite threedimensional space and an infinite one-dimensional time are not possible, either.50 These concepts can only be found using strict logic, with the help of psychological analysis within empirical experience. In Brentano’s doctrine of space and time there is an immanent critique of Kant’s concepts, which comes close to “completely refuting them.” Brentano concludes that most of Kant’s categories and a priori concepts are not real concepts, rather more like “connotative expressions”.51 Moreover, Brentano is convinced, following in Aristotle’s footsteps, that Kant errs with his concept of substance. Kant has no idea of the original meaning of the substance and therefore described it as something that is the basis of every change.52 Thereby substance is completely misinterpreted and within this understanding only harms metaphysics. Substance has lost its original sense in Kant’s works,53 which is to be the bearer of the “accidentals”. Therefore Brentano also rejects Kant’s a priori substance concept. The concept of substance remains for Brentano the “concept of being in its actual sense”.54 Substance is included in each perception.55
Theory of Judgment Brentano repeatedly opposes the Kantian theory of synthetic a priori. This theory cannot satisfy Brentano’s doctrine of evident judgements and must therefore be rejected as unscientific concepts. The synthetic a priori judgements cannot be evident judgements. Kant wishes to form science and philosophy on the basis of synthetic a priori judgements, therefore Brentano calls him a “dogmatist who left the path of natural research”.56He also names Kant (along with Thomas Aquinas) a precursor to his own theory of judgement, yet accuses them both of not being freed from the domination of categorical judgements.57 In his own theory of judgement Brentano makes a radical reduction of classes of judgement, which again implies an immanent critique of Kant, in particular his fundamental distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Brentano recognizes, for example, only analytic judgements from a logical respect. Synthetic judgements are only possible from a psychological respect.58 The usual Kantian classification of judgement, according to quantity, quality, relation and modality, is completely rejected by Brentano. He only considers judgements according to quality and modality, however he undertakes considerable changes in their categorization. For example, he sets out that Kant’s infinite judgements merely describe negative expressions. Since negative expressions are solely fictions according to Brentano, infinite judgements are judgements with a “difference of substance.” Only because of a “pedantic enthusiasm for tri-
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chotomy”,59 Kant wished to put the infinite judgements next to the affirmative and negative judgements.
Fig 5: Letter, Franz Brentano to the faculty of the University of Vienna, requesting a lectern (1876)
Criticism of Kant’s theory of judgment forms the basis for Brentano’s refutation of Kant’s transcendental dialectic and its antinomies. In his essay Nieder mit den Vorurteilen, Brentano self-critically asks himself if this is really what Kant wished to express, or if the generalized language has misinterpreted his writings: What a shame that we cannot summon Kant from his grave, so he can declare whether I factually blemished his theory or whether I just translated his baroque diction […] into a proper and good German.
But immediately afterwards he argues: But we do not need his reawakening. The two questions he posed: ‘How is synthetic knowledge possible?’ and ‘To what extent can we trust it?’ eliminate all doubt about his true opinion.60
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Finally, it should be noted that Brentano considers Kant’s “monstrous assertion” – that the existential statement is also a categorical statement – to be ridiculous.61 Brentano sees the existential statement as archetype of judgment. It is the simplest and most common form of judgment.62 The complete criticism and restructuring of the Kantian judgments (synthetic, analytic, a priori, existential, etc.) can be seen in close connection with Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena.
Psychological Phenomena and Inner Perception For Brentano, experience is, in addition to the inner perception of one’s own mental phenomena, the basis of psychology. Brentano classifies mental phenomena into three groups: imagination, judgement and emotion. This classification has been influenced by Aristotle, Descartes and Kant,63 whereat Kant had already been influenced by the classification of his contemporaries Mendelssohn and Tetens).64 Brentano clearly distinguishes inner perception from inner observation; only the first is the “indispensable source”65 of psychology. Inner perception also represents the reality of mental phenomena, which means that mental phenomena can be described by inner perception. However, the reality of inner perception also constitutes inner perception, meaning that it can therefore be described by itself. Thus consciousness is absolutely self-constituent. Inner perception is not only an inner conceivability that is in opposition to external conceivabilities. It is already a state of consciousness, which includes both external and internal conceivabilities.66 In the evidence of inner perception, Brentano sees the “epistemological restitution of Kant’s thing in itself: it is introspectively given and identifiable”.67 When Brentano admits the imperceptibility of the thing in itself in the context of science,68 he simultaneously denies that imperceptibility within the framework of psychology. The objects of psychology (the real states of consciousness) are immediately self-explanatory and evident.69 Therefore the thing in itself is perceivable or identifiable.70 To what extent Brentano’s interpretation does justice to Kant’s thing in itself is a different matter. However, for Brentano “the thing in itself” is no longer “unknowable”71 as in Kant, whereby we can only recognize phenomena, rather it may be given to us through inner perception.
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Fig. 6: Fragment of one of Brentano’s lectures in which he critically discusses Kant’s concept of the phenomenon
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The Brentano School in Vienna and Graz by Kurt Walter Zeidler Franz Brentano (1838–1917) categorically rejected critical and speculative idealism. In his view, Kant and German idealism belongs to the last phase of philosophy, representing the “extreme of decadence”: a wilful reaction against scepticism, “using unheard of and unnatural means to rescue cognition […] and, in a rush of enthusiasm, seeks to further extend its domain”.72 And as is well-known, Brentano sought the remedy for this decline, which he believed reached the “nadir of degeneration of human thought” in Hegel’s system,73 in empirical psychology : Philosophy is a science like any other, and must therefore, if correctly exercised, have essentially a method which is identical the method of other sciences. It is now clearly established that the method of the natural sciences […] is also the only valid one for philosophy. […] This method has prevailed during all ascending periods of philosophy, and wherever this method was abandoned its decline necessarily ensued; the scientific character of research was lost. I am therefore very worried that this may happen here after my departure, if not immediately than some time later. The appropriate guarantee against this happening, more than any other, would be the creation of an institute of psychology, not to be entrusted to anyone who does not apply the method of natural science in his research and thereby holds contact with natural science.74
The hopes expressed by Brentano in 1895 on his departure from Vienna had already been realised in Graz one year before by his former student, Alexius Meinong. While the first course in experimental psychology in Vienna was taught in the summer semester of 1899 by Alois Höfler (1853–1922), a former student of Brentano and Meinong, followed by Adolf Stöhr (1855–1921), who held the third ordinary professorship of philosophy since 1910, it was only in 1922 that an institute of psychology was established at the University of Vienna with the appointment of Stöhr’s successor, Karl Bühler (1879–1967).75 Apart from Alois Höfler, appointed as Professor of Pedagogy in 1907, no former students of Brentano succeeded in obtaining a position at the University of Vienna. His students from his earlier years in Würzburg, Anton Marty (1847–1914) and Carl Stumpf (1848–1936), both took their degrees at Göttingen with Rudolf Hermann Lotze, and later went via Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi) to Prague (Anton Marty), or via Würzburg, Prague, Halle and Munich to Berlin (Carl Stumpf). Brentano’s students from his Vienna period went to Graz (Alexius Meinong), Prague (Christian von Ehrenfels), Lwûw (Kazimierz Twardowski), or Göttingen and Freiburg (Edmund Husserl). While Brentano and his school had only limited impact in Vienna, the distinctive philosophical constellation in Austria played a decisive role in the further evolution of the Brentano school. Since Kantianism was officially suppressed,76 in Austria it was pre-Kantian philosophy that formed the tradition,
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particularly Leibnizism, which in the early 19th century experienced a vigorous revival through Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) and Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848). Herbart’s anti-idealistic realism and Bolzano’s decidedly antiKantian logical objectivism formed a close association in the Austrian Empire, and Herbartianism, once Bolzano too had fallen victim to persecution by the state and church authorities, acquired the status of virtually the official “Austrian philosophy”. In this context it is indicative that the Herbartian Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898), who as Ordinary Professor of Philosophy (1861–95) had been instrumental in Brentano’s appointment at the University of Vienna, had once been the favourite student of the “Bohemian Leibniz”, Bernard Bolzano. For Franz Brentano it was primarily Bolzano’s anti-Kantianism and his work on the philosophy of mathematics that prompted him to draw his Vienna students’ attention to this almost forgotten figure, but from Brentano’s perspective “the story of the reception of Bolzano at his school was a narrative of defection”.77 That defection originates precisely at the point where Brentano’s realism and Bolzano’s objectivism meet and most distinctly depart, and departed most distinctly from the philosophy of Kant. A student and friend of Bolzano, Franz Prˇhonsky´ (1788–1859), expressed the nub of the problem, if only indirectly, in his Anti-Kant: if one followed “Bolzano’s explanation of the concept of intuition […], that it is a representation […] through [which] an object is given, immediately given”,78 then the ground is cut away from beneath the feet of Kantianism; Kant’s epistemo-critical inquiry after the a priori functions constituting the unity of the object is thereby truncated. However the epistemo-critical inquiry then re-appears in a new guise: if one follows Bolzano and Brentano in emphasising that all thought refers to, and is dependent on, an objectivity that is not established by or dependent on the thinker, then the task is to find an alternative explanation for the relationship between representation and object. The starting point for such alternative explanations is provided by Franz Brentano’s doctrine, whereby every mental phenomenon is characterised by what the mediaeval scholastics called the intentional (and probably mental) inexistence of an object, and what we would term, if in not entirely unambiguous formulations, as the relationship to a content, the focus on an object (not to be understood in this context as a reality), or immanent objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit).79
What is denoted by these “not entirely unambiguous formulations” may be illustrated by the following well-known examples: “In representation something is represented, in a judgement something is affirmed or rejected, in love something is loved, in hate something is hated, in desire something is desired, etc.”,80 but is not explained by these examples until such time as an explanation
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Fig. 7: Josef Kriehuber, Bernard Bolzano (1849)
is given as to the ontological status of the “something” that is represented, affirmed or rejected, loved or hated. In the context of descriptive psychology an obvious course is to approach this ontological problem by investigating more closely “the peculiar interwovenness of the object of inner representation with representation itself […] and that mental act”.81 As the history of the Brentano school demonstrates, however, investigations along these lines resulted not so much in a solution as in a differentiation of the problem, into investigations focused more on mental acts (Husserl), more on content (Meinong) or more on real objects (later Brentano).
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Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938) Kazimierz (Kasimir) Jerzy Adolf Skrzypna-Twardowski, Ritter von Ogon´czyk, was born on 20 October 1866 in Vienna. After attending the Theresian Academy he undertook university studies with Franz Brentano and Robert Zimmermann from 1885, taking his degree with the latter in 1891 with a thesis entitled Über den Unterschied zwischen der klaren und deutlichen Perception und der klaren und deutlichen Idee bei Descartes [On the Difference between Clear and Distinct Perception and the Clear and Distinct Idea in Descartes].82 Following periods of research in Leipzig with Wilhelm Wundt and Oswald Külpe and in Munich with Carl Stumpf, from 1892 he worked in an insurance company and wrote his Habilitation thesis Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung [On the Theory of the Content and Object of Representations. A Psychological Investigation] (Vienna 1894). After a brief time spent teaching at the University of Vienna, in 1895 Twardowski was appointed to a position at the University of Lwûw, where he taught with great success until his retirement in 1930, and as the co-founder of the “Lwûw-Warsaw school” largely defined the profile of Polish philosophy in the 20th century. He died on 11 February 1938 in Milanûwek, near Warsaw. Kazimierz Twardowski has the distinction of being the first member of the Brentano school to call for a strict demarcation between the act, content and object of representation, citing Bolzano, who he said had “held to this distinction with great consistency, in that when speaking of the ‘content’ of a representation, he used the terms ‘objective representation’ and ‘representation in itself ’”, and from the latter he had distinguished “on the one hand the object and on the other the received or subjective representation, by which he understood the act of representation.”83 Since Twardowski interpreted Bolzano’s logical objectivism in the spirit of the realism of his teacher, Brentano, he yet challenged Bolzano’s ideas regarding the “objectless representations […] of a round square, green virtue, etc.”,84 rather, he asserted, “every representation represents an object, whether that object exists or not […]. So while it was correct to claim that the objects of some representations do not exist, it was going too far to claim that there is no object corresponding to such representations, […] that they are objectless representations.”85 With this objection, Twardowski identified the path that Meinong then travelled with his “Theory of Objects”.
Alexius Meinong (1853–1921) Alexius Meinong Ritter von Handschuchsheim was born on 17 July 1853 in Lwûw, as the son of a major general. He grew up in Vienna, and from 1870 studied
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German philology and history at the University of Vienna. After graduating in history in 1874, he studied philosophy with Franz Brentano, gaining his Habilitation qualification in 1878 with Hume-Studien I: Zur Geschichte und Kritik des modernen Nominalismus [Hume Studies I: the History and Criticism of Modern Nominalism]. He was then appointed to extraordinary and ordinary professorships in Graz in 1882 and 1889 respectively, and it was in Graz that he set up Austria’s first laboratory of experimental psychology (“psychological laboratory”) in 1894. He became a full member of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna in 1914, and died on 27 November 1920 in Graz.
Fig. 8: Alexius Meinong
Meinong initially worked mainly in the area of psychology, before developing his theory of the “objective” (Objektiv), to which “Bolzano’s ‘proposition in itself ’ […] approaches very closely, if not coinciding with it altogether”.86 The point of departure for his ideas was Brentano’s thesis that “the fact of having an object is an essential characteristic of all that is mental”.87 But contrary to the later Brentano, by “object” (Gegenstand) Meinong understands not a real thing, but absolutely everything: “The proper initial definition of what an object is
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founders on the absence of both genus and differentia, for everything is an object.”88 Hence his theory of objects aspires to be more than all previous ontology and metaphysics.89 It embraces a much wider scope than metaphysics, which only has to do with the totality of what exists. But the totality of what exists, including that which has existed and will exist, is infinitely small in comparison with the totality of objects of cognition; and the ease which this is ignored is probably based on the fact that that the particularly lively interest in the real that is part of our nature favours an exaggeration whereby the non-real is treated as simply nothing, or more accurately, something on which cognition either has no point of engagement whatsoever or no worthy point of engagement.90
Against this “prejudice in favour of the actual”,91 Meinong emphasises that already when cognising relations we are engaged “with that peculiar object-like entity” (Gegenstandsartiges) that stands opposite judgements and assumptions in the same way as the actual object stands opposite representations. I have proposed the name ‘objective’ for this entity, and have demonstrated that this ‘objective’ can itself again enter into the functions of an actual object, and in particular become the object of a new evaluation directed towards it as towards an object, or of other intellectual operations.92
Since the “objective” standing opposite “judgements and assumptions” does not necessarily possess an existence or being, a further distinction has to be drawn between a “being objective” (Seinsobjektiv) and a “being-thus objective” (Soseinsobjektiv) in which context it is necessary to note the “fact” that “the beingthus of an object is not impacted, so to say, by its non-being”.93 This “principle of the independence of ‘being-thus’ from ‘being’”,94 first formulated by Meinong’s student Ernst Mally, applies “not only to objects […] that do not in fact exist, but also those that cannot exist, since they are impossible. Not only is the oft-cited ‘golden mountain’ made of gold, but also the ‘round square’ is just as certainly round as it is square.”95 If every “object […] is in a manner of speaking presented for our decision on its being or non-being”, then as well as having to distinguish between the ‘existence’ (Existieren) of real objects and the ‘subsistence’ (Bestand) of ideal objects, we must also attribute the character of ‘object’ to the impossible and contradictory : “Even that which neither exists or subsists is still characterised by a residue of character as posited, ‘absistence’ (Aussersein) of which […] no object thus seems to be devoid.”96 With the admission of “impossible objects”, Meinong derives the most radical consequence imaginable of an objectivistic approach, which limits the activities of the subject to the “grasping”97 of presented objects. This places object theory at a strange intermediate point between ontology and formal semantics, but also produces results that are unwanted, as much from the formal logical as from the
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realistic perspective; the objectivistic conferring of “object” status on mental fictions and negations leads not only to a superfluity of unreal objects, but also to a violation of the principle of contradiction, when Meinong claims that the “round square” is both round and square. The radical objectivism of object theory was therefore criticised by Meinong’s student and successor, Ernst Mally, as an inadmissible amalgamation of questions of being and meaning,98 following Bertrand Russell’s earlier formulation of his “theory of descriptions”, in order to counter the paradoxes of object theory.99 Meinong thereby became one of the fathers of analytical philosophy, and indeed – in the light of the relationship between object theory and formal semantics, and in the context of deontic and epistemic logics – something of a “Meinong renaissance” has since taken place in that field.100 Translated by John Jamieson
Fig. 9: Brentano’s annotated copy of ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
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Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) by Marek Bozˇuk In the 19th century the municipality of Proßnitz (nowadays Prosteˇjov, Moravia) was more liberal on confessional issues than its neighbouring communities, thus facilitating the settlement of several Jewish families in this region over a number of generations. A few of these families were known as Husserl (“Husa” is a Czech word and means “goose”, indicating a past family occupation). On the 8th of April 1859, Edmund Husserl was born into one of these German speaking families as the second son of three.101 His father was a not very pious cloth merchant and sent his son Edmund, at the beginning of his educational career, to a municipal grammar school in Leopoldstadt (nowadays the second district of Vienna). After less than one term, Husserl was shifted to the k.u.k. (AustroHungarian) Grammar school in Olmütz (nowadays Olomouc). There he was considered a bad student who, at the last moment, learned barley enough to just pass the final exam of the year. When the school board finally noticed this “fraud”, they decided that Husserl should not be allowed to pass his final exams – whereupon he gave the first proof of his impressive ability to study. Within a few weeks Husserl managed to acquire a complete knowledge of the former year’s lessons and passed brilliantly. During these weeks of intense studying, the young Husserl became aware for the first time of his fascination for the laws and forms of mathematics. Husserl began to study in Leipzig in 1876, where he first enrolled in astronomy, but also attended courses in physics, mathematics and philosophy, the latter under the guidance of Wilhelm Wundt who was the founder of the first Institute for Experimental Psychology in Leipzig. During this period in Leipzig he encountered Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk who was nine years his senior and whose involvement in Protestantism influenced Husserl who converted to Protestantism ten years later in 1886.102 In 1878 Husserl moved to Berlin, where he enrolled as a student of mathematics under Karl Weierstraß and Leopold Kronecker. He also enrolled in Berlin to study philosophy under Friedrich Paulsen. After he had finished his thesis in mathematics, entitled Beiträge zur Theorie der Variationsrechnung [Contributions to the Theory of the Calculus of Variations], Husserl again moved to another city in 1882: this time he chose Vienna and stayed there until 1886. In 1883 he assisted Weierstraß, during an one-semester intermezzo back in Berlin, by preparing a lecture on Abelian functions. He also began, on the advice of Masaryk, to study philosophy under Franz Brentano in Vienna in 1884. After two more years Brentano then advised Husserl to continue his studies under Carl Stumpf in Halle. Once more he followed the advice given by an elder and left Vienna in 1886 to live and work for the rest of his life in Germany. In the year 1887 Husserl married Malvine Steinschneider. He achieved his
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Fig. 10: Edmund Husserl (around 1900)
teaching qualification under the supervision of Stumpf, writing a thesis on Über den Begriff der Zahl [On the Concept of Number] which was published four years later under the title Philosophie der Arithmetik [Philosophy of Arithmetic]. Until 1901 he remained an associate professor in Halle, where he also became acquainted with neo-Kantianism which in Germany was powerfully represented in this period by the Marburg School and by the Southwest School. In particular, Husserl collaborated with Paul Natorp both intellectually and by correspondence. His intense examination of Natorp’s philosophy, as well as of Gottlob Frege’s critique of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, led to Husserl’s so-called “radical turn”.103 It consisted of a fundamental critique of psychologism and a transcendental realignment of his phenomenology. This “radical turn”, however, did not develop until his period as a lecturer in Göttingen. Before that he had lectured in Halle on most of such philosophical domains as epistemology, metaphysics and logic as well as on ethics, psychology, history of philosophy and philosophy of religion. He also taught the British empiricists and sensualists (mainly Hume and Locke) together with Descartes and Kant. His first magnum opus – the Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Teil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik [Logical Investigations, Vol. 1, Prolegomena on Pure
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Logic] – was published in 1900, followed one year later by the Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis [Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, Investigations on Phenomenology and Epistemology]. These important publications paved the way for the prestigious call to teach his phenomenology at the University of Göttingen. Without hesitation Husserl accepted this offer and stayed in Göttingen until 1916. In those years the first phenomenological movements appeared. Involved were the Munich School (Alexander Pfänder, Moritz Geiger, Johannes Daubert) as well as a scientific discipleship within the Philosophical Society of Göttingen (Adolf Reinach, Theodor Conrad, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Max Scheler, Alexandre Koyr¦, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden und Adolf Grimme). Together with Husserl, they intended to work towards the final aim of phenomenological methodology as a way towards an ultimate philosophical justification. Here, in 1905, Husserl also gave his lectures Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins [On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time] which were not published by Martin Heidegger until 1928, after Edith Stein had collected and edited the material. In these lectures one can already note the increasing orientation of Husserl’s thought towarda a transcendental position, which would finally bring him into opposition with the Göttingen group of his followers. They accused him of regression within the phenomenological program. In turn Husserl criticised their naive naturalism, respectively psychologism. Meanwhile the First World War put an end to these lively discussions dealing with phenomenology in Göttingen. After the publication of Husserl’s next major work in 1913, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie [Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy] he succeeded Heinrich Rickert in 1916 and became a tenured professor at the University of Freiburg, where he remained active until 1928, working on his conception of a phenomenology under a transcendental perspective. Husserl’s broad philosophical impact at last made itself felt during his Freiburg period and the phenomenological approach started to spread in altered and more developed forms. Due to the political changes in this period in Germany and Europe and the concomitant shifts in interests, an increasing number of international scholars, especially from the United States (f.e. Marvin Faber, Dorion Cairns) and from Japan (f.e. Count Shuzo Kuki, Hasime Tanabe), attended Husserl’s lectures, along with such intellectual protagonists as Gerda Walther, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Rudolf Carnap or Günther Anders. In Freiburg, Husserl was supported mainly by Edith Stein, Ludwig Landgrebe, Eugen Fink and Martin Heidegger, the latter being proposed by Husserl himself as his successor instead of “the senior of the Munich phenomenologists”104 Alexander Pfänder. And yet Husserl didn’t realise “for a long time the actual distance
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Fig. 11 (a): Edmund Husserl’s lectures on Kant
between Heidegger’s thoughts and his own ones”.105 The state-conformist attitude of his successor resulted not only in negative expert opinion reports on colleagues from the philosophical academic field, but Heidegger, as head of the faculty board, also deprived at the end of 1935 his former mentor of the right to teach. This also included prohibiting Husserl from his right to enter the University of Freiburg.106 Already in 1933, after the National Socialists had come to power, Husserl was temporarily stopped from teaching for a few months by the Baden ministry of education and cultural affairs. By 1937 he was suffering the full brunt of the all embracing malevolence of the Nazi regime. He was prohibited from taking part at the IX. International Congress of Philosophy, he was forced to withdraw from the Philosophical Organisation in Belgrade and he was evicted from his apartment in the Lorettostraße, etcetera. Husserl himself
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Fig. 11 (b): Edmund Husserl’s lectures on Kant
Fig. 11 (c): Edmund Husserl’s lectures on Kant
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characterized these events as the worst humiliation of his entire life, but he continued to work by demonstratively writing a few notations on the back page of the document prohibiting his entry into the University of Freiburg.107 He also refused a call to work for the University of South California in Los Angeles in 1936. Husserl’s social and occupational isolation inside Germany was in stark contrast to the far-reaching interest in Husserl’s work abroad. This led to his invitation for giving lectures throughout Europe after his retirement in 1928. He was also given honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1928), of the Acad¦mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l’Institut de France (1932), of the Cercle Philosophique de Prague (1935) and was appointed Fellow of the British Academy (1936). All this was witnesseth to the international influence of Husserl’s philosophy. Similarly his admirers were predominantly European towards the end of his activities including such intellectuals as Herbert Marcuse and Emmanuel Levinas. Similarly his professional involvement with other scientists was of European scope, ranging from Alfred Schütz in Vienna, Jan Patocˇka and Roman Jakobson in Prague, Ernst Cassirer in Sweden, Jos¦ Ortega y Gasset in Spain, the Italian phenomenologist Antonio Banfi and the French ethnologist Lucien L¦vy-Bruhl. Husserl gave lectures in 1922 in London, in 1928 in Amsterdam and in 1929 in Paris. This lecture was published in 1931 as M¦ditations cart¦siennes [Cartesian Meditations]. On request of the Kant Society 1931, he lectured in Frankfurt, Berlin and Halle on Phenomenology and Anthropology. His last activity in lecturing took place in Vienna (1935) and in Prague (1934 and 1936) and centered around his last unfinished major work the Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie [The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy]. In this work, at least, Kant serves as the initial point for Husserl’s phenomenology as transcendental approach. Husserl died at 79 on the 27th of April 1938 in Freiburg in Breisgau. His work and papers were saved under dramatic circumstances by the young Belgian Franciscan Herman Leo Van Breda, who transferred them, hidden in a diplomatic bag, to Leuven where, in 1939, he founded the Husserl Archive.
Mapping Out the Stages of Husserl’s Kantianism in Vienna by Marek Bozˇuk When asking for the connections and influences that associate Edmund Husserl with Vienna and with Immanuel Kant, we initially find – as seems appropriate – that the connections to Vienna are relatively scarce but very real. The Kantian
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influences, by contrast, catch our eye immediately but seem much broader in their interpretative divergences.
Husserl in Vienna This is despite the fact that Vienna, although it did not play a very significant role in Husserl’s development, can be viewed as both the starting- and endpoint in Husserl’s thinking – at least in terms of symbolic representation. After all, Husserl’s work brought him to Vienna three times: first, on the occasion of completing his Ph.D., then for his philosophical studies and 50 years later for his last series of lectures. Between the initial stays in Vienna and the concluding Viennese phase Husserl’s phenomenology develops in line with his understanding of Kant, whereby the latter is almost diametrically opposed during his first compared to his last stay in Vienna. While initially he was a convinced “antiKantian” formed by Brentano, towards the end we can observe in Husserl’s thinking an extensive identification with Kant’s works; a final work by Husserl that failed to appear should even have comprised an affirmative analysis of Kant.108 In the following lines, we are going to offer a brief and therefore inevitably superficial synopsis of Husserl’s reception of Kant. Much has been written about the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy. Most diverging viewpoints have been put forward in this context; one can only say that the full scale of potential interpretations has been exploited. At one end of the scale, there is Husserl as the antipode to Kant and any neo-Kantian thinking; at the other end there is the neo-Kantian Husserl; in between, there are nuanced representations. Obviously the relationship between Husserl on the one hand and Kant and the neo-Kantians on the other hand is complex. Obviously, there are internal relations, though, be they positive or negative.109
Kant’s Polarity for Husserl With these words, Iso Kern starts his monograph Husserl und Kant in 1964. The book accurately describes the relationship between these two thinkers in terms of their reception. As Kern highlights: the extent to which Kantian transcendental philosophy has entered Husserl’s phenomenology remains an area of dispute – but it seems undeniable that Kant played an important role for Husserl. Thus, at the end of his extensive historical and systematic analysis Kern concludes that Husserl works on Kant and neo-Kantianism continually and extensively and that he adopts or develops central ideas from the works he examines.110 Or, as Robert Sokolowski succinctly argues: “Husserl’s phenom-
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enology took its beginnings in neo-Kantian soil.”111 Regardless of the question of when Husserl’s phenomenology began to gain enough independence – in other words, whether this independence begins with the adoption of key concepts from Brentano or later, with the dissociation from a specific Austrian tradition of phenomenology which had partly been caused by the study of Kant112 – Husserl makes reference to Kant more and more often over the years.
Fig. 12: Husserl’s annotated copy of ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Generally, most publications understand the subcutaneous Kantianism in Husserl’s phenomenology as either a kind of defensive recognition or an affirmative rejection.113 This polarity of Kant’s influence is obvious in several places in Husserl’s work, notably where the proximity of phenomenological perspectives and issues to transcendental philosophy is argued explicitly. However, Husserl rarely writes about these issues without criticising Kant for either not having understood the actual implications of his own transcendental insights or for “not having dissociated himself sufficiently from psychologism and anthropologism.”114 Consequently, according to Husserl, Kant did not proceed far enough with his radical critique or he tackled issues from “too high up” and thus partly lapsed into mysticism. Therefore, Husserl warns of Kant, not without
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holding him in high regard: one should take care to prevent “the tremendous power of mind that Kantian thinking has exerted so far from turning into an insurmountable wall of prejudices.”115 Kant […] does not succeed in finalising the necessary distinction. Of course, we are not just dealing with subjectively valid judgements that are limited to the empirical subject in their validity. Neither are we just dealing with objectively valid judgements, in other words: judgements valid for any subject at all. We have, after all, eliminated the empirical subject, and the transcendental apperception, as well as consciousness in general, will soon acquire a completely different and not at all mysterious meaning for us.116
Lectures and seminars taught by Husserl can be viewed as factual evidence of the fact that Husserl increasingly engaged with Kant. As Husserl gets older, those lectures and seminars become both more extensive and more important. This is also mirrored in the vivid correspondence between Husserl and representatives of neo-Kantianism (mainly Paul Natorp and Heinrich Rickert) and in Husserl’s own library, which contained several editions of Kant’s works with numerous annotations as well as Kant’s complete works. One of these volumes, an edition of Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], bears witness to the ambivalent yes-but relationship between phenomenology and critical philosophy. On its title page, Husserl noted down the following quotation from Kant’s writings – which seems to indicate that he may have understood Kant better than Kant himself did: I only wish to make a note of the fact that it is not unusual, neither in common speech nor in writing, to understand a writer better than he understood himself by way of comparing the thoughts an author expresses about his subject. A writer may misunderstand himself due to the fact that he has not defined his concept thoroughly enough. This may lead him to oppose his own intention either in speech or in thought.117
Husserl’s Increasing Affirmation of Kant Husserl’s philosophical career starts in Vienna. His academic training in Berlin initially mainly focuses on the area of mathematics. He continues his studies from 1881 to 1883 in Vienna and graduates with a doctoral dissertation on Beiträge zur Theorie der Variatsionsrechnung [Contributions to Theorizing the Variational Calculus]. There he once again meets the Kant-critical Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, nine years his senior, whom he had met some years before in Leipzig and who had begun to lecture philosophy in Vienna in 1882. Together, they attend lectures118 by Franz Brentano. The significant influence Masaryk exerted on Husserl manifests itself in two life-changing decisions of Husserl’s: following
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Masaryk’s advice, he changes his confession and begins to study philosophy with Brentano. Accordingly, Husserl analyses Brentano’s philosophical conceptions from 1884 to 1886. Brentano’s theory and practice of philosophy as a science as exact as mathematics is a decisive reason for Husserl to shift his career entirely to the area of philosophy.119 However, it suggests itself that Husserl initially identifies with Brentano’s teachings not just in terms of methodology (in the sense of philosophy as a strictly rational undertaking) but also regarding content.120 He first and foremost embraces the idea of the intentionality of the mind as a fundamental orientation of any mental act on something. Furthermore, he also endorses the distinction between genetic and descriptive psychology as a distinction in the empirical-psychologistic or philosophicalreflexive manner of the scientific study of the mind. He also endorses Brentano’s negative Kant reception. Accordingly, and partly due to the hostility towards Kant in the Austrian education policies and the permanent, latent misunderstanding of his work that follows from that, Kant and German Idealism become manifestations of an era of philosophical decay, a stage in philosophy marked by mystical aberration and reverie. The thing itself, synthetic a-priori truths, faculties or the pure forms of perception (space and time) etcetera are obscure and reactionary metaphysical ideas. According to Brentano, the only meaningful knowledge a priori to experience is thinkable in the context of definitional truths ex terminis and is therefore a trivial matter.121 “If we regard Franz Brentano as the ‘grandfather (on the father’s side)’ of phenomenology”, then we could call Bolzano “the ‘grandfather (on the mother’s side)’ of phenomenology.”122 Wei Zhang’s verdict is supported by recent research on Husserl, which views Bolzano’s influence as a turning point123 that happened in Husserl’s work after he had left Vienna. He mainly takes conceptions such as the “sentences in themselves” or the “objectless presentations” from the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano. These will subsequently lead to the discovery of ideal objects (generally known as ‘meaning’), which in Husserl’s work will be called noema – the ideal content of a mental act or noesis.124 In accordance with Zhang, “one can say that Husserl mediated by Bolzano removes himself from Brentano’s psychologism. Husserl’s phenomenology can thus be regarded as a compromise between Brentano’s descriptive psychology and Bolzano’s pure logic.”125 What is interesting in this context is that Bolzano, too, manifests a rather negative view of Kant, despite the fact that he does not share Brentano’s pathos of decay. However, he does share Brentano’s criticism of the supposed subjectivism of critical philosophy. In 1850, Bolzano’s student Franz Prˇhonsky´ publishes a book entitled Neuer Anti-Kant [New Anti-Kant], in which Bolzano’s logic is juxtaposed with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Husserl, however, seems to have hardly known this study, as it is never mentioned explicitly in his own work.
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Nevertheless, Husserl himself mentions another decisive influence on his thinking as it evolved between Brentano’s anti-Kantian psychology and Bolzano’s Kant-oppositional logic: “Lotze’s thoughts around the interpretation of Plato’s theory of ideas have made a particularly deep impact on me.”126 The German logician and philosopher Hermann Lotze, who significantly influenced some neo-Kantians and who sympathised much more with the German Idealists than Brentano or Bolzano did, gives Husserl the concept of ideal meaning, based on which (or, rather, aiming toward) the phenomenological programme of eidetic reduction gradually develops. Later, the concept of ideal meaning also marks the most important difference from the Kantian system. What has serious consequences for Kant’s critique of reason, according to Husserl, is “[t]he lack of a clear distinction between intuition and intuited, forms of appearances as modes of consciousness and forms of apparent objectivity”,127 thus the lack of a distinction between noema and noesis. This is because “a transcendental logic is only possible in a transcendental noetics.”128 Furthermore, “Husserl regards the a priori as the ideal object, as opposed to Kant’s ‘formal a priori.’”129 For Husserl, the a priori is not simply a formal notion of knowledge prior to any experience, but specifically the content (“ideal content”130) of all our thoughts, so that phenomenology also allows for a material a priori, which Kant would have ruled out.131 Husserl’s above-mentioned turn towards Bolzano occurred in Halle, where Husserl moved after finishing his studies with Brentano in Vienna. In Halle, Husserl deepened his knowledge of psychologistic philosophy with Carl Stumpf, with whom he completed his habilitation in 1887. Husserl’s habilitation studies the association between psychology and logics. He publishes this work four years later under the title of Philosophie der Arithmetik [Philosophy of Arithmetic]. However, with this project he experiences a serious setback in his efforts as a scholar. Ultimately, this will lead him to abandon the psychologistic position he forged under the influence of Brentano. However, Husserl’s renunciation of Brentano “in 1894 is not just a consequence of Frege’s critique of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, but also more significantly due to Natorp […].”132 Paul Natorp, co-founder of the Maribor School of neo-Kantianism, had been exchanging letters with Husserl since his stay in Halle and “Husserl refers to Natorp for his refutation of the first and second psychologistic precondition [in the eighth chapter of Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil [Logical Investigations. Vol. 1]].”133 Of course, the estrangement from and criticism of psychologism through the influence of neo-Kantianism does not equate an endorsement of transcendental philosophy. However, gradually Husserl realises that philosophy as an exact science of ultimate justification is possible neither with the aid of an empirically founded psychology nor with Bolzano’s analytical pure logic. Consequently, Husserl
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Fig. 13: Diary entry by Edmund Husserl on 25 September 1906: “The first and foremost problem I have to solve for myself if I wish to call myself a philosopher, is a critique of reason. A critique of logical and practical reason, of altogether evaluative reason. Without broadly fathoming the meaning, nature, methods and main considerations of a critique of reason, without having created, determined and substantiated a general outline for it, I can not live truly and veritably. I have sufficiently reveled in the anguish of the uncertain and the wavering doubt. [An erster Stelle nenne ich die allgemeine Aufgabe, die ich für mich lösen muß, wenn ich mich soll einen Philosophen nennen können. Ich meine eine Kritik der Vernunft. Eine Kritik der logischen und der praktischen Vernunft, der wertenden überhaupt. Ohne in allgemeinen Zügen mir über Sinn, Wesen, Methoden, Hauptgesichtspunkte einer Kritik der Vernunft ins Klare zu kommen, ohne einen allgemeinen Entwurf für sie ausgedacht, entworfen, festgestellt und begründet zu haben, kann ich wahr und wahrhaftig nicht leben. Die Qualen der Unklarheit, des hin- und herschwankenden Zweifels habe ich ausreichend genossen.]”
begins to search for an exit from both positions. At the same time, in the years around 1900 he is still not convinced of Kant’s work, even though he contributes to Hans Vaihinger’s Kantstudien (Kant Studies).134 In his Logical Investigations he still praises “the teachings of Herbart, which he had adopted from Leibniz in order to refute Kant.”135 The Götting phase, which begins with the Investigations, is initially characterised by Husserl’s work on his own, independent phenomenology, as well as its foundations. For Husserl, “[p]hilosophising […] is a personal struggle with life and death, an illness caused by the most intimate spiritual need and a recovery accompanied by the painful delight of giving birth to most intimate ideas.”136 Not because of the growing national-socialist threat,
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but in the face of the search for a phenomenological foundation and in the face of his faltering thinking in 1905, he notes down in his diary : “My life was and still is in great danger.”137 “How many approaches, how many attempts, to moving deeper and deeper, […] And, after all this, how far behind am I. […] Woe betide me if I get stuck in these work studies and working methods! […] All I am striving for currently is to solve the problem of the […] foundational analysis.”138 Kant’s transcendental philosophy was what “came to rescue” and showed him the path towards such a foundational analysis. In the same year, he gave the Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins [Lectures on the Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness], which marked the beginning of his transcendental turn and brought him into opposition with the phenomenological movement as it existed up until then. From then on, Kant became a more and more stable component of his lectures and seminars139 and as early as four years later, on 18 March 1909, in a letter to Natorp, in which he compared his phenomenology and Natorp’s neo-Kantian psychology, Husserl explains his position concerning transcendental philosophy as follows: I also believe that these two ‘psychologies’ are connected by way of nature; in fact their relationship is inexplicably close. But, phenomenology in no way requires transcendental philosophy to precede it. At the same time, your psychology should follow transcendental philosophy : as you have noticed yourself. Of course, the two of us probably differ quite substantially in what we designate as transcendental philosophy and wherein we perceive its main problems and methods to be. Still, it seems to me as if we were close, and as if it were one and the same philosophy that connected us, offering us its different aspects, posing different sets of problems to us, which however depend on each other. I just believe that the core problems lie in the lower sections of phenomenology. From there, the natural progress should lead to the problems at the summit. As always, I see or feel deep inner connections and coincidences.140
There is not going to be a substantial change in Husserl’s view for the rest of his life. According to Husserl, Kant, who views the foundation of knowledge in the transcendental subject, is exceptional in that he essentially proceeds correctly in his efforts to achieve the ultimate justification of philosophy. But, due to his naturalist and anthropological bias or dogmata he apparently places the zero point for his critique “too far above.” Consequently, his examination of the domain of the transcendental subject is not thorough enough, in Husserl’s opinion. Thus, Kant does not venture as far as the radical problem of knowledge. He lacks a genuine conception of the a priori due to anti-Platonic and formalrationalistic prejudices. Furthermore, he has no concept of phenomenological reduction or he mixes up noesis and noema, etcetera. Nonetheless, there are numerous similarities and congruencies beside these numerous reproaches. For instance, Husserl holds on to the distinction between transcendental analytics and aesthetics or the distinction between the analytical and synthetic a priori –
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to mention but the most obvious parallels. Of course, Husserl mostly changes these theorems.141 Maybe in future it will be established that the profound darkness of Kant’s theories, which can be regarded as a manifestation of the fact that they are beyond ultimate justification, are due to the fact that Kant, influenced by Wolff ’s understanding of ontology, remained ontologically interested even as a transcendentalist. […] No matter how much he offered the first deep insights into the a priori of the life of consciousness that bestows meanings and of the connections between the making of meaning and meaning itself, he does not recognise that his transcendental philosophy cannot be narrowed down as much as he believes it can. A radically scientific enforcement of such a philosophy is only possible if the full life and striving of consciousness in its concrete manifestation and in full differentiation is subjected to examination, with all its correlative sides.142
Ultimately, however, Husserl is kindly disposed towards Kantianism at the end of his career. For instance, “in 1925 the phenomenologist [Husserl] writes to the neo-Kantian [Cassirer] that he reads the second volume of ‘Philosophie der symbolischen Formen’ (Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) ‘often and with great attention’ and that he is pleased about the fact that Cassirer has enriched Kantianism with ‘phenomenological motifs’.”143 His concluding remarks on Kant can be found in his last major work, published in 1936, Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie – Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie [The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology]. Vienna is once more important for Husserl as it is for his last three talks in Prague and Vienna that he is preparing this text. Already on compulsory leave, he continues his work publicly as he gives talks at well-known European universities. Initially, he speaks at the Sorbonne, where shortly after finishing his Formale und Transzendentale Logik [Formal and Transcendental Logic] he presents the basic ideas of his phenomenology, which he will then write down in the Cartesianischen Meditationen [Cartesian Meditations]. Towards the end of his various engagements as a public speaker in London or Amsterdam and some other European cities he presents some first ideas from his Crisis. In 1934, Emanuel Rdl invites him to the Eighth International Congress of Philosophy in Prague, where someone else reads a shortened early draft of his Vienna talk, as Husserl cannot participate. The paper forms the nucleus for the Crisis publication, the first part of which is a modification of the talk in Vienna, given on 7 and 10 May 1935 (including a small extension, which Husserl will present in person in the autumn of 1935 in Prague). In the title of the Crisis publication, Husserl explicitly calls his approach to phenomenology transcendental, which signals the fact that he is beginning to view himself as part of the tradition of transcendental philosophy. In Crisis, Husserl states more precisely his relationship to Kant in the context of his
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Fig. 14: Edmund Husserl, Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy. From a lecture Husserl gave at the University of Freiburg’s celebrations of Kant on 1 May 1924
teleological conception of the history of philosophy : the ideal of objectivity in the European sciences alienates humanity more and more from its habitat. A philosophy that seeks to uncover the ultimate truth of humanity must look for its ultimate justification in the anonymous structures of that habitat, thus focusing on the human subjects, rather than on the objects of the world. Descartes
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was the first to discover the transcendental subject as a foundational authority. Kant’s model follows this discovery and offers a transcendental model of explanation as an alternative to the objectivist ideal of the sciences. Husserl himself attempts to complete such a system of transcendental or subjective ultimate justification with his phenomenology and thus views himself in direct line with Descartes and Kant in terms of the history of philosophy. In Husserl’s own words: “what unites generations of philosophers [is characterised by] an orientation towards an ultimate form of transcendental philosophy – in the shape of phenomenology”.144 Translated by Katharina Walter
Heidegger’s Metaphysical Interpretation of Kant – Reason and the Hermeneutics of Facticity by Philipp Schmidt Martin Heidegger was born in Messkirch on 26 September 1889.145 After he had broken off his priestly training he continued to study philosophy and the arts and sciences at the University of Freiburg, where he graduated with his doctoral thesis Über die Lehre des Urteils im Psychologismus [The Theory of Judgment in Psychologism] in 1913. In 1915 he presented his habilitation thesis Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus [Duns Scotus’ Theory of the Categories and of Meaning], which was assessed by the neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. Before he became professor in Marburg in 1923, Heidegger worked as a private lecturer and as Edmund Husserl’s private assistant in Freiburg. A few years after being called to Marburg, in 1927, he published his first main work Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. In the following year he took over Edmund Husserl’s position in Freiburg. In 1930 Heidegger turned down a position in Berlin for the first time. Three years later, in 1933, he was invited again to take over a professor’s position both in Berlin and Munich, but did not accept either of the posts. In the same year he joined the NSDAP shortly after he was elected rector in Freiburg. However, he resigned from office only a year later as a result of conflicts with party representatives and the government over matters concerning the university. After the Second World War, Heidegger was banned from teaching by the French occupying army. After he had been judged a mere “Mitläufer” [follower] in 1949, the military government accepted his retirement as emeritus professor, which occurred in 1951. Then he started teaching again. Until the end of his life he undertook several lecturing tours, which took him to France, Greece and to Vienna. On 24 October 1956 he gave the lecture Der Satz vom Grund [The Principle of Ground]146 at the University of Vienna and another
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lecture in the Vienna Burgtheater entitled Dichten und Denken [Poetry and Thinking] on 11 May 1958.147 Heidegger died in Messkirch on 6 May 1976.
Fig. 15: Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, but is a controversial figure as a result of his involvement in the Third Reich.148 Since the publication of his intellectual diaries from the 1930s called Schwarze Hefte149 [Black Notebooks], the debate about a possible connection between his political ideas and his philosophical thinking has again gathered momentum.150 What is, however, undisputed is the influence Heidegger’s works had on the philosophy of the 20th century and its protagonists. Many thinkers from widely disparate philosophical traditions were inspired by him: Jean-Paul Sartre and French existentialism, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructivism, HansGeorg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur and Hannah Arendt.151 Heidegger’s thinking, which was dedicated to phenomenology and the philosophy of life, aimed at an ontological critique of European metaphysics, which he accused of having ignored the question of the meaning of Being. In his early main work Being and Time he therefore wanted to uncover the meaning of Being by the analytic of Dasein, the existential structure of which is essentially characterised by an understanding of Being. The analytic method used is the hermeneutics of facticity, because its point of departure is Dasein in its historically determined concretion. In his later
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philosophy, after his reorientation called “the turn” Heidegger gave up this early approach to the history of Being, because it seemed to him that it was too much rooted in the traditional modern-age concept of the subject. Heidegger devoted himself to Kantian philosophy primarily in his early phase, even though there are references to Kant in many texts and lectures from all stages of his career. They mainly appear when he deals with the history of philosophy, but can also be found in the context of systematic considerations. But Heidegger’s preoccupation with Kant was most intense during the 1920s and early 1930s, as can be concluded from the great number of lectures and seminars Heidegger gave on him. There are many reasons for Heidegger’s involvement in Kantian philosophy. Above all, he was interested in examining the philosophical theory of the first Critique and related questions about the possibility of metaphysics as a science, about cognition and experience, about the importance of the transcendental power of imagination, the concepts of Being and the world and the designation of the subject as mere subject of cognition.152 But Heidegger also reflected about Kant’s views of beauty153 and the relationship between transcendental and practical freedom.154 At first sight it may seem strange that Heidegger devoted so much time to Kant at the beginning of his academic career, because his own thinking was oriented much more towards the philosophy of life of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard or Dilthey, whose approaches were in sharp contrast to Kant.155 As early as 1919 he criticised the neo-Kantians Natorp, Windelband and Rickert and the latter’s critique of Husserl, who he defends, in his lecture Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie [Towards the Definition of Philosophy].156 Another fact that separated Heidegger from Kant was his closeness to the traditions of Aristotle and Brentano. His critical attitude is still visible in the first part of Being and Time. Here Heidegger, indeed, does praise Kant because he was “the first and only one” who “allowed himself to be driven there by the compelling force of the phenomena themselves” to connect “the interpretation of being” thematically “with the phenomenon of time”. However, Kant had not posed the question of Being because he had taken over the Cartesian view of Being without any further examination. For this reason, according to Heidegger, there is a “lack of a thematic ontology of Dasein”, which makes it impossible for Kant to clarify “the decisive connection between time and the ‘I think’”.157 In his Kant book published two years later, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics], which contains the results of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant in a new form, he even hopes to find “an advocate for the question of Being which I posed”,158as he wrote in retrospect in 1973. There were several reasons for this change in attitude, which Otto Friedrich Bollnow discussed in his habilitation lecture as early as the beginning of the 1930s. First, Heidegger had discovered the connection between the “problem of
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Fig. 16: Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl
Being in traditional metaphysics and the phenomenon of time”159 in the schematism chapter during the winter term of 1927/28. Second, he thought that the question of Being had been misunderstood in the critical reception of Being and Time, which meant that “Kant’s text became a refuge”.160 In this way, the Kant book was a preparation for the second part of Being and Time Heidegger was planning at the time, but never wrote. So he had systematic reasons for devoting himself to Kant, even though his approach was driven mainly by the desire to deal with his own questions in the light of Kant’s work. Furthermore, Heidegger may have hoped that by discovering the question of Being in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, he could make his own ontological question heard by the dominant neo-Kantian philosophers of his time and could counter the neo-Kantian interpretation of Kant’s philosophy as epistemology with a metaphysical interpretation. Undoubtedly, Heidegger offered a way of reading Kant that differed
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from the usual epistemological interpretation. Bollnow identifies this difference on the basis of the twofold interpretation of the concept of possibility : The first sees the possibility of experience as an external possibility, i. e. it examines the question whether an experience of the desired kind is possible; the nature of experience, however, is something that we always presuppose as given. In contrast, the second interprets possibility as an internal possibility. It examines how experience is possible, i. e. it tries to capture the nature of experience within the totality of the human Being-inthe-world and thus to determine the concept of experience first.161
This description makes clear how the hermeneutic programme of Being and Time – i. e. to uncover the meaning of Being by analysing Dasein and its intrinsic understanding of Being – is connected to Kant’s transcendental-philosophical question about the possibility of experience. Heidegger no longer says that Kant failed to reveal the structure of Being of Dasein. Rather, he now finds the fundamental-ontological approach of his own hermeneutics of facticity confirmed by Kant’s dictum that the three basic questions What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?162 ultimately refer to the fourth basic question What is man?163 Here he points to Kant’s view that human reason is naturally predisposed to metaphysics, since finite reason does not only inherently include transcendence, but also wants to become “certain of its own finitude” as a result of the “Care” described in Being and Time that it feels about its own Being.164 Thus the metaphysical predisposition of human reason consists of its transcendental structure on the one hand, which allows pure reason to step over towards being, and of the desire to uncover and to interpret the structure of its own finitude, i. e. its own self, on the other. Heidegger views Kant’s Groundwork of Metaphysics as “uncovering the transcendence of subjectivity”.165 In this light Heidegger’s question about the possibility of experience or “ontological knowledge” becomes crucial. Ontological knowledge is not knowledge of the object, but “letting stand opposed”, i. e. the transcendental structure enabling the self to step over towards being. “Ontological knowledge ‘forms’ transcendence, i. e. the holdingopen of the horizon that becomes discernible in advance through the pure schemata. They ‘spring forth’ as the ‘transcendental product’ of the transcendental power of imagination.”166 What is decisive for Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant is his idea that cognition is primarily intuition, a thought that is in sharp contrast to what Kant says, and that thinking is “subservient to intuition”.167 So when Heidegger says that ontological knowledge forms transcendence, he means “the creating of the look”168 of the horizon in which possible objects can become intuitable, i. e. can become images. “The horizon of transcendence can be formed only in a making-sensible.”169 What is meant here is the making-sensible of the pure concepts of understanding, which is made
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possible by schematism, with the schemata being formed by the pure power of imagination. In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason however, Kant grouped the faculty of imagination under the heading “understanding”, and not as the third faculty of the mind beside sensibility and understanding, as in the first edition. Heidegger saw this as “shrinking-back from the transcendental power of imagination”, in which the “original, essential constitution of humankind” was rooted.170 Due to this new classification, all synthesis now had to be performed by understanding, resulting – Heidegger says – in the fact that Kant cannot have seen the temporary character of the syntheses undertaken by the transcendental power of imagination. But what ought to be uncovered was the doings of the transcendental power of imagination, those hidden acts of subjectivity performed in the dark. According to Heidegger, Kant had avoided exploring this abyss, because he wanted to reinforce the foundation of pure reason, since it should provide a safe ground for his moral philosophy, which refuted all subjective relativisation through empirism: “All pure synthesis and synthesis in general must, as spontaneity, fall to the faculty which in a proper sense is free, the acting reason.”171 Referring to the first version of the Critique, Heidegger sees the transcendental power of imagination as the “root of both stems”,172 i. e. of sensibility and understanding. In this context he tries to elucidate the structure of those “formative center[s]“173 that make the transcendence of ontological knowledge possible. Heidegger then wants to show “the inner temporal character of the transcendental power of imagination”.174 Therefore he can finally rephrase the thesis formulated in Being and Time mutatis mutandis in the context of the Kantian project: The interpretation of the transcendental power of imagination as root, i. e., the elucidation of how the pure synthesis allows both stems to grow forth from out of it and how it maintains them, leads back from itself to that in which this root is rooted: to original time. As the original, threefold-unifying forming of future, past, and present in general, this is what first makes possible the “faculty” of pure synthesis, i. e., that which it is able to produce, namely, the unification of the three elements of ontological knowledge, in the unity of which transcendence is formed.175
Time is what makes all experience of a being possible and hence also the understanding of Being, which is part of the existential constitution of Dasein as Being-in-the-World. It is against the backdrop of time that the world – the horizon in which all Being can be encountered or become an object and in which Dasein is embedded – opens up for the self. This goes to show how much Heidegger’s interpretation of the Critique differs from the neo-Kantian and epistemological view and why it must be called “metaphysical”. Not only does he consider the “pure science of reason” as part of
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the metaphysica generalis, which explores the question of “knowledge of beings in general”,176 but consequently interprets the examination of finite reason in the light of fundamental ontology as “metaphysics of Dasein”.177 Heidegger’s rather idiosyncratic interpretation of Kant was largely rejected by Kant scholars, and Heidegger himself admits that he had treated Kant’s text resorting to “violence” – at least from the point of view of “historical philology”.178 Therefore it comes as no surprise when Dieter Sturma comments the fact that Heidegger’s reading of Kant has received little attention in the academic world179 by saying that “Kant scholars and Heidegger scholars have not come together yet”.180 One of the reasons for this could be that Heidegger’s Kant interpretation depended on his own development, which was characterised by frequent changes as he progressed towards a kind of thinking that centred on the history of Being.181 Therefore it is difficult to evaluate the effect the view which he offered in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics actually had.182 In any case, Heidegger considered Sartre’s reading of the translation of the fourth section as “crucial”, because it was only then that Sartre “understood” Being and Time.183 Therefore we can in fact assume that by writing his “Kant book” Heidegger achieved his goal of giving an introduction to Being and Time and of making the question of Being accessible. Sartre was most likely not the only one for whom Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant was crucial for understanding Being and Time, and therefore the Kant book must have played a role in strengthening the influence of Being and Time and of Heidegger’s philosophy in general, a role that may be hard to define, but must not be underestimated. The fact that there are only few – if any – references to the Kant book in secondary literature that would show the positive effect the Kant book had on the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy becomes clear when taking into consideration its innermost intention, namely to give an introduction to Heidegger’s own thinking. Even if his interpretation of Kant has to be – and was – viewed as an idiosyncratic appropriation, it primarily brought Heidegger’s approach to the fore. Thus, his reading of Kant mainly offers an opportunity to study Heidegger’s own approach. Another question is what effect Heidegger’s Kant studies had on his own thinking. There is sufficient proof that Heidegger dedicated most of his work to Kant in the years after the publication of Being and Time. However, he must have been sufficiently familiar with Kant even before writing his main work, as we can tell from numerous references to Kant in the lectures he gave during the summer term of 1925184 and in Being and Time itself. Although Heidegger’s theoretical position was characterised by a certain distance to Kant at that time, the latter continued to be a point of departure for him and was as such an essential part of the horizon of Heidegger’s thinking. The Austrian philosopher and Jesuit Emerich Coreth, who was professor for Christian philosophy at the University of Innsbruck until his retirement in 1989, even believed that “this man [Kant, PS]
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always [remained] at the back of Heidegger’s entire thinking, even though his influence is mostly hidden”.185 Furthermore, he stresses “that Kant’s transcendental question [forms] such an essential basis of Heidegger’s thinking that the questions he poses can only be fully understood when we bear this in mind”.186 Undoubtedly, Heidegger took the “transcendental question beyond Kant” and developed it further in his thinking, but this only reveals “his profound engagement with Kant – even though he does not mention him”.187 In any case, this is an aspect of Heidegger’s Kant reception that has not yet found the attention it deserves. Translated by Susanne Costa
Hönigswald’s Attitude to Kant and Phenomenology by Max Brinnich Richard Hönigswald (1875–1947) Richard Hönigswald was born in Ungarisch-Altenburg (Mosonmagyarûvûr in present-day Hungary) on 18 July 1875.188 He graduated in medicine in Vienna in 1902. After studying in Graz with the Brentano follower Alexius Meinong and the neo-Kantian Alois Riehl, he graduated in philosophy in 1904 with the thesis Über die Lehre Hume’s von der Realität der Außendinge [On Hume’s Theory of the Reality of External Objects]. After his habilitation (a post-doctoral qualification) in 1906 with a thesis entitled Beiträge zur Erkenntnistheorie und Methodenlehre [A Study on Epistemology and Methodology] in Breslau (present-day Wroclaw) he was given a position as lecturer there. In 1916 he became associate professor and was promoted to full professor of philosophy in 1919. In 1930 he was nominated full professor of philosophy in Munich, but was dismissed in 1933 during National Socialism because of his Jewish origins. A petition to prevent his dismissal, instigated by his colleagues, was unsuccessful because the Ministry of Culture had obtained several expert opinions – including one from Martin Heidegger – which were in favour of his dismissal. In 1938 Richard Hönigswald was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. After promising in writing to leave Germany, he was able to emigrate to the United States in 1939. This was the end of his academic career, but he continued his research until his death in New Haven in 1947. During his entire life he focused his attention on Kant. He shared an interest in epistemological questions with neo-Kantianism, and his dedication to Kant led him to a close involvement with phenomenology and also to a deep conflict with it.
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Hönigswald’s Admiration for Kant, his Closeness to Husserl and his Animosity towards Heidegger Hönigswald closely followed the tradition of neo-Kantianism, in particular when dealing with questions of validity, for which he considered Kant’s work to be the foundation. His keen interest in Kant also left him open to the contemporary debates in the phenomenological movement – something he maintained an ambiguous attitude towards. While he valued the goals of the phenomenological tradition of the “Brentano Circle”, he thought that phenomenologists like Husserl stopped half-way, or, as in the case of Heidegger, never got beyond impressive language games. So Hönigswald’s work embraced phenomenology, but differences soon came to the surface and in some cases even led to personal animosity. He had studied with Alexius Meinong, who confronted him with the problem of lived experience, and with Alois Riehl, who focused his attention primarily on the problems related to the cognition of objects and on Immanuel Kant.189 At the time, the Austrian phenomenological tradition, as embodied by Brentano followers like Meinong and Husserl, still put great emphasis on the parallel treatment of these two questions,190 but this was later contested in the conflict between phenomenology and neo-Kantianism. With his interest in the given on the one hand and in methodology on the other, Hönigswald in a way operated in a grey area, a fact which can be explained by his reception of Kant.191 In his Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie [History of Epistemology] (1933) he wrote: In the future [after Kant, MB] we can only consider epistemology if we take ethics, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion and law into account, which is something that is also true of Kant himself. Therefore it is not […] simply a preparatory discipline, but a uniform theory of truth in all its existing forms. As a theory of knowledge it is also […] a ‘theory’ of culture.192
This presentation of Kantian philosophy clearly shows the interrelationship of neo-Kantian and phenomenological elements in Hönigswald’s thinking. Hönigswald valued the phenomenological tradition of the “Brentano Circle” – which in his opinion included Meinong, Stumpf, Marty and Husserl – and praised their intention to describe the subjective horizon of experience.193 But the phenomenologist (by whom he means Husserl) “stops half-way through” without “developing a theory of the object” as he wrote later in the text.194 He himself closely followed the ideal of objectivity in a very neo-Kantian manner and aimed at a theory of knowledge that included the ethical, aesthetic and religious dimensions of subjectivity.195 Underpinning this is his deep aversion to Heidegger :
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In recent years phenomenology has been threatened, if not suffocated, by a hyperbolical development, which is not without coherence in dialectic terms and unswervingly trusts in the power of knowledge on which the free constitution of values is founded. [. . . ] The correlation that Martin Heidegger is trying to create between ‘mankind’s’ philosophy of life and cultural philosophy, between ontology and phenomenology, will still have to prove its epistemological validity, despite its alleged engagement with Kant. Whether one thinks that such a proof is not necessary in a “fundamental-ontological” discussion in the first place, will not affect the scientific theory of knowledge until the concept of “fundamental ontology” itself is freed of the liberal interplay of “hermeneutic” formulae. Impressive terminology […] and references to ‘pre-logical’ strata of the mind will not change this.196
This polemic against Heidegger written in 1933 is a sign of the animosity the two philosophers felt for each other ; even though, their mutual dislike had devastating consequences for only one of them. Historically, it was part of the conflict between the schools of phenomenology and of neo-Kantianism, which escalated in the Davos Disputation in 1929. At the time, the main point of contention was Kant’s legacy. As early as 1922 Hönigswald, in his monograph Die Philosophie von der Renaissance bis Kant [Philosophy from the Renaissance to Kant], regards the tasks of philosophy after Kant as being the same as answering the questions concerning the validity of cognition. He emphasizes that “even if one or the other of particular critical questions was posed before Kant […] those details are not decisive for his relationship to the past”, because [w]hat distinguishes Kant from all his predecessors (regardless of whether they were close contemporaries or close in their thinking) is his superior methodological mastery of the entire realm of potential validity by posing one single question – with Kant a new principle of posing questions was born.197
What Heidegger wrote in the late 1920s, in particular in Sein und Zeit [Being and Time] and in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics], is diametrically opposed to this point of view : he does not regard post-Kantian considerations as questions about the validity of knowledge of that which is, but rather regard the validity of knowledge as a question of Dasein.198 The differences between the two authors concerning the aims of philosophy after Kant are programmatic. Hönigswald believes that Heidegger’s approach to phenomenology is in danger of depicting objective cognition within the horizon of the phenomenon of subjectivity in a “hyperbolical” manner.199 Conversely, Hönigswald’s approach must have seemed to Heidegger like the neutralisation of the human horizon in the light of a kind of anonymous objectivity. Heidegger’s assessment of Hönigswald, quoted in full below, which led to his dismissal on antiSemitic grounds during the time of National Socialism, illustrates the last point:
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Fig. 17 (a): Martin Heidegger, Evaluation of Hönigswald
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Fig. 17 (b): Martin Heidegger, Evaluation of Hönigswald
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Hönigswald comes from the neo-Kantian school, which represents a philosophy directly corresponding to liberalism […]. The essence of man is dissolved [aufgelöst] in a freely floating consciousness in general, and this is diluted to a universally logical world reason. In this way, through an apparently rigorous scientific justification, attention [der Blick] is deflected from man in his historical rootedness and in his folkish [volkhaften] tradition from his origins from soil and blood [Überlieferung seiner Herkunft aus Boden und Blut]. Together with it went a conscious pushing back [Zurückdrängung] of all metaphysical questions, and man appeared [galt] only as the servant [Diener] of an indifferent universal world culture. Hönigswald’s writings arose from this basic attitude [Grundeinstellung]. It is however the case that Hönigswald defends [verficht] the thoughts of neo-Kantianism with an especially dangerous acumen and an idle dialectic. The danger consists above all in that his doing [Treiben] awakens the impression of highest objectivity [Sächlichkeit] and rigorous science and already has deceived and induced many young people into error. I must also today again qualify the calling [Ruf; note: in German university parlance, an academic is called to a job in the university] of this man to the University of Munich a scandal, which can only be explained in that the Catholic [katholisch] system preferentially favours such people, who are apparently ideologically indifferent, because they are not dangerous with respect to its own efforts and are “objective-liberal” in the usual way. I am always available to answer further questions. With best regards! Heil Hitler! Your very devoted Heidegger200
This assessment was the unacademic end of an academic conflict between Heidegger and Hönigswald over the legacy of Kant’s philosophy and the range phenomenology was able to cover. This conflict was part of a dispute between philosophical schools, which did not end with Heidegger’s alleged victory over neo-Kantianism in the Davos Disputation,201 but with his involvement in National Socialism. Hönigswald was a clear opponent of Heidegger’s, but was close to phenomenology in the Austrian tradition of the Brentano School. This can be explained by his reception of Kant. Translated by Susanne Costa
Endnotes
Kant and Censorship 1
See Johannes Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt. Von Bolzano über Freud zu Kelsen: Österreichische Wissenschaftsgeschichte 1848–1938. Bielefeld 2010, 151–161 and Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frühkantianismus in der Donaumonarchie. Amsterdam 1982, 9–22. 2 Rudolf Haller, Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie?, in: id., Fragen zu Wittgenstein und Aufsätze zur Österreichischen Philosophie. Amsterdam 1986, 31–43, 38. See id., Österreichische Philosophie, in: id., Studien zur Österreichischen Philosophie. Variationen über ein Thema. Amsterdam 1979, 5–22. 3 Haller, Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie? [n. 2], 38. 4 Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, in: Otto Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, Sozialismus und Logischer Empirismus, ed. Rainer Hegselmann. Frankfurt am Main 1979, 81–101, 81–84. 5 Otto Neurath, Die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises und die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus, in: id., Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische Schriften, 2 vols., vol. 2, ed. Rudolf Haller, Heiner Rutte. Wien 1981, 673–702, 676. 6 See Wolfgang Stock, Die Erfassung der österreichischen Nationalphilosophie im Rahmen der empirischen Metaphilosophie. Ein Beitrag zur Methode der Historiographie der Philosophie, in: Jnos Kristûf Nyri (ed.), Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein. Zur Tradition der österreichischen Philosophie. Wien 1986, 54–73, 55–56. 7 Otto Neurath, cited in: Stock, Die Erfassung der österreichischen Nationalphilosophie [n. 6], 55. 8 Otto Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie, in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, 587–610, 597, n. 3. 9 See Harald Haslmayr, Geistige Hintergründe des Biedermeier, in: Clifford Bernd, Robert Pichl, Margarete Wagner (ed.), The Other Vienna. The Culture of Biedermeier Austria. Österreichisches Biedermeier in Literatur, Musik, Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. Wien 2002, 285–296, 291. 10 Roger Bauer, Laßt sie koaxen, die kritischen Frösch in Preußen und Sachsen. Zwei Jahrhunderte Literatur in Österreich. Wien 1977, 25. 11 Roger Bauer, Der Idealismus und seine Gegner in Österreich. Heidelberg 1966, 12.
528 12
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Rudolf Haller, Bernard Bolzano. Eine nicht gehaltene Rede zu seinem 200. Geburtstag, in: id., Fragen zu Wittgenstein, 44–54, 44. See id., Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie? [n. 2], 35. 13 Stock, Die Erfassung der österreichischen Nationalphilosophie [n. 6], 56. 14 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 15. 15 Robert Mühlher, Ontologie und Monadologie in der österreichischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Joseph Stummvoll (ed.), Die österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Festschrift zum fünfundzwanzigjährigen Dienstjubiläum des Generaldirektors Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Bick. Wien 1948, 488–504. 16 Herbert Seidler, Österreichischer Vormärz und Goethezeit. Geschichte einer literarischen Auseinandersetzung. Wien 1982. 17 Barbara Otto, Der sezessionierte Herbart. Wissenschaftsrezeption im Staatsinteresse zur Zeit Metternichs, in: Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll (ed.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung: Philosophie in Österreich von 1400 bis heute, vol. 3, Bildung und Einbildung. Vom verfehlten Bürgerlichen zum Liberalismus. Philosophie in Österreich (1820–1880). Klausen-Leopoldsdorf 1995, 141–153, 144. 18 Haller, Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie? [n. 2], 36. 19 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 16. 20 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 11–14. Cf. Reinhard Pitsch, Überlegungen zur Romantik in Österreich, in: Benedikt, Knoll (ed.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 199–212. See Edgar Morscher, Brentano and His Place in Austrian Philosophy, in: Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller (eds.), Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos. Beiträge zur Brentano-Konferenz (Graz 4.–8. September 1977). Graz 1978, 1–9 and Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 158–159. 21 Franz Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand nebst Abhandlungen über Plotinus, Thomas von Aquin, Kant, Schopenhauer und Auguste Comte, ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig 1926, 20. 22 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 13. 23 Cf. Rudolf Haller, Zur Historiographie der österreichischen Philosophie, in: Nyri (ed.), Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein [n. 6], 41–53, 47. 24 Haller, Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie? [n. 2], 40. 25 Werner Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition. Über eine Eigenheit der österreichischen Philosophie, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 303–317, 303. 26 See both my essays on the general reception of Kant in Austria in this volume, 26–39. 27 Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 304 and 306. See Kurt Walter Zeidler, Der ‘österreichische’ Neukantianismus, in: Michael Benedikt, Endre Kiss, Reinhold Knoll (ed.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung: Philosophie in Österreich von 1400 bis heute, vol. 4, Anspruch und Echo. Sezession und Aufbrüche in den Kronländern zum Finde-SiÀcle. Philosophie in Österreich (1880–1920). Klausen-Leopoldsdorf 1998, 253–268. 28 Sepp Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen. Von Kant und Goethe zu Stifter. Ein Beitrag zur österreichischen Geistesgeschichte. Linz 1982, 11. 29 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 151–161. 30 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 11. 31 Max Ortner, Kant in Österreich, in: Jahrbuch der Grillparzer Gesellschaft 14 (1904), 1–25, 17.
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Karl Wotke, Kant in Österreich vor 100 Jahren. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie in Österreich, in: Zeitschrift für die österreichischen Gymnasien 4 (1903), 289–305, 304. See Ortner, Kant in Österreich [n. 31], 19. 33 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 152. See Franz Fillafer, Rivalisierende Aufklärungen. Die Kontinuität und Historisierung des josephinischen Reformabsolutismus in der Habsburgermonarchie, in: Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Die Aufklärung und ihre Weltwirkung. Göttingen 2010, 123–168. 34 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 155–156. 35 Georg Jellinek, Die deutsche Philosophie in Österreich, in: id., Ausgewählte Schriften und Reden, 2 vols., vol. 1, ed. Wilhelm Windelband. Berlin 1911, 55–68, 55–58. 36 Alfred Wieser, Die Geschichte des Fachs Philosophie an der Universität Wien 1848–1938, dissertation. Wien 1950, 235. 37 Ernst Topitsch, Kant in Österreich, in: Richard Meister (ed.), Philosophie der Wirklichkeitsnähe. Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag Robert Reiningers. Wien 1949, 236–254, 250. 38 Wieser, Die Geschichte des Fachs Philosophie [n. 36], 239–241. 39 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 161. 40 Cf. Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 151–161. See the introductory remarks on Kant and the “Austrian philosophy” in this volume, 19–26. 41 See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 278 and Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 236–254, 239 and 243. 42 See Stephan Barta, Die politisch verfolgten Professoren des österreichischen Vormärz, dissertation. Wien 1966, 22–24 and Franz Fillafer’s piece in this volume, 74–82. Also: Eduard Winter (ed.), Der Bolzanoprozess. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Prager Karlsuniversität im Vormärz. Brno 1944. 43 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 285. Also: Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 248. 44 Rudolf Haller, Zur Historiographie der österreichischen Philosophie, in: Nyri (ed.), Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein [n. 6], 41–53, 43. 45 Alexander Fixelmüller cited in Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 33. 46 See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 27. See further : Haslmayr, Geistige Hintergründe des Biedermeier, 285–296, and: Hermann Blume, Romantische Naturphilosophie und “praktischer Idealismus”. Zur Entwicklung philosophischer Konzeptionen im Werk Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 383–388. 47 Werner Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität”. Die Geisteswissenschaften in Österreich zwischen josephinischer Aufklärung und franziszeischer Restauration, in: Hanna SchnedlBubenicˇek (ed.), Vormärz. Wendepunkt und Herausforderung. Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft und Kulturpolitik in Österreich. Wien 1983, 17–46, 25–26. See id., Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 303–317, 307–308. 48 Silvester Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration. Metternichs Wissenschafts- und Pressepolitik und die Wiener “Jahrbücher der Literatur” (1818–1849). Tübingen 1977, 31. 49 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 46–47. 50 Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 25. See Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration [n. 48], 35–36 and Ernst Wangermann, Aufklärung und staatsbürgerliche Erziehung. Gottfried van Swieten als Reformator des österreichischen Unterrichtswesens 1781–1791. Wien 1978.
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Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 308. Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration [n. 48], 40. 53 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 46–47. 54 Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 29. 55 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 132. Cf. id., 155–190 and Dek’s piece in this volume, 51–55. 56 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 108. 57 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 107–108 and 132. 58 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 133. 59 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 135. 60 See Waltraud Heindl, Beamtentum, Elitenbildung und Wissenschaftspolitik im Vormärz, in: Schnedl-Bubenicˇek (ed.), Vormärz [n. 47], 47–64, 55. 61 Hanna Schnedl-Bubenicˇek, Einleitung, in: id. (ed.), Vormärz [n. 47], 9–16, 9. 62 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 37. See Eduard Castle, Johann Nagl, Jakob Zeidler (eds.), Deutsch-Österreichische Literaturgeschichte, 4 vols. Wien 1899–1937 and Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 122. 63 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 112. 64 Max Leyrer, Franz Paul Herbert and his circle, in: Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins 66 (1962), 89–107. See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 231–265 and Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 239–240 and 94–101 in this volume. 65 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 39. See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 129–134. 66 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 137. See Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 245 and Franz Fillafer’s piece in this volume, 94–101. 67 Sepp Domandl, Verdrängter und aufgeklärter Humanismus. Wiederholte Spiegelungen, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 367–379, 368. 68 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 109. See Ortner, Kant in Österreich, 1–25, 5–6. 69 Domandl, Verdrängter und aufgeklärter Humanismus [n. 67], 368. 70 Domandl, Verdrängter und aufgeklärter Humanismus [n. 67], 368. 71 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 39. See Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 242 and Ortner, Kant in Österreich, 16. See further : Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 140–141, 191 and Olga Ring’s piece in this volume, 47–50. 72 Haller, Bernard Bolzano. Eine nicht gehaltene Rede zu seinem 200. Geburtstag [n. 12], 44–54, 44. See Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 303–307. 73 See e. g.: Oskar Sashegyi, Zensur und Geistesfreiheit unter Joseph II. Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte der habsburgischen Länder. Budapest 1958. 74 See e. g.: Donald Daviau, Biedermeier. The Happy Face of the Vormärz Era, in: Bernd et al. (eds.), The Other Vienna, 11–27. Also: Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration [n. 48]. 75 Walter Obermaier, Zensur im Vormärz, in: Tino Erben (ed.), Bürgersinn und Aufbegehren. Biedermeier und Vormärz in Wien 1815–1848. Wien 1988, 622–627, 622f. 76 See Paul Bernard, From the Enlightenment to the Police State. The Public Life of Johann Anton Pergen. Illinois 1991. 77 Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration [n. 48], 35–36. 78 Cf. Ernst Wangermann, Von Joseph II. zu den Jakobinerprozessen. Wien 1966. 52
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Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 286–293. Cf. Lechner, Gelehrte Kritik und Restauration [n. 48], 27. 81 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 291. 82 Erich Zöllner, Geschichte Österreichs. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Wien 1990, 385. 83 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 110f. 84 Zöllner, Geschichte Österreichs [n. 82], 385. See also: Paul Bernard, Jesuits and Jacobins: Enlightenment and Enlightened Despotism in Austria. Urbana 1971. 85 Wynfrid Kriegleder, Die literarische Romantik in Österreich, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 213–226, 216. See Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 40 and Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 282. 86 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 107–108. 87 Ruth Melkis-Bihler, Politische Aspekte der Schubertzeit, in: Walther Dürr, Siegfried Schmalzriedt, Thomas Seyboldt (eds.), Schuberts Lieder nach Gedichten aus seinem literarischen Freundeskreis. Auf der Suche nach dem Ton der Dichtung in der Musik. Frankfurt am Main 1999, 81–96, 91. See Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 17–46, 31. 88 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 153. 89 Cf. Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 118. 90 See Helmut Lang, Die Zeitschriften in Österreich zwischen 1815 und 1880, in: Herbert Zeman (ed.), Die Österreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil im 19. Jahrhundert (1830–1880). Graz 1982, 13–21. 91 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 283. 92 Cf. Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 236–254, 243. 93 Cf. Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 283. 94 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 42. 95 Cf. Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 31. 96 Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 303–317, 309. 97 Cf. Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 309. See Susanne Preglau-Hämmerle, Die politische und soziale Funktion der österreichischen Universität. Innsbruck 1986, 94–96. 98 See Wotke, Kant in Österreich vor 100 Jahren [n. 32], 289–305. 99 Cf. Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 34. 100 Cf. Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 43–45; 124–126; 126–130. See further : Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 292–299. 101 Cf. Wotke, Kant in Österreich vor 100 Jahren [n. 32], 295. 102 Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 241. 103 Sauer, Von der “Kritik” zur “Positivität” [n. 47], 35. 104 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 299. 105 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 52. 106 Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 242. See further : Hosp, Zwischen Aufklärung und katholischer Reform. Jakob Frint, Bischof von St. Pölten, Gründer des Frintaneums in Wien. Wien/München 1962. 80
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Domandl, Verdrängter und aufgeklärter Humanismus [n. 67], 367–379, 369. See further : Erika Rüdegger, Die philosophischen Studien an der Wiener Universität 1800 bis 1848, dissertation. Wien 1964. 108 See e. g.: Salomon Frankfurter, Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Franz Exner und Hermann Bonitz. Beiträge zur Geschichte der österreichischen Unterrichtsreform. Wien 1893; Hans Lentze, Die Universitätsreform des Ministers Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein. Wien 1962; Christoph Thienen-Adlerflycht, Graf Leo Thun im Vormärz. Grundlagen des böhmischen Konservativismus im Kaisertum Österreich. Wien 1967 and Kurt Walter Zeidler’s piece in this volume, 39–46. 109 See e. g.: Werner Ogris, Die Universitätsreform des Ministers Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein. Festvortrag anläßlich des Rektoratstages im Großen Festsaal der Universität Wien am 12. März 1999. Wien 1999. See Preglau-Hämmerle, Die politische und soziale Funktion der österreichischen Universität [n. 97], 101–107. 110 Domandl, Verdrängter und aufgeklärter Humanismus [n. 67], 369. 111 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 278. 112 Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 28], 42. 113 Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 239 and 243. 114 Otto, Der sezessionierte Herbart [n. 17], 141–153, 144. 115 Obermaier, Zensur im Vormärz [n. 75], 623. 116 Zöllner, Geschichte Österreichs [n. 82], 385. 117 See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 278. Cf. Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 243. 118 Cf. url: https://monuments.univie.ac.at/index.php?title=Denkmal_Leo_Graf_Thun_ and_Hohenstein (9 March 2015). 119 Frankfurter, Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Franz Exner und Hermann Bonitz [n. 108]. 120 See Andreas Hoeschen, Lothar Schneider, Herbartianismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Umriss einer intellektuellen Konfiguration, in: Lutz Raphael, Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (eds.), Ideen als gesellschaftliche Gestaltungskraft im Europa der Neuzeit. München 2006, 447–477. 121 Eduard von Bauernfeld, Aus Alt- und Neu-Wien, in: Gesammelte Schriften von Bauernfeld, vol. 12. Wien 1873, 8f. 122 Hugo Rokyta, Vincenz Weintridt. Der ‘österreichische Bolzano’. Leben und Werk eines Repräsentanten des Vormärz in Österreich und Mähren. Wien 1998. 123 Bauernfeld, Aus Alt- und Neu-Wien [n. 121], 9ff. 124 Bauernfeld, Aus Alt- und Neu-Wien [n. 121], 10. 125 Jane Regenfelder, Der sogenannte ‘Bolzano-Prozeß’ und das Wartburgfest, in: Helmut Rumpler (ed.), Bernard Bolzano und die Politik. Wien 2000, 154. 126 Robert Zimmermann, Ungedruckte Briefe von und an Herbart, in: Robert Zimmermann (ed.), Ungedruckte Briefe. Wien 1877, XI. 127 Bauernfeld, Aus Alt- und Neu-Wien [n. 121], 12f. 128 Bauernfeld, Aus Alt- und Neu-Wien [n. 121], 17f. 129 Frankfurter, Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Franz Exner und Hermann Bonitz [n. 108], 4. 130 Frankfurter, Graf Leo Thun-Hohenstein, Franz Exner und Hermann Bonitz [n. 108], 26, 76. 131 Die Neugestaltung der österreichischen Universitäten über Allerhöchsten Befehl dargestellt von dem k.k. Ministerium für Kultus und Unterricht. Wien 1853, 20, 23. Cited in:
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Elmar Schübl, Harald Heppner (eds.), Universitäten in Zeiten des Umbruchs. Wien 2011, 18f. 132 Sauer, Die verhinderte Kanttradition [n. 25], 313. 133 Franz Exner, Die Psychologie der Hegelschen Schule. Leipzig 1842, 107f. 134 Exner, Die Psychologie der Hegelschen Schule [n. 133], 111. 135 Robert Zimmermann, Anthroposophie im Umriss. Entwurf eines Systems idealer Weltansicht auf realistischer Grundlage. Wien 1882, VIII f. 136 Cf. Robert Zimmermann, Leibnitz’ Monadologie. Deutsch mit einer Abhandlung über Leibnitz’ und Herbart’s Theorien des wirklichen Geschehens. Wien 1847; id., Leibnitz und Herbart. Eine Vergleichung ihrer Monadologien. Wien 1849. 137 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 123ff. 138 Zimmermann, Leibnitz und Herbart [n. 136], 120. Cf. id., Leibnitz’ Monadologie [n. 136], 121f. 139 Cf. Zimmermann, Leibnitz und Herbart [n. 136], 130, 148. 140 Zimmermann, Leibnitz und Herbart [n. 136], 7. 141 Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1], 130. 142 Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und größtentheils neuen Darstellung der Logik, vol. 1. Sulzbach 1837, § 21, 85. 143 Robert Zimmermann, Philosophische Propädeutik. Wien 21860, VII; Eduard Winter, Robert Zimmermanns philosophische Propädeutik und die Vorlagen aus der Wissenschaftslehre Bernard Bolzanos. Wien 1975. 144 Robert Zimmermann, Über Kant’s mathematisches Vorurtheil und dessen Folgen. Wien 1871, 13. 145 Robert Zimmermann, Aesthetik. Erster, historisch-kritischer Theil: Geschichte der Aesthetik als philosophischer Wissenschaft. Wien 1858; Zweiter, systematischer Theil: Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft. Wien 1865. 146 Georg Wolfgang Cernoch, Zimmermanns Grundlegung der Herbartschen Aesthetik: Eine Brücke zwischen Bolzano und Brentano, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung [n. 17], vol. 3, 681–715. 147 Cf. Dominique Bourel, Eine Generation später : Lazarus Bendavid (1762–1832), in: Michael Albrecht, Eva Engel, Norbert Hinske (eds.), Moses Mendelssohn im Kreise seiner Wirksamkeit. Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung. Tübingen 1994, 363–380. 148 Cf. Lazarus Bendavid, Selbstbiographie, in: Bildnisse jetzt lebender Gelehrten mit ihren Selbstbiographien, ed. Michael Siegfried Lowe. Berlin 1806, 1–72, 7 and url: http://www. haskala.net/autoren/bendavid01/autobiographie.html (19 May 2015). 149 Bendavid, Selbstbiographie [n. 148], 22. 150 Bendavid, Selbstbiographie [n. 148], 34. 151 Bendavid, Selbstbiographie [n. 148], 52. 152 Moritz Veit, Lazarus Bendavid. Geb. den 18. Okt. 1762, gest. den 28. März 1832, in: Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung 199 (1832), 849f. and issue number 200 (1832), 853f., 853. 153 Bendavid, Selbstbiographie [n. 148], 66 and url: http://www.haskala.net/autoren/ bendavid01/autobiographie.html (19 May 2015). 154 Lazarus Bendavid, Vorlesungen über die Critik der reinen Vernunft. Wien 1975, 3. 155 Bendavid, Critik der reinen Vernunft [n. 154], 3. 156 Bendavid, Critik der reinen Vernunft [n. 154], 3.
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Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 195. Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 197. 159 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 195. 160 Karl Rosenkranz, Geschichte der Kant’schen Philosophie, ed. Steffen Dietzsch. Berlin 1987, 265. 161 Veit, Lazarus Bendavid [n. 152]. 162 Cf. url: http://www.jewish-archives.org/nav/classification/11220 (19 May 2015). 163 Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Markus, in: id., Säkularausgabe, vol. 10. Berlin/Paris 1979, 223. 164 See B¦la Puknszky, Kant elso˝ magyar követo˝ i ¦s ellenfelei [Kant’s first supporters and opponents in Hungary], in: Protestns Szemle 5–6 (1924), 294–303; Lszlû Horkay, Kant elso˝ magyar követo˝ i [Kant’s first supporters in Hungary], in: Jûzsef Szauder, Andor Tarnai (eds.), Irodalom ¦s felvilgosods. Budapest 1974, 202–228. Andrs M¦szros, Afilozûfia Magyarorszgon. A kezdetekto˝ l a 19. szzad v¦g¦ig [Philosophy in Hungary. From the beginnings to late 19th century]. Pozsony 2000. 208–116. 165 Horkay, Kant elso˝ magyar követo˝ i [n. 164], 201. 166 M¦szros, A filozûfia Magyarorszgon [n. 164], 102. 167 M¦szros, A filozûfia Magyarorszgon [n. 164], 105. 168 Anton Kreil, Über die wissenschaftliche Maurerey, in: Journal für Freymaurer 7 (1785), 49–78; Anton Kreil, Geschichte des pythagoräischen Bundes, in: Journal für Freymaurer 5 (1785), 3–28; Anton Kreil, Geschichte der Neuplatoniker, in: Journal für Freymaurer 6 (1785), 5–51; Anton Kreil, Über die eleusinischen Mysterien, in: Journal für Freymaurer 10 (1786), 5–42. For Kreil and scientific masonry see Jan Assmann, Die Zauberflöte. Oper und Mysterium. München 2005, 100–105, 151, 157, 198, 216, 222. 169 Cf. Magyar Tudomnyos Akad¦mia Könyvtrnak K¦zirattra [Handschriftenabteilung der Bibliothek der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften], M. Irod. Lev. 4 r. 154. See also: Schedius Lajos levelez¦se [Correspondence of Ludwig Schedius], ed., prefaced and annotated by Eszter Dek in the series Magyarorszgi Tudûsok Levelez¦se (Commercia Litteraria Eruditorum Hungariae) supported by OTKA K 100446 [Hungarian Scientific Research Fund]. 170 Anton Kreil on 16 August 1796 to Ludwig Schedius, in: Magyar Tudomnyos Akad¦mia Könyvtrnak K¦zirattra [n. 169]. 171 Anton Kreil on 16 August 1796 to Ludwig Schedius, in: Magyar Tudomnyos Akad¦mia Könyvtrnak K¦zirattra [n. 169]. 172 M¦szros, A filozûfia Magyarorszgon [n. 164], 102. 173 M¦szros, A filozûfia Magyarorszgon [n. 164], 108. 174 Cf. Burkhard Ellegast, Aufklärerische Gedanken in den österreichischen Stiften am Beispiel Melks, in: Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 115 (2004), 283–368; Sepp Domandl, Die Kantrezeption in Österreich, in: Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie 19 (1987), 7–45, 13–14; Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 236–253, 238, 245; Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1]. 175 Cf. Johannes Frimmel, Literarisches Leben in Melk. Ein Kloster im 18. Jahrhundert im kulturellen Umbruch. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2005, 148–150, 149, 187. 176 Cf. Wilfried Kowarik, Art. Reyberger, in: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1818–1950, vol. 9. Wien 1988, 104. 177 Domandl, Die Kantrezeption in Österreich, 14.
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Frantisek Kopecky´, Moraltheologie im aufgeklärten theresianisch-josephinischen Zeitalter. Sittliche Bildung und Ausgestaltung der Morallehre zum eigenständigen systematischen Lehrfach. St. Ottilien 1990, 261. 179 Gutachten Christoph Kardinals Fürsterzbischofs zu Wien, AVA Acta 24C Theol. Mor., 206 ex Dezembri 1801, fol 71r–72v, 71v. 180 Rechtfertigung des Professor Reyberger gegen die ihm allergnädist mitgetheilten Bemerkung über sein Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, AVA Acta 24C Theol. Mor.fol. 86v. 181 Anton Reyberger, Systematische Anleitung zur christlichen Sittenlehre oder Moraltheologie. Wien 1794, 211; cf. also 130; Kant, KpV, AA V, 126–127. 182 Cf. Kopecky´, Moraltheologie im aufgeklärten theresianisch-josephinischen Zeitalter [n. 178], 273–278, 290–293; Eduard Hosp, Die josephinischen Lehrbücher der Theologie in Österreich, in: Theologisch-praktische Quartalschrift 105/3 (1957), 195–214, 203–205, 212–214 and Erik Adam, Merkwürdigkeiten. Die Erziehungsphilosophie Vincenz Eduard Mildes im Kontext zeitgenössischer Strömungen, in: Ines Maria Breinbauer, Gerald Grimm, Martin Jäggle (eds.), Milde revisited. Vincenz Eduard Mildes pädagogisches Wirken aus der Sicht der modernen Erziehungswissenschaft. Wien 2006, 39–54, 38–41. 183 Shortened version of the article Anhang: Kant in Salzburg first published in Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 137–166. Reprint with the kind permission of the author, Werner Sauer, and the publisher, Königshausen & Neumann, esp. Johannes Königshausen. 184 Cf. Max Braubach, Die katholischen Universitäten Deutschlands und die französische Revolution: Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, XLIX (1929), 263–303. Robert Haaß, Die geistige Haltung der katholischen Universitäten Deutschlands im 18. Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau 1952. Georg Huber, Graf von Benzel-Sternau und seine “Dichterischen Versuche über Gegenstände der kritischen Philosophie”, in: Kant-Studien 11 (1906), 1–39. Karl Vorländer, Immanuel Kant. Der Mann und das Werk. 2 vols. Hamburg 1977, vol. 1, 425 ff, II, 242ff. 185 Cf. Huber, Graf von Benzel-Sternau [n. 184], 14. Cf. also Haaß, Die geistige Haltung [n. 184], 89ff. 186 Cf. Vorländer, Immanuel Kant [n. 184]. See also Roger Bauer, Der Idealismus [n. 11], 12ff.; John Edwin Gurr, The Principle of Sufficient Reason in some Scholastic Systems 1750–1900. Milwaukee 1959, 59ff. and Karl Werner, Geschichte der katholischen Theologie. Seit dem Trienter Concil bis zur Gegenwart. München 1866, 173ff., 225ff., 259ff., 282ff. 187 Cf. Helmut Mathy, Die Universität Mainz 1477–1977. Mainz 1977, 160ff. 188 Cf. Oswald Külpe, Festrede zur Kant-Feier der Würzburger Universität am 12. Februar 1904, in: Joachim Kopper, Rudolf Malter (eds.), Immanuel Kant zu ehren. Frankfurt am Main 1974, 174–200. 189 Matern Reuß, Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären?, in: Karl Gottlob Hausius (ed.), Materialien zur Geschichte der kritischen Philosophie, in drei Sammlungen, nebst einer historischen Einleitung zur Geschichte der Kantischen Philosophie, photomechanischer Nachdruck. Düsseldorf 1969, 1. collection, 52–88; cit. 69. 190 Reuß, Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären? [n. 189], 69 n. 191 Reuß, Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären? [n. 189], 67. 192 Reuß, Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären? [n. 189], 81.
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Cf. Walter Del Negro, Die Pflege der Naturwissenschaft an der alten Universität: Universität Salzburg 1622–1962–1972. Festschrift. Salzburg 1972, 109–119, 112ff. Haaß, Die geistige Haltung [n. 184], 161f. Rupert Mittermüller, Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der ehemaligen Benedictiner-Universität in Salzburg. Salzburg 1889, 10ff. Magnus Sattler, Collectaneenblätter zur Geschichte der ehemaligen Benediktiner-Universität Salzburg. Kempten 1890, 410ff. 194 Cf. Hans Wagner, Die Aufklärung im Erzstift Salzburg. Salzburg/München 1968. 195 Cf. Karl O. Wagner, Die ‘Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung’ in: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 48 (1908), 89–221; see also: 121f., 125 and the bibliography of Erhard’s works in Johann Benjamin Erhard, Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution und andere Schriften, ed. Hellmut G. Haasis. Frankfurt am Main 1976, 236ff. For Schelle cf. Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 542ff. 196 Cit. after Huber, Graf von Benzel-Sternau [n. 184], 14. 197 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 3 (1788), col. 1437–9; cit. 1438. 198 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 3 (1788), col. 1439. 199 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 3 (1788), col. 1785–97; cit.1785. 200 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 3 (1788), col. 1788. 201 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 3 (1788), col. 1797. 202 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 1 (1791), col. 209–19; cit. 209. 203 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 2 (1793), col. 816–22; cit. 822. 204 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 2 (1796), col. 409–15; cit. 409. 205 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 1 (1799), col. 5–16. 206 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 1 (1799), col. 545–66; cit. 545. 207 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 1 (1790), col. 433–47; cit. 433. 208 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 1 (1790), col. 445. 209 After Wagner, Die ‘Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung’ [n. 195], 163. 210 Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteraturzeitung 2 (1799), col. 621–4,761–5, 781–4. 211 Ludwig Ernst Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kants, in: Felix Gross (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen. Berlin 1912, 3–115, 106. 212 Augustin Schelle, Über den Grund der Sittlichkeit, in: Hausius (ed.), Materialien zur Geschichte [n. 189], 3. collection, 3–47; cit. 5f. 213 Schelle, Über den Grund der Sittlichkeit [n. 212], 8. 214 Schelle, Über den Grund der Sittlichkeit [n. 212], 39. 215 Schelle, Über den Grund der Sittlichkeit [n. 212], 46. 216 Augustin Schelle, Praktische Philosophie zum Gebralso akademischer Vorlesungen, 2 Teile. Salzburg 1792–94, I, Vorerinnerung (not paginated). 217 Schelle, Praktische Philosophie [n. 216], 9, n., 48ff., 249f. 218 Cf. Erich Adickes, German Kantian Bibliography, reprint. Würzburg 1967, 219, 292. Matthäus Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da?, 2 vols., vol. 2. Salzburg 1801, 91. Johannes Kamintius, Kant in Salzburg, in: Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie, 10/11 (1966–67), 433–453, 449; Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 602ff. and Wagner, Die ‘Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung’ [n. 195], 121. 219 Cf. Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218]; Mittermüller, Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der ehemaligen Benedictiner-Universität [n. 193], 13.
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Johann Evangelist Hofer, De Kantiana interpretationis lege. Salzburg 1800, esp. 12ff. See also: Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 655f. 221 Cf. Del Negro, Die Pflege der Naturwissenschaft [n. 193], 114f. Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 518. 222 Cf. Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 519ff. Werner, Geschichte der katholischen Theologie [n. 186], 252ff. 223 Ulrich Peutinger, Religion, Offenbarung und Kirche. In der reinen Vernunft aufgesucht. Salzburg 1795, 50. 224 Peutinger, Religion, Offenbarung und Kirche [n. 223]. 225 Peutinger, Religion, Offenbarung und Kirche [n. 223], 50. 226 Cf. Sattler, Collectaneenblätter [n. 193], 517f. 227 Tiberius Sartori, Der Theolog nach dem Geiste der neuesten Litteratur und den Bedürfnissen der gegenwärtigen Zeit. Eine Schrift für junge Theologen auf Schulen und Universitäten. Salzburg 1796, 7. 228 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 8. 229 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 9f. 230 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 58. 231 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 60. 232 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 61f. 233 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 63f. 234 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 89f. 235 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 86. 236 Sartori, Der Theolog [n. 227], 91. 237 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218]. If not otherwise noted, see for biographical information on Fingerlos Kamintius, Kant in Salzburg [n. 218], 434ff. 238 Cf. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 56 vols. Leipzig and München 1875–1912, vol. 30, 340–342 und Wagner, Die ‘Oberdeutsche allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung’ [n. 195], 167ff. 239 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 2, 88f. 240 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, iii; cf. also Kamintius, Kant in Salzburg [n. 218], 438ff. 241 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 8 242 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 16. 243 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 16. 244 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 54. 245 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 62. 246 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 62. 247 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 154; n. Kant, MS, AA VI, 486ff. 248 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 63f. 249 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 84. 250 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 87. 251 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 100ff. 252 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 108. 253 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 109. 254 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 1, 109f. For Kant cf. KpV, AA V, 125f. 255 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 2, 52f. 256 Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 2, 62.
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Fingerlos, Wozu sind Geistliche da? [n. 218], vol. 2, 69f. Cit. after Kamintius, Kant in Salzburg [n. 218], 450. 259 Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kants [n. 211]. 260 Conrad Stang on 2 October 1796 to Immanuel Kant, AA XII, 99. 261 After Kamintius, Kant in Salzburg [n. 218], 433f. 262 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 10. 263 Conrad Stang on 2 October 1796 to Immanuel Kant, AA XII, 100. 264 Cf. Malahi Hacohen, Karl Popper. The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna. Cambridge 2000, 58; see also: Friedrich Stadler, Aspekte des gesellschaftlichen Hintergrunds und Standorts des Wiener Kreises am Beispiel der Wiener Universität, in: Hal Berghel et al. (eds.), Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Critical Rationalism. Wien 1979, 41–59. 265 Eduard Winter, Bernard Bolzano und sein Kreis, dargestellt mit erstmaliger Heranziehung der Nachlässe Bolzanos und seiner Freunde. Leipzig 1933. On Winter recently Franz L. Fillafer, Thomas Wallnig (eds.), Josephinismus zwischen den Regimen. Eduard Winter, Fritz Valjavec und die zentraleuropäischen Historiographien im 20. Jahrhundert. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2015. 266 Cf. Seidler, Österreichischer Vormärz und Goethezeit [n. 16], 71. 267 Robert Zimmermann, Philosophie und Philosophen in Oesterreich, in: ÖsterreichischUngarische Revue 6 (1888/1889), 177–208, 259–272, 189. 268 Cf. Hosp, Zwischen Aufklärung und katholischer Reform [n. 106]. 269 Cf. Norbert Fischer, Franz Bader (eds.), Kant und der Katholizismus. Stationen einer wechselhaften Geschichte. Freiburg 2005; Josef Dobrovsky´, Prˇednsˇky o praktick¦ strnce v krˇestˇansk¦m nbozˇenstvi [Lectures on The Practical in Christian Religion, 1787–1791], ed. Josef Volf, Milosˇ B. Volf, Josef Vrasˇtil. Praha 1948; Josef Tvrdy´, Vztahy Josefa Dobrovsk¦ho filosofii [Josef Dobrovsky´’s relationships with philosophy], in: Bratislava 4 (1929), 276–295, 289; Wotke, Kant in Österreich vor 100 Jahren [n. 32]; Ludwig Schönwald, Das Interesse an der Kantischen Philosophie und das Eindringen seiner Ideen nach Österreich im josephinischen und franzisceischen Zeitalter, manuscript dissertation. University of Vienna 1914; Heinz Marquart, Matthäus Fingerlos (1748–1817). Leben und Wirken eines Pastoraltheologen und Seminarregenten in der Aufklärungszeit. Göttingen 1977. 270 Franz L. Fillafer, Die Aufklärung in der Habsburgermonarchie und ihr Erbe. Ein Forschungsüberblick, in: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 40 (2013), 35–97, 53–54. 271 Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre [1834], in: id., Gesamtausgabe, ed. Jan Berg, vol. I/11. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 1985, § 29, 166–167, cf. Jacob Schmutz, Der Einfluß der böhmischen Jesuitenphilosophie auf Bernard Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre, in: Petronilla Cemus, Richard Cemus (eds.), Bohemia Jesuitica, 1556–2006, 2 vols., vol. 1. Praha 2010, 603–615, here 613, n. 47. Sigismund von Storchenau, Die Philosophie der Religion. Augsburg 1772, 68; id., Abhandlung über die Materie, insoweit sie das Denkungsvermögen ausschließen soll, in: Beyträge zu verschiedenen Wissenschaften von einigen österreichischen Gelehrten. Wien 1775, 317–330. Cf. Bernhard Jansen, Philosophen katholischen Bekenntnisses in ihrer Stellung zur Philosophie der Aufklärung, in: Scholastik 11 (1936), 1–51, 40. 272 Peter Simons, The Anglo–Austrian Analytic Axis, in: Jnos Kristûf Nyri (ed.), From Bolzano to Wittgenstein: The Tradition of Austrian Philosophy. Wien 1986, 98–107. Barry Smith, Philosophie, Politik und wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Zur Frage der Philoso258
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phie in Österreich und Deutschland, in: Rudolf Haller (ed.), Skizzen zur Österreichischen Philosophie. Amsterdam/Atlanta 2000, 1–22, 18. 273 Otto Neurath, Le d¦veloppement du Cercle de Vienne et l’avenir de l’empirisme logique. Paris 1935, 8–59. 274 Heinrich Rutte, Rudolf Haller, Gespräch mit Heinrich Neider, Wien. Persönliche Erinnerungen an den Wiener Kreis, in: Johann Christian Marek, Josef Zelger et al. (eds.), Österreichische Philosophen und ihr Einfluss auf die analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart I. Innsbruck/München/Graz/Gießen 1977, 21–42, 36. 275 Heinrich Gomperz, Ernst Mach (Nach einem am 26. Februar 1916 gesprochenen Nachrufe), in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 29 (1916), 321–328, 324. 276 Karl Wotke, Vincenz Eduard Milde als Pädagoge und sein Verhältnis zu den geistigen Strömungen seiner Zeit. Eine cultur- und quellengeschichtliche Einleitung in seine “Erziehungskunde”. Wien 1902. 277 Cf. Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 1], 267–322. 278 Cf. Franz Leander Fillafer, Hermann Bonitz. Philologe, Mitschöpfer der Universitätsreform, in: Mitchell G. Ash (ed.), Die Universität Wien als Ort der Politik seit 1848, vol. 1 of Mitchell G. Ash and Joseph Ehmer (eds.), 650 Jahre Universität Wien, vol. 2, Universität, Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft. Göttingen/Wien 2015, 189–196. 279 Fillafer, Franz von Zeiller and Kantianism in Jurisprudence, see present volume, 82–94. 280 Lorenz Leopold Haschka on 24 July 1804 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, cited in Robert Kreil, Wiener Freunde, 1784–1808. Beiträge zur Jugendgeschichte der deutsch-österreichischen Literatur. Wien 1883, 83. 281 Carl Kübeck von Kübau, Tagebücher, ed. Max von Kübau, 2 vols., vol. I/1. Wien 1909, 53, 99. 282 Cf. Fillafer, Franz von Zeiller [n. 279], 82–94. 283 Cf. Kant, KrV, B 595–B 670; Moritz Enzinger, Adalbert Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830). Innsbruck 1950, 152–204. 284 Cf. Ivo Cerman, Moral Anthropology of Joseph Nikolaus Windischgrätz, in: id., Rita Krueger, Susan Reynolds (eds.), The Enlightenment in Bohemia. Religion, Morality and Multiculturalism. Oxford 2011, 169–190; Martina Ondo Grecˇenkov, Windischgrätz a Condorcet. Prˇbeˇh jednoho osvcensk¦ho projektu [Windischgrätz and Condorcet: Story of ˇ esky´ cˇasopis historicky´ 107 (2009), 569–598. an Enlightened Project], in: C 285 Karl Wotke, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kantianismus in Österreich, in: Jahresbericht des öffentlichen Untergymnasiums in der Josefstadt 26 (1902/1903), 3–14; Pavel Krˇivsky´ (ed.), Korespondence Jana Leopolda Haye, Josefa Frantisˇka Hurdalka a Augustina Zippa s Josefem Dobrovskym [The correspondence of Johann Leopold Hay, Josef Franz Hurdlek and Augustin Zippe with Josef Dobrovsky´], in: Literarni archiv 5 (1970), 133–168. 286 Daniela Tinkov, Une Esp¦rance R¦volutionnaire en Moravie. L’Imaginaire Politique e Philosophique de Trois Cur¦s francophiles (1790–1803), in: Annales Historiques de la R¦volution franÅaise 84/370 (2012), 103–130, 113, 115. 287 Josef August Ginzel, Bischof Hurdlek, ein Charakterbild aus der Geschichte der böhmischen Kirche. Prag 1873, 9. 288 Reinhard Blänkner, Tugend, Verfassung, Zivilreligion. Normative Integration im aufgeklärten Liberalismus, in: Hubertus Buchstein, Rainer Schmalz-Bruns (eds.), Politik der
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Integration: Symbole, Repräsentation, Institution. Festschrift für Gerhard Göhler zum 65. Geburtstag. Baden-Baden 2006, 339–367. 289 Cf. Helmut Engelbrecht, Zur Problematik und zu den Aufgaben einer Milde-Biographie: Anregungen anläßlich der Wiederkehr des 200. Geburtstags des bedeutenden österreichischen Pädagogen, in: Festschrift des Bundesgymnasiums Krems zum Abschluß der Neugestaltung und Erweiterung des Schulgebäudes und zur Feier des 200. Geburtstages V. E. Mildes (1777–1853). Krems 1977, 63–110; Elisabeth Kovcs, Die Persönlichkeit des Wiener Fürst-Erzbischofs Vinzenz Eduard Milde im Spiegel der Historiographie, in: Jahrbuch des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 34 (1978), 218–238. 290 Gutachten über den gemeinschaftlichen Plan des Hof und Burgpfarrers Jakob Frint und des Hofkaplans und Pfarrers zu Wolfpaßing Vinzenz Milde, zur Veredelung des weiblichen Geschlechts, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien, Kaiser Franz file box 108; Gutachten der Studienhofkommission, 28. 3. 1821, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Wien, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv (ÖStA, AVA), Kultus und Unterricht 24 C. Phil. Erziehungskunde; Kaiser Franz on 27 March 1832 to Graf Mittrowsky, ÖStA AVA Studienhofkommission 24 E. 291 Vincenz Eduard Milde, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Erziehungskunde zum Gebrauche öffentlicher Vorlesungen. Wien 1811–1813. 292 Horst Thom¦, Metaphorische Konstruktion der Seele. Zu Herbarts Psychologie und ihrer Nachwirkung, in: Andreas Hoeschen, Lothar Schneider (eds.), Herbarts Kultursystem. Perspektiven der Transdisziplinität im 19. Jahrhundert. Würzburg 2001, 69–82, 74. 293 Christiane Ruberg, Wie ist Erziehung möglich? Moralerziehung bei den frühen pädagogischen Kantianern. Rieden 2009, 178; Hildgard Holtstiege, Die Pädagogik Vincenz Eduard Mildes. Wien 1971, 86–216. 294 Cf. Brigitte Mazohl-Wallnig, Bolzanisten und die österreichische Universitätsreform, in: Helmut Rumpler (ed.), Bernard Bolzano und die Politik. Staat, Nation und Religion als Herausforderungen für die Philosophie im Kontext von Spätaufklärung, Frühnationalismus und Restauration. Wien/Köln/Graz 2000, 221–246, 241. 295 Zimmermann, Philosophie und Philosophen in Österreich [n. 267], 189. 296 Jakob Frint, Handbuch der Religionswissenschaft fu¨ r die Candidaten der Philosophie [1806–1814], 4 vols., vol. II/2. Triest/Wien 21812, 375. 297 Frint, Handbuch [n. 296], vol. I,11806, 193. 298 Josef Calasanz von Likawetz (1773–1850), cf. Werner M. Bauer, Philosophischer Zeitgeist. Adalbert Stifter und die Elementa Philosophiae des Josef Calasanz Likawetz, in: Harmut Laufhütte, Alfred Doppler et al. (eds.), Stifter und Stifterforschung im 21. Jahrhundert. Tübingen 2007, 67–84; Franz Loidl, Johann Michael Leonhard (1782–1863), in: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon [n. 176], vol. 5. Wien 1970, 143–144. 299 Cf. Wolfgang Röd, Die Philosophie der Neuzeit, 3/1: Kritische Philosophie von Kant bis Schopenhauer. München 2006, 158–160. 300 Wilhelm T. Krug, System der praktischen Philosophie. 3 vols., vol. 2: Tugendlehre. Königsberg 1817–1819, § 9, 40–42, n. 1; Josef Calasanz von Likawetz, Elementa Philosophiae in usum Auditorum Philosophiae adumbrata, 5 vols., vol. 4. Graz 1818–1820, § 40, also vol. 3, § 117, 199–201; vol. 4, §§ 9, 12, 65. Also Johann Michael Leonhard, Systematischer Religionsunterricht fu¨ r Kandidaten der Philosophie, 3 vols., vol. 3. Wien 1822, § 17; see also Enzinger, Adalbert Stifters Studienjahre [n. 283], 183–189.
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See Johann Reikerstorfer, Anton Günther (1783–1863) und seine Schule, in: Emerich Coreth, Walter M. Neidl, Georg Pfligersdorffer (eds.), Christliche Philosophie im katholischen Denken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Graz 1987, 266–284. 302 Anton Gu¨ nther, Nachträgliche Randglossen zu einigen Waidspru¨ chen der Gegenwart u¨ ber Vergangenes in der Geschichte europäischer Philosophie, in id., Euristheus und Heracles: Meta-logische Kritiken und Meditationen. Wien 1843, 315–348, 335. 303 Gu¨ nther, Nachträgliche Randglossen [n. 302], 336. 304 Peter Knoodt, Anton Gu¨ nther. Eine Biographie, 2 vols., vol. 1. Wien 1881, 389–390. 305 Anton Günther, Ein Wort über den Vernunfthaß auf katholischem Gebiete, in: Zeitschrift für die gesammte katholische Theologie 3 (1852), 53–64. 306 E. [Franz Egerer?], Kants Nachzügler, in: Wiener Kirchenzeitung 1850, 517. 307 Cf. Eduard Winter, Maria Winter (eds.), Domprediger Johann Emanuel Veith und Kardinal Friedrich Schwarzenberg. Der Günther-Prozess in unveröffentlichten Briefen und Akten. Wien 1972. 308 Gunter Wesener, Franz von Zeiller (1751–1828) – Leben und Werk, in: Joseph F. Desput, Gernot Kocher (eds.), Franz von Zeiller. Symposium der Rechtswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Graz und der Steiermärkischen Landesbibliothek am 30. November 2001 aus Anlass der 250. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages. Graz 2003, 67–91. 309 Cf. Wilhelm Brauneder, Das Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch für die gesamten Deutschen Erbländer der Österreichischen Monarchie, in: Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 62 (1987), 205–254. 310 Christian Neschwara, “… kein Rechtsgelehrter Österreichs hat sich so ungetheilten Ruhmes im In- und Auslande zu erfreuen gehabt, wie er!” Zur Geschichte des ZeillerDenkmals im Arkadenhof der Universität Wien, in: Markus Stepan, Helmut Gebhardt (eds.), Zur Geschichte des Rechts. Festschrift für Gernot Kocher zum 65. Geburtstag. Graz 2007, 277–290. 311 Herbert Kalb, Grundrechte und Martini – eine Annäherung, in Heinz Barta et.al. (ed.), Naturrecht und Privatrechtskodifikation: Tagungsband des Martini-Colloquiums 1998. Wien 1999, 235–260, 252. 312 Cf. Fillafer, Kant and Pre-1848 Catholic Theology, in this volume, 74–82. 313 Joachim Rückert, Kant-Rezeption in juristischer und politischer Theorie (Naturrecht, Rechtsphilosophie, Staatslehre, Politik) des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Martyn P. Thompson (ed.), John Locke and Immanuel Kant: historische Rezeption und gegenwärtige Relevanz. Berlin 1991, 144–215, 158; Jürgen Blühdorn, “Kantianer” und Kant. Von der Rechtsmetaphysik zur Wissenschaft vom “positiven” Recht, in: Kant-Studien 64 (1973), 363–394. 314 Cf. John C. Laursen, The Subversive Kant. The Vocabulary of “Public” and “Publicity”, in: Political Theory 14 (1986), 584–603; Peter Burg, Kant und die Französische Revolution. Berlin 1974, recently : Reidar Maliks, Kant’s Politics in Context. Oxford 2014. 315 Werner Schubert (ed.), Akademie fu¨ r Deutsches Recht 1933–1945: Protokolle der Ausschu¨ sse; Ausschuß fu¨ r Personen-, Vereins- und Schuldrecht: Unterausschuß fu¨ r Allgemeines Vertragsrecht. Berlin 1992, 235–236, and introduction, xxxiv–xxxv ; Gernot Heiß, Siegfried Mattl et.al. (eds.), Willfährige Wissenschaft: Die Universität Wien 1938–1945. Wien 1989, 213, 313–314. 316 Ernst Swoboda, Das Allgemeine bu¨ rgerliche Gesetzbuch im Lichte der Lehren Kants: Eine Untersuchung der philosophischen Grundlagen des österreichischen bu¨ rgerlichen
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Rechts, ihrer Auswirkung im einzelnen und ihrer Bedeutung fu¨ r die Rechtsentwicklung Mitteleuropas. Graz 1926, 29, 30–33, 47, 61, 290; Moritz Wellspacher, Das Vertrauen auf äußere Tatbestände im bu¨ rgerlichen Rechte. Wien 1906, 121–124; id., Das Naturrecht und das ABGB, in: Festschrift zur Jahrhundertfeier des allgemeinen bu¨ rgerlichen Gesetzbuches, 1 June 1911, 2 vol., vol. 1. Wien 1911, 173–207, 180–182. Critical: Arthur Steinwenter, Kritik am österreichischen bu¨ rgerlichen Gesetzbuch – einst und jetzt, in: id., Recht und Kultur. Graz 1950, 60, fn. 7; Heinrich Demelius, Kant, Zeiller, und das bürgerliche Gesetzbuch, in: Notariatszeitung 69 (1929), 20–21. 317 Gunter Wesener, Zeillers Lehre “von Verträgen überhaupt”, in: Walter Selb, Herbert Hofmeister (eds.), Forschungsband Franz von Zeiller (1751–1828): Beiträge zur Gesetzgebungs- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Wien 1980, 248–268, 267. 318 Hans-Erich Bödeker, Istvn Hont, Naturrecht, Politische Ökonomie und Geschichte der Menschheit. Der Diskurs über Politik und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Otto Dann (ed.), Naturrecht, Spätaufklärung, Revolution. Hamburg 1995, 80–89. 319 Cf. [Johann T. Sattler, Johann F. Mieg, Johann M. Absprung], Freymüthige Briefe an Herrn Grafen V. über den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Gelehrsamkeit der Universität und der Schulen zu Wien. Frankfurt/Leipzig 1774, 90, 93 fn.; in contrast [Joseph Mader], Über einige Vorzüge des Naturrechts, des Herrn Karl Anton von Martini […]. Wien 1774, 31–35. For Wolff ’s identification of Euclidian-geometrical and Aristotelian-syllological method, Wolfgang Röd, Geometrischer Geist und Naturrecht. Methodengeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Staatsphilosophie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. München 1970, 186; Christian Böhr, Erkenntnisgewißheit und politische Philosophie. Zu Christian Wolffs Postulat des philosophus regnans, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 36 (1982), 579–598, 583. 320 Christian Wolff, Philosophia rationalis, sive Logica […] Discursus Praeliminaris. Frankfurt/Leipzig 1728, § 7; id., Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen, zur Beförderung ihrer Glückseligkeit [1720], 4th enlarged edition Frankfurt/ Leipzig 1733, § 23; Jan Schröder, Wissenschaftstheorie und Lehre der praktischen Jurisprudenz auf deutschen Universitäten an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main 1979, 137. 321 Röd, Geometrischer Geist und Naturrecht [n. 319], 128. 322 Franz Freindaller, Über das Geschichtliche der göttlichen Offenbarung: Mit Beantwortung der von den Rationalisten aufgeworfenen Vorfrage: Ob es nicht besser gewesen wäre, im Falle Gott eine Offenbarung dem Menschen geben wollte, sie ohne Geschichte in einem bündigen Systeme mitzutheilen, in: Theologisch-Praktische Linzer-Monathschrift 7/ 1 (1812), 207–221, 7/2, 61–103, 194–225. 323 Kant, KrV, A 126–127. 324 Kant, KrV, B 303. 325 Kant, KrV, A 405. In contrast, concepts of reason, archetypes, transcendental-theoretical ideas (god, world, soul, state) act as concepts of reason “to which no congruent object can be given in the senses” (Kant, KrV, A 327/B 383–384). Practical ideas, however, like those of goodwill and the righteous right, have a constitutive use: reason demands that they be realized. 326 Cf. Thomas S. Hoffmann, Kant und das Naturrechtsdenken, in: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 87 (2001), 449–467.
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Wolfgang Proß, Natur, “Naturrecht” und Geschichte. Zur Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaften und der sozialen Selbstinterpretation im Zeitalter des Naturrechts (1600–1800), in: Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Literatur 3 (1978), 38–67, 45. 328 Kant, GMS, AA IV, 429. 329 Franz von Zeiller, Das natürliche Privatrecht. Wien 21808, § 3. 330 Jutta Brückner, Staatswissenschaften, Kameralismus und Naturrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Politischen Wissenschaft im Deutschland des späten 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts. München 1977, 213. 331 Kant, TP, AA VIII, 291, imperium paternale as “the greatest despotism thinkable”. Cf. Diethelm Klippel, Politische Freiheit und Freiheitsrechte im deutschen Naturrecht des 18. Jahrhunderts. Paderborn 1976, 63–64, 136. 332 Herbert Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller. Erörterungen zu Zeillers Staatsrechtslehre anhand einer Vorlesungsmitschrift aus 1802, in: Societ Italiana di Storia del Diritto (ed.), Diritto e potere nella Storia Europea. Atti del quarto congresso internazionale della Societ Italiana di Storia del Diritto in onore di Bruno Paradisi. Firenze 1982, 1007–1029, 1011 (Hobbes). 333 Zeiller, Das natürliche Privatrecht [n. 329], § 43. 334 Franz von Zeiller, Grundsätze der Gesetzgebung 1806/1809, in: Erik Wolf (ed.), Quellenbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main 1949, 243. 335 Joseph von Sonnenfels, Handbuch der inneren Staatsverwaltung mit Rücksicht auf die Umstände und Begriffe der Zeit, vol. 1. Wien 1798, 225. 336 Sonnenfels, Handbuch der inneren Staatsverwaltung [n. 335], 211. 337 “The act by which a people forms itself into a state is the original contract. Properly speaking, the original contract is only the idea of this act, in terms of which alone we can think of the legitimacy of a state. In accordance with the original contract, everyone (omnes et singuli) within a people gives up his external freedom in order to take it up again immediately as a member of a commonwealth, that is, of a people considered as a state (universi). And one cannot say : the human being in a state has sacrificed a part of his innate outer freedom for the sake of an end, but rather, he has relinquished entirely his wild, lawless freddom in order to find his freedom as such undiminished, in a dependence upon laws, that is, in a rightful condition, since his dependence arises from his own lawgiving will.” (Kant, RL, AA VI, § 47, 315–316). 338 The “constitution providing for the greatest human freedom according to laws that permit the freedom of each to exist together with that of others” is a “necessary idea, which one must make the ground not merely of the primary plqan of a state’s constitution but of all the laws too”. Even though this may never come to pass, it is in effect a “regulative idea”, “when it is set forth as an archetype, in order to bring the legislative constitution of human beings ever nearer to a possible greatest perfection” (Kant, KrV, B 372). 339 “To refuse to obey an external and supreme will on the grounds that it allegedly does not conform with reason would be absurd.” (Kant, SF, AA VII, 25). 340 Kant, RL, AA VI, 318. 341 Ralf Dreier, Rechtsbegriff und Rechtsidee. Kants Rechtsbegriff und seine Bedeutung für die gegenwärtige Diskussion. Frankfurt am Main 1986. 342 Dreier, Rechtsbegriff und Rechtsidee [n. 341], 19.
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Cf. Matthew Levinger, Kant and the Origins of Prussian Constitutionalism, in: History of Political Thought 19 (1998), 241–263. 344 Kant, TP, AA VIII, 294. 345 Franz von Zeiller, Das natu¨ rliche Privat-Recht. Wien 1802, § 49 n. 346 Zeiller, Das natu¨ rliche Privat-Recht [n. 345], § 49. 347 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1013. 348 “Civil freedom in consideration of all actions that do not have a harmful impact on the state.” (Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1026) 349 Zeiller, Das natürliche Privat-Recht [n. 345], § 50. 350 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz von Zeiller [n. 332], 1018, 1025. 351 Reinhart Koselleck, Die Verzeitlichung der Begriffe [1997], in: id., Begriffsgeschichten. Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache, hg. v. Carsten Dutt. Frankfurt am Main 2006, 77–85, 83. 352 Julius Ofner, Der Ur-Entwurf und die Berathungs-Protokolle des Österreichischen Allgemeinen bu¨ rgerlichen Gesetzbuches, 2 Bde, vol. 1. Wien 1899, 6: “Das Recht ist kein Machwerk der Menschen und die Machthaber sind keine Rechtsschöpfer, keine Rechtgeber. Alles Recht gibt urspru¨ nglich die Vernunft. Der Gesetzgeber ist das Organ, der anwendende Erklärer der rechtlichen Vernunft.” Cf. ib., vol. 1, 23, 464, und vol. 2, 542; Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz von Zeiller [n. 332], 1019–1020 (“Stating” and “sanctioning” of the rights as duties of the legislator.) 353 Zeiller, Das natürliche Privat-Recht [n. 345], § 49. 354 Ofner, Ur-Entwurf [n. 352], i, iii, §§ 1–8. 355 Franz L. Fillafer, Escaping the Enlightenment. Liberal Thought and the Legacies of the Eighteenth Century, 1790–1848, Diss. Universität Konstanz 2012, 376. 356 Hans Barta, Martini–Colloquium: Begru¨ ßung und Einfu¨ hrung, in: Naturrecht und Privatrechtskodifikation, 15–92, 79, hierzu Wilhelm Brauneder, “Angst vor Napoleon!” Die Entstehung von § 16 ABGB: eine schaurige Geschichte, in: Zeitschrift fu¨ r Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 25 (2003), 291–294; Franz-Stefan Meissel, De l’esprit de mod¦ration – Zeiller, das ABGB und der Code Civil, in: Thomas Olechowski et.al. (eds.), Grundlagen österreichischer Rechtskultur. Festschrift für Werner Ogris zum 75. Geburtstag. Wien 2010, 265–292. 357 Ofner, Ur-Entwurf [n. 352], vol. 2, 471; Franz von Zeiller, Commentar über das allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch für die gesammten Deutschen Erbländer der Oesterreichischen Monarchie, vol. 1. Wien 1811, § 16, n. 5, 106. 358 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1024. 359 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1021, § 26 erlaubte und unerlaubte Gesellschaften. 360 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1022. 361 Hofmeister, Bürger und Staatsgewalt bei Franz v. Zeiller [n. 332], 1023. 362 Berthold Kupisch, Zeiller und die “Eingriffskondiktion” des § 1041 ABGB, in: Selb u. a. (eds.), Forschungsband [n. 317], 134–152, 150–151. 363 On indemnity and road safety cf. Wesener, Zeillers Lehre “von Verträgen überhaupt”, 266–2On 67, Klaus Luig, Franz von Zeiller und die Irrtumsregelung des ABGB, in: Selb u. a. (eds.), Forschungsband [n. 317], 153–166. 364 Zeiller, Das Natürliche Privat-Recht [n. 345], § 37.
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Gerhard Luf, Zeiller und Kant. Überlegungen zu einem wissenschaftlichen Naheverhältnis, in: Heiner Bielfeldt et.al. (eds.), Würde und Recht des Menschen. Festschrift für Johannes Schwertländer zum 70. Geburtstag. Würzburg 1992, 93–110. 366 Fillafer, Escaping the Enlightenment [n. 355], 331–350; Ofner, Ur-Entwurf [n. 352], vol. 1, 213 (21. März 1803). 367 Kant, OP, AA XXI, 178; id., VAZeF, AA XXIII, Loses Blatt F 23, 163. 368 Karl von Savigny, Der zehnte Mai 1788, in: Zeitschrift für die geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft 9 (1838), 421–432. 369 Blühdorn, “Kantianer” und Kant [n. 313], 384. 370 Zeiller, Besprechung des “Code civil des FranÅais” [1804], in: id., Vorbereitung zur neuesten Oesterreichischen Gesetzkunde im Straf- und Civil-Justiz-Fache, vol. 1. Wien/ Triest 1810, 257. 371 Ofner, Ur-Entwurf [n. 352], vol. 1, 47 (§§ 49–54), Heinz Mohnhaupt, Zeillers Rechtsquellenverständnis, in: Selb u. a. (eds.), Forschungsband [n. 317], 167–179, 177. 372 Zeiller, Eigenschaften eines bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches, in: id., Vorbereitung [n. 370], vol. 1, 61–62. 373 Dieter Grimm, Das Verhältnis von politischer und privater Freiheit bei Zeiller, in: Selb et. al. (eds.), Forschungsband [n. 317], 94–106, 101–104. 374 Report by Johann Melchior von Birckenstock, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Wien, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv, Studienhofkommission, Nr. 25.360/1802, 265 ex Juni 1802, cf. Gerhard Oberkofler, Die Verteidigung der Lehrbu¨ cher von Karl Anton von Martini (1726–1800) und Franz von Zeiller (1751–1828): Eine Studie u¨ ber das österreichische Juristenmilieu im Vormärz, in: id., Studien zur Geschichte der österreichischen Rechtswissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main 1984, 9–78, 13; as an “upright man“, Zeiller was a designated member of an anti-revolutionary literary society which was meant to serve as a disguise organisation for a secret club in support of the consolidation policy of Leopold II; cf. Wilhelm Brauneder, Leseverein und Rechtskultur. Der juridischpolitische Leseverein zu Wien 1840 bis 1990. Wien 1992, 16. 375 Fillafer, Escaping the Enlightenment [n. 355], 383. 376 Cf. [Josef Unger?], Die Universitätsfrage in Österreich: Beleuchtet vom Standpunkte der Lehr- und Lernfreiheit. Wien 1853, 22; Josef Unger, System des österreichischen allgemeinen Privatrechts I. Leipzig 1856, 71, Fn. 16, § 16 as a “pointless” and “practically meaningless” paragraph, arising from a “speculative urge” of the codifiers. 377 Hans Lentze, Graf Thun und die voraussetzungslose Wissenschaft, in: Helmut MezlerAndelberg (ed.), Festschrift Karl Eder zum siebzigsten Geburtstag. Innsbruck 1959, 197–209. 378 Rückert, Kant-Rezeption [n. 313], 191–194; id., Idealismus, Jurisprudenz und Politik bei Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Ebelsbach 1984, 364–368, 309–310, 99, 238, 495; ErnstWolfgang Böckenförde, Die historische Rechtsschule und das Problem der Geschichtlichkeit des Rechts, in: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde et.al. (eds.), Collegium Philosophicum. Joachim Ritter zum 60. Geburtstag. Basel/Stuttgart 1965, 9–36, 16; Schröder, Wissenschaftstheorie und Lehre der praktischen Jurisprudenz [n. 320], 129, Fn. 268. 379 Ernst Topitsch, Stiller Widerstand in der “Universität unter dem Hakenkreuz”, in: id., Im Irrgarten der Zeitgeschichte. Ein Kapitel zur politischen Theologie. Berlin 2003, 131–137; Hans Albert, Ein streitbarer Philosoph. Ernst Topitsch zum Gedächtnis, in: Aufklärung und Kritik Sonderheft 8 (2000), 7–14; Karl Acham, Sprachkritik – Weltan-
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schauungsanalye – intellektuelle Selbstbesinnung. Eine Würdigung des Werks von Ernst Topitsch, in: Ernst Topitsch, Überprüfbarkeit und Beliebigkeit. Die beiden letzten Abhandlungen des Autors, ed. Karl Acham. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2005, 11–84. 380 Ernst Topitsch, Naturrecht im Wandel des Jahrhunderts, in: Aufklärung und Kritik 1/1 (1994), 1–13; id., Das Problem des Naturrechts, in: Werner Maihofer (ed.), Naturrecht und Rechtspositivismus. Darmstadt 1962, 159–177; Johannes Messner, Atheismus und Naturrecht. Ein Streitgespräch mit Ernst Topitsch, in: Neues Forum 13 (1966), 475–478, 607–611, 698–702; 14 (1967), 28–31, 360–362; cf. Topitsch’s introduction to Hans Kelsen, Aufsätze zur Ideologiekritik. Neuwied/Berlin 1964, 11–27; sowie Hans Kelsen, Vergeltung und Kausalität (1941). Wien/Köln/Graz 1982. 381 Topitsch, Kant in Österreich [n. 37], 236–253. 382 See Ernst Topitsch, Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft und der politische Auftrag der Universität. Berlin 1968 und Nikolai Wehrs, Protest der Professoren. Der “Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft” in den 1970er Jahren. Göttingen 2014. 383 Ernst Topitsch, Die “Himmelsstadt” des Jürgen Habermas, in: id., Im Irrgarten der Zeitgeschichte, 93–130; cf. id., Die Wissenschaftsauffassung Carl Schmitts, in: id., Im Irrgarten der Zeitgeschichte, 44–92. 384 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie und Praxis. Sozialphilosophische Schriften (1963). Frankfurt am Main 41971, 320. 385 Cf. Ernst Topitsch, Über Leerformeln. Zur Pragmatik des Sprachgebralsoes in Philosophie und politischer Theorie, in: id. (ed.), Probleme der Wissenschaftstheorie. Festschrift für Victor Kraft. Wien 1960, 233–264; Hans Albert, Traktat über kritische Vernunft. Tübingen 51991. 386 Cf. Ernst Topitsch, Kosmos und Herrschaft. Ursprünge der “politischen Theologie”, in: Wort und Wahrheit 10 (1955), 19–30; id., Die Wissenschaftsauffassung Carl Schmitts [n. 383], 54; Friedrich Balke, Kreuzzug und Kartei. Carl Schmitt und die Juden, in: Neue Rundschau 111/3 (2000), 168–179. 387 Topitsch, Die “Himmelsstadt” [n. 383], passim; id., Überprüfbarkeit und Beliebigkeit [n. 379], 119. 388 Ernst Topitsch, Gedichte aus dem Gästebuch von Hans Albert, in: Aufklärung und Kritik Sonderheft 8 (2000), 196–200. 389 See Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll, Franz Schwediauer, Cornelius Zehetner (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – Verzögerte Aufklärung, vol. 6: Auf der Suche nach authentischem Philosophieren. Philosophie in Österreich 1951–2000. Wien 2010. 390 Ernst Topitsch, Ein Blick zurück auf die geistige “Welt von gestern”, in: id., Überprüfbarkeit und Beliebigkeit [n. 379], 85–104, 87. 391 Ernst Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie. Kant in weltanschauungsanalytischer Betrachtung (1975). Tübingen 21992, 211. 392 Cf. Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 1]. 393 Sigmund Freud, Die Zukunft einer Illusion, in: id., Gesammelte Werke, vol. 14. London 1955, 339–340; Hans Kelsen, Vergeltung und Kausalität, 92–94; Edgar Zilsel, Die sozialen Ursprünge der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft, ed. Wolfgang Krohn. Frankfurt am Main 1976, 66–68; Hans Reichenbach, Der Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie. Braunschweig 1968, 63–66. 394 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 4–27. 395 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 35.
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Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 37–39. Robert Reininger, Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn und seine Theorie der Erfahrung. Wien/Leipzig 1900, 20–21. Cf. Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 89. 398 Reininger, Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn und seine Theorie der Erfahrung [n. 397], 151–152. 399 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 104–114. 400 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 115–143. 401 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 217. 402 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 144–191. 403 Cf. Victor Kraft, Mathematik, Logik und Erfahrung. Wien 21970, 10, 21–23. 404 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 218. 405 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 192–201. Cf. also Fillafer, Kant and Pre-1848 Catholic Theology, see present volume, 74–82. 406 Topitsch, Die Voraussetzungen der Transzendentalphilosophie [n. 391], 215. 407 Cf. Manfred Wetzel, Vorhut oder Nachhut? Über das so genannte harte Traktat gegen die Neue Linke, in: Die Zeit 10 (7. März 1969) and Wilhelm Weber, Ernst Topitsch, Das Wertfreiheitsproblem seit Max Weber, in: Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 13/2 (1951), 158–201. 408 Acham, Sprachkritik – Weltanschauungsanalye – intellektuelle Selbstbesinnung [n. 379], 42. 409 Herta Nagl-Docekal, Rudolf Langthaler (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion. Die Bedeutung Kants für die Gegenwart. Berlin 2004 (= Sonderband 9 der Deutschen Zeitschrift für Philosophie). 410 Herta Nagl-Docekal, Rudolf Langthaler, Vorwort, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 7–9, 7. 411 Jürgen Habermas, Die Grenze zwischen Glauben und Wissen. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte und aktuellen Bedeutung von Kants Religionsphilosophie, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 141–160. 412 Jürgen Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, in: id., Glauben und Wissen. Frankfurt am Main 2001, 9–34. 413 Jürgen Habermas, Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?, in: Jürgen Habermas, Josef Ratzinger, Dialektik der Säkularisierung. Freiburg 2005, 15–17. 414 Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 13–70. 415 Onora O’Neill, Self-Legislation, Autonomy and the Form of Law, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 13–26, 13. 416 O’Neill, Self-Legislation, Autonomy and the Form of Law [n. 415], 18. 417 Paul Guyer, Civic Responsibility and the Kantian Contract, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 27–47, 46. 418 Guyer, Civic Responsibility and the Kantian Contract [n. 417], 27–29. Dazu: Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago 1990. 419 Nagl-Docekal et al.(eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 73–138. 420 Pauline Kleingeld, Kants Argumente für den Völkerbund, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 99–111, 99. 397
548 421
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Sharon Anderson-Gold, Evil and Enlightenment in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 113–122, 121. 422 Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 141–217. 423 Reiner Wimmer, Kann Religion vernünftig sein? Zur Metakritik an Kants kritischer Religionsphilosophie, in: Nagl-Docekal et al. (eds.), Recht – Geschichte – Religion [n. 409], 173–194, 193–194. Wimmer cites from: Charles Taylor, Die immantente Gegenaufklärung: Christentum und Moral, in: Ludwig Nagl (ed.), Religion nach der Religionskritik. Wien/ Berlin 2003, 60–85. 424 See Peter Heintel, Die Bedeutung der Kritik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft für die transzendentale Systematik. Bonn 1970 (= Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte, vol. 99, slightly revised Viennese habilitation dissertation); Hans-Dieter Klein, Formale und materiale Prinzipien in Kants Ethik, in: Kant-Studien 60 (1969), 183–197; Michael Benedikt, Kritische Erwägungen zur jüngeren englischsprachigen Kant-Literatur, in: Philosophische Rundschau 17 (1970), 1–27; Heimo Hofmeister, The Problem of Truth in the Critique of Pure Reason, in: Lewis W. Beck (ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress. Dordrecht 1972, 316–321; Wilhelm Lütterfelds, Kants Dialektik der Erfahrung. Meisenheim 1977. 425 Peter Heintel, Ludwig Nagl (eds.), Zur Kantforschung der Gegenwart. Darmstadt 1981. 426 Peter Heintel, Vorwort, in: Heintel et al. (eds.), Zur Kantforschung der Gegenwart [n. 425], VII–VII, VII. 427 See Jindrˇich Zeleny´, Zum Problemzusammenhang der Kantschen transzendentalen Logik und der materialistischen Dialektik, in: Heintel et al. (eds.), Zur Kantforschung der Gegenwart [n. 425], 429–442. 428 Original: S. Morris Engel, Wittgenstein and Kant, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30 (1970), 483–513, trans. Heinz Kolar. 429 In the original: Martin J. Scott-Taggart, Recent Work on the Philosophy of Kant, in: American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966), 171–204, trans. Heinrich Pfannkuch for the volume Zur Kantforschung der Gegenwart [n. 425]. 430 See e. g. Rudolf Langthaler, Kants Ethik als System der Zwecke. Zu einer modifizierten Idee der “moralischen Theologie”. Berlin 1991 (= Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte, vol. 125); id., Nachmetaphysisches Denken? Kritische Anfragen an Jürgen Habermas. Berlin 1997; id., “Gottvermissen” – eine theologische Kritik der reinen Vernunft? Die neue Politische Theologie im Spiegel der Kantischen Religionsphilosophie. Regensburg 2000; Herta Nagl-Docekal, Die Objektivität der Geschichtswissenschaft. Wien/München 1982; id. (ed.), Der Sinn des Historischen. Frankfurt am Main 1996; id., Feminist Ethics: How It Could Benefit from Kant’s Moral Philosophy, in: Robin May Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant. University Park 1997, 101–124. 431 Rudolf Langthaler, Herta Nagl-Docekal (eds.), Glauben und Wissen. Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas. Wien/Berlin 2007 (= Wiener Reihe. Themen der Philosophie, vol. 13). 432 Jürgen Habermas, Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen: I. Zur Kantischen Religionsphilosophie, in: Langthaler et al. (eds.), Glauben und Wissen, 366–414. 433 Habermas, Replik auf Einwände [n. 432], 367–383. 434 Habermas, Replik auf Einwände [n. 432], 367. 435 Jürgen Habermas, Ein Symposium über Glauben und Wissen. Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen, in: id., Nachmetaphysisches Denken II. Berlin 2013, 183–237.
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436
See Maureen Junker-Kenny, Habermas and Theology. London/New York 2011; id., Religion and Public Reason. A Comparison of the Positions of John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricoeur. Berlin 2014. 437 See e. g.: Christian Danz, Die Deutung der Religion in der Kultur. Aufgaben und Probleme der Theologie im Zeitalter des religiösen Pluralismus. Neukirchen-Vluyn 2008; Ludwig Nagl, Das verhüllte Absolute. Essays zur zeitgenössischen Religionsphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main et al. 2010; Rudolf Langthaler, Geschichte, Ethik und Religion im Anschluß an Kant, 2 vols. Berlin 2013; Herta Nagl-Docekal, Innere Freiheit. Grenzen der nachmetaphysischen Moralkonzeptionen. Berlin 2014; Johann Reikerstorfer, Weltfähiger Glaube. Theologisch-politische Schriften. Berlin 2008.
Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold 1
So says Reinhold in a letter from early November 1786 to Christian Gottlob von Voigt in: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Korrespondenzausgabe der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, founded by Reinhard Lauth, Kurt Hiller, Wolfgang H. Schrader, vol. 1: Korrespondenz 1773–1788, ed. Reinhard Lauth, Eberhard Heller und Kurt Hiller. StuttgartBad Cannstatt 1983, 145–157, 153. 2 For Reinhold’s biography see: Ernst Reinhold, Erste Abtheilung. Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken, in: id. (ed.), Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken, nebst eines Auswahl von Briefen Kant’s, Fichte’s, Jacobi’s und andrer philosophirender Zeitgenossen an ihn. Jena 1825, 3–124, url: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/ Record/009724178, (22 May 2014); Reinhard Lauth, Nouvelles recherches sur Reinhold et l’Aufklärung, in: Archives de philosophie 41 (1979), 593–629; Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frühkantianismus in der Donaumonarchie. Würzburg/Amsterdam 1982, 57–106; Hermann Schüttler, Karl Leonhard Reinhold und die Illuminaten im Vorfeld der Französischen Revolution, in: Manfred Buhr, Hans Holz, Hans Sandkühler et. al (eds.), Republik der Menschheit: Französische Revolution und deutsche Philosophie. Köln 1989, 49–75; Alexander von Schönborn, Karl Leonhard Reinhold – eine annotierte Bibliographie. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1991, 9–50; Horst Schröpfer, Karl Leonhard Reinhold – sein Wirken für das allgemeine Verständnis der “Hauptresultate” und der “Organisation des Kantischen Systems”, in: Norbert Hinske, Erhard Lange, Horst Schröpfer (eds.), “Das Kantische Evangelium”. Der Frühkantianismus an der Universität Jena von 1785–1800 und seine Vorgeschichte. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1993, 101–120; Gerhard W. Fuchs, Karl Leonhard Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph. Eine Studie über den Zusammenhang seines Engagements als Freimaurer und Illuminat mit seinem Leben und philosophischen Wirken. Frankfurt am Main 1994. For primary and secondary literature on Reinhold see: www.klreinhold.ch (27 October 2014). 3 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Gedanken über Aufklärung, in: Der Teutsche Merkur 3 (1784), 122–133, 125. 4 See Martin Bondeli, Von Herder zu Kant, zwischen Kant und Herder, mit Herder gegen Kant – Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: Marion Heinz (ed.), Herder und die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. Amsterdam/Atlanta 1998, 203–234.
550 5
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See Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Schreiben des Pfarrers zu *** an den H. des T.M., in: Der Teutsche Merkur 1 (1785), 148–174, 164. 6 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Ueber die Natur des Vergnügens, in: Der Teutsche Merkur 4 (1788), 61–79, 61. 7 See Alexander Scharff, Das Kieler Studentische Ehrengericht 1793–1806. Eine gescheiterte Universitätsreform im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, in: Nordelbingen. Beiträge zur Kunstund Kulturgeschichte 41 (1972), 141–175. 8 Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration [n. 2], 1982, 87. 9 Cf. Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 145. 10 Cf. Reinhold, Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken [n. 2], 3. 11 All information comes from the website of the Church of St. Anna, url: http:// www.annakirche.at (20 May 2014). 12 So Reinhold in a letter to his father Karl Ägidius on 13 September 1773, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 3–8, 7. 13 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Ehrenrettung der Lutherischen Reformation gegen zwey Kapitel in des K.K. Hofraths Herrn J. M. Schmids Geschichte der Teutschen nebst einigen Bemerkungen über die gegenwärtige katholische Reformation im Oesterreichschen. Jena 1789, “Vorbericht”; url: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/werkansicht/dlf/28141/5/cache.off (22 May 2014). 14 Reinhold, Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken [n. 2], 14f. 15 Cf. Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 16. 16 Cf. Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration [n. 2], 45f.; cf. Franz Martin Wimmer, Philosophiegeschichte in Österreich nach 1750, in: Michael Benedikt, Wilhelm Baum, Reinhold Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus, Verzögerte Aufklärung, vol. 2: Österreichische Philosophie zur Zeit der Revolution und Restauration (1750–1820). Wien 1992, “Das Lehrbuch der wolffischen Schule”, 92–161, 121ff. 17 Cf. Franjo Zenko, Fundamentalphilosophie und Protophysik: Die Kraft bei Ruder Josip Boskovic, in: Benedikt et al. (eds.), Österreichische Philosophie (1750–1820) [n. 16], 489–502, 501. 18 Edith Rosenstrauch-Königsberg, Freimaurerei im josephinischen Wien, Aloys Blumauers Weg vom Jesuiten zum Jakobiner. Wien 1975, 49, 56. 19 See Wilhelm Baum, Wenzel Gottfried von Purgstalls Beziehungen zu Reinhold, Kant, Schiller und Goethe, in: Benedikt et al. (eds.), Österreichische Philosophie (1750–1820) [n. 16], 852–866, 854. 20 Cf. Reinhold, Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken [n. 2], 17. 21 Cf. Rosenstrauch-Königsberg, Freimaurerei im josephinischen Wien [n. 18], 53ff., 70. 22 Karl Leonhard Reinhold shortly before 16 April 1783 to Aloys Blumauer, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 9–12, 9f. 23 Cf. Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 25 and Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration, 59 and 98 n. [n. 2]. 24 Cf. Rosenstrauch-Königsberg, Freimaurerei im josephinischen Wien [n. 18], 49. 25 See Pierluigi Valenza, Wege des Realismus. Herder, Reinhold und Bardili im Vergleich, in: Marion Heinz (ed.), Herders ‘Metakritik’. Analysen und Interpretationen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2013, 127–148, 128f.
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Reinhold, Reinhold’s Leben und litterarisches Wirken [n. 2], 20. Cf. Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 33. 28 See Wilhelm Baum, Die Aufklärung in Jena und die Jakobiner in Österreich, in: Benedikt et.al. (eds.), Österreichische Philosophie (1750–1820) [n. 16], 803–827, 812. 29 Cited in Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 32. 30 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 271–276, 271. 31 Ignatz von Born on 19 April 1784 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 15–19, here 15f. See also older editions of Robert Keil: Wiener Freunde 1784–1808. Wien 1883; id. (ed.), Wieland und Reinhold. Original Mittheilungen, als Beiträge zur Geschichte des deutschen Geisteslebens. Leipzig/Berlin 1885. 32 See Peter-Henning Haischer, Christoph Martin Wieland. Ein Weltbürger in Weimar. Weimar 2015. 33 Christoph Martin Wieland on 15 May 1785 to Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, in: Christoph Martin Wieland, Briefwechsel, 20 vols., vol. 8.2, ed. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Berlin 1963–2007, 449–452, here 451. 34 Cf. Hans Wahl, Geschichte des Teutschen Merkur. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Journalismus im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Berlin 1914; Thomas C. Starnes, Der Teutsche Merkur. Ein Repertorium. Sigmaringen 1994; Thomas Bach, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823). Philosophie und Kulturmorphologie im Teutschen Merkur, in: Andrea Heinz (ed.), ‘Der Teutsche Merkur’ – die erste deutsche Kulturzeitschrift? Heidelberg 2003, 254–275. 35 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 26 January 1787 to Friedrich Nicolai, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 179–190, here 183. 36 See Jan Assmann, Die Mysterienbeiträge im Journal für Freymaurerey, in: id., Religio duplex. Ägyptische Mysterien und europäische Aufklärung. Berlin 2010, 243–350. 37 Reinhold, Gedanken über Aufklärung [n. 3], 3–22, 122–133 and 232–245. 38 See Schüttler, Reinhold und die Illuminaten [n. 2], 49–75; Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2] and Gothaer Illuminaten Enzyklopädie online: http://illuminatenwiki.uni-erfurt.de (28 May 2015). 39 See Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, Journal von einer Reise von Weimar nach Frankreich im Jahr 1787, ed. Hermann Schüttler. Neuried 1994. 40 Horst Schröpfer, Schack Hermann Ewald (1745–1822). Ein Kantianer in der thüringischen Residenzstadt Gotha. Köln/Weimar/Wien 2015. 41 Cf. e. g. Schack Hermann Ewald on 4 October 1790 to Heinrich Ludwig Jacob, in: Adolf Hasenclever, Ein ungedruckter Brief Schack Hermann Ewalds an Ludwig Heinrich Jakob vom 4. Oktober 1790, in: Mitteilungen der Vereinigung für Gothaische Geschichte und Altertumsforschung (1917/18). Gotha 1918, 31–35. 42 Cf. Karl Leonhard Reinhold in early November 1786 to Christian Gottlob Voigt, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 147–157; cf. Schüttler, Reinhold und die Illuminaten [n. 2], register of members. 43 Reinhold, Schreiben des Pfarrers [n. 5], 148–174. 44 See Bondeli, Von Herder zu Kant [n. 4], 203–234; id., Einleitung, in: Karl Leonhard Reinhold: Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, 2 vols. (Gesammelte Schriften. Kommentierte Ausgabe, vol. 2/1–2), ed. Martin Bondeli. Basel 2007, VII–LXVI. See Wolfgang Pross, Nach27
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wort, in: Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, ed. Wolfgang Pross, vol. III/1: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. München/Wien 2002, 837–1041, esp. 1022ff. 45 Cf. Horst Schröpfer, Kants Weg in die Öffentlichkeit. Christian Gottfried Schütz als Wegbereiter der kritischen Philosophie. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2003; Lutz-Henning Pietsch, Topik der Kritik. Die Auseinandersetzung um die Kantische Philosophie (1781–1788) und ihre Metaphern. Berlin/New York 2010, 48–52 and 101–107. 46 Cf. Ernst-Otto Onnasch, Einleitung, in: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, ed. with an introduction and annotations by id. Hamburg 2010, vol. 1, LX f. 47 Karl Leonhard Reinhold in early November 1786 to Christian Gottlob Voigt in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 155. 48 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 270–276, here 271f. 49 See Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 91. 50 Karl Leonhard Reinhold in early November 1786 to Christian Gottlob Voigt, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 153. 51 See the introductions to Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1; id., Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, vol. 1. Leipzig 1790 (= OA) and id., Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, [n. 44], vol. 2/2; id., Briefe über die Kantischen Philosophie, vol. 2. Leipzig 1792 (= OA). 52 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1, 70; OA 104. 53 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1, 112; OA 170. 54 Kant, KrV, A 751f. 55 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1, 94; OA 141. 56 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1, 86–89; OA 131–135. 57 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 33; OA 38. 58 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 71. 59 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Ueber die Teutschen Beurtheilungen der französischen Revoluzion. Ein Sendschreiben an den Herausgeber, in: Der neue Teutsche Merkur 1 (1793), 387–424. 60 See Kant, KrV, A 828ff. 61 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/1, 113; OA 171. 62 See Martin Bondeli, Über eine “Entdeckung” in der Psychologie. Reinholds Auseinandersetzung mit Platners Bemerkungen zur Geschichte des Seelenbegriffs, in: Guido Naschert, Gideon Stiening (eds.), Aufklärung. Interdisziplinäres Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts und seiner Wirkungsgeschichte. Themenschwerpunkt: Ernst Platner (1744–1818). Konstellationen der Aufklärung zwischen Philosophie, Medizin und Anthropologie. Hamburg 2007, 327–342. 63 See Kant, KpV, AA V, 39–41. 64 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 51–53; OA 64–66. 65 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 161–182; OA 220–261. 66 See Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 145; OA 197f. 67 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 158; OA 217. 68 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 254; OA 383.
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See Alessandro Lazzari, “Das Eine, was der Menschheit Noth ist”. Einheit und Freiheit in der Philosophie Karl Leonhard Reinholds (1789–1792). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2004, 167–222. 70 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 188; OA 271f. 71 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], vol. 2/2, 188; OA 272. 72 Kant, MS, AA VI, 226. 73 See Karl Ameriks, Ambiguities in the Will: Reinhold and Kant, Briefe II; Daniel Breazeale, The fate of Kantian freedom: One cheer (more) for Reinhold; Martin Bondeli, Zu Reinholds Auffassung von Willensfreiheit in den Briefen II; Manfred Baum, Kants Replik auf Reinhold, in: Violetta Stolz, Marion Heinz, Martin Bondeli (eds.), Wille, Willkür, Freiheit. Reinholds Freiheitskonzeption im Kontext der Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin/Boston 2012, Sektion II “Wille, Willkür und Willensfreiheit”. 74 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, AA X 497. 75 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, AA X 497. 76 See Kant, AA X–XII; esp. AA XI, 181, 313; Reinhold, Korrespondenzausgabe, vol. 2: Korrespondenz 1788–1790, ed. Faustino Fabbianelli, Kurt Hiller, Ives Radrizzani. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2007, 167. 77 See Alfred Klemmt, Karl Leonhard Reinholds Elementarphilosophie. Hamburg 1958, 149–167; Arnulf Zweig, Reinhold’s Relation to Kant, in: Martin Bondeli, Wolfgang H. Schrader (ed.), Die Philosophie Karl Leonhard Reinholds. Amsterdam/New York 2003, 39–54. 78 See Christan Gottfried Schütz on 18 February 1785 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 398. 79 See Immanuel Kant, Erinnerungen des Recensenten der Herderschen Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Nro. 4 und Beil. der Allg. Lit-Zeit.) über ein im Februar des Teutschen Merkur gegen diese Recension gerichtetes Schreiben, AA VIII, 56–58. 80 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 497. 81 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 498. 82 Schütz’ critique was published in several volumes between 12 and 30 July1785 in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. See also its reissue in Rezensionen zur Kantischen Philosophie 1781–87, ed. Albert Landau. Bebra 1991, 147–181. 83 See Immanuel Kant on 19 January 1788 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA X, 524. 84 See Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: F. H. Jacobi’s Nachlaß. Ungedruckte Briefe von und an Jacobi und Andere, vol. 2, ed. Rudolf Zoeppritz. Leipzig 1869, 95. 85 See Fuchs, Reinhold – Illuminat und Philosoph [n. 2], 172f. 86 Immanuel Kant on 28. and 31 January 1787 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA X, 514. 87 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 19 January 1788 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 524. 88 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 19 January 1788 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 524. 89 See Kant, KU, AA V, 207. 90 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 19 January 1788 to Immanuel Kant, AA X,, 526; see also: Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 1 March 1788 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 529. 91 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 14 June 1789 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 62. 92 See Immanuel Kant on 12 May 1789 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA XI, 39. 93 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Rezension ‘Philosophisches Magazin’ herausgegeben von J. A. Eberhard. Drittes und viertes Stück. 1789, in: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 174 (1789), 577–584. 94 See Immanuel Kant on 21 September 1789 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA XI, 89.
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Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 12 October 1787 to Immanuel Kant, AA X, 499. Immanuel Kant on 21 September 1791 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA XI, 288. 97 Immanuel Kant on 2 November 1791 to Jakob Sigismund Beck, AA XI, 304. 98 Kant, AA XII, 348–350. 99 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 21 January 1793 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 410. 100 See Immanuel Kant on 28 March 1794 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, AA XI, 494. 101 Cf. Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 254 [comment to the letter]. 102 See Sabine Roehr, Zum Einfluß K. L. Reinholds auf Schillers Kant-Rezeption, in: Martin Bondeli, Wolfgang H. Schrader (eds.), Fichte-Studien. Supplementa. New York 2003, 105–121; cf. also Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 55 [comment to the letter]. 103 Cf. Roehr, Zum Einfluß K. L. Reinholds auf Schillers Kant-Rezeption [n. 102], 108ff. 104 Cf. Friedrich Schiller, Über Anmut und Würde, in: id., Gedichte und Prosa, selected by Emil Staiger, Zürich 1991, 323–399, 376; Roehr, Zum Einfluß K. L. Reinholds auf Schillers Kant-Rezeption [n. 102], 112ff. 105 As written by Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 14 June 1789 to Immanuel Kant, in: id., Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 128–137. 106 Cf. Christoph Martin Wieland on 18 February 1789 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 53–57, 56. 107 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 56 [comment to the letter]. 108 Cf. Karl Vorländer, Kant – Schiller – Goethe, Gesammelte Aufsätze von Karl Vorländer. Leipzig 1907, 140f. 109 Cf. Otto Ernst Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie. Leipzig 1914, 27. 110 Cf. Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie [n. 109], 50. 111 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 290 [comment to the letter]. 112 Cf. Jens Immanuel Baggesen on 28 September or 30 October 1791 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold; also at the end of Reinhold’s letter to Baggesen on 23 December 1791. See Reinhold, Korrespondenzausgabe, vol. 3: Korrespondenz 1791, ed. Faustino Fabbianelli, Eberhard Heller, Kurt Hiller, Reinhard Lauth, Ives Radrizzani and Wolfgang H. Schrader assisted by Christian Kauferstein, Petra Lohmann and Claudius Strube. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2011, 280–282 and 356–362. 113 Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie [n. 109], 51. 114 Cf.: http://www.uni-kiel.de/grosse-forscher/index.php?nid=reinhold& pr=1 (4 March 2015). 115 Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie [n. 109], 18. 116 Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie [n. 109], 21ff. 117 Hesse, Jens Baggesen und die deutsche Philosophie [n. 109], 48. 118 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1791 [n. 112], 318f. [comment to the letter]. 119 Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg on 5. October 1791 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1791 [n. 112], 284–293, 286f. 120 Cf. Manfred Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung’. Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik. Frankfurt am Main 1997, 38ff. Cf. also Gunther Wenz, Hegels Freund und Schillers Beistand. Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848). Göttingen 2008, 28. 121 Cf. Dieter Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich. Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte des Idealismus. Tübingen – Jena 1790–1794, 2 vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main 2004, 1222. 122 Cf. Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich [n. 121], Vol. 1, 273. 123 Cf. Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich [n. 121], Vol. 2, 1258.
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Cf. Immanuel Kant on 21 December 1792 to Johann Benjamin Erhard, AA XI, 398–399, 398. 125 Johann Benjamin Erhard, Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution und andere Schriften, ed. Hellmut G. Haasis München 21970, 92f. (p. 182 of the original edition of 1795). 126 Cf. Reichster Kopf, in: Der Spiegel 16/1970, 194/196; url: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/ print/d-45122545.html (23 July 2014). 127 Verhörprotokolle der Wiener Jakobiner über Erhard, [Hohenwart am 10. August 1794], in: Erhard, Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution [n. 125], 189 and 259f. 128 Denkwürdigkeiten des Philosophen und Arztes Johann Benjamin Erhard, ed. Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. Stuttgart 1830; url: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/ 9200143/BibliographicResource2000069361896.html (25 November 2014). 129 Cf. Vorländer, Kant – Schiller – Goethe [n. 108], 9 n. 130 Cf. Wenz, Hegels Freund und Schillers Beistand [n. 120], 101, 112; Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung’ [n. 120], 429. 131 Cf. Wenz, Hegels Freund und Schillers Beistand [n. 120], 30; Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich [n. 121], vol. 2, 1199. 132 Cf. Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich [n. 121], vol. 2, 1198. 133 See Wenz, Hegels Freund und Schillers Beistand [n. 120], 160–168. 134 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1791 [n. 112], 98 [comment to the letter]. 135 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1791 [n. 112], 99 [comment to the letter]. 136 See Friedrich Karl Forberg on 14 May 1791 to Reinhold, in: Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1791 [n. 112], 99–110. 137 See Wenz, Hegels Freund und Schillers Beistand [n. 120], 149–154. 138 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 85 [comment to the letter]. 139 Reinhold, Korrespondenz 1788–1790 [n. 76], 6 [comment to the letter]. 140 Friedrich Carl Forberg on 14 May 1791 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: Friedrich Carl Forberg: Philosophische Schriften, ed. Guido Naschert, 2 vols., vol. 1. Paderborn et al. 2016, 715. 141 Max Ortner, Werner Sauer and Wilhelm Baum worked this out in a number of studies: Max Ortner, Kant in Kärnten, in: Carinthia 1 (1924), 65–87; Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration [n. 2], esp. 231–265; Wilhelm Baum (ed.), Weimar – Jena – Klagenfurt. Der Herbert-Kreis und das Geistesleben Kärntens im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution. Klagenfurt 1989; id., Franz Paul von Herbert und die deutsche Geistesgeschichte. Neue Quellenfunde zur Geschichte des Herbertkreises, in: Carinthia 1/180 (1990), 435–486; id., Novalis und der Klagenfurter Herbertkreis, in: Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 109/4 (1990), 520–529; id., Pestalozzis Scheitern in Österreich und die Rezension seiner “Nachforschungen” durch Reinhold und Erhard, in: Benedikt et.al. (eds.), Österreichische Philosophie (1750–1820) [n. 16], 596–614; id., Die Aufklärung in Jena und die Jakobiner in Österreich. Der Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis, in: ibid., 803–827; id., Wenzel Gottfried von Purgstalls Beziehungen zu Reinhold, Kant, Schiller und Goethe, in: ibid., 852–866; id., Der Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, in: Revue Internationale de Philosophie 197 (1996), 483–514; Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, Korrespondenz mit dem Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis. Mit einer Ergänzung: Franz de Paula von Herbert: Mein Abtrag an die Welt, ed. Wilhelm Baum assisted by Ursula Wiegele and Christoph Prainsack. Wien 1995.
556 142
Endnotes
For Fernow’s relation to Reinhold see Harald Tausch, Von Jena nach Rom. Beobachtungen zur Genese von Fernows Wissenschafts- und Kunstverständnis im Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte und Johann Benjamin Erhard, in: Reinhard Wegner (ed.), Kunst als Wissenschaft. Carl Ludwig Fernow – ein Begründer der Kunstgeschichte. Göttingen 2005, 11–59. 143 Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung’ [n. 120], 367. 144 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Gesammelte Schriften. Kommentierte Ausgabe, vol. 4: Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens nebst einigen Erläuterungen über die Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens, ed. Martin Bondeli assisted by Silvan Imhof. Basel 2011, 6. 145 Wilhelm Baum defined in which respect Kantian philosophy was important here; cf. Baum, Der Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik in: Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration [n. 3], 488ff. 146 Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv Wien, Pergen-Akten X/B 3, H 5 (agents report), cited in Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration [n. 2], 240. 147 Friedrich Carl Forberg, Lebenslauf eines Verschollenen [1840], in: id., Forberg: Philosophische Schriften [n. 140], 29. 148 Carl Ludwig Fernow on 11 February 1794 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: id., “Rom ist eine Welt in sich”. Briefe 1789–1808, ed. and commented by Margrit Glaser and Harald Tausch, 2 vols., vol. 1. Göttingen 2013, 73f. 149 Friedrich Carl Forberg, Lebenslauf eines Verschollenen [1840], in: id., Philosophische Schriften [n. 140], 29. 150 Friedrich Carl Forberg on 28 September 1791 to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, in: id., Philosophische Schriften [n. 140], 720. 151 Cf. Hermann Schüttler, Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens, 1776–1787/93. München 1991, replaces: url: http://illuminaten-wiki.uni-erfurt.de/Mitglieder_des_Illuminate nordens (19 May 2015). 152 See Guido Naschert, Netzwerkbildung und Ideenzirkulation: Johann Benjamin Erhards Reisen durch das Europa der französischen Revolution, in: Kriminelle – Freidenker – Alchemisten. Räume des Untergrunds in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Martin Mulsow. Wien/ Köln/Weimar 2014, 503–553. 153 Franz Paul Freiherr von Herbert on 6 May 1794 to Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, in: Niethammer, Korrespondenz mit dem Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis [n. 141], 76. 154 Von Herbert on 6 May 1794 to Niethammer, in: Niethammer, Korrespondenz mit dem Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis [n. 141], 76. 155 Franz Paul Freiherr von Herbert on 30 June 1799 to Johann Benjamin Erhard, in: Denkwürdigkeiten [n. 128], 455–458, 458. 156 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Ueber das Fundament [n. 144], 74; id., Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens nebst einigen Erläuterungen über die Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens. Jena 1791 (= OA), 129. 157 See Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen, Das Fundament der Elementarphilosophie betreffend, Vol. 1. Jena 1790, 85ff. (reissue with an introduction and annotations ed. Faustino Fabbianelli. Hamburg 2003). 158 Reinhold, Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790) [n. 157], Vol. 1, 167. 159 Reinhold, Ueber das Fundament [n. 144], 48; OA 75.
Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold 160
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Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1, ed. Martin Bondeli. Basel 2013, 164; OA 244. 161 See Reinhold, Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790) [n. 157], Vol. 1, 186, and Reinhold, Ueber das Fundament [n. 144], 28f.; OA 32. 162 Cf. Kant, KrV, A 838/B 866. 163 Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Auswahl vermischter Schriften. Erster Theil. Jena 1796, 226. 164 Kant, KrV, A 51/B 75. 165 Reinhold, Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [n. 160], 218; OA 335. 166 See Reinhold, Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790) [n. 157], vol. 1, 245. 167 Kant, KrV, A 22/B 37. 168 Kant, KrV, A 93f./B 126. 169 Kant, KrV, A 158/B 197. 170 Kant, KrV, A 158–235/B 197–294. 171 Cf. Kant, KrV, 158/B 197. 172 See Reinhold, Ueber das Fundament [n. 144], 45f., 76 f; OA 68f., 135f. 173 See Martin Bondeli, Möglichkeit der Erfahrung. Zur Kant-Revision Karl Leonhard Reinholds in der Schrift Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens, in: Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, vol. 5, ed. Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca, Margit Ruffing. Berlin/Boston 2013, 679–690. 174 Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie [n. 44], Vol. 2/2, 254; OA 383. 175 Kant, MS, AA VI, 438. 176 Karl Leonhard Reinhold in early November 1786 to Christian Gottlob Voigt, in: id., Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [n. 1], 153. 177 Reinhold, Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790) [n. 157], vol. 1, 116. 178 See Dieter Henrich, Konstellationen. Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789–1795). Stuttgart 1991, 240f.; Martin Bondeli, Das Anfangsproblem bei Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Eine systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Philosophie Reinholds in der Zeit von 1789 bis 1803. Frankfurt am Main 1995, 107–153; Henrich, Grundlegung aus dem Ich [n. 121], 618–622. 179 See Reinhold, Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790) [n. 157], Vol. 2, 59–65. 180 See Jürgen Stolzenberg, Fichtes Begriff der intellektuellen Anschauung. Die Entwicklung in den Wissenschaftslehren von 1793/94 bis 1801/02. Stuttgart 1986. 181 See Johann Gottlieb Fichte, [Rezension:] Ohne Druckort: Aenesidemus, oder über die Fundamente der von dem Hrn. Prof. Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elementar-Philosophie. Nebst einer Vertheidigung des Skepticismus gegen die Anmaßungen der Vernunftkritik. (1792), in: id., J.-G.-Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. I/2: Werke 1793–1795, ed. Reinhard Lauth et al. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1965, 62. 182 See Fichte, Rezension Aenesidemus [n. 181], 46, 62. 183 See Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie (1795), in: id., Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, on behalf of the Schelling Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner et al., Vol. I/2, ed. Hartmut Buchner, Jörg Jantzen. Stuttgart 1980, 98f.
558
Endnotes
184
See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie, in: id., Gesammelte Werke, in association with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ed. by the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vol. 4, ed. Hartmut Buchner. Hamburg 1968, “Reinhold”, 77.
Kant and Eastern Europe 1
Cf. the author’s extended study on these questions: P¦ter Egyed, Az ellenreformciû eszmeis¦ge – k¦t hullmban [Ideology of the Counter-Reformation – in Two Waves]. Sz¦kelyföld 2003, 45–55. 2 In his study dedicated to university studies in the Middle Ages, Sndor Tonk mentions 2.500 students who attended universities abroad: Erd¦lyiek egyetemjrsa a köz¦pkorban [University Studies of Transylvanians in the Middle Ages]. Bucures¸ti 1979. 3 Jnos J. Varga, Kollonich Lipût ¦s az ‘Einrichtungswerk’. A bboros ¦rsek egyhzpolitikjnak vltozatai [Leopold Kollonich and the “Einrichtungswerk”. Church Policy Versions of the Cardinal Archbishop], in: Jûzsef Jankovics, Istvn Monok, Judit Nyerges, P¦ter Srközy (eds.), A magyar mu˝ velo˝ d¦s ¦s a kereszt¦nys¦g [Hungarian Culture and Christianity]. Budapest/Szeged 1998, 770–776, 772; url: http://mek.oszk.hu/06300/06383/ pdf/keresztenyseg1_1resz.pdf (18 November 2014). 4 Magyar Törv¦nytr Corpus Juris Hungarici [Hungarian statute book Corpus Juris Hungarici] 1861. ¦vi. XXV. Törv¦nycikk Complex Kiadû-Wolters Kluwer Jogi Adatbzis, url: http://www.1000ev.hu/index.php?a=3& param=4299 (6 April 2015). 5 Staatsarchiv Sankt Georgen in Komitat Covasna, Romania. Vorstand der Gemeinde Szacsva Fond 1. Nr. 28, cited in P¦ter Egyed, Az int¦zm¦nyek ¦s az erkölcsi viszonyok kapcsolata a sz¦kely trsadalomban a Gubernium korban [The Relationship between Institutions and Moral Conditions in the Sz¦kely Society at the Time of the Gubernium]. Manuscript 1978. 6 B¦la Holl, Der Geschichtsunterricht in den ungarischen Piaristengymnasien um die Wende des 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert, in: Moritz Csky, Horst Haselsteiner, Tibor Klaniczay, Kroly R¦dei (eds.), A magyar nyelv ¦s kultfflra a Duna völgy¦ben [The Hungarian Language and Culture in the Danube region]. Budapest/Wien 1989, 77–82, 79; url: http://mek. oszk.hu/06300/06382/pdf/dunavolgy1_1resz.pdf (18 November 2014). Although the question of how to teach history in schools has priority, this study indicates how principal and practical as well as local demands shape the structure of education. 7 Kant, WA, AA VIII, 36. 8 The main works of Jnos Aptzi Csere (1625–1659), who studied in Harderwijk and Utrecht and was the founder of philosophy in Hungarian are: Disputatio de mente umana, Magyar Encyclopaedia (1655), Magyar Logiktska (1654). 9 Apczai Csere Jnos, Magyar Enciklopaedia. Bucures¸ti 1977, 423. 10 The manuscripts in the sense of Kant and Fichte written by Pl Sipos (1759–1816) who studied in Frankfurt (Oder), Göttingen and Berlin, gained success as a mathematician and was a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, are: Vorläufige Betrachtungen über die Philosophie (1812), Der Gang der Religion im Fortschritte der Zeit philosophisch betrachtet (1816), Summarische Deduktion der menschlichen Bestimmung (1816).
Kant and Eastern Europe 11
559
Cf. Sndor Karcsony, A magyar ¦szjrs [The Hungarian Mentality]. Budapest 1985, 415–416: “From the Real Being he returns to the Practical Being which he gives meaning to. This is an Asian philosophy and appears to be slightly simplified from the viewpoint of the subjective and complicated systems and methods of European philosophy but it is merely descriptive: objective and primitive”. 12 Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold. Pestini 1792, 152. 13 Josephi Rozgonyi, Oratio Inauguralis de Socratica philosophandi ratione nostris temporibus revocanda. Habita S. Patakini 1798. 2-da Maji in Auditorio maximo, cum in munus Philosophiam ibidem publicae docendi rite adiret. Edita rogatu & impensis Praestantiss. Anni 1808. Philosophiae Auditorium. S. Patakini 1808. 14 Istvn Szentgyörgyi, Logica multum mutata, et quoad facere licuit, aevo nostro accomodata. Posonii 1805, 110. 15 Rozgonyi, Dubia [n. 12], 14. 16 James Beattie, An Essay on the Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Edinburgh 1770, 142. (Reprint: New York 1983) 17 Rozgonyi, Dubia [n. 12], 150–151. 18 Rozgonyi, Dubia [n. 12], 6. 19 Matthiam Trattner, Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold [Review], in: Novi ecclesiastico-scholastiti Annales Evangelicorum August. Et Helvet. Confessionis in Austriaca Monarchia 1/2 (1793), 60–89. 20 Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Responsio ad immodesti anonymi recensentis, crises, contra Dubia de initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani. Allatas, et vol. I. Annal. Ecclesiasticorum anni 1793. insertas. Per auctorem Dubiarum de initiis transcendentalis idealismi. S. Patakini 1816. 21 Rozgonyi, Responsio [n. 20], 6. 22 Josephi Rozgonyi, Aphorismi historiae philosophiae, quos Jozephus Rozgony, philosophiam traditurus praemisit. Sros-Patakini 1821, 160. See Clarissimi Domini Josephini Rozgonyi. Philosophiae in Coll. Helv. Conf. Addict. S. Patakiensi Professoris Publici Ordinarii, Philosophia universalis. Descripta, & plurimis Interpretationibus, Exemplis & Notis, in publicis praelectionibus connotatis aucta per P.[aulum] B.[alogh] de A.[lms] Tomus continens Psychologiam. S. Patakini 1812/1813. (Archive of the Library of the University of Budapest, F27) 23 Josephi Rozgonyi, Aphorismi psychologiae empiricae et rationalis perpetua Philosophiae Criticae ratione habita a Josepho Rozgony, Incl. Zempliniensis etc. Comitatuum Tab. Jud. Assessere, et in Ill. Collegio Ref. S. Patak. Philosophiae Professore, in usum Scolae suae scripti. S. Patakini 1819, 330. 24 Josephi Rozgonyi, Aphorismi juris naturae, perpetua juris Romani, Hungarici, juris naturae Kantiani ratione habita. A Josepho Rozgony, Incl Zempleniensis etc. Comitatuum Tab. Jud. Assessore, et in Ill. Collegio Ref. Sros-Patak. Philosophiae Professoro concinnati. S. Patakini 1822, 152. 25 Ernst Gottlob Schulze, Aenesidemus, oder über die Fundamente der von dem Herrn Professor Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elementar-philosophie. Nebst einer Vertheidigung des Skepticismus gegen die Anmaassungen der Vernunftkritik. Helmstedt 1792. Modern edition in: Arthur Liebert (ed.), Neudrucke seltener philosophischer Werke, vol. 1. Berlin 1911.
560 26
Endnotes
See Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism. London/ Cambridge 2003, especially 140–154. 27 See Tudomnyos Gyu˝ jtem¦ny [Scientific Collection]] 1/11 (1817), 121–122. 28 [Gottlob Ernst Schulze], Aphorismi psychologiae empiricae et rationalis perpetua philosophiae criticae ratione [Rezension], in: Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 3 (1821), 1998–2000. For its modern edition see: Lajos Rcz, Egy magyar ¦s egy n¦met antikantinus ¦rintkez¦se [Antikantian Communication of a Hungarian and a German], in: Lajos D¦nes (ed.), Dolgozatok a modern filozûfia kör¦bo˝ l. Eml¦kkönyv Alexander Bernt hatvanadik szület¦se napjra [Essays from the field of Modern Philosophy. Festschrift for Bernt Alexander’s 60th Birthday. Budapest 1910, 537–549. 29 Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Êszre-v¦telek azon m¦g k¦z-rsban l¦vo˝ ’s a’ Knt zl¦se szer¦nt k¦szült munkra n¦zve, mellynek neve: Erko˝ ltsi Tudomnyok’ megrostlsa [Remarks on a Kantian handwritten Work: Moral Teaching]. S. Patak 1813. 30 [Jûzsef Rozgonyi], A’ pap ¦s a’ doctor a’ snlo˝ do˝ Knt köru˝ l, vagy rövid vizsglsa, fo˝ k¦pen a’ Tiszt. Pucz Antal ¢r’ Elm¦lked¦seinek: A’ Knt’ Philosophijnak fo˝ Resulttumairûl, ’s ûldalaslag illet¦se az erko˝ ltsi Catechismust rû’ B¦tsi feleleteinek [The Priest and the Doctor with an ailing Kant or a Short Study mainly of reputable Mister Antal Pucz’ Main Results of Kant’s Philosophy and References to the Viennese Responses of the Moral Catechism’s Author]. Pest 1819. Modern edition in: Miklûs Vrhegyi, Lajos Ko˝ szegi (eds.), Elm¦sz. Szemelv¦nyek a r¦gi magyar filozûfibûl [Philosophy. A Selection from old Hungarian Philosophy]. Veszpr¦m 1994, 69–86. Hereafter cited after the modern edition. 31 Rozgonyi, A’ pap ¦s a’ doctor a’ snlo˝ do˝ Knt köru˝ l [n. 30], 84. 32 Lszlû Ungvrn¦meti Tûth, Besz¦lget¦s. Aristipp. Kant. Merkfflr [Conversation. Aristipp. Kant. Merkur], in: Hasznos Mulatsgok [Beneficial Amusements] 3/36 (1819), 281–284. Siehe Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Aristippus v¦delme [Defence of Aristippus], in: Tudomnyos Gyu˝ jtem¦ny [Scientific Collection] 6/7 (1822), 52–61. 33 See Andrs M¦szros, Jakob Fries hatsa a magyarorszgi filozûfira [Jakob Fries‘ Effect on Philosophy in Hungary], in: Magyar Filozûfiai Szemle [Hungarian Philosophical Jorunal] 39/3–4 (1995), 481–498. 34 The above text is a shortened version of my study in Hungarian: B¦la Mester, Magyar felvilgosods – n¦met vagy skût? Rozgonyi Jûzsef Kant-kritikja, in: Ludassy Mria (ed.), A felvilgosods lmai ¦s rnyai. Budapest 2007, 393–446; the study received funding support from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA K 104643). 35 Nikolay Milkov, Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881), in: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, url: http://www.iep.utm.edu/lotze/ (18 November 2014). 36 Anthony K. Jensen, Neo-Kantianism, in: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, url: http://www.iep.utm.edu/neo-kant/ (18 November 2014). 37 Imre Kajlûs, Dr. Böhm Kroly ¦lete ¦s munkssga [The Life and Work of Dr. Böhm Kroly]. Besztercebnya 1913, 177. 38 Kroly Böhm, A nemtudatosnak philosophija [The Philosophy of the Unconscious], in: Elleno˝ r 1873, 122–125. 39 Cf. Karl Böhm, Beiträge zur Theorie des Bewusstseins, in: Philosophische Monatshefte 12 (1876), 145–183; Karl Böhm, Zur Theorie des Gedächtnisses und der Erinnerung [To the Theory of Rememberance and Memory], in: Philosophische Monatshefte 13 (1877), 481–515; Adolf Horwicz, Zur Theorie des Gedächtnisses und der Erinnerung. Replik, in:
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Philosophische Monatshefte 14 (1878), 235–240; Karl Böhm, Duplik, in: Philosophische Monatshefte 14 (1878), 240–243. 40 Kroly Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga. Philosophiai kutatsok [The Man and his World. Philosophical Investigations], 6 vols. Budapest 1883–1942, vol. 1: Dialektika vagy alapphilosophia [Dialectics or Fundamental Philosophy]. 41 See Kroly Böhm, Dialektika vagy alapphilosophia. Den Haag 2003, url: http://www. federatio.org/mi_bibl/BohmKaroly_EV_I.pdf (13 March 2015), XX–XXI. 42 Böhm, Dialektika vagy alapphilosophia [n. 40], 13. 43 See Kant, KrV, A 92f./B 125f. 44 Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 2: A szellem ¦lete [The Life of the Spirit]. 45 Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 3: Axiolûgia vagy ¦rt¦ktan [Axiology or the Doctrine of Value]. 46 See § 94 of Böhms Axiology. The genres of values in themselves based on the genres of pleasures. Kant – with reference to Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Kant, EEKU, AA XX, 240f. 47 Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 4: A logikai ¦rt¦k tana [The Doctrine of Logical Value]. 48 See Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 4: A logikai ¦rt¦k tana [The Doctrine of Logical Lalue], § 107 with reference to Kant, KrV, A 12/B 26. 49 Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 5: Az erkölcsi ¦rt¦k tana [The Doctrine of Moral]. 50 See Böhm, Az erkölcsi ¦rt¦k tana [n. 49], § 71. A slightly different formulation of Kant See Kant, KU, AA V, 212. 51 Böhm, Az ember ¦s vilga [n. 40], vol. 6: Az eszt¦tikai ¦rt¦k tana [The doctrine of aesthetic value]. 52 Hegedu˝ s Lornt, ¢jkantinus ¦s ¦rt¦kteolûgia [Neo-Kantian and Value-Theology]. Budapest 1996. 53 The contribution is based on an analysis of the following studies: Tibor Hank, Geschichte der Philosophie in Ungarn: Ein Grundriss. München 1990; Judit Hell, Ferenc Lendvai L., Lszlû Perecz, Magyar filozûfia a XX. szzadban: Elso˝ r¦sz. [Hungarian Philosophy in the 20th Century : Part One]. Budapest 2000; Lszlû Perecz, Nemzet, filozûfia, “nemzeti filozûfia” [Nation, Philosophy, “National Philosophy”]. Budapest 2008. 54 Sndor Tavaszy, Mi a filozûfia? [What is Philosophy?]. Kolozsvr 1928. 55 The questions addressed here are discussed further in Martûn Tonk, Idealizmus ¦s egzisztenciafilozûfia Tavaszy Sndor gondolkodsban [Idealism and Existential Philosophy in Sndor Tavaszy’s Thinking]. Kolozsvr-Szeged 2002. The present contribution is based on a study on the topic published earlier : Mrton Tonk, A kantianizmus magyar recepciûjnak tört¦net¦bo˝ l [The History of the Reception of Hungarian Kantianism], in: B¦la Mester, Lszlû Perecz (eds.), Közelt¦sek a magyar filozûfia tört¦net¦hez [New Approaches to the History of Hungarian Philosophy]. Budapest 2004, 250–279. 56 Sndor Tavaszy, Bevezet¦s a filozûfiba [Introduction to Philosophy]. Kolozsvr 1999, 51. 57 Kant, Prol, AA IV, 265. 58 Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft. Tübingen 1915. 59 Sndor Kib¦di Varga, Magyar ¦s n¦met filozûfia (Az erd¦lyi ¦s a bdeni iskola) [Hungarian and German Philosophy (The Siebenbürger and the Baden Schools)], in: id., A szellem hatalma [The Power of the Mind]. München 1980, 58.
562 60
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The other two lectures were given by Rudolf Eucken and were entitled Übersicht über die Gesamtgeschichte der Philosophie [A Survey of the Whole History of Philosophy] and Die leitenden Ideen der Gegenwart (Darstellung und Kritik) [The Principal Idea of the Present (Presentation and Criticism)]. 61 Further lectures were given by Adolf Lasson: Grundprobleme der Philosophie [Basic Problems of Philosophy], Logik und Erkenntnistheorie [Logic and Epistemology] and Gottesbeweise [Proofs of Divinity], Hans Rupp Entwicklung des menschlichen Geistes [Development of the Human Mind] and Max Frischeisen-Köhler Grundprobleme der Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie [Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Religion]. 62 Cf. Simion Ghit¸a˘, Influent¸a ‘Criticii rat¸iunii pure’ n filozofia romneasca˘ [The influence of the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ on Romanian Philosophy], in: Alexandru Boboc et al. (eds.), Immanuel Kant. 200 de ani de la aparit¸ia ‘Criticii rat¸iunii pure’. Bucuresti 1982, 214–224, 217. 63 George Bogdan-Duica˘, Cantiani romni [Romanian Kantians], in: Sa˘ma˘na˘torul 3/6 (1904), 81–84, 81. 64 Joan Petrovici, Kant und das rumänische Denken, in: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie und Soziologie 38/1–2 (1929), 92–103, 94. 65 According to his student Ion Eliade-Ra˘dulescu, Gheorghe Laza˘r, in: Curierul romnesc [The Romanian Courier] 10/66 (1839), 261–264, 263. 66 Cf. Petrovici, Kant und das rumänische Denken [n. 64], 99. 67 Cf. Constantin Noica, Cum a ntlnit Eminescu pe Kant [How Eminescu met Kant], in: Steaua 1/2 (1969), 17–25. 68 Mihai Eminescu, Lecturi kantiene. Traduceri din ‘Critica rat¸iunii pure’ [Kant’s Readings. Translation from the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’], ed. Constantin Noica and Alexandru Surdu. Bucuresti 1975. 69 Dimitrie Gusti, Aniversarea centenara˘ a mort¸ii lui Immanuel Kant [The Centenary of Immanuel Kant’s Death], in: Cultura romna˘. Pedagogie, ¸stiint¸e, litere 1/4 (1904), 97–100. 70 Petrovici, Kant und das rumänische Denken [n. 64], 100. 71 Petrovici, Cerceta˘ri filosofice. Rolul ¸si nsemna˘tatea filosofiei [Philosophical Studies. The Role and Meaning of Philosophy]. Ias¸i 1907, 153. 72 Cf. Gheorghe Al. Cazan, ‘Influent¸a’ lui Kant asupra operei lui C. Ra˘dulescu-Motru [Kant’s “Influence” on the Works of C. Ra˘dulescu-Motru], in: Boboc (ed.), Immanuel Kant [n. 62], 232–243. 73 Constantin Ra˘dulescu-Motru, Puterea sufleteasca˘ [The Mental Strength]. Bucuresti 2 1930, 99. 74 Mircea Florian, Immanuel Kant, in: Ion Petrovici (ed.), Istoria filosofiei moderne, vol. 2. Bucuresti 1938, 3–199. 75 Florian, Immanuel Kant [n. 74], 61, 199. 76 Cf. Gheorghe Epure, Prezent¸a lui Kant n filozofia ¸stiint¸ei din Romnia n perioada interbelica˘ [The Presence of Kant in Romanian Scientific Theory between the World Wars], in: Boboc (ed.), Immanuel Kant [n. 62], 251–264. 77 Lucian Blaga, Kant ¸si metafizica [Kant and Metaphysics], in: Saeculum 2/8 (1944), 77. 78 Athanase Joja, Studii de logica˘ [Logical Studies], vol. 3. Bucuresti 1971, 218. 79 Mircea Flonta, Über ‘Analytisch’ bei Kant, in: Kant-Studien 67/2 (1976), 210–215.
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Constantin Noica, Kant ¸si metafizica, dupa˘ interpretarea lui Heidegger [Kant and Metaphysics in Heidegger’s Interpretation], in: Boboc (ed.), Immanuel Kant [n. 62], 141–152. 81 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Karel Havlcˇek. Praha 1996, 18. 82 Cf. Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Sebevrazˇda hromadny´m jevem spolecˇensky´m modern osveˇty [Suicide as a Mass Phenomenon of Modern Culture]. Praha 1998, 73. 83 Masaryk, Sebevrazˇda hromadny´m jevem spolecˇensky´m modern osveˇty [n. 82], 158. 84 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Pocˇet pravdeˇpodobnosti a Humova skepse [Probability Calculus and Hume’s Scepticism], in: Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Prˇednsˇky a studie z let 1882–1884 [Lectures and Studies 1882–1884]. Praha 1998, 28. 85 Masaryk, Pocˇet pravdeˇpodobnosti a Humova skepse [n. 84], 29. 86 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [The Foundations of Concrete Logic]. Praha 2001, 151. 87 Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [n. 86], 62. 88 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Pokus o konkr¦tn logiku [Attempt at Concrete Logic]. Praha 2001, 74. 89 Masaryk, Pokus o konkr¦tn logiku [n. 88], 75. 90 Masaryk, Pokus o konkr¦tn logiku [n. 88], 160. 91 Masaryk, Pokus o konkr¦tn logiku [n. 88], 161. 92 Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [n. 86], 89. 93 Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [n. 86], 105. 94 Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [n. 86], 178. 95 Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [n. 86], 151. 96 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Modern cˇloveˇk a nbozˇenstv [Modern Man and Religion]. Praha 2000, 58. 97 Masaryk, Modern cˇloveˇk a nbozˇenstv [n. 96], 60. 98 Masaryk, Modern cˇloveˇk a nbozˇenstv [n. 96], 59. 99 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Rusko a Evropa [Russia and Europe], 3 vols. Praha 1995–1996. 100 Masaryk, Rusko a Evropa [n. 99], vol. 3, 163. 101 Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Sveˇtov revoluce. Za vlky a ve vlce 1914–1918 [World Revolution. The Making of a State, 1914–1918]. Praha 2005. 102 Kant, KrV, B 139. 103 ˇ esk filosofie Cf. Jan Zouhar, Helena Pavlincov, Jirˇ Gabriel, Demokracie je diskuse… C 1918–1938 [Democracy is Discussion… Czech Philosophy 1918–1938]. Olomouc 2005, 170. 104 Cf. Martin Hemelk, Spinoza. Doba, zˇivot a mysˇlenky novoveˇk¦ho filosofa [Spinoza. Time, Life and Idea of a Modern Philosopher]. Praha 2006, 616. 105 Cf. Karel Skalicky´, Prvn stoupenci a odpu˚rci Masarykova realismu [Early Supporters and Opponents of Masaryk’s Realism], in: Erazim Kohk, Jakub Trnka (eds.), Hledn cˇesk¦ filosofie [In Quest of Czech Philosophy]. Praha 2012, 35–47, 40–41. 106 Cf. also V ˇcem spocˇv vy´znam Kantova dualistick¦ho pojet v teoretick¦ a praktick¦ filosofii? [What is the Meaning of Kant’s dualistic Perception in Theoretical and Practical Philosophy?], in: Ruch filosoficky´ 2–3/4 (1924), , 33–42; 4–5/4 (1924), 97–106. 107 Vladimi´r Hoppe, Dva za´kladni´ proble´my Kantova kriticismu [Two fundamental Problems of Kant’s Criticism]. Brno 1932, 6. 108 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 34.
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Cf. Kant, MAN, AA IV, 470. Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 9. 111 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 9–10. All translations of citations from Hoppe’s essays by the author. 112 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 10. 113 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 10. 114 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 10. 115 Cf. Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 15–16. 116 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 37. 117 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 14. 118 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 16–17. 119 Cf. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, in: id., Fichtes Werke, ed. Immanuel Herrmann Fichte, vol. 1. Berlin 1971, 472–477. 120 For example in: Kant, KrV, A 11/B 25. 121 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 41. 122 Cf. Fichte, Zweite Einleitung [n. 119], 475. 123 Cf. Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 19. 124 Cf. Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 45. 125 Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 18. Emphasis by Hoppe. 126 Kant, KrV, B 130. 127 Kant, KrV, B 139. 128 Kant, KrV, B 139. 129 Cf. Hoppe, Dva zkladn probl¦my [n. 107], 31. 130 For Masaryk’s (political) philosophy cf. Zwi Batscha, Eine Philosophie der Demokratie. Thomas G. Masaryks Begründung einer neuzeitlichen Demokratie. Frankfurt am Main 1994. 131 Cf. Max Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung. Berlin 1912, 55. 132 Max Steiner, Die Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums. Berlin 1905, 5. 133 Hans-Ludwig Ollig, Einleitung, in: id. (ed.), Materialien zur Neukantianismus-Diskussion. Darmstadt 1987, 1–16, 3. 134 See Max Brod, Der Prager Kreis. Stuttgart 1966, 35. 135 See Berlin und der Prager Kreis, ed. Margarita Pazi, Hans Dieter Zimmermann. Würzburg 1991. 136 Cf. Manfred Voigts, Die “Freie Wissenschaftliche Vereinigung” – Eine Anti-antisemitische Studentenverbindung, in: Pardes 11 (2005), 103–107. 137 Kurt Krolop, Ein Prager Frondeur in Berlin: Max Steiner, in: Klaas-Hinrich Ehlers, Steffen Höhne, Marek Nekula (eds.), Studien zur Prager deutschen Literatur. Wien 2005, 125–144, 128. 138 Steiner, Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums [n. 132], 20. 139 Cf. Die Fackel 6/176 (1905), 22–24. For the relationship between Kraus and Steiner cf. Kurt Krolop, Prager Autoren im Lichte der Fackel, in: Ehlers (ed.), Studien zur Prager deutschen Literatur [n. 137], 108–110. 140 Kurt Hiller, Leben gegen die Zeit, vol. 1: Logos. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1969, 64f. 141 Salomo Friedländer, Max Steiner : Die Welt der Aufklärung, in: Der Sturm 3/107 (April 1912), 20–22; 3/108 (Mai 1912), 28–30; 3/109 (May 1912), 34. 110
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Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Hartmut Geerken and Detlef Thiel, 38 vols. Herrsching 2005f. 143 Cf. Thomas Ludolf Mayer, Das Problem eines höchsten Grundsatzes in der Philosophie bei Jacob Sigismund Beck. Amsterdam 1991. 144 Cf. Jörg Krappmann, Apologet der Konsequenz. Der Prager deutsche Philosoph Max Steiner. Olomouc 2009, 27–46. 145 Cf. Karl Vorländer, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2. Leipzig 1911, 422–442. 146 Vorländer, Geschichte der Philosophie [n. 145], 438. 147 Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung [n. 131], 56. 148 Steiner, Die Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums, 19, 6. 149 Otfried Höffe, Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. München 2003, 23. 150 Steiner, Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums [n. 132], 28. 151 Salomo Friedländer/Mynona, Hat Erich Maria Remarque wirklich gelebt?/Der Holzweg zurück. Herrsching 2010, 372. 152 Friedländer, Remarque [n. 151], 373. 153 Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung [n. 131], 197. 154 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. München 1899; id., Immanuel Kant. Die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk. München 1905. 155 Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung [n. 131], 197. Cf. also: Sven Brömsel, Darwin-Debatten um 1900. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Julius von Wiesner und Max Steiner, in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 65/3 (2013), 252–277. 156 Oscar Ewald, Die deutsche Philosophie im Jahre 1908, in: Kant-Studien 14 (1909), 389. For more details on the relationship between Steiner and Ewald cf. Jörg Krappmann, Der Prager deutsche Philosoph Max Steiner und die Kant-Forschung zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne, Marek Nekula (eds.), Kafka und Prag. Köln 2012, 69–80. 157 Steiner, Rückständigkeit des modernen Freidenkertums [n. 132], 98. 158 Petr A. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution. London 1902. 159 Cf. Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung [n. 131], 15. 160 Hans Wisskirchen, “Gegensätze mögen sich reimen”. Quellenkritische und entstehungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Thomas Manns Naphta-Figur, in: Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 29 (1985), 430. 161 Max Steiner, Die Lehre Darwins in ihren letzten Folgen. Berlin 1908, 94. 162 Steiner, Die Welt der Aufklärung [n. 131], 66. 163 Alenka Zupancˇicˇ, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. London 2000, 92. 164 Zupancˇicˇ, Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan [n. 163], 248. 165 Zdravko Kobe, Tri ˇstudije o Kantovi prakticˇni filozofiji [Three Studies on Kant’s Practical Philosophy]. Ljubljana 2008. 166 Zdravko Kobe, Automaton transcendentale I. Kantova pot h Kantu [Automaton Transcendentale I. Kant’s Path to Kant]. Ljubljana 1995. 167 Zdravko Kobe, Automaton transcendentale II. Kritika cˇistega uma [Automaton Transcendentale II. Critique of Pure Reason]. Ljubljana 2001. 168 Kobe, Tri ˇstudije o Kantovi prakticˇni filozofiji [n. 167], 180 [Translation: Jure Simoniti]. 169 Kobe, Tri ˇstudije o Kantovi prakticˇni filozofiji [n. 167], 181 [Translation: Jure Simoniti].
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Jure Simoniti, Die Philosophie der kleinsten Prätentiösität [Philosophy of the Smallest Pretentiousness], trans. Alfred Leskovec. Wien 2014. 171 Kant, KrV, A 407/B 434. 172 Ioannis Baptist Horvath, Declaratio infirmitatis fundamentorum operis Kantiani ‘Critik der Reinen Vernunft’. Buda 1797. 173 Kant, Prol, AA IV, 366. 174 Kant, KrV, B 39. 175 Simeon Csucsich, Philosophia critice elaborata. Viennae 1815. 176 Cf. Stjepan Zimmermann, Opc´a noetika. Teorija spoznaje i kritika njezine vrijednosti [A General Noetic. Theory of Knowledge and Critique of its Values]. Zagreb 1918, 13. 177 Zimmerman, Opc´a noetika [n. 176], 26ff. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of source literature are by Max Brinnich. 178 Franjo Markovic´, Logika, in: Prilozi za istrazˇivanje filozofijske basˇtine 35/36 (1912), 247–258, 258. 179 Franjo Markovic´, Razvoj i sustav obc´enite estetike [The Development and System of General Aesthetics]. Zagreb 1903, 198. 180 Albert Bazala, Povijest filozofije [History of Philosophy]. Zagreb 1912, 23. 181 Cf. Albert Bazala Filozofijske studije I. Metalogicˇki korijeni filozofije [Philosophical Studies I. Metalogical Roots of Philosophy]. Zagreb 1924. 182 Cf. the postface of the translation of Kant’s Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können and Die Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, published in Croatian under the title Dvije rasprave. Zagreb 1953, 237. 183 Milan Kangrga, Etika ili revolucija [Ethics or Revolution]. Belgrade 1983, 164. 184 Kant, TP, AA VIII, 278ff.. 185 Gajo Petrovic´, Moguc´nost cˇovjeka [Possibility of Man]. Zagreb 1969, 139. 186 Petrovic´, Moguc´nost cˇovjeka [n. 185], 101. 187 Karl Marx in September 1843 to Arnold Ruge, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol. 1. Berlin 1976, 344. 188 Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, in: Marx, Engels, Werke [n. 187], vol. 1, 382. 189 Cf. Gajo Petrovic´, Cˇemu praxis [The Purpose of Practice]. Zagreb 1972, 150; id., Moguc´nost cˇovjeka [n. 185], 98. 190 Petrovic´, Moguc´nost cˇovjeka [n. 185], 98. 191 Milan Kangrga, Fenomenologija ideolosˇko-politicˇkog nastupanja jugoslavenske srednje klase [Phenomenology of the ideological-political Appearance of Yugoslav Middle Class], in: Praxis 3–4 (1971), 445. 192 U povodu nekih najnovijih kritika Praxisa [On occassion of the recent Critique of Praxis], in: Praxis 1–2 (1974), 238. 193 Kant, TP, AA VIII, 290. 194 Aleksa Buha, Etika klasicˇnog njemacˇkog idealizma [The Ethics of Classical German Idealism]. Sarajevo 1986; Aleksa Buha, Argumenti za Republiku Srpsku [Arguments for the Serbian Republic]. Belgrade 1996. 195 Ivan Bubalo, Kantova etika i odgovornost za svijet [Kantian Ethics and Responsibility in the World]. Zagreb 1984. 196 Bubalo, Kantova etika [n. 195], 215.
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Tomasz Kups´ (ed.), Recepcja filozofii Immanuela Kanta w filozofii polskiej w pocza˛tkach XIX wieku [The Reception of Immanuel Kant in Polish Philosophy at the Beginning of the 19th Century]. Torun´ 2014; Mirosław Z˙elazny, Przedmowa tłumacza [Editor’s Preface], in: Immanuel Kant, O porzekadle…, Do wiecznego pokoju [On the Common Saying…, Perpetual Peace], trans. Mirosław Z˙elazny. Torun´ 1995, VII–XXVIII. 198 ˙ Zelazny, Przedmowa tłumacza [n. 197], XIII. 199 Heiner F. Klemme, Przedmowa do wydania polskiego [Preface to the Polish Edition], in: Kant, O porzekadle…, Do wiecznego pokoju [n. 197], LXXI–LXXII; Z˙elazny, Przedmowa tłumacza [n. 197], XIV. 200 Kups´ (ed.), Recepcja filozofii Immanuela Kanta w filozofii polskiej w pocza˛tkach XIX wieku [n. 197]. 201 Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Historia filozofii [History of Philosophy], vol. 2. Warszawa 1993, 189. 202 Cf. Karol Kuz´micz, Immanuel Kant jako inspirator polskiej teorii i filozofii prawa w latach 1918–1950 [Immanuel Kant as Inspiration Source of the Polish Theory of Law and Philosophy of Law 1918–1950]. Białystok 2009. 203 Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Je˛zyk i poznanie. Wybûr pism [Language and Cognition. Selection of Papers], vol. 1.Warszawa 1960, 264–277. 204 Roman Ingarden, Ksia˛z˙eczka o człowieku [A Small Book on Man]. Krakûw 1972, 39.
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Roger Bauer, Der Idealismus und seine Gegner in Österreich. Heidelberg 1966. See also id., Laßt sie koaxen, die kritischen Frösch in Preußen und Sachsen. Zwei Jahrhunderte Literatur in Österreich. Wien 1977 and Harald Haslmayr, Geistige Hintergründe des Biedermeier, in: Clifford Bernd, Robert Pichl, Margarete Wagner (eds.), The Other Vienna. The Culture of Biedermeier Austria. Österreichisches Biedermeier in Literatur, Musik, Kunst und Kulturgeschichte. Wien 2002, 285–296. 2 Cf. Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frühkantianismus in der Donaumonarchie. Amsterdam 1982. 3 Wilhelm Baum, Wien als letzter Zufluchtsort der Aufklärung. Josef Schreyvogel: Die Philosophie Kants als Bollwerk gegen die “neue Schule” der Wiener Romantik, in: Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll (eds.), Bildung und Einbildung. Vom verfehlten Bürgerlichen zum Liberalismus. Philosophie in Österreich (1820–1880). Klausen-Leopoldsdorf 1995, 283–298. 4 Ernst von Feuchtersleben cited in Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 2], 330. 5 Franz Grillparzer, Gedichte, in: id., Franz Grillparzer. Sämtliche Werke, Ausgewählte Briefe, Gespräche, Berichte, 4 vols., vol. 1, ed. Peter Frank, Karl Pörnbacher. München 1964–1969, 9–366, 330–331 (1849). 6 Franz Grillparzer, Erinnerungen, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 4, 189–224, 222–223 (1850/1851). 7 Franz Grillparzer, Tagebücher, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 4, 225–727, 486 (1832).
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Joseph Schreyvogel, Josef Schreyvogels Tagebücher 1810–1823, 2 vols., vol. 1, ed. Karl Glossy. Berlin 1903, 228 (8 January 1813). 9 Sepp Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen. Von Kant und Goethe zu Stifter. Ein Beitrag zur österreichischen Geistesgeschichte. Linz 1982, 40. 10 Elisabeth Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel. Förderer und Freund Grillparzers, in: Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins 96 (1992), 27–38, 28. See also: Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 9], 62. 11 Baum, Wien als letzter Zufluchtsort der Aufklärung [n. 3], 289. 12 Franz Grillparzer, Epigramme, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 1, 367–594, 426 (1837). 13 Joseph Schreyvogel cited in Robert Mühlher, Ontologie und Monadologie in der österreichischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Joseph Stummvoll (ed.), Die österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Festschrift zum fünfundzwanzigjährigen Dienstjubiläum des Generaldirektors Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Bick. Wien 1948, 488–504, 488. 14 Herbert Seidler, Österreichischer Vormärz und Goethezeit. Geschichte einer literarischen Auseinandersetzung. Wien 1982, 108. See also: Roger Bauer, Die “Neue Schule” der Romantik im Urteil der Wiener Kritik, in: Herbert Zeman (ed.), Die Österreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil im 19. Jahrhundert (1830–1880). Graz 1982, 221–229. 15 Franz Grillparzer, Studien und Aufsätze, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 209–1178, 716 (1848). 16 Walter Seitter, Unzeitgemäße Aufklärung. Franz Grillparzers Philosophie. Wien 1991, 165. See also: Peter Wittmann, Zu Grillparzers Rezeption von Kant und Hegel, in: Benedikt, Knoll (eds.), Bildung und Einbildung [n. 3], 529–540, 537–538. 17 Grillparzer, Epigramme [n. 12], 542 (1856). 18 Franz Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 20–178, 137f. 19 Grillparzer, Epigramme [n. 12], 547 (1857). 20 Seitter, Unzeitgemäße Aufklärung [n. 16], 25. See also Grillparzer, Epigramme [n. 12], 435 (1839) and 504 (1850). 21 Wittmann, Zu Grillparzers Rezeption von Kant und Hegel [n. 16], 529. 22 Wittmann, Zu Grillparzers Rezeption von Kant und Hegel [n. 16], 539–540. 23 Grillparzer, Studien und Aufsätze [n. 15], 692 (1835). 24 Grillparzer, Studien und Aufsätze [n. 15], 241 (1820). 25 For biographical data on Schiller see especially : Gero von Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik 1933–2009. Sein Leben und Schaffen. Stuttgart 22000 and Karin Wais, Die Schiller-Chronik. Frankfurt am Main 2005; moreover Helmut Koopmann (ed.), Schiller-Handbuch, 2. revised and updated edition. Stuttgart 2011; Axel Gellhaus, Norbert Oellers (eds.), Schiller. Bilder und Texte zu seinem Leben. Köln/Weimar/Wien 1999; Rose Unterberger, Friedrich Schiller. Orte und Bildnisse. Ein biographisches Bilderbuch. Stuttgart 2008; Rüdiger Safranski, Friedrich Schiller oder die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus. München/Wien 2004; Jörg Aufenanger, Friedrich Schiller. Biographie. Düsseldorf/Zürich 2004; PeterAndr¦ Alt, Friedrich Schiller. München 2004. 26 Karl Leonhard Reinhold on 14 June 1789 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 62. Cf. in Philipp Schaller’s piece in this volume, Reinhold as Mediator of Kantian Philosophy, 147–158. 27 Cf. Guido Naschert’s piece in this volume, Reinhold and the Reception of Kant among the Herbert Circle in Klagenfurt, 158–164.
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Friedrich Schiller on 10 April 1791 to Christian Gottfried Körner, in: id., Schillers Werke, founded by Julius Petersen, continued by Lieselotte Blumenthal and Benno von Wiese, ed. on behalf of the “Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der Klassischen Deutschen Literatur in Weimar” (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv) and the Schiller-Nationalmuseum in Marbach by Norbert Oellers and Siegfried Seidel, Nationalausgabe, Weimar, vol. 26: Briefwechsel. Schillers Briefe 1. 3. 1790–17. 5. 1794, ed. Edith Nahler and Horst Nahler. Weimar 1992, no. 68, 82f. Cf. Caroline von Wolzogen, Schillers Leben, verfaßt aus Erinnerungen der Familie, seinen eignen Briefen und den Nachrichten seines Freundes Körner, two parts. Stuttgart/Tübingen 1830, Zweiter Theil, 83. (Cited after the reprint, ed. Peter Boerner. Hildesheim 1990.) 29 Cf. Gabriele Geml’s piece on Joseph Schreyvogel in this volume, Joseph Schreyvogel – Kantian Moral Philosophy as the Art of Living, 303–312. 30 For the inaugural lecture cf. Friedrich Schiller, Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? Zum 200. Jahrestag von Friedrich Schillers Eintritt in den Lehrkörper der Universität Jena, ed. Hans Schmigalla and Volker Wahl in the series Jenaer Reden und Schriften, Veröffentlichung der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität. Jena 1989. Cf. also Wais, Schiller-Chronik [n. 25], 118. 31 Cf. Koopmann, Schiller-Handbuch [n. 25], 732ff.; Wais, Schiller-Chronik [n. 25], 68; Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik 1933–2009 [n. 25], 119. 32 Friedrich Schiller on 3 March 1791 to Christian Gottfried Körner, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 26, no. 65, 77f. 33 Friedrich Schiller on 28 November 1791 to Joachim Göschen, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 26, no. 92, 112; also Wais, Schiller-Chronik [n. 25], 152 and 153 as wells as Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik 1933–2009 [n. 25], 165 and 170. For Kant’s works in Schiller’s library cf. Schiller, Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 41, no. 1, 622–625. 34 Friedrich Schiller on 22 September 1797 to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 29, no. 140, 136ff. 35 Caroline von Wolzogen, Schillers Leben, 83 [n. 28]. Cf. Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik 1933–2009 [n. 25], 165. 36 Cf. Schiller, Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 41, no. 2, 307–320 sowie Schiller, Zum 200. Jahrestag [n. 30], 15 u. 38–43. 37 Friedrich Schiller on 13 June 1794 to Immanuel Kant, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 27, no. 11, 12f. 38 Immanuel Kant on 30 March 1795 to Friedrich Schiller, AA XII, 11. 39 Immanuel Kant on 30 March 1795 to Friedrich Schiller, AA XII, 11. 40 Friedrich Schiller on 23 August 1794 to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 27, no. 22, 25. 41 Friedrich Schiller on 23 August 1794 to Johann Wolfgang, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 27, no. 22, 26. 42 Friedrich Schiller on 31 August 1794 to Johann Wolfgang, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 27, no. 26, 32. 43 Cf. Frederic Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher. A Re-Examination. Oxford 2005, 72; cf. also Heike Pieper, Schillers Projekt eines ‘menschlichen Menschen’. Eine Interpretation der “Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen von Friedrich Schiller”, Dissertation. Bielefeld 1996, 138–142 and Violetta L. Waibel, Die Schönheit als zweite Schöpferin des Menschen. Schillers Idee des “Spieltriebs” und der “aktiven Bestimmbarkeit” in den Briefen
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‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung’, Beitrag für die Festschrift von Konrad Liessmann zum 60. Geburtstag im April 2013, in: Katharina Lacina, Peter Gaitsch (eds.), Intellektuelle Interventionen: Gesellschaft, Bildung, Kitsch. Wien 2013, url: http://www.loecker-verlag.at/ docs/ViolettaL.Waibel.pdf (30 June 2015). 44 Cf. Christian Friedrich Michaelis Nachschrift Fragmente aus Schillers aesthetischen Vorlesungen vom Winterhalbjahr 1792–93, in: Schiller, Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 21, 66–88 und ebd., 383–388. 45 Friedrich Schiller on 22 December 1798 to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 30, no. 16, 15. 46 For a detailed description of the historical origins of the letters Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, in: Schiller, Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 21, 232–242. 47 Cf. the detailed interpretation in Waibel, Die Schönheit als zweite Schöpferin des Menschen [n. 43]. 48 Friedrich Schiller, Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 20, 13. Brief, 347. 49 Schiller, Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [n. 48], 14. Brief, 353. 50 Schiller, Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [n. 48], 15. Brief, 359. 51 Kant, KU, § 9, 27–32. 52 Schiller, Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [n. 48], 27. Brief, 410. 53 Friedrich Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 20, 284. 54 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 282. 55 Kant, KpV AA V, 72. 56 Kant, KpV AA V, 73. 57 Kant, KpV AA V, 73. 58 Kant, KpV AA V, 73. 59 Kant, KpV AA V, 76. 60 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 260. 61 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 262. 62 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 264. 63 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 265. 64 Johann Erich Biester on 5 October 1793 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 456f. 65 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 23 n. 66 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 23 n. 67 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 23 n. 68 Kant, RGV, AA VI, 23f. n. 69 Kant, MSTL, AA VI, 391. 70 Kant, MSTL, AA VI, 392. 71 Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [n. 48], 316/317. 72 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 289. 73 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 296/297. 74 Cf. Schiller, Ueber die tragische Kunst, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 20, 148–170; id. Vom Erhabenen, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 20, 171–195; id. Ueber das Pathetische, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 20, 196–221. 75 Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 297.
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Schiller, Ueber Anmuth und Würde [n. 53], 298. Cf. here and hereafter Klaus Berghahn, Nachwort, in: Friedrich Schiller, Vom Pathetischen und Erhabenen. Ausgewählte Schriften zur Dramentheorie. Stuttgart 1981, 136ff. 78 Berghahn, Nachwort [n. 77], 138. 79 Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und des Erhabenen, AA II, 212. 80 Johann Wolfgang Goethe on 18 February 1795 to Friedrich Schiller, in: Schiller, Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 35, no. 149, 107. 81 Friedrich Schiller on 19 February 1795 to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in: id., Nationalausgabe [n. 28], vol. 27, no. 111. 82 Kant, KU AA V, 274. 83 Kant, KU AA V, 274. 84 Kant, KU AA V, 325/326. 85 Cf. Schiller, Ueber die tragische Kunst [n. 74], 148–170; Vom Erhabenen [n. 24], 171–195; Ueber das Pathetische [n. 74], 196–221. 86 Schiller, Ueber die tragische Kunst [n. 74], 164f. 87 Cf. Franz Grillparzer, [Zur Philosophie], in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 1144–1146, 1144f. [Tgb. 79, 1809/10 sowie Tgb. 180, 1816]. 88 Grillparzer, Tagebücher [n. 7], 486 [Tgb. 2010, 1832]. Cf. for Lichtenberg’s meaning for Grillparzer : Grillparzer, [Zur Philosophie], 1144 f [Tgb. 79, 1809/10] and Friedrich Sengle, Biedermeierzeit: Deutsche Literatur im Spannungsfeld zwischen Restauration und Revolution 1815–1848, 3 vols., vol. 3: Die Dichter. Stuttgart 1980, 59f. 89 Cf. Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 108f. and Elisabeth Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel. Der Aufklärer im Beamtenrock. Wien 1995, 126, 149ff. 90 Cf. the annotations for Grillparzer, in: Grillparzer, Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 1228. 91 Cf. the annotations for Grillparzer, in: Grillparzer, Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 1, 1205. 92 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 40. 93 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 40. 94 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 48. 95 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 48. 96 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 49. 97 Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 49 and Grillparzer, Das Narrennest, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 2, 577–590, 590. 98 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 2, 243. 99 Grillparzer, Tagebücher [n. 7], 389ff. [Tgb. 1413, 1826]. 100 Grillparzer, Zur Ästhetik, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 211–258, 241 [Tgb. 622, 1820]. 101 The accusations made against Grillparzer’s language sums up critically Sengle, Die Dichter [n.], 67. 102 Grillparzer, Zur Ästhetik [n. 100] resp. Franz Grillparzer, Aesthetische Studien, in: Grillparzers sämtliche Werke: in zwanzig Bänden, ed. August Sauer, vol. 15. Stuttgart 1892, 5–149. 103 Grillparzer, Zur Ästhetik [n. 100], 225f. [Tgb. 895, 1820/21]. 104 Grillparzer, Zur Ästhetik [n. 100], 284 [Tgb. 3196, 1837]. 105 Cf. Fritz Störi, Grillparzer und Kant. Frauenfeld/Leipzig 1935, 20ff. 106 Cf. Störi, Grillparzer und Kant [n. 105], 31f. 107 Cf. Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 138. 77
572 108
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Cf. Grillparzer, Zur Philosophie, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 3, 1155 [Tgb. 4245, 1859]. 109 Cf. Störi, Grillparzer und Kant [n. 105], “Die Ethik”, 57–81; especially 64. Cf. also and for example Bernd Breitenbruch, Ethik und Ethos bei Grillparzer. Denkerische Bemühung und dramatische Gestaltung. Berlin 1965; Friedrich Kainz, Grillparzer als Denker. Der Ertrag seines Werks für die Welt- und Lebensweisheit. Wien 1975; esp. chapter 11 “Ethik”, 138–218, 141. 110 Cf. Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie [n. 18], 153. 111 Grillparzer, Libussa, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 2, 449–518, 516. [emphasis in original] 112 Grillparzer, Die Jüdin von Toledo, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 2, 257–343, 339. 113 Grillparzer, Zur Ästhetik [n. 100], 222 [Tgb. 883, 1820/21]. 114 Grillparzer, [Wieviel weißt du, o Mensch] (Gedichte 1843), in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 1, 292f., 293; Kant, KpV, A 289. 115 Grillparzer, Nachruf an Zacharias Werner (Gedichte 1823), in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 1, 151f., 152 [emphasis in original]. 116 Grillparzer zit. in: Breitenbruch, Ethik und Ethos bei Grillparzer [n. 109], 44. 117 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 8. Jänner 1811”, 12. 118 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 10f. 119 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 4. März 1811”, 36. 120 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 15. Jänner 1811”, 20. 121 Amand Berghofer zit. in: Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 11. 122 Amand Berghofer zit. in: Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 11. 123 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 4. März 1811”, 36; “Eintrag vom 13. Mai 1811”, 67f. 124 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 13. Mai 1811”, 68. 125 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 16. Jänner 1811”, 20; “Eintrag vom 21. Jänner 1811”, 24. 126 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 27ff.; 57. 127 Johann Baptist von Alxinger zit. in: Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 28f. 128 Cf. for Schreyvogel’s contributions to the “Monathsschrift” with a particular focus on Kant’s philosophy : Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 2], “Kapitel VII: Schreyvogel und die Österreichische Monatsschrift”, 207–229. 129 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 29ff. 130 Cf. Joseph Schreyvogel, Der Teutsche Lovelace. Proben aus einem Roman in Briefen, in: Der neue Teutsche Merkur 3/11 (1795), 217–247 sowie id., Der Teutsche Lovelace, in: Der neue Teutsche Merkur 1/1 (1796), 3–15. 131 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 61. 132 Cf. Horst Schröpfer, Kants Weg in die Öffentlichkeit. Christian Gottfried Schütz als Wegbereiter der kritischen Philosophie. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt 2003 sowie Horst Schröpfer, Christian Gottfried Schütz – Initiator einer wirkungsvollen Verbreitung der Philosophie Kants, in: Norbert Hinske, Erhard Lange, Horst Schröpfer (eds.), Der Aufbruch in den Kantianismus. Der Frühkantianismus an der Universität Jena von 1785–1800 und seine Vorgeschichte. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt 1995, 15–35. 133 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 61.
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Joseph Schreyvogel am 14. 12. 1794 an seinen Bruder Georg, zit. in: Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 56. 135 Cf. Karl Glossy, Einleitung, in: Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], “I. Theil”, XVII–LXXIX, XXXVI. 136 Cf. Karl Glossy, Einleitung, in: Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], “I. Theil”, XVII–LXXIX, XXXVI. 137 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 72, 91. 138 Ferdinand von Plffy zit. in: Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 114. 139 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 177 (for Shakespeare), 193ff. (for Goethe and Schiller). 140 Cf. Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 2, “Einträge vom 13. und 15. März 1817”, 243. 141 Cf. Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 74ff. 142 Cf. Hellmut Himmel, Geschichte der deutschen Novelle. München 1963, 181ff. 143 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 1. Oktober 1811”, 188. Cf. zu Schreyvogels gelinder Aversion gegen die belletristische Literatur auch Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 4. Juni 1811”, 83. 144 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Einträge vom 4. und 7. Februar 1812”, 155. 145 Cf. for the collections of Schreyvogel’s library : Buxbaum, Joseph Schreyvogel [n. 89], 282f. 146 Cf. Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 4. Februar 1812”, 155. 147 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “20: Eintrag vom 15. Jänner 1811”, 20. 148 Cf. Gabriele Geml’s pieces Feuchtersleben, Kant and the Prehistory of Psychotherapy, 313–323, and Franz Grillparzer – Approaches to Kant, 291–303, in this volume. 149 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 18. Juni 1811”, 89. 150 Cf. Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 16. Jänner 1811”, 21. 151 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 15. Dezember 1811”, 141f. 152 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 26. Mai 1811”, 68 and “Eintrag vom 6. August 1811”, 101. 153 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 15. Dezember 1811”, 141f. 154 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 15. Jänner 1811”, 20 [emphasis in original] and “Eintrag vom 23. Februar 1812”, 161. 155 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 14. Mai 1811”, 76. 156 Schreyvogel, Tagebücher [n. 8], vol. 1, “Eintrag vom 20. Dezember 1811”, 143. 157 Ernst von Feuchtersleben, cited in: Kurt G. Fischer, Ernst von Feuchtersleben – Kulturpolitik und Bildung, in: Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Pädagogische Schriften, ed. Kurt G. Fischer. Paderborn 1963, 144–162, 146. 158 Cf. Karl Pisa, Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben. Pionier der Psychosomatik. Wien 1998, 44ff. Cf. Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Autobiographische Mittheilungen für die K. K. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, in: id., Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Hedwig Heger, vol.VI/1, ed. by Barbara Otto. Wien 2002, 265–274, 269. 159 Grillparzer, Meine Erinnerungen an Feuchtersleben, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 4, 221–224; 221f. 160 Cf. Else Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben und seine Seelenheilkunde, in: id., Hölderlin, Feuchtersleben, Freud. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse, der Psychiatrie und Neurologie, ed. and introduced by Bernhard Handlbauer. Graz/Wien 2004, 315–346, 316, 332, 339.
574 161
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Cf. Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 333. Cf. Max Neuburger, Feuchtersleben als Psychiater und Psychotherapeut, offprint from Wiener Medizinischen Wochenschrift 24 (1933), and Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 329, 338. 163 Cf. Gerhard Stumm, Geschichte, Paradigmen und Methoden der Psychotherapie, in: Thomas Slunecko (ed.), Psychotherapie. Eine Einführung. Wien 2009, 29–84, 30. 164 Cf. Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 329. 165 Cf. the critical accounts of Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 316 and Herbert Seidler, Nachwort zu: Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol. I/2, 887–901, 887f. 166 Cf. Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 336f. 167 Cf. Pappenheim, Der Psychiater Feuchtersleben [n. 160], 345. 168 Cf. Fischer, Ernst von Feuchtersleben – Kulturpolitik und Bildung [n. 157], 155f. and Thomas Maisel, Alma Mater auf den Barrikaden: Die Universität Wien im Revolutionsjahr 1848. Wien 1998, 43. 169 Cf. Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.VI/2 (Apparat), 857 [comment to the letter]. 170 Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, cited in: Pisa, Feuchtersleben [n. 158], 171. 171 Cf. Peter Frank, Karl Pörnbacher, Anhang to: Grillparzer, Sämtliche Werke [n. 5], vol. 4, 1013. 172 Grillparzer, Meine Erinnerungen an Feuchtersleben [n. 159], 222f. 173 Feuchtersleben, Autobiographische Mittheilungen [n. 158], vol. VI/2, 930 [comment]. 174 Ludwig August Frankl, cited in: Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.VI/2, 856. 175 Feuchtersleben, Autobiographische Mittheilungen [n. 158], 271. 176 Cf. Kant, Prol, AA IV, 260. 177 Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.VI/2, 936 [comment]. 178 Heinrich Damerow, cited in: Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.VI/2, 934. 179 Cf. Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.VI/2, 935 [comment]. 180 Cf. Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde, ed. as a sketch from the lectures, unchanged reprint of the 1845 edition published by Carl Gerold in Vienna, photomechanical reprint. Graz 1976, XIV. 181 Kant, SF, AA VII, 95–115. 182 Cf. e. g. Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele, in: id., Kleines Lehrbuch der Vernunft. Zur Diätetik der Seele und Tagebuchblätter, with a postface by Hans Tabarelli. Wien 1949, 13–130; 13f. 183 Cf. Feuchtersleben, Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde [n. 180], 372. 184 Feuchtersleben, Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde [n. 180], 372 [emphasis in original]. 185 Cf. Gabriele Geml, Franz Grillparzer and Joseph Schreyvogel in the present volume 291–312. 186 Herbert Seidler, Nachwort to: Feuchtersleben, Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol. I/2, 887–901, 894. 187 Cf. Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Gedichte, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol.I/1, 198f. Cf. also vol. I/2, 644. 162
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Cf. Feuchtersleben, Gedichte, in: id., Sämtliche Werke [n. 158], vol. I/1, 440f. [emphasis in original]. 189 Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele [n. 182], 52f. 190 Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Lebensblätter. Wien/Leipzig 1851, 237f. 191 Andreas Arndt, Friedrich Schlegel, in: Walter Jaeschke, id., Die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie nach Kant. Systeme der reinen Vernunft und ihre Kritik 1785–1845. München 2012, 224. 192 Armin Erlinghagen, Das Universum der Poesie. Prolegomena zu Friedrich Schlegels Poetik. Paderborn u. a. 2011, 431. 193 Siehe zur frühen Kant-Rezeption ausführlicher Guido Naschert, Friedrich Schlegels philosophische Lehrjahre. Untersuchungen zu den Traditionsbezügen und Innovationen der Frühromantik. Berlin/Boston 2015, Kap. II–IV. 194 Friedrich Schlegel, Studien des Alterthums, 1794–1799. Köln, Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln. Nachlass Friedrich Schlegel (Görres-Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Wissenschaft) (Edition in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 15/3 in Vorbereitung). 195 Cf. Friedrich Schlegel, Von der wahren Liebe Gottes und dem falschen Mystizismus (1819), in: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, founded and ed. Ernst Behler (†) assisted by Jean-Jacques Anstett (†) and Hans Eichner, continued by Andreas Arndt. Paderborn/ München/Wien 1958ff., here: vol. 8, 529–545, 533. See Guido Naschert, “Klassisch leben”. Friedrich Schlegels Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (1798) im Kontext von klassischer Altertumswissenschaft und kritischer Philosophiehistorie, in: Thomas Lange, Harald Neumeyer (eds.), Kunst und Wissenschaft um 1800. Würzburg 2000, 179–198; Naschert, Schlegels philosophische Lehrjahre [n. 193], passim. 196 Cf. Friedrich Schlegel, [Beilage II.] Aus der ersten Epoche. Zur Logik und Philosophie. 1796 (in Jena), in: id., Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe [n. 195], vol. 18, 518. 197 Cf. Winfried Eckel, Nikolaus Wegmann (eds.), Figuren der Konversion. Friedrich Schlegels Übertritt zum Katholizismus im Kontext. Paderborn 2014 (= Schlegel-Studien, vol. 5) 198 Cf. Friedrich Creuzer on 7 June 1808 to Friedrich Carl von Savigny, in: Hans Eichner, Friedrich Schlegel im Spiegel seiner Zeitgenossen, ed. Hartwig Mayer, Hermann Patsch, 4 vols., vol. 2. Würzburg 2012, 91. 199 Cf. etwa Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophische Fragmente. Zweite Epoche. I. [1798], in: id., Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe [n. 195], vol. 18, 320. 200 Friedrich Schlegel, Die Entwicklung der Philosophie in zwölf Büchern [Köln 1804–1805], in: id., Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe [n. 195], vol. 12, 283–291. 201 Cf. e. g. Bianca Turtur, “Wien ist schön”. Situation der deutschen Romantiker in Wien. Eine feldtheoretische Untersuchung. Berlin 2001; Christian Aspalter, Wolfgang MüllerFunk, Edith Saurer, Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, Anton Tantner (eds.), Paradoxien der Romantik. Gesellschaft, Kultur und Wissenschaft in Wien im frühen 19. Jahrhundert. Wien 2006. 202 Friedrich Schlegel, Ueber die neuere Geschichte [1810/11], in: id., Kritische FriedrichSchlegel-Ausgabe [n. 195], vol. 7, 125–407, here: 389. 203 Friedrich Schlegel, [Über F. H. Jacobi: Von den Göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung. 1812], in: id., Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe [n. 195], vol. 8, 441–458, hier 456f. Cf. Bärbel Frischmann, Vom transzendentalen zum frühromantischen Idealismus. J. G. Fichte und Fr. Schlegel. Paderborn 2005, 263–267.
576 204
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Friedrich Schlegel, Der Philosoph Hamann [1812], in: id., Kritische Friedrich-SchlegelAusgabe [n. 195], vol. 8, 459–461, here: 460. 205 For biographical data see Urban Roedl, Adalbert Stifter. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1965; and: Peter A. Schoenborn, Adalbert Stifter. Sein Leben und Werk. Tübingen/Basel 1999. 206 Cf. Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 11. 207 Cf. Moriz Enzinger, Adalbert Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830). Innsbruck 1950, 58. 208 Cf. Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207], 60. 209 Cf. Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 11. 210 Cf. Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 18. Cf. Adalbert Langer, Zu den Quellen des Rechtsdenkens bei Adalbert Stifter. Eine geistesgeschichtliche Studie. Linz 1968. 211 Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 18. 212 Cf. Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 18. 213 Winfried Georg Sebald, Bis an den Rand der Natur. Versuch über Stifter, in: id., Die Beschreibung des Unglücks. Zur österreichischen Literatur von Stifter bis Handke. Salzburg/Wien 1985, 15–37, 15. 214 Thomas Bernhard, Alte Meister, in: id., Werke, ed. Martin Huber, Wendelin SchmidtDengler, vol. 8. Frankfurt am Main 2008. 215 Arno Schmidt, Zettel’s Traum. Stuttgart 1970, 807. 216 Arno Schmidt, Sitara und der Weg dorthin. Eine Studie. Frankfurt am Main 1985, 339. 217 Walther Dörr, Stifter und Kant, in: Mitteilungsblatt der Adalbert-Stifter-Gesellschaft (München) 1952, 100–101, 101. 218 Cf. Wilhelm Dehn, Ding und Vernunft. Zur Interpretation von Stifters Dichtung. Bonn 1969, 5; and Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207]. Cf. Werner M. Bauer, Stifter und die Aufklärung, in: Klaus Müller-Salget, Sigurd Paul Scheichl (eds.), Nachklänge der Aufklärung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Für Werner M. Bauer zum 65. Geburtstag. Innsbruck 2008, 27–42. 219 Cf. Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207], 184. 220 Adalbert Stifter, Feldblumen, in: id., Werke und Briefe. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Alfred Doppler, Wolfgang Frühwald, vol. 1/4: Studien. Buchfassungen. Erster Band, ed. Helmut Bergner, Ulrich Dittmann. Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln/Mainz 1980, 43–171, 61. 221 Cf. Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207], 184. 222 Cited in Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207], 184–185. 223 Cf. Heinrich Ritter von Srbik, Adalbert Stifter. Politisches Vermächtnis. Wien 1950, “Vorwort”, 7–10, 7–8. 224 Cf. Wilhelm Dehn, Ding und Vernunft. Zur Interpretation von Stifters Dichtung. Bonn 1969. 225 Cf. Domandl, Wiederholte Spiegelungen [n. 9], 14–15; and Enzinger, Stifters Studienjahre (1818–1830) [n. 207]. 226 Sebald, Bis an den Rand der Natur [n. 213], 18. 227 Adalbert Stifter, Was ist das Recht?, in: id., Werke und Briefe. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Alfred Doppler, Wolfgang Frühwald, vol. 8/2: Schriften zu Politik und Bildung. Texte, ed. Werner M. Bauer. Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln/Mainz 1997, 231–234, 231. 228 Dörr, Stifter und Kant [n. 217], 100. 229 Stifter, Was ist das Recht? [n. 227], 233.
Kant and his Poets 230
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Stifter, Was ist das Recht? [n. 227], 234. Kant, GMS, AA IV, 430, n. 232 Kant, GMS, AA IV, 430, n. 233 Friedrich Hebbel, Das Komma im Frack, in: id., Vermischte Schriften IV (1825–1863). Kritische Arbeiten III, ed. Richard Maria Werner. Berlin 1904, 189–193, 193. 234 Adalbert Stifter, Bunte Steine. Buchfassungen, in: id., Werke und Briefe, vol. 2/2, “Vorrede”, 9–19, 9. 235 Stifter, Bunte Steine [n. 234], 10. 236 Stifter, Bunte Steine [n. 234], 12. 237 Stifter, Bunte Steine [n. 234], 13. 238 Stifter, Bunte Steine [n. 234], 13. 239 Schoenborn, Stifter. Leben und Werk [n. 205], 371. 240 Sepp Domandl, Die philosophische Tradition von Adalbert Stifters “Sanftem Gesetz”, in: Vierteljahresschrift des Adalbert Stifter-Instituts des Landes Oberösterreich 1/2 (1972), 79–104, 87. 241 Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhäuser assisted by Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, vol. II/1: Aufsätze, Essays, Vorträge, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt am Main 1977, 334–367, 340. 242 Cf. Domandl, Die philosophische Tradition von Adalbert Stifters “Sanftem Gesetz” [n. 240], 88. 243 Cf. for example Helmut Richter, Berlin. Aufstieg zum kulturellen Zentrum. Bonn 1987. 244 For the cultural differences between Germany and Austria before and after World War II cf. for example Jochen Staadt (ed.), Schwierige Dreierbeziehung. Österreich und die beiden deutschen Staaten. Frankfurt am Main 2013; Carl E. Schorske, General Tension and Cultural Change. Reflections on the Case of Vienna, in: The Turn of the Century. German Literature and Art, 1890–1915, ed. Gerald Chapple and Hans H. Schulte. Bonn 1981, 416–431; Marion F. Deshmukk, Art and Politics in Turn-of-the-Century Berlin, in: ib., 462–475. A certain but biased impression gives Gabriele Holzer, Verfreundete Nachbarn. Österreich – Deutschland. Ein Verhältnis. Wien 1995. Cf. also Günther Sander, Engagierte Wissenschaft. Austromarxistische Kulturstudien und die Anfänge der britischen Cultural Studies. Wien/Berlin 2006; and Gerhard Funke, Grundlagen einer transzendentalphilosophischen Systematik. Die geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen der unterschiedlichen Entwicklung, die die systematische Philosophie bis heute in Österreich und Deutschland genommen hat. Stuttgart 1992. 245 Robert Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe, commented digital edtion of all works, letters and posthumous writings, with transcripts and facsimiles of all handwritings, ed. Walter Fanta, Klaus Amann and Karl Corino. Klagenfurt 2009, “Pfad: Band 16: Frühe Tagebuchhefte 1899–1926/Eintrag vom 20. Februar 1902”. 246 For biographical data see Paul Schick, Karl Kraus. In Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1965; and: Friedrich Rothe, Karl Kraus. Die Biographie. München 2003. See also Hans Weigel, Karl Kraus oder die Macht der Ohnmacht. Wien 1986. 247 Cf. Alfred Pfabigan, Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus. Eine politische Biographie. Wien 1976, 164. 248 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 329. Wien 1911, 11. 249 Kraus, Die Fackel 329. Wien 1911 7. 231
578 250
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Karl Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Vorspiel und Epilog, in: id., Schriften, ed. Christian Wagenknecht, vol. 10. Frankfurt am Main 1986, 9. 251 Cf. e. g. the reading of Die Raben, url: http://www.wienbibliothek.at/medien/raben3. m4v (18 May 2014). 252 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 1. Wien 1899, 1–2. 253 Kraus, Die Fackel 1 [n. 252], 1. 254 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 691. Wien 1925, 61. 255 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 213. Wien 1906, 19. 256 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 9. Wien 1899, 27. 257 Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, in: id., Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften 1. Frankfurt am Main 1977, 353–384, 355. 258 Karl Kraus, Die Sprache, in: id., Schriften [n. 250], vol. 7, 12. 259 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 413. Wien 1915, 43. 260 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 759. Wien 1927, 87. 261 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 283. Wien 1909, 28. 262 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 329. Wien 1911, 10. 263 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 406. Wien 1915, 152. 264 Theodor W. Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität. Zum elften Band der Werke von Karl Kraus, in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann assisted by Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz, vol. 11: Noten zur Literatur. Frankfurt am Main 1974, 367–387, 381. 265 Cf. Christian Wagenknecht, Korrektur und Klitterung. Zur Arbeitsweise von Karl Kraus, in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Text + Kritik. Sonderband Karl Kraus. München 1975, 108–115, 108. 266 Cf. Wagenknecht, Korrektur und Klitterung [n. 265], 108. 267 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 303. Wien 1910, 40. 268 Cf. Otto Kerry, Karl-Kraus-Bibliographie. Mit einem Register der Aphorismen, Gedichte, Glossen und Satiren. München 1970; and Sigurd Paul Scheichl, Kommentierte Auswahlbibliographie zu Karl Kraus, in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.), Text + Kritik. Sonderband Karl Kraus [n. 265], 158–241. 269 Irina Djassemy, Die verfolgende Unschuld. Zur Geschichte des autoritären Charakters in der Darstellung von Karl Kraus. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2011, 29. 270 Djassemy, Die verfolgende Unschuld [n. 269], 29. 271 Djassemy, Die verfolgende Unschuld [n. 269], 29. 272 Gerhard Scheit, Jargon der Demokratie. Über den neuen Behemoth. Freiburg 2006, 227. 273 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 68. Wien 1901, 3. 274 Kant, KrV, A 2. 275 Kraus, Die Fackel 68 [n. 273] 4. 276 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 484. Wien 1918, 211. 277 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 242. Wien 1908, 11. 278 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 406. Wien 1915, 100. 279 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 190. Wien 1905, 6. 280 Kraus, Die Fackel 190 [n. 279], 6. 281 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 577. Wien 1921, 40. 282 Kraus, Die Fackel 577 [n. 281], 40.
Kant and his Poets 283
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Cf. Volker Gerhardt, Immanuel Kants Entwurf “Zum ewigen Frieden”. Eine Theorie der Politik. Darmstadt 1995, 212. 284 Cf. Gerhardt, Kants Entwurf “Zum ewigen Frieden” [n. 283], 212. 285 Otfried Höffe, Einleitung: Der Friede – ein vernachlässigtes Ideal, in: id. (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden. Berlin 1995, 5–18, 5. 286 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 343. 287 Cf. Höffe, Der Friede – ein vernachlässigtes Ideal [n. 285], 9. 288 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 343. 289 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 347. 290 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 343. 291 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 344. 292 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 345. 293 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 345. 294 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 346. 295 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 346. 296 Cf. Höffe, Der Friede – ein vernachlässigtes Ideal [n. 285], 10. 297 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 349. 298 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 354. 299 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 357. 300 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 350. 301 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 350. 302 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 360. 303 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 363. 304 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel 474. Wien 1918, 159. 305 Kraus, Die Fackel 474 [n. 304], 159. 306 Cf. Kant, TP, AA VIII, 309. 307 Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität [n. 264], 369–370. 308 Adorno, Sittlichkeit und Kriminalität [n. 264], 369. 309 Kraus, Die Fackel 474 [n. 304], 160. 310 Kraus, Die Fackel 474 [n. 304], 156. 311 Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit [n. 250], 354. 312 Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit [n. 250], 354. 313 Kraus, Die Fackel 474 [n. 304], 155. 314 Kraus, Die Fackel 474 [n. 304], 155–156. 315 For biographical data see Ingeborg Schnack, Rainer Maria Rilke. Chronik seines Lebens und seines Werkes, second, revised and enlarged edition. Frankfurt am Main 1996; Gunter Martens, Annemarie Post-Martens, Rainer Maria Rilke. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2008; Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke. New York 1996. 316 Cf. Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 8. 317 Cf. Freedman, Life of a Poet [n. 315], 23 and also Schnack, Rainer Maria Rilke [n. 315], 23 and Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 14. 318 Cf. the article by Christoph Leschanz Kant in the Work of Robert Musil in this volume, 372–380. 319 Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 12. 320 Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 12. 321 Schnack, Rilke [n. 315], 19.
580 322
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Cf. Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 12–13. Cf. Schnack, Rilke [n. 315], 24–28 and 35–37 and also Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 16 and 19. 324 Schnack, Rilke [n. 315], 62. 325 Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 57. 326 Cf. Martens, Post-Martens, Rilke [n. 315], 104. 327 Schnack, Rilke [n. 315], 218. 328 Tina Simon, Rilke als Leser. Untersuchungen zum Rezeptionsverhalten. Ein Beitrag zur Zeitbegegnung des Dichters während des ersten Weltkrieges. Frankfurt am Main/Wien 2001, 249. 329 Rainer Maria Rilke on 18 February 1897 to Dr. Karl Freiherrn Du Prel, in: id., Briefe aus den Jahren 1892 bis 1904, ed. Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber. Leipzig 1939, 33. 330 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik, ed. with an introduction by Karl Kehrbach. Leipzig 1880, Einleitung, III. According to Kehrbach’s statement, it was published by Fues (R. Reisland) in 1880. 331 Tomas Kaiser, Zwischen Philosophie und Spiritismus. (Bildwissenschaftliche) Quellen zum Leben und Werk des Carl du Prel. Dissertation University of Lüneburg 2006, 33, url: http://d-nb.info/987129473/34 (2 March 2015). 332 Cf. Kaiser, Zwischen Philosophie und Spiritismus [n. 331], 115. 333 Cf. for this Birgit Recki, Raffael ohne Hände? Kant, Lessing, Val¦ry und andere über Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Kunst, in: Violetta L. Waibel, Konrad Paul Liessmann (eds.), Es gibt Kunstwerke – Wie sind sie möglich? Paderborn 2014, 33–54, 37. 334 Carl du Prel, Das Rätsel des Menschen. Einleitung in das Studium der Geheimwissenschaften. Graz 2008, 21. 335 Du Prel, Das Rätsel des Menschen [n. 334], 64. 336 Du Prel, Das Rätsel des Menschen [n. 334], 41. 337 Du Prel, Das Rätsel des Menschen [n. 334], 41. 338 Du Prel, Das Rätsel des Menschen [n. 334], 41. 339 Kant, TG, AA II, 332. 340 Kant, TG, AA II, 332. 341 Kant, TG, AA II, 368. 342 Kant, TG, AA II, 318. 343 Arthur Schopenhauer, Versuch über das Geistersehn und was damit zusammenhängt, in: id., Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. 1. Zürich 1988, 225–310, 264. 344 Schopenhauer, Versuch über das Geistersehn [n. 343], 263 f, trans. Sabine Roehr and Christopher Janaway, in: Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena. Short Philosophical Essays, vol. 1, “Essay on Spirit-seeing and Related Issues”. Cambridge 2014. 345 Kant, KrV, A 222/223, B 270. 346 Schopenhauer, Versuch über das Geistersehn [n. 343], 229, trans. Roehr, Janaway, in: Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena [n. 344]. 347 Rainer Maria Rilke on 18 February 1897 to Dr. Karl Freiherrn Du Prel, in: id., Briefe aus den Jahren 1892 bis 1904 [n. 329], 33. 348 August Stahl, “ein paar Seiten Schopenhauer ” – Überlegungen zu Rilkes SchopenhauerLektüre und deren Folgen, in: Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 69 u. 70 (1988 u. 1989), 569–582, 174–188, cf. esp. 569–576; the reference to Schopenhauer’s works can be found in Carl du Prel, Der Spiritismus. Leipzig, o. J., 21. 323
Kant and his Poets 349
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Cf. Priska Pytlik, Okkultismus und Moderne. Ein kulturhistorisches Phänomen und seine Bedeutung für die Literatur um 1900. Paderborn 2005, 167–194. 350 Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, with a comment by Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann. Frankfurt am Main 2000, 37. 351 Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge [n. 350], 30 f, trans. William Needham. 352 Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge [n. 350], 62f. 353 See Simon, Rilke als Leser [n. 328], 230. 354 Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge [n. 350], 47 f, trans. William Needham. 355 All citations in: Schnack, Rilke [n. 315], 523ff. 356 Rainer Maria Rilke, Auch ein Münchner Brief, in: id., Schriften, ed. Horst Nowalewski. Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig 1996, 38–42, 42. 357 Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge [n. 350], 63 f, trans. William Needham. 358 For biographical data see Bernhard Viel, Egon Friedell. Der geniale Dilettant. München 2013, 328–335. 359 Egon Friedell, Der Lausbub, in: Heribert Illig (ed.), Das Egon Friedell Lesebuch. Zürich 2009, 24–28, 24. First published in: Neues Wiener Journal (31 May 1914). 360 Cf. Viel, Egon Friedell [n. 358], 103–106. 361 Cf. Heribert Illig, Friedell als Buchautor, in: id. (ed.), Egon Friedell. Abschaffung des Genies. Gesammelte Essays von 1905–1918. Wien 1982, 277–282, 277. 362 Egon Friedell, Goethe, in: Illig (ed.), Egon Friedell Lesebuch [n. 359], 39–40. Cf. 363 Allan Janik, Stephen Toulmin, Wittgensteins Wien, translation from American English by Reinhard Merkel. Wien 1984, 104. 364 Peter Haage, Der Partylöwe, der nur Bücher fraß. Egon Friedell und sein Kreis. Hamburg 1971, 72. 365 Egon Friedell, Von Dante zu d’Annunzio. Wien 1915, 61. 366 Cf. Illig, Friedell als Buchautor [n. 361], 278. 367 Cf. Illig, Friedell als Buchautor [n. 361], 278. 368 Cf. Edgar Beier, Egon Friedell. Der Multimedia-Kommunikator als dialektisch (-synthetischer) Kulturpublizist, diploma thesis. Wien 1995, 29. 369 Cf. Heribert Illig, Schuld und Sühne, in: Illig (ed.), Egon Friedell Lesebuch [n. 359], 291. 370 Egon Friedell, Takt, in: Daniel Kehl, Daniel Kampa (eds.), Egon Friedell. Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken. Ausgewählte Essays zu Geschichte, Politik, Philosophie, Religion, Theater und Literatur. Zürich 2007, 47. Zuerst erschienen in: Neues Wiener Journal (23 March 1919). 371 Egon Friedell, Das Publikum, in: Kehl, Kampa (ed.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 111. First published in: Neues Wiener Journal, 27 May 1923. 372 Egon Friedell, Shaw als Erzieher, in: Kehl, Kampa (ed.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 200. First published in: März 6 (1909). 373 Egon Friedell, Zwei, die sich geärgert haben, in: Kehl, Kampa (ed.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 67. Zuerst erschienen in: Neues Wiener Journal (20 February 1921). 374 Friedell, Zwei, die sich geärgert haben [n. 373], 67. 375 Egon Friedell, Die Schaubühne. Ein Dialog, in: Heribert Illig (ed.), Abschaffung des Genies [n. 361], 137. Zuerst erschienen in: Schaubühne 22/7 (8 June 1911), 589. 376 Egon Friedell, Der Dichter, in: Kehl, Kampa (eds.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 228. Zuerst erschienen in: Schaubühne 19–21/6 (1910), 505, 534, 560. 377 Friedell, Der Dichter [n. 376], 229.
582 378
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Friedell, Der Dichter [n. 376], 234. Egon Friedell, Der Zweck des Lebens, in: Kehl, Kampa (eds.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 37. First published in: Neues Wiener Journal (23. 3. 1919). 380 Friedell, Takt [n. 370], 46–47. 381 Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit. Die Krisis der europäischen Seele von der Schwarzen Pest bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, unabridged special edition in one volume, first edition in three volumes 1927–1931. München 1984, 762. 382 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 768. 383 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 769. 384 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 768. 385 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 894. 386 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 896. 387 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 895. 388 Egon Friedell, Geschichte und Religion, in: Kehl, Kampa (eds.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 446. Aus: Walther Schneider (ed.), Das Altertum war nicht antik und andere Bemerkungen. Wien 1950. 389 Friedell, Geschichte und Religion [n. 388], 446. 390 Friedell, Geschichte und Religion [n. 388], 446. 391 Friedell, Geschichte und Religion [n. 388], 446. 392 Friedell, Takt [n. 370], 47. 393 Egon Friedell, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, in: Kehl, Kampa (eds.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 309. First published as preface in: Egon Friedell (ed.), Lichtenberg. Ein Verkleinertes Bild seines Gedankenlebens. Stuttgart 1910. 394 Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung oder Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt, in: id., Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari, vol. 6. Berlin/New York 1967–77 and 1988, 63. 395 Friedell, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg [n. 393], 309. 396 Friedell, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg [n. 393], 309. 397 Egon Friedell, Der Kritiker, in: Kehl, Kampa (eds.), Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken [n. 370], 265. 398 Egon Friedell, Der Lausbub, in: Neues Wiener Journal (31. 5. 1914). 399 Cf. Illig, Friedell als Buchautor [n. 361], 279. 400 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 763. 401 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 763. 402 Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes (1785), in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3/2. Berlin 1929ff., 3. 403 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 773. 404 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 773. 405 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 783. 406 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 762. 407 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 1429. 408 Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit [n. 381], 1429. 409 Egon Friedell, Kritik der Natur, in: Illig (ed.), Egon Friedell Lesebuch [n. 359], 53. Zuerst erschienen in: Berliner Tageblatt (17 September 1913). 410 Friedell, Kritik der Natur [n. 409], 53. 411 Friedell, Kritik der Natur [n. 409], 56. 379
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Friedell, Kritik der Natur [n. 409], 57. For biographical data see Karl Corino, Robert Musil. Eine Biographie. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003; Wilfried Berghahn, Robert Musil. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004; Oliver Pfohlmann, Robert Musil. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2012. 414 Cf. Berghahn, Robert Musil [n. 413], 9. 415 Cf. Pfohlmann, Robert Musil [n. 413], 22. 416 Robert Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Kommentare und Apparate/ Kontexte/Brünner und Berliner Jahre 1898–1907/1902”. 417 Cf. Corino, Robert Musil [n. 413], 1878–1879. 418 Cf. Corino, Robert Musil [n. 413], 130–133. 419 Cf. Musils Diary Entries on 8 and 15 May 1902 in: Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Lesetexte/Band 16. Frühe Tagebuchhefte 1899–1926/I. Brno, Stuttgart, Berlin (1899–1908)/4. Altes schwarzes Heft (1900–1904)/Tagebuch und literarische Projekte/ 53–54”. 420 Cf. Pfohlmann, Robert Musil [n. 413], 38. 421 Corino, Robert Musil [n. 413], 222. 422 Cf. Corino, Robert Musil [n. 413] ‘Ich kann nicht weiter’. Die Verlags- und Finanzmisere der frühen dreißiger Jahre und die Gründung der Berliner Musil-Gesellschaft, 1089–1108; ‘Verlegt, Verleger, in dauernder Verlegenheit’. Die Gründung des Wiener Musil-Fonds, 1159–1174. 423 Robert Musil, Motive – Überlegungen. Gesammelte Werke, ed. Adolf Fris¦, vol. 7: Kleine Prosa, Aphorismen, Autobiographisches. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1978, 882. Cf.: Aldo Venturelli, Die Kunst als fröhliche Wissenschaft. Zum Verhältnis Musils zu Nietzsche, in: Nietzsche-Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch für die Nietzsche-Forschung 9 (1980), 302–337, 303–304. 424 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Kommentare und Apparate/Werkkommentare/Band 9: Reden/Gedruckte Reden/Über die Dummheit/Textgenese”. 425 Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, in: id., Gesammelte Werke [n. 423], vol. 2, “Kapitel 100: General Stumm dringt in die Staatsbibliothek ein und sammelt Erfahrungen über Bibliothekare, Bibliotheksdiener und geistige Ordnung”, 459–465. 426 Thomas Söder, Robert Musil und die Begegnung mit dem Denken Kants in ‘Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless’, in: Musil Forum 19/20 (1993/94), 31–46, 31. 427 Josef Strutz, Von der biegsamen Dialektik. Notiz zur Bedeutung Kants, Hegels und Nietzsches für das Werk Robert Musils, in: Musil-Studien 12 (1984); Karl Dinklage, Karl Corino, Josef Strutz, Johann Strutz (ed.), Robert Musil – Literatur, Philosophie, Psychologie. München/Salzburg 1984, 11–21, 13. See also Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Band 12, Essays, 1928–1926, Skizze der Erkenntnis eines Dichters”. Cf. for Musil and his relation to Kant’s aesthetics also: Patrizia C. McBride, The Void of Ethics. Robert Musil and the Experience of Modernity. Evanston/Illinois 2006, “Kapitel 4: Kant and the Ethos of Aesthetic Judgment”, 97–127. 428 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Band 16, Frühe Tagebuchhefte 1899–1926/Eintrag vom 20. Februar 1902”. 429 Corino, Robert Musil [n. 413], 1878. 430 Cf. Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Kommentare und Apparate/Kontexte/ Zeitleiste/Brünner und Berliner Jahre 1898–1907/1902”. 431 Venturelli, Die Kunst als fröhliche Wissenschaft, 308.
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Musil, Franz Blei, in: id., Gesammelte Werke [n. 423], vol. 8: Essays und Reden, 1022. Cf. Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Nachlass-Apparate/Siglen/AN/Verzeichnis, AN 128”. 434 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Transkriptionen und Faksimiles/Nachlass Mappen/Mappengruppe IV/Mappe IV-2/IV-2–111 AN 128 2”. 435 Pfohlmann, Robert Musil [n. 413], 44. 436 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, in: id., Gesammelte Werke [n. 423], vol. 6: Prosa und Stücke, 8. 437 Söder, Robert Musil und die Begegnung mit dem Denken Kants [n. 426], 31. 438 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 73–74. 439 Cf. Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 74–78. 440 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 77–78. 441 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 78. 442 Söder, Robert Musil und die Begegnung mit dem Denken Kants [n. 426], 31. 443 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 78. 444 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 80. 445 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 82. 446 Musil, Der deutsche Mensch als Symptom, in: id., Gesammelte Werke [n. 423], vol. 8: Essays und Reden, 1385. 447 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Transkriptionen und Faksimiles/Nachlass Mappen/Mappengruppe IV/Mappe IV-2/IV-2–111 AN 128 2”. 448 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Transkriptionen und Faksimiles/Nachlass Mappen/Mappengruppe IV/Mappe IV-2/IV-2–111 AN 128 2”. 449 Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften [n. 425], 16. Cf. for Musil’s Möglichkeitsmensch and Kant also: Ulrich Karthaus, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften und die Phantasie. Überlegungen im Anschluß an Kant, in: Musil Forum 7 (1981), 111–117. 450 Cf. Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 83. 451 Cf. hierzu auch: Söder, Robert Musil und die Begegnung mit dem Denken Kants [n. 426], 37. 452 Musil, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [n. 436], 92. 453 Musil, Klagenfurter Ausgabe [n. 245], “Pfad: Band 16: Frühe Tagebuchhefte 1899–1926/Eintrag vom 20. Februar 1902”. 454 Söder, Robert Musil und die Begegnung mit dem Denken Kants [n. 426], 40. 455 Max Brod, Vom ewigen Frieden, in: Die Schaubühne 12/11 (1916), 245–248. 456 Brod, Vom ewigen Frieden [n. 455], 247. 457 Cf. Franz Kafka, Briefe 1914–1917, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, in: id., Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe. Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Gerhard Neumann, Malcolm Pasley, Jost Schillemeit, Gerhard Kurz under the advice of Nahum Glatzer, Rainer Gruenter, Paul Raabe, Marthe Robert. Frankfurt am Main 2005, 682 [comment to the letter]. 458 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 343. 459 Franz Kafka on 16 October 1917 to Felice Bauer, in: id., Briefe 1914–1917 [n. 457], 348–350. 460 Cf. Jürgen Born, Kafkas Bibliothek. Ein beschreibendes Verzeichnis, with an index of all books, journals and articles mentioned in Kafka’s writings. Frankfurt am Main 1990, 185. 461 Born, Kafkas Bibliothek [n. 460], 174. 462 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 343. 433
Kant and his Poets 463
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Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 347. Cf. Hans Saner, Die negativen Bedingungen des Friedens, in: Höffe (ed.), Zum ewigen Frieden [n. 285], 55f. 465 Saner, Negative Bedingungen, 56. 466 Cf. Pierre Laberge, Von der Garantie des ewigen Friedens, in: Höffe (ed.), Zum ewigen Frieden [n. 285], 160–165. 467 Cf. Laberge, Garantie [n. 466], 161. 468 Kant, IaG, AA VIII, 20f. 469 Cf. Laberge, Garantie [n. 466], 164. 470 Kant, IaG, AA VIII, 23. 471 Franz Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, ed. Jost Schillemeit, in: id., Schriften [n. 457], 119, 344. 472 Kant, IaG, AA VIII, 23. 473 Cf. Jospeh Vogl, Ort der Gewalt. Kafkas literarische Ethik. München 1990, 180–185. 474 Cf. Vogl, Ort der Gewalt [n. 473], 180. 475 Cf. Vogl, Ort der Gewalt [n. 473], 180. 476 Kafka, Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II [n. 471], 7. 477 Cf. Franz Kafka, Der Verschollene, ed. Jost Schillemeit, in: id., Schriften [n. 457], 387–419. 478 Kafka, Der Verschollene [n. 477], 402. 479 Cf. Kafka, Der Verschollene [n. 477], 400–403. 480 Kafka, Der Verschollene [n. 477], 401. 481 Cf. Jacques Derrida, Von der Gastfreundschaft, translation from French by Markus Sedlaczek. Wien 2001, 25–26. And cf. Hans-Dieter Bahr, Die Sprache des Gastes. Eine Metaethik. Leipzig 1994, 30–44. 482 Kant, ZeF, AA VIII, 358. 483 Oskar Baum, Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, in: Witiko. Zeitschrift für Kunst und Dichtung 2/87 (1929), 126–128, 128. 484 Franz Kafka, Das Schloß, ed. Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main 1982, in: id., Schriften [n. 457], 24. 485 Cf. Jörg Krappmann, Der Prager deutsche Philosoph Max Steiner und die Kantforschung zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Kafka und Prag. Literatur-, kultur-, sozialund sprachhistorische Kontexte, ed. Peter Becher, Steffen Höhne, Marek Nekula. Köln, Weimar, Wien 2012. And Kurt Krolop, “Materialästhetik” in der Fackel um 1900, in: Klaus Schenk (ed.), Moderne in der deutschen und der tschechischen Literatur. Basel 2000, 99–118. 486 Franz Kafka, Tagebücher, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, Michael Müller, Malcolm Pasley. Frankfurt am Main 1990, in: id., Schriften [n. 457], 892. 487 Brod, Vom ewigen Frieden [n. 455], 247. 488 Max Brod, Streitbares Leben. Autobiographie 1884–1968. Frankfurt am Main 1979, 165. 489 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 165. 490 Cf. Peter Neesen, Vom Louvrezirkel zum Prozess. Franz Kafka und die Psychologie Franz Brentanos. Göppingen 1972, 18. 491 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 165. 492 Franz Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis, ed. Alfred Kastil. Leipzig 1925, 47. 493 Cf. Eliam Campos, Die Kantkritik Brentanos. Bonn 1979, 16–17. 464
586 494
Endnotes
Cf. Neesen, Louvrezirkel [n. 490], 17–18. Cf. Georg Gimpl, Weil der Boden selbst hier brennt… Aus dem Prager Salon der Berta Fanta (1865–1918). Furth im Wald 2001, 129–131, 280–283. And Franz Kafka, Briefe 1900–1912, ed. Hans-Gerd Koch, in: id., Schriften [n. 457], 397 [comment to the letter]. 496 Cf. Kafka, Briefe 1900–1912 [n. 495], 12, 392. 497 Gimpl, Berta Fanta [n. 495], 281. 498 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 168. 499 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 164. 500 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 172. 501 Gimpl, Berta Fanta [n. 495], 283–288. 502 Cf. Gimpl, Berta Fanta [n. 495], 325–336. 503 Cf. Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 169–170. 504 Cf. GaÚlle Vassogne, Max Brod in Prag. Identität und Vermittlung. Tübingen 2009, “Kapitel 6.1: Brod und die Prager deutschsprachigen Schriftsteller : die Erfindung des Prager Kreises”, 176–190. And Max Brod, Der Prager Kreis. Stuttgart 1966. 505 Brod, Streitbares Leben [n. 488], 171–172. 506 Cf. Gimpl, Berta Fanta [n. 495], 338. 507 Franz Brentano on 22 November 1913 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: Hugo Bergmann, Franz Brentano, Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergmann, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 7/1 (1946), 83–158, 141. 508 Franz Brentano on 27 March 1914 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: id., Briefe [n. 507], 152. 509 Franz Brentano on 20 February 1914 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: id., Briefe [n. 507], 149. 510 Franz Brentano on 27 March 1914 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: id., Briefe [n. 507], 152. 511 Franz Brentano on 27 March 1914 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: id., Briefe [n. 507], 152. 512 Franz Brentano on 27 March 1914 to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, in: id., Briefe [n. 507], 152. 513 Cf. Gimpl, Berta Fanta [n. 495], 343. 514 Since there is an authorial voice besides the main protagonist and first-person narrator in Malina, a “narrating I” cannot be defined. 515 Cf. Ingeborg Bachmann, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum and Clemens Münster, 4. Vols., vol. 3. München/Zürich 1993, 81. 516 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 3, 334. 517 Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina, in: id., Werke [n. 515], vol. 3, 306, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 203. 518 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 306, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 203. 519 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 307, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 203. 520 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 307, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 203. 521 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 3, 13. 522 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 12–13, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 203. 523 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 240–245.
495
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587
Cf. Richard Heinrich, Briefgeheimnis. Sprechen und Sprache in Ingeborg Bachmanns “Malina”, in: Jeanne Benay (ed.), “Und wir werden frei sein, freier als je von jeder Freiheit…”. Die Autorin Ingeborg Bachmann. Wien 2005, 23–38. 525 Ingeborg Bachmann, Das dreißigste Jahr, in: dies., Werke [n. 515], vol. 2, 111–112, trans. Michael Bullock. New York 1987, 30. 526 Kant, KpV, AA V, 161. 527 Cf. Ingeborg Bachmann, Frankfurter Vorlesungen: Probleme zeitgenössischer Dichtung, in: id., Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 217. 528 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 217. 529 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 218. 530 Cf. Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 217–218. 531 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 270 and cf. Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 3, 104. 532 Bachmann, Das dreißigste Jahr [n. 525], 112, trans. Michael Bullock. New York 1987, 30. 533 Bachmann, Das dreißigste Jahr [n. 525], 112. 534 Kant, Prol, AA IV, 262. 535 Kant, Prol, AA IV, 262. 536 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 2, 112. 537 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 2, 113. 538 Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 4, 218. 539 Cf. Kant, KpV, AA V, 161. 540 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne, in: id., Werke [n. 394] , vol. 3/2: Nachgelassene Schriften 1870–1873, 873–890, 875. 541 Bachmann, Frankfurter Vorlesungen [n. 527], 192–193. 542 Cf. Kant, Anth, AA VII, 191. 543 Bachmann, Frankfurter Vorlesungen [n. 527], 237. 544 Ingeborg Bachmann, Die kritische Aufnahme der Existentialphilosophie Martin Heideggers, hg. von Robert Pichl. München/Zürich 1985. 545 Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund. Pfullingen 1957, 205. 546 Paul Celan, Der Meridian. Rede anläßlich der Verleihung des Georg-Büchner-Preises, in: id., Gesammelte Werke in sieben Bänden, ed. Beda Allemann, Stefan Reichert assisted by Rolf Bücher. Frankfurt am Main 1983, III, 195. 547 Ingeborg Bachmann, Keine Delikatessen, in: id., Werke [n. 515], vol. 1, 173. 548 Cf. Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 230–231. 549 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 229–230, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 150–151. 550 Cf. Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 230–231. 551 Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 323–324, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 215. 552 Kant, KrV, AA IV, 8 and Bachmann, Werke [n. 515], vol. 3, 322, trans. Philip Boehm. New York 1990, 214. 553 Kant, KrV, A X. 554 Kant, KrV, A VIII. 555 Kant, KrV, A XI. 556 Kant, KrV, A X. 557 Cf. Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 332–333.
588 558
Endnotes
Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 334. Cf. for the relation of thinking/reading and heat: id., Malina [n. 517], 81. (See the mention of the Critique of Pure Reason as a book read by the first-person narrator here) 559 Cf. Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 335 and Bachmann, Das dreißigste Jahr [n. 525], 107–108. 560 Cf. Bachmann, Malina [n. 517], 332. 561 Cf. up to here: Joachim Hoell, Thomas Bernhard. München 2000, 7–34. 562 Thomas Bernhard, Die Autobiographie, ed. Martin Huber, Manfred Mittermayer, in: id., Werke, vol. 10. Frankfurt am Main 2004, 150. Cf. ibid., 128f. 563 Cf. Bernhard, Die Autobiographie [n. 562], 217ff., 272f. and Hoell, Thomas Bernhard [n. 561], 34–39 and Thomas Bernhard, Wittgensteins Neffe. Eine Freundschaft. Frankfurt am Main 1987, 34ff. 564 Cf. Hoell, Thomas Bernhard [n. 561], 49–58. 565 Bernhard, Die Autobiographie [n. 562], 88f. Cf. Bernhard, Wittgensteins Neffe [n. 563], 30f. 566 Bernhard, Die Autobiographie [n. 562], 477. 567 Cf. Juliane Vogel, Die Gebetbücher des Philosophen. Lektüren in den Romanen Thomas Bernhards, in: Modern Austrian Literature 21/3–4 (1988), 173–186, 173 and 176. 568 Cf. Walter Seitter, Vorführungen. Paraphilosophische Dramatisierung in der Nachkriegsliteratur, in: Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll et al. (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – Verzögerte Aufklärung, vol. 6: Auf der Suche nach authentischem Philosophieren. Philosophie in Österreich 1951–2000. Wien 2010, 808–824, 816 fn. 39. 569 Bernhard, Die Autobiographie [n. 562], 323. Cf. id., Der Italiener. Salzburg 1971, 146f. 570 Cf. Bernhard, Die Autobiographie [n. 562], 166, 169–172, where Bernhard makes the isolation of the grandfather very clear and Hoell, Thomas Bernhard [n. 561], 14–17, 40. 571 Cf. Hans-Jürgen Schings, Die Methode des Equilibrismus. Zu Thomas Bernhards “Immanuel Kant”, in: Hans Dietrich Irmscher et al. (eds.), Drama und Theater im 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Walter Hinck. Göttingen 1983, 432–445, 436–439 and 444. Cf. Peter Hodina, Die Karnevalisierung des großen Aufklärers. Thomas Bernhards Komödie Immanuel Kant, in: Peter Csobdi et. al. (eds.), Die lustige Person auf der Bühne. Gesammelte Vorträge des Salzburger Symposions 1993, vol. 2. Anif/Salzburg 1994, 751–768, 762–766. 572 Kant, SF, AA VII, 115. 573 Thomas Bernhard, Immanuel Kant, in: id., Stücke 2. Frankfurt am Main 1988, 251–340, 256. 574 Cf. Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 310ff., 322. 575 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 319. 576 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 280. 577 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 303. 578 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 255. Cf. the phrase in Kant, NTH, AA I, 278. For the following cf. Schings, Die Methode des Equilibrismus [n. 571], 441f. 579 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 256. For the paragraph which Bernhard adapts to his text see: Kant, NTH, AA I, 279. For the following cf. ib. 580 Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 260. Indeed, Kant undertakes a “new estimation of living forces” (Kant, GSK, AA I, 139).
Kant and his Poets 581
589
Bernhard, Immanuel Kant [n. 573], 260. To blur this reference, Bernhard shortens the original sentence: “According to this the law of the estimation of squares does not apply across all motions irrespective of their velocity, rather the latter impacts on the calculation.”, transl. John Jamieson, Kant, GSK, AA I, 154. 582 Cf. Thomas Bernhard, Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall. Frankfurt am Main 1986, 149ff. 583 Monologe auf Mallorca (1981), in: Thomas Bernhard. Eine Begegnung. Gespräche mit Krista Fleischmann. Frankfurt am Main 2006, 11–89, 28. 584 Brigitte Hofer, Das Ganze ist im Grunde ein Spaß. ORF, 12. April 1978, in: Sepp Dreissinger (ed.), Von einer Katastrophe in die andere. 13 Gespräche mit Thomas Bernhard. Weitra 1992, 49–62, 56. 585 Thomas Bernhard, Verstörung, in: id., Werke, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main 2003, 176. 586 Cf. Hoell, Thomas Bernhard [n. 561], 133f. 587 Wilhelm Baum, Einleitung, in: id. (ed.), Weimar – Jena – Klagenfurt. Der Herbert-Kreis und das Geistesleben Kärntens im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution. Klagenfurt 1989, 5–21, 14. 588 Immanuel Kant in spring 1792 to Maria von Herbert, Entwurf, AA XI, 331. 589 Maria von Herbert in August 1791 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 273. 590 Maria von Herbert in early 1794 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 484–485. 591 Maria von Herbert in August 1791 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 273. 592 Kant, KpV, AA V, 122. 593 Kant, KrV, B XXIX–XXX. 594 Kant, KrV, B 424. 595 Fräulein Maria von Herbert in August 1791 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 273. 596 Kant, GMS, AA IV, 403. 597 Kant, GMS, AA IV, 422. 598 Ludwig Ernst Borowski in August 1791 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 274. 599 James Edwin Mahon, Kant and Maria von Herbert: Reticence vs. Deception, in: Philosophy 81 (2006), 417–444, 418. 600 Immanuel Kant in spring 1792 to Maria von Herbert, Entwurf, AA XI, 331. 601 Immanuel Kant in spring 1792 to Maria von Herbert, Entwurf, AA XI, 331. 602 Maria von Herbert in early 1794 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 484. 603 Maria von Herbert in January 1793 to Immanuel Kant, AA XI, 403. 604 Mahon, Kant and Maria von Herbert [n. 599], 420. 605 Immanuel Kant on 11 February 1793 to Elisabeth Motherby, AA XI, 411. 606 Alois Brandstetter, Cant läßt grüßen. Klagenfurt 2009, 5. 607 Norbert Mayer, Franz Schuh: “Ich habe auf jede Ordnung verzichtet”, in: Die Presse, 12. 9. 2009, url: http://diepresse.com/home/kultur/literatur/507920/Franz-Schuh_Ichhabe-auf-jede-Ordnung-verzichtet (18 November 2014). 608 Mayer, Schuh: “Ich habe auf jede Ordnung verzichtet” [n. 607]. 609 Franz Schuh, Im Museum der Wahrnehmung, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe, schmutzige Wäsche. Wien 2006, 39. 610 Franz Schuh, Schöpfung, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe [n. 609], 260. 611 Franz Schuh, Caf¦ Hegelhof, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe [n. 609], 276. 612 Schuh, Caf¦ Hegelhof [n. 611], 277.
590 613
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Franz Schuh, “Es geht um menschliche Würde”, in: Der Kurier (15. 10. 2011), url: http:// kurier.at/chronik/oberoesterreich/es-geht-um-menschliche-wuerde/733.839 (18 November 2014). 614 Schuh, “Es geht um menschliche Würde” [n. 613]. 615 Franz Schuh, Was ist besonders gut? Aspekte des Guten in der philosophischen Ethik, unpublished lecture, given on 22 January 2010 as part of the “Gestalttage” of the department of integrative gestalt therapy of ÖAAG, url: http://www.gestalttherapie.at/ downloads/gt2010_franz_schuh_was_ist_gut.pdf (18 November 2014). 616 Schuh, Was ist besonders gut? [n. 615], 7. 617 Schuh, Was ist besonders gut? [n. 615], 9. 618 Schuh, Was ist besonders gut? [n. 615], 9. 619 Franz Schuh, Verwandlungsspezialisten. Über Philosophie und Schauspielkunst, unpublished lecture, given as part of the anniversary conference in celebration of 125 years Burgtheater at Ringstraße from 11 to 13 October 2013 at the Burgtheater Vienna, 3. url: http://www.burgtheater.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/Schuh-Franz_Verwandlungss pezialisten_FIN.pdf (18 November 2014). 620 Schuh, Verwandlungsspezialisten [n. 619], 3. 621 Franz Schuh, Geld oder Leben!, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe [n. 609], 147. 622 Franz Schuh, Lob der Nutzlosigkeit, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe [n. 609], 79. 623 Mayer, Schuh: “Ich habe auf jede Ordnung verzichtet” [n. 607]. 624 Franz Schuh, In der Buchhandlung, in: id., Schwere Vorwürfe [n. 609], 122–123. 625 Franz Schuh, Grünäugige Blicke. Wolfgang Welsch glaubt nicht, dass der Mensch das Maß aller Dinge ist, in: Die Zeit (16. 8. 2012), url: http://www.zeit.de/2012/34/WolfgangWelsch-Mensch-und-Welt (18 November 2014). 626 Schuh, Grünäugige Blicke [n. ]. 627 Schuh, Grünäugige Blicke [n. 625]. 628 Daniel Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt. Reinbek bei Hamburg 2005, 48. 629 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 199. 630 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 208. 631 Kant, IaG, AA VIII, 26. 632 Kant, KpV, AA V, 161. 633 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 54–55. 634 Kant, WA, AA VIII, 35. 635 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 91. 636 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 94. 637 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 96. 638 Eberhard Knobloch, Alexander von Humboldt und Carl Friedrich Gauß – im Roman und in Wirklichkeit, in: HiN – Humboldt im Netz. Internationale Zeitschrift für HumboldtStudien 13/25 (2012), 63–79. 639 Knobloch, Humboldt und Gauß [n. 638], 63–79. 640 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 96–97. 641 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 220. 642 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 221–222. 643 Kant, KrV, B 131. 644 Kehlmann, Vermessung der Welt [n. 628], 175.
Kant and the Vienna Circle
591
Kant and the Vienna Circle 1
Cf. Friedrich Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis. Ursprung, Entwicklung und Wirkung des Logischen Empirismus im Kontext. Frankfurt am Main 1997; id., The Vienna Circle: Context, Profile, and Development, in: Alan Richardson, Thomas Uebel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism. New York 2007, 13–40; Victor Kraft, Der Wiener Kreis. Der Ursprung des Neopositivismus. Wien/New York 1968. 2 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 660–920; id., The Vienna Circle [n. 1], 15–16. 3 Cf. Hal Berghel, Adolf Hübner, Eckehart Köhler (eds.), Wittgenstein, der Wiener Kreis und der Kritische Rationalismus, records of the third International Wittgenstein Symposium. Wien 1979; Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper – The Formative Years, 1902–1945. Cambridge 2000. 4 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, number 1. Wien 1929. Hereafter cited from Kurt Rudolf Fischer (ed.), Österreichische Philosophie von Brentano bis Wittgenstein. Wien 1999, 125–171. 5 Cf. Friedrich Stadler, Popularisierungsbestrebungen im Wiener Kreis und ‘Verein Ernst Mach’, in: Hans-Joachim Dahms (ed.), Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Aufklärung. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Wiener Kreises. Berlin/New York 1985, 101–128. 6 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [n. 4], 145. 7 Cf. Rainer Hegselmann and Geo Siegwart, Zur Geschichte der ‘Erkenntnis’, in: Wolfgang Spohn (ed.), Erkenntnis orientated: a centennial volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Dordrecht 1991, 461–471. 8 Cf. Günther Sandner, Otto Neurath. Eine politische Biographie. Wien 2014, 256–262; Hans-Joachim Dahms, Die “Encyclopedia of Unified Science” (IEUS). Ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Bedeutung für den Logischen Empirismus, in: Elisabeth Nemeth, Nicolas Roudet (eds.), Paris – Wien. Enzyklopädien im Vergleich. Wien 2005, 105–120. 9 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 395–436. 10 Cf. Brigitte Lichtenberger-Fenz, “…deutscher Abstammung und Muttersprache”: Österreichische Hochschulpolitik in der Ersten Republik. Wien 1990. 11 Cf. Friedrich Stadler, Antisemitismus an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Wien – Am Beispiel von Moritz Schlick und seines Wiener Kreises, in: Oliver Rathkolb (ed.), Der lange Schatten des Antisemitismus. Kritische Auseinandersetzungen mit der Geschichte der Universität Wien im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Wien 2013, 207–237. 12 Cf. Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft. Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft. 1930–1940, 2 vols. Münster 2004. 13 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 920–960. 14 Cf. Hans-Joachim Dahms, Die Bedeutung der Emigration des Wiener Kreises für die Entwicklung der Wissenschaftstheorie, in: Stadler (ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft [n. 12], vol. 1. 155–167. 15 Cf. Thomas Uebel, Empiricism at the crossroads: the Vienna Circle’s protocol-sentence debate. Chicago 2007. 16 Cf. Donata Romizi, The Vienna Circle’s “Scientific World-Conception”: Philosophy of Science in the Political Arena, in: Hopos 2/2 (2012), 205–242.
592 17
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Cf. Otto Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, in: id., Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Rudolf Haller, Heiner Rutte. Wien 1981, 345–348. 18 Cf. Thomas Uebel, Vernunftkritik und Wissenschaft: Otto Neurath und der erste Wiener Kreis. Wien/New York 2000. 19 Cf. Johannes Friedl, Konsequenter Empirismus. Die Entwicklung von Moritz Schlicks Erkenntnistheorie im Wiener Kreis. Wien 2013, 73–80. 20 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [n. 4], 134. 21 Cf. Michael Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge 1999, “Geometry, Convention and the Relativized A Priori”, 59–70, 59. 22 Cf. Thomas Uebel, Empricism at the crossroads [n. 15]. 23 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [n. 4], 139. 24 Moritz Schlick, Die Wende der Philosophie, in: Fischer (ed.), Österreichische Philosophie [n. 4], 173–179, 174. 25 Schlick, Die Wende der Philosophie [n. 24], 177. 26 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [n. 4], 132. 27 Otto Neurath, Einzelwissenschaften, Einheitswissenschaft, Pseudorationalismus, in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 703–709, 708. 28 Cf. George A. Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science. To the Icy Slopes of Logic. Cambridge 2005; Hans-Joachim Dahms, Die Bedeutung der Emigration des Wiener Kreises für die Entwicklung der Wissenschaftstheorie; Friedrich Stadler, Transfer and Transformation of Logical Empiricism: Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects, in: Gary Hardcastle and Alan Richardson (ed.), Logical Empiricism in North America. Minneapolis/London 2003, 216–233. 29 Cf. Friedman, Logical Positivism [n. 21]; Alan Richardson, Carnap’s Construction of the World. The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Positvism. Cambridge 2008; Thomas Ryckman, The Reign of Relativity. Philosophy in Physics 1915–1925. Oxford 2005; Alberto Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. To the Vienna Station. Cambridge 1991; Thomas Mormann, Werte bei Carnap, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 60/2 (2006), 169–189. 30 Cf. Rudolf Haller, Der erste Wiener Kreis, in: id., Der erste Wiener Kreis, in: id., Fragen zu Wittgenstein und Aufsätze zur Österreichischen Philosophie. Amsterdam 1986, 89–107. 31 Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy. New York 1961, 13–61. 32 Ernst Mach, Anpassung der Gedanken an die Tatsachen und aneinander, in: id., Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung. Darmstadt 1980, 164–182. 33 Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy [n. 31], 28–30. 34 Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy [n. 31], 20. 35 Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy [n. 31]. 36 Cf. Henri Poincar¦, On the Foundations of Geometry, in: The Monist 9 (1898), 1–43. 37 Cf. Philipp Frank, Kausalgesetz und Erfahrung, in: Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 6 (1907), 443–450; Otto Neurath, Probleme der Kriegswirtschaftslehre, in: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 69 (1913), 438–501. 38 Cf. Neurath, Probleme der Kriegswirtschaftslehre [n. 37], 457f.; id., Die Verirrten des Cartesius und das Auxiliarmotiv, in: Jahrbuch der Philosophischen Gesellschaft an der Universität zur Wien (1913), 45–59.
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Cf. Thomas Uebel, Otto Neurath, the Vienna Circle and the Austrian Tradition, in: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 44 (1999), 249–269. 40 Otto Neurath, Der logische Empirismus und der Wiener Kreis (1936), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 739–748, 742. 41 Otto Neurath, Die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises und die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus (1936), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 673–702. 42 Cf. Robert Reininger (ed.), 50 Jahre Philosophische Gesellschaft an der Universität Wien 1888–1938. Wien 1938; Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18], 138–142; Denis Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions: Remarks on the Philosophical Society of Vienna (1888–1938), in: Anne Reboul (ed.), Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Wien 2014, 349–374. 43 Cf. Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions [n. 42], 353–360. 44 Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions [n. 42], 358. 45 Cf. Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18], 142. 46 Philipp Frank, Mechanismus oder Vitalismus? Versuch einer präzisen Formulierung der Fragestellung, in: Ostwald’s Annalen der Naturphilosophie 7 (1908), 393–409. 47 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 184. 48 Cf. Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions [n. 42], 364. 49 Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions [n. 42], 368–369. 50 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 248; Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18], 260. 51 Cf. Fisette, Austrian Philosophy and its Institutions [n. 42], 370. 52 Cf. Lichtenberger-Fenz, “…deutscher Abstammung und Muttersprache” [n. 10]. 53 Cf. Stadler, Antisemitismus an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Wien [n. 11]. 54 Klaus Taschwer, Geheimsache Bärenhöhle. Wie ein antisemitisches Professorenkartell der Universität Wien nach 1918 jüdische und linke Forscherinnen und Forscher vertrieb, url: http://www.academia.edu/4258095/Geheimsache_Barenhohle._Wie_ein_antisemi tisches_Professorenkartell_der_Universitat_Wien_nach_1918_judische_und_linke_For scherinnen_und_Forscher_vertrieb._2013_ (15 May 2015). 55 Robert Reininger, Ansprache, in: Kant-Studien 35 (1930), 16–17, 16. 56 Reininger, Ansprache [n. 55], 17. 57 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 676. 58 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath, [n. 8], 286. 59 Cf. zur Biographie: Fynn Ole Engler, Mathias Iven (eds.), Moritz Schlick. Leben, Werk und Wirkung. Berlin 2008. 60 Cf. Matthias Neuber, Die Grenzen des Revisionismus. Schlick, Cassirer und das ‘Raumproblem’. Wien/New York 2012, 46–57. 61 Cf. the biography in this volume, 454-458. 62 Cf. Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [n. 28], 189. 63 Cf. Ryckman, Philosophy in Physics 1915–1925 [n. 28]. 64 Ernst Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie. Hamburg 2001. 65 Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [n. 64], 73. 66 Cf. Michael Friedman, Parting of the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger. Peru 2000, 87–110. 67 Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [n. 64], 74, 78. 68 Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [n. 64], 78.
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Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [n. 64], 81–82. Cassirer, Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie [n. 64], 82–83. 71 Hans Reichenbach, Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori. Berlin 1920. 72 Cited in Edwin Glassner, Heidi König-Porstner (eds.), Moritz Schlick Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5: Rostock, Kiel, Wien. Aufsätze, Beiträge, Rezensionen 1919–1925. Wien/New York 2012, 502. 73 Reichenbach, Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori [n. 71], 46. 74 Cf. Friedman, Logical Positivism [n. 21], 60–66. 75 Moritz Schlick, Kritizistische oder empiristische Deutung der neuen Physik?, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 72], vol. 5, 223–247; id., Hans Reichenbach, Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis a priori, in: ib., 499–508. 76 Moritz Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre. Frankfurt am Main 1979. 77 Moritz Schlick, Die philosophische Bedeutung des Relativitätsprinzips, in: Michael Stöltzner, Thomas Uebel (eds.), Wiener Kreis. Texte zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung. Hamburg 2006, 41–91. 78 Cf. Neuber, Die Grenzen des Revisionismus [n. 60], 45–130. 79 Schlick, Kritizistische oder empiristische Deutung der neuen Physik? [n. 75], 227. 80 Cf. the editorial report: Schlick, Hans Reichenbach, Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis a priori [n. 75], 499–506. 81 Schlick, Kritizistische oder empiristische Deutung der neuen Physik? [n. 75], 240. 82 Schlick, Kritizistische oder empiristische Deutung der neuen Physik? [n. 75], 232. 83 Cf. Michael Friedman, Dynamics of Reason. Stanford 2001. 84 For Schlick’s biography and writings cf. Fynn Ole Engler, Mathias Iven, Moritz Schlick (1882–1936). Philosoph und Physiker, in: Hans-Uwe Lammel, Gisela Boeck (eds.), Rostocker gelehrte Köpfe. Referate der interdisziplinären Ringvorlesung des Arbeitskreises ‘Rostocker Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte’ im Wintersemester 2009/2010. Norderstedt 2013, 33–54; Herbert Feigl, Moritz Schlick, in: Erkenntnis 7 (1937/38), 393–419; Brian McGuinness (ed.), Zurück zu Schlick. Eine Neubewertung von Werk und Wirkung. Wien 1985; Heiner Rutte, Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), in: Neue Österreichische Biographie, vol. 19. Wien 1977, 120–128; Friedrich Stadler, Der Philosoph Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), in: Conceptus 37 (1982), 75–80; Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle. Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism. Wien/NewYork 2001, 722–723; sowie Edgar Zilsel, Moritz Schlick, in: Die Naturwissenschaften 11 (1937), 161–167. 85 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 722. 86 Cf. Massimo Ferrari, An Unknown Side of Moritz Schlick’s Intellectual Biography : the Reviews for the ‘Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie’ (1911–1916), in: Friedrich Stadler (ed.), The Vienna Circle and the Logical Empiricism. ReEvaluation and Future Perspectives. Dordecht/Boston/London 2002, 63–79; sowie Michael Heidelberger, Kantianism and Realism: Alois Riehl (and Moritz Schlick), in: Michael Friedman, Alfred Nordmann (eds.): The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth Century Science. Cambridge MA, 2006, 227¢247. 87 Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 723. 88 Cf. Rudolf Haller, Der erste Wiener Kreis, in: Erkenntnis 22 (1985), 341–358. 89 Cf. Arthur Liebhert, Wien [Bericht der Philosophische Gesellschaft an der Universität Wien. Ortsgruppe Wien der Kant-Gesellschaft], in: Kant-Studien 32 (1927), 556, 556. 70
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Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], “Dokumentation: Die Ermordung von Moritz Schlick”, 920–961; Peter Malina, Tatort: Philosophenstiege, in: Michael Benedikt, Rudolf Burger (eds.): Bewußtsein, Sprache und Kunst. Wien 1988, 231–253. 91 Cf. Ferrari, Schlick’s Intellectual Biography [n. 86], 63–79, 64–66. 92 Cf. Ferrari, Schlick’s Intellectual Biography [n. 86], 64. 93 Ferrari, Schlick’s Intellectual Biography [n. 86], 68. 94 Hans Jürgen Wendel, Fynn Ole Engler, Einleitung, in: Moritz Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, ed. Hans Jürgen Wendel, Fynn Ole Engler. Wien/New York 2009, 9–10. 95 Cf. Moritz Schlick, Rezension zu P. Natorp, Die logischen Grundlagen der exacten Wissenschaften (Berlin/Leipzig 1910), in: Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie 35 (1911), 254–260; Moritz Schlick, Rezension zu L. Goldschmidt, Zur Wiedererweckung kantischer Lehre (Gotha 1910), in: Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie 35 (1911), 261–262; Moritz Schlick, Rezension zu M. Frischeisen-Köhler, Wissenschaft und Wirklichkeit (Leipzig/Berlin 1912), in: Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie 37 (1913), 145–148; Moritz Schlick, Rezension zu H. Cornelius, Transzendentale Systematik.Untersuchungen zur Begründung der Erkenntnistheorie (München 1916), in: Vierteljahrschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie und Soziologie 40 (1916), 384–386. 96 Moritz Schlick, Die philosophische Bedeutung des Relativitätsprinzips, in: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 159 (1915), 129–175, 165. 97 Cf. Ferrari, Schlick’s Intellectual Biography [n. 86], 64. 98 Juha Manninen, Towards a Physicalistic Attitude, in: Stadler (ed.), Logical Empiricism [n. 86], 133–151, 134. 99 Moritz Schlick, Kritische oder empirische Deutung der neuen Physik? Bemerkungen zu Ernst Cassirers Buch “Zu Einsteinischen Relativitätstheorie”, in: Kant-Studien 26 (1921), 96–112, 99. 100 Moritz Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, ed. by the editorial board of “Naturwissenschaften”, vol. 1. Berlin 21925, 117. 101 Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [n. 100], 317. 102 Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [n. 100], 366. 103 Cf. Moritz Schlick, Gibt es ein materiales Apriori?, in: id., Gesammelte Aufsätze 1926–1936. Wien 1938, 19–31, 20. 104 Schlick, Gibt es ein materiales Apriori? [n. 103], 22–23, cited in id., Is there a Factual a priori?, in: Herbert Feigl, Wilfrid Sellars (eds.), Readings in Philosophical Analysis. New York 1949, 277–285. 105 Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre [n. 100], 81. 106 Ernst Cassirer, Ausgewählter wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. John Michael Kreis. Hamburg 2009, 95. 107 Moritz Schlick, Fragen der Ethik. Wien 1930, 8, cited in id., Problems of Ethics, transl. David Rynin. New York 1939. 108 Cf. Schlick, Fragen der Ethik [n. 107], 15. 109 Moritz Schlick, Aphorismen. Wien 1962, 44. 110 Paolo Parrini, On the Formation of Logical Empiricism, in: Stadler (ed.), Logical Empiricism [n. 86], 9–21, 10. 111 For Edgar Zilsel’s biography cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 749–764; Johann Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel und die Einheit der Erkenntnis. Wien 1981; Johannes Lenhard,
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Wolfgang Krohn, Das Gesetz der großen Zahlen. Edgar Zilsels Versuch einer Grundlegung physikalischer und sozio-historischer Gesetze, in: Karin Hartbecke, Christian Schütte (eds.), Naturgesetze. Historisch-systematische Analysen eines wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs. Paderborn 2006, 291–318. 112 Cf. the documents for Zilsel’s dissertation and graduation in 1915: Philosophische Rigorosenprotokolle (Ph 59.24), report no. 4116, Universitätsarchiv Wien (UAW). 113 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 749; Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 20. 114 Edgar Zilsel, Der einführende Philosophieunterricht an den neuen Oberschulen, in: Volkserziehung 1 (1921), 324–341; id., Kant als Erzieher, in: Schulreform 3 (1924), 182–188. 115 Cf. Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 22. 116 Cf. Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 20–22. 117 Cf. Klaus Taschwer, Geheimsache Bärenhöhle. Wie ein antisemitisches Professorenkartell der Universität Wien nach 1918 jüdische und linke Forscherinnen und Forscher vertrieb. url: www.academia.edu/4258095/Geheimsache_Bärenhohle._Wie_ein_antisemi tisches_Professorenkartell_der_Universität_Wien_nach_1918_judische_und_linke_For scherinnen_und_Forscher_vertrieb._2013_ (17 May 2014). 118 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 749. 119 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 749. 120 Cf. Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 29. 121 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 749. 122 Cf. Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 296. 123 Cf. Edgar Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem. Ein philosophischer Versuch über das Gesetz der großen Zahlen und die Induktion. Leipzig 1916, 13. 124 Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 154. 125 Adolf Fick, Philosophischer Versuch über die Wahrscheinlichkeiten. Würzburg 1883. 126 Zilsel refers to the following works of Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. 127 Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 75–76. 128 Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 144. 129 Cf. Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 175. 130 Cf. Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 175. 131 Cf. Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem [n. 123], 175–180. 132 Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 302. 133 Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 13 134 Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 25. 135 Cf. Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 305. 136 Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 305. 137 Cf. Lenhard, Krohn, Das Gesetz der grossen Zahlen [n. 111], 295. 138 Edgar Zilsel, Die Geniereligion. Ein kritischer Versuch über das moderne Persönlichkeitsideal, mit einer historischen Begründung. Wien/Leipzig 1918. 139 For a complete biography cf.: Edgar Zilsel, The Social Origins of Modern Science, ed. Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn, Robert S. Cohen. Dordrecht/Boston/London 2000, 243–245. 140 Cf. Stadler, The Vienna Circle [n. 84], 752–754.
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Cf. Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 36–39. Zilsel, Der einführende Philosophieunterricht [n. 114], 328. 143 Dvorˇak, Edgar Zilsel [n. 111], 37. 144 Zilsel, Kant als Erzieher [n. 114], 182–188, 184f. 145 Zilsel, Kant als Erzieher [n. 114], 183. 146 Edgar Zilsel, Philosophische Bemerkungen, in: Edgar Zilsel, Wissenschaft und Weltanschauung. Aufsätze 1929–1933, ed. Gerald Mozetic. Wien/Köln/Weimar 1992, 31–45, 34. First published in: Der Kampf 22 (1929), 178–186. 147 Zilsel, Philosophische Bemerkungen [n. 146], 34. 148 Cf. for Neurath’s biography : Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8]; Paul Neurath, Otto Neurath (1882–1945). Leben und Werk, in: Paul Neurath, Elisabeth Nemeth (ed.), Otto Neurath oder die Einheit on Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Wien 1994, 13–96; Elisabeth Nemeth, Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Encyclopedia and Utopia. The Life and Work of Otto Neurath (1882–1945). Dordrecht 1996; Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas Uebel, Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics. Cambridge 1996; Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18]. 149 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 16–28. 150 Cf. Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18], 288–289. 151 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 42–53. 152 The work was published in two parts: Otto Neurath, Zur Anschauung der Antike über Handel, Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft, in: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 32 (1906), 577–606, and: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 34 (1907) 145–205. 153 Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 47. 154 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 47. 155 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 27–33. 156 Cf. Uebel, Vernunftkritik [n. 18], 103–167; Haller, Der erste Wiener Kreis [n. 30]. 157 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 27–28. 158 Cf. Cartwright, Cat, Fleck, Uebel, Philosophy between Science and Politics [n. 148], 14–18. 159 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 72–77. 160 Cf. Günther Sandner, “Was Menschenkraft zu leisten vermag”. Otto Neurath und die Kriegswirtschaftslehre, in: Wolfram Dornik, Julia Walleczek-Fritz, Stefan Wedrac (eds.), Frontwechsel. Österreich-Ungarns “Großer Krieg” im Vergleich. Wien 2013, 377–397. 161 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 91–106. 162 Cf. Otto Neurath, Durch die Kriegswirtschaft zur Naturalwirtschaft. München 1919, 1. 163 Cf. Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 753. 164 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 39–52; Cartwright, Cat, Fleck, Uebel, Philosophy between Science and Politics [n. 148], 43–55. 165 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 165–177. 166 Cf. Matthew Eve. Christopher Burke, Otto Neurath: From Hieroglyphics to Isotype. A visual Autobiography. London 2010. 167 See Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 191–192. 168 Otto Neurath, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft. 100 Bildtafeln. Leipzig 1931. 169 Kurt Tucholsky, Auf dem Nachttisch, in: id., Gesammelte Werke. 1931, vol. 9. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995, 139–145, 144. 141
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Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 184. Cited in Anne Siegetsleitner, Ethik und Moral im Wiener Kreis. Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus. Wien/Köln/Weimar 2014, 196. 172 Cf. Thomas Uebel, The Enlightenment Ambition of Epistemic Utopianism: Otto Neurath’s Theory of Science in Historical Perspective, in: Ronald Giere, Alan Richardson (eds.), Origins of Logical Empiricism. Minneapolis 1996, 91–113. 173 William M. Johnston, Österreichische Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte. Gesellschaft und Ideen im Donauraum 1848 bis 1938. Wien 2006, 201. 174 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 84–85. 175 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 234–240. 176 Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 240. 177 Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 402–431. 178 Cf. Otto Neurath, Einheit der Wissenschaft als Aufgabe (1935), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 625–630. 179 Otto Neurath, Foundations of the Social Sciences, in: Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, Charles Morris (eds.), Foundations of the Unity of Science. Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. 2. Chicago 1970, 1–52. 180 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 87–90. 181 Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 90. 182 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 271–273. 183 Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 274–277. 184 Cited in Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 245. 185 Cf. Neurath, Neurath. Leben und Werk [n. 148], 95. 186 Cf. Otto Neurath, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, Sozialismus und Logischer Empirismus. Frankfurt am Main 1979, 19. 187 Cf. Thomas Uebel, Otto Neurath’s Idealist Inheritance: The Social and Economic Thought of Wilhelm Neurath, in: Synthese 103(1995), 87–121. 188 Cf. Otto Neurath, Lebensgestaltung und Klassenkampf. Berlin 1928. 189 Cf. Sandner, Otto Neurath [n. 8], 286. 190 Cf. Rudolf Haller, Studien zur Österreichischen Philosophie. Amsterdam 1979; id., Fragen zu Wittgenstein [n. 30]; William Johnston, Austrian Mind. An intellectual and social history, 1848–1938. Berkeley 1983. For more literature on Austrian philosophy see Alexander Wilfing’s article in this volume, 19–26. 191 See for Neurath’s “Zwischenspiel” theory : Otto Neurath, Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung (1930/1931), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 1, 371–386, 381; id., Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 676. 192 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41]. 193 Neurath, Die Entwicklung des Wiener Kreises und die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus, 688. 194 Cf. Otto Neurath, Der Logische Empirismus [n. 40], 743–744. 195 Cf. zum Konzept der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung: Donata Romizi, The Vienna Circle’s “Scientific World-Conception”: Philosophy of Science in the Political Arena, in: Hopos 2 (2012) 2, 205–242. 196 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 692–693.
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Cf. Franz Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand: nebst Abhandlungen über Plotinus, Thomas von Aquin, Kant, Schopenhauer und Auguste Comte. Hamburg 1986; Ernst Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen. Jena 1922, 24 n. 198 Cf. for example the original interpretation of this approach in terms of the history of ideas: Johannes Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt. Von Bolzano über Freud zu Kelsen: Österreichische Wissenschaftsgeschichte 1848–1938. Bielefeld 2010. 199 Haller, Fragen zu Wittgenstein [n. 30], 22. 200 Rudolf Haller, Gibt es eine österreichische Philosophie?, in: id., Fragen zu Wittgenstein [n. 30], 31–43, 43. 201 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 676. 202 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 676. 203 Cf. for Herbartianism: Feichtinger, Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt [n. 198], 120–131; Andreas Hoeschen, Lothar Schneider, Herbartianismus im 19. Jahrhundert: Umriss einer intellektuellen Konfiguration, in: Lutz Raphael, Heinz-Elmar Tenorth (eds.), Ideen als gesellschaftliche Gestaltungskraft im Europa der Neuzeit. München 2006, 447–477; for the reception of Christian Wolff ’s philosophy in Austria see for example: Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frühkantianismus in der Donaumonarchie. Amsterdam 1982, 45. 204 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 686. 205 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 676. 206 Cf. the fundamental study of Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 203], 45. 207 Neurath, Der Logische Empirismus [n. 40], 742. 208 Neurath, Der Logische Empirismus [n. 40], 741. 209 Neurath, Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [n. 191], 372. 210 Neurath, Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [n. 191], 384. 211 Neurath, Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung [n. 191], 373–374. 212 Cf. the comprehensive footnote in: Otto Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie (1933), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 587–610, 597 n. 213 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 682. 214 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 678. 215 Neurath, Einheitswissenschaft und Psychologie [n. 212], 597 n. 216 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 678. 217 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 682. 218 Critique on Kant’s categorical imperative can be found in numerous works of Neurath. See for the passage cited here: Otto Neurath, Lebensgestaltung und Klassenkampf (1928), in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 1, 227–294, 228. 219 Cf. Neurath, Einheit der Wissenschaft als Aufgabe [n. 178], 625–630. 220 Uebel, Empiricism at the crossroads [n. 15]. 221 Cf. Otto Neurath, Die Einheitswissenschaft und ihre Enzyklopädie, in: id., Philosophische und methodologische Schriften [n. 17], vol. 2, 777–786, 785. 222 Neurath, Die Zukunft des Logischen Empirismus [n. 41], 701. 223 Golo Mann, Erinnerungen und Gedanken. Eine Jugend in Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main 1986, 373. 224 Cf. for Carnap’s biography in general: Andr¦ W. Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought. Cambridge 2007; Andr¦ W. Carus, Carnap’s intellectual development, in: Mi-
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chael Friedman, Richard Creath (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Carnap. Cambridge 2007, 19–42; Thomas Mormann, Rudolf Carnap. München 2000, 13–37; Stadler, Studien zum Wiener Kreis [n. 1], 667; Rudolf Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie. Stuttgart 1993. 225 Cf. Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought [n. 224], 41–50. 226 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 5. 227 Cf. Gottfried Gabriel, Introduction: Carnap brought Home, in: Steve Awodey, Carsten Klein (eds.), Carnap Brought Home: The View from Jena. Chicago 2004, 3–24. 228 Cf. Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 8; Wilhelm Flitner, Erinnerungen: 1889–1945. Paderborn 1986, 204. 229 Rudolf Carnap, Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre. Berlin 1922 (= KantStudien Ergänzungsheft, vol. 56). 230 Cf. Walter Laqueur, Young Germany : A History of the German Youth Movement. New York 1962. 231 Cf. Meike G. Werner, Moderne in der Provinz: Kulturelle Experimente im Fin-de-SiÀcle Jena. Göttingen 2003; Meike G. Werner, Jugend im Feuer. August 1914 im Serakreis, in: Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte 8/2 (2014), 19–34. 232 Cf. Micha Brumlick, Rudolf Carnap, in: Barbara Stambolis (ed.), Jugendbewegt geprägt. Essays zu autobiographischen Texten von Werner Heisenberg, Robert Jungk und vielen anderen. Göttingen 2013, 191–197. 233 Cf. Wilhelm Flitner, Erinnerungen: 1889–1945. Paderborn 1986, 360. 234 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 14–16. 235 Rudolf Carnap, Über die Aufgabe der Physik, in: Kant-Studien 28 (1923), 90–107; Rudolf Carnap, Über die Abhängigkeit der Eigenschaften des Raumes von denen der Zeit, in: Kant-Studien 30 (1925), 331–345. 236 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 23; cf. Christian Thiel, Carnap und die wissenschaftliche Philosophie auf der Erlanger Tagung 1923, in: Rudolf Haller, Friedrich Stadler (eds.), Wien-Berlin-Prag. Der Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie. Zentenarien Rudolf Carnap – Hans Reichenbach – Edgar Zilsel. Wien 1993, 175–188. 237 Verein Ernst Mach, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung [n. 4]. 238 Rudolf Carnap, Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Berlin 1928. 239 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 32. 240 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 52. 241 Rudolf Carnap, Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache, in: Erkenntnis 2/4 (1932), 219–244. 242 Rudolf Carnap, Die logische Syntax der Sprache. Wien 1934 (= Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, vol. 8). 243 Carnap, Mein Weg in die Philosophie [n. 224], 64. 244 Cf. Stadler (ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft [n. 12], vol. 1. 245 Cf. George Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic. Cambridge 2005, 272–282. 246 Cf. Mormann, Rudolf Carnap [n. 224], 13–36. 247 See Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie [n. 203]. 248 Kurt Walter Zeidler, Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie. Der Ausgang des Neukantianismus und die post-neukantianische Systematik R. Hönigswalds, W. Cramers, B. Bauchs, H. Wagners, R. Reiningers und E. Heintels. Bonn 1995, 65ff.
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Alois Riehl, Realistische Grundzüge. Eine philosophische Abhandlung der allgemeinen und nothwendigen Erfahrungsbegriffe. Graz 1870, II. 250 Riehl, Realistische Grundzüge [n. 249], 8f. 251 Alois Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft, vol. 2. Leipzig 1879, “1. Theil, Die sinnlichen und logischen Grundlagen der Erkenntnis”, 67. 252 Kurt Walter Zeidler, Der “Österreichische” Neukantianismus, in: Michael Benedikt, Endre Kiss, Reinhold Knoll (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – Verzögerte Aufklärung, vol. 4: Anspruch und Echo. Sezession und Aufbrüche in den Kronländern zum Fin-deSiÀcle. Klausen-Leopoldsdorf 1998, 253–268. 253 Riehl, Realistische Grundzüge [n. 249], 26. 254 Cf. Alois Riehl, Der Philosophische Kritizismus. Geschichte und System, vol. 1: Geschichte des philosophischen Kritizismus. Leipzig 21908, 6, 19–207; Richard Hönigswald, Über die Lehre Hume’s von der Realität der Außendinge. Berlin 1904; Robert Reininger, Philosophie des Erkennens. Leipzig 1911, 137–290; id., Locke, Berkeley, Hume. München 1922. 255 Cf. Alois Riehl, Moral und Dogma. Wien 1871; id., Friedrich Nietzsche. Der Künstler und Denker. Stuttgart 1897; Robert Reininger, Friedrich Nietzsches Kampf um den Sinn des Lebens. Der Ertrag seiner Philosophie für die Ethik. Wien/Leipzig 1922; id., Wertphilosophie und Ethik. Die Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens als Grundlage einer Wertordnung. Wien/Leipzig 1939. 256 Fort he biography see Karl Nawratil, Robert Reininger. Leben – Wirken – Persönlichkeit. Wien 1969. 257 Cf. Wolfgang Stegmüller, Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Eine historisch-kritische Einführung. Wien 1952, 278–302; Erwin Rogler, Wirklichkeit und Gegenstand. Untersuchungen zur Erkenntnismetaphysik Robert Reiningers. Frankfurt am Main 1970; Zeidler, Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie [n. 248], 245–290. 258 Reininger, Friedrich Nietzsches Kampf um den Sinn des Lebens [n. 255], 182ff. 259 Robert Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit, second, completely revised and enlarged edition, vol. 1. Wien 1947, 11. 260 Reininger, Philosophie des Erkennens [n. 254], 347f. 261 Cf. Paul Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode. Tübingen 1912, 38f., 122 and Robert Reininger, Das Psycho-Physische Problem. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung zur Unterscheidung des Physischen und Psychischen überhaupt. Wien/ Leipzig 1916, 316. 262 Cf. Robert Reininger, Jugendschriften 1885–1895. Aphorismen 1894–1948, ed. and introduced by Karl Nawratil. Wien 1974, 64, 66, 77ff. 263 Reininger, Philosophie des Erkennens [n. 254], 355, 357, 372. 264 Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [n. 259], vol. 1, 266. 265 Cf. Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [n. 259], vol. 1, 39f., 88. 266 Cf. Zeidler, Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie [n. 248], 267–283, 275f. 267 Cf. Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [n. 259], vol. 1, 396; vol. 2. Wien 21948, 179. 268 Cf. Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [n. 259], vol.1, 59; vol. 2, 184. 269 Reininger, Metaphysik der Wirklichkeit [n. 259], vol. 2, 141ff.
602 270
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See Franz Weisz, Der frühe Heintel. Leben, Werk und Lehre von 1912 bis 1949. Mit einem kurzen Überblick über sein späteres Schaffen, Diss. Wien 2009, url: http://othes.univie.ac.at/5767/1/2009–02–15_7505539.pdf (11 March 2015). 271 Cf. Erich Heintel, Selbstdarstellung, in: Ludwig J. Pongratz (ed.), Philosophie in Selbstdarstellungen, vol. 3. Hamburg 1977, 133–188; id., Zur Systematik der Philosophie, in: Andr¦ Mercier (ed.), Philosophische Selbstbetrachtungen, vol. 12. Bern/Frankfurt am Main/New York 1985, 104–140; Helmut Gehrke, Theologie im Gesamtraum der Wirklichkeit. Zur Systematik Erich Heintels. Wien/München 1981; Zeidler, Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie [n. 248], 291–330. 272 Erich Heintel, Nietzsches “System” in seinen Grundbegriffen. Leipzig 1939, 29. 273 Erich Heintel, Die beiden Labyrinthe der Philosophie. Systemtheoretische Betrachtungen zur Fundamentalphilosophie des abendländischen Denkens. vol. 1: Einleitung and I. part: Neopositivismus und Diamat (Histomat). Wien/München 1968, 178f. 274 Heintel, Die beiden Labyrinthe der Philosophie [n. 273], 181. 275 See Erich Heintel, Sprachphilosophie, in: Wolfgang Stammler (ed.), Deutsche Philologie im Aufriß, vol. 1. Berlin 1952, 453–498; id., Einleitung zu J. G. Herder, Sprachphilosophische Schriften, ed. Erich Heintel. Hamburg 1964; id., Einführung in die Sprachphilosophie. Darmstadt 1972, 21975, 31986, 41991. 276 Cf. Heintel, Die beiden Labyrinthe der Philosophie [n. 273], 11, 20. 277 Cf. Heintel, Grundriß der Dialektik. Ein Beitrag zu ihrer fundamentalphilosophischen Bedeutung, vol. 2: Zum Logos der Dialektik und zu seiner Logik. Darmstadt 1984, 284ff. 278 Cf. Rudolf Eisler, Einführung in die Erkenntnistheorie. Darstellung und Kritik der erkenntnistheoretischen Richtungen. Leipzig 1907, IX, XI f., 242ff. 279 Cf. Peter Heintel, System und Ideologie. Der Austromarxismus im Spiegel der Philosophie Max Adlers. Wien/München 1967; Alfred Pfabigan, Max Adler. Eine politische Biographie. Frankfurt am Main 1982; Christian Möckel, Sozial-Apriori. Der Schlüssel zum Rätsel der Gesellschaft. Leben, Werk und Wirkung Max Adlers. Frankfurt am Main 1993. 280 Cf. Hans Amrhein, Kants Lehre vom ‘Bewusstsein überhaupt’ und ihre Weiterbildung bis auf die Gegenwart. Berlin 1909. 281 Max Adler, Kausalität und Teleologie im Streite um die Wissenschaft. Wien 1904, 187f. 282 Cf. url: http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/ (11 March 2015); Hans Herzka, Zum Gedenken an Oskar Ewald, in: Neue Wege 55 (1961), 274f.; Michael Benedikt, Drei Generationen religiöser Sozialismus: Oskar Ewald (Friedländer), in: Michael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll, Cornelius Zehetner (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung: Philosophie in Österreich von 1400 bis heute, vol. 5: Im Schatten der Totalitarismen. Vom philosophischen Empirismus zur kritischen Anthropologie. Philosophie in Österreich 1920–1951. Wien 2005, 297–302. 283 Oskar Ewald, Kants kritischer Idealismus als Grundlage von Erkenntnistheorie und Ethik. Berlin 1908, 15. 284 Cf. Oskar Ewald, Die Probleme der Romantik als Grundfragen der Gegenwart. Berlin 1904; id., Gründe und Abgründe. Präludien zu einer Philosophie des Lebens, 2 vols. Berlin 1909; id., Lebensfragen. Leipzig 1910. 285 Oskar Ewald, Die französische Aufklärungsphilosophie. München 1924, 158. 286 For Kelsen’s biography see Hans Kelsen, Selbstdarstellung (1927) sowie Autobiographie (1947), in: id., Hans Kelsen Werke, vol. 1: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1905–1910 und Selbstzeugnisse, ed. Matthias Jestaedt in collaboration with the Hans Kelsen-Institut.
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Tübingen 2007, 19–28 and 29–92; Rudolf Aladr M¦tall, Hans Kelsen. Leben und Werk. Wien 1969. Furthermore, the current portrait is guided by the website of the Hans KelsenInstitute: url: http://www.univie.ac.at/staatsrecht-kelsen/leben.php (18 November 2014) and the Austria Forum url: http://austria-forum.org/af/Wissenssammlungen/Biogra phien/Kelsen,_Hans (18 November 2014). For primary and secondary literature on Kelsen see: http://www.hans-kelsen.org (18 November 2014). 287 Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 32. 288 M¦tall, Kelsen [n. 286], 4; cf. Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 33. 289 Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 33. 290 Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 34. 291 Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 35. 292 Cf. Hans Kelsen, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre: entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatze, second, enlarged reprint of the second edition with a preface. Aalen 1984 (Tübingen 1923). 293 Cf. the two diverging editions of Die Reine Rechtslehre: Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, study edition of the first edition 1934, ed. and with an introduction by Matthias Jestaedt. Tübingen 2008; and Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, reprint of the first edition 1960. Wien 2000. 294 Cf. Kelsen, Selbstdarstellung (1927) [n. 286], 21 and M¦tall, Kelsen [n. 286], 15. 295 Kelsen, Selbstdarstellung (1927) [n. 286], 22. 296 Cf. url: http://www.univie.ac.at/staatsrecht-kelsen/kreis.php (18 November 2014); Die Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule. Ausgewählte Schriften von Hans Kelsen, Adolf J. Merkl und Alfred Verdross, 2 vols., ed. Hans Klecatsky, Ren¦ Marcic, Herbert Schambeck. Wien 1968; Rudolf Aladr M¦tall (ed.), 33 Beiträge zur Reinen Rechtslehre. Wien 1974. 297 Cf. url: http://www.univie.ac.at/staatsrecht-kelsen/leben.php (18 November 2014). 298 Kelsen, Selbstdarstellung (1927) [n. 286], 21. 299 Kelsen, Autobiographie (1947) [n. 286], 36. 300 Cf. Wolfgang Kersting, Neukantianische Rechtsbegründung, in: Dietmar Willoweit (ed.): Die Begründung des Rechts als historisches Problem. München 2000, 269–314, here 296; cf. Fritz Sander, Hans Kelsen: Die Rolle des Neukantianismus in der Reinen Rechtslehre. Eine Debatte zwischen Sander und Kelsen, ed. Stanley L. Paulson. Aalen 1988. 301 For the following paragraphs in a shortened and slightly modified form cf. Sophie Loidolt, Einführung in die Rechtsphänomenologie. Tübingen 2010, 133–141. 302 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], III. 303 Hans Kelsen, Was ist die Reine Rechtslehre? (1953), in: Gerd Roellecke (ed.), Rechtsphilosophie oder Rechtstheorie? Darmstadt 1988, 232–253, 243. 304 Cf. Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 64. 305 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1934) [n. 293], 65. 306 Horst Dreier, Rechtslehre, Staatssoziologie und Demokratietheorie bei Hans Kelsen. Baden-Baden 1986, 295. Cf. also Detlef Horster, Rechtsphilosophie zur Einführung. Hamburg 2002, 77. 307 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 205. 308 Cf. Kersting, Neukantianische Rechtsbegründung [n. 300], 273. 309 Cf. Hans Kelsen, Was ist juristischer Positivismus? in: Juristenzeitung 20/15/16 (1965), 466–469, here 468f.; cf. Kersting, Neukantianische Rechtsbegründung [n. 300], 273f. 310 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 4.
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Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 3. Robert Alexy, Begriff und Geltung des Rechts. Freiburg/München 2002, 155; cf. also ibid., 154–198. 313 Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 205. 314 Cf. Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre (1960) [n. 293], 228ff. 315 Cf. Fritz Schreier, Die Wiener rechtsphilosophische Schule, in: Rudolf Aladr M¦tall (ed.), 33 Beiträge zur Reinen Rechtslehre. Wien 1974, 419–436, here 419. 316 Schreier, Die Wiener rechtsphilosophische Schule [n. 315], 428. 317 Cf. Felix Kaufmann, Kant und die Reine Rechtslehre, in: M¦tall (ed.), 33 Beiträge zur Reinen Rechtslehre [n. 315], 141–152; Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Phänomenologie und logischer Empirismus. Zentenarium Felix Kaufmann. Wien 1997; Ota Weinberger, Werner Krawietz (eds.), Reine Rechtslehre im Spiegel ihrer Fortsetzer und Kritiker. Wien 1988; Sophie Loidolt, Einführung in die Rechtsphänomenologie. Tübingen 2010. 312
Kant and Phenomenology 1
Cf. Robin D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong and Others on Mind and Object. Heusenstamm 2008, 1–22. 2 Cf. the chapter “Kant und die Zensur” in this volume. 3 Cf. e. g. Kurt R. Fischer, Philosophie aus Wien. Wien/Salzburg 1991, 113. 4 Cf. Franz Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand, ed. Oskar Kraus, with a new introduction by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. Hamburg 1968, 7–23. 5 Edmund Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen, in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana, vol. 2, ed. Walter Biemel. Den Haag 1973, 48. Cf. Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen, The Husserl dictionary. London/New York 2012, “Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)”, 178–179, 178. 6 See Martin Heidegger, Vorwort zur vierten Auflage (1973), in: id., Gesamtausgabe, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm v. Herrmann, vol. 3: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Frankfurt am Main 1991, XIV. 7 Richard Hönigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie. Berlin 1933, 182f. Cf. Hönigswald, Grundlagen der Erkenntnistheorie, ed. Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik. Hamburg 1997, 62f. 8 Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 7. 9 For the following biographical data see Peter Anton von Brentano di Tremezzo, Stammreihen der Brentano mit Abriß der Familiengeschichte. Bad Reichenhall 1933; Oskar Kraus, Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. München 1919; Anton Marty, Franz Brentano. Eine biographische Skizze, in: id., Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Josef Eisenmeier, Alfred Kastil, Oskar Kraus, vol. I/1. Halle a. S. 1916; Reinhard Kamitz, Franz Brentano: Wahrheit und Evidenz, in: Josef Speck (ed.), Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen, vol.: Philosophie der Neuzeit III. Schleiermacher, Bolzano, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Brentano, Nietzsche. Göttingen 1983, 160–197; Mauro Antonelli, Seiendes, Bewußtsein, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano. Freiburg/München 2001; William M. Johnston, Österreichische Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte.
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Gesellschaft und Ideen im Donauraum 1848 bis 1938. Wien 1974; Wilhelm Baumgartner, Franz-Peter Burkard, Franz Brentano. Eine Skizze seines Lebens und seiner Werke, in: Reinhard Fabian, Rudolf Haller, Norbert Henrichs (eds.), International bibliography of Austrian philosophy 1982/1983. Amsterdam/Atlanta 1990, 17–53. 10 Cf. Dale Jacquette, Introduction: Brentano’s philosophy, in: id., (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano. Cambridge UK 2004, 1–19, 6. 11 Cf. Antonelli, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano [n. 9], 439–441. 12 Cf. Carl Stumpf, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano, in: Kraus, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 87–149, 129. 13 Cf. Kamitz, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 160. 14 Cf. Barry Smith, Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago/La Salle (Illinois) 1994, 28. 15 Cf. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology [n. 1], 23. 16 Cf. Kamitz, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 161. Cf. Wolfgang Huemer, Franz Brentano, in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, url: http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/brentano/ (4 May 2014). 17 Edmund Husserl, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano, in: Kraus, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 151–167, 167; transl. by Artemis Linhart. 18 Franz Brentano, Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergmann, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1946 (7), 141. 19 Cf. Franz Brentano, Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischem Gebiete (1874), in: id., Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, ed. Oskar Kraus, with a new introduction by Paul Weingartner. Hamburg 1986, 83–100. 20 Cf. Reinhard Kamitz, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 164. 21 Kraus, Franz Brentano [n. 9]; Marty, Franz Brentano, 21. 22 Cf. Kraus, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 17. 23 Cf. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology [n. 1], 17. 24 Cf. Liliana Albertazzi, From Kant to Brentano, in: Liliana Albertazzi, Massimo Libardi, Roberto Poli (eds.), The School of Franz Brentano. Dordrecht/Boston/London 1996, 423–464, 455. 25 Cf. Kamitz, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 162. 26 Cf. Antonelli, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano [n. 9], 25f. 27 Eberhard Tiefensee, Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838–1917). Tübingen/Basel 1998, 221. 28 Stumpf, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano [n. 12], 148f. 29 Cf. Tiefensee, Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838–1917) [n. 27], 229. 30 Cf. Franz Brentano, Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit, from the estate, ed. Klaus Hedwig. Hamburg 1987, 303. 31 Cf. Franz Brentano, Die Habilitationsthesen (1866), in: id., Über die Zukunft der Philosophie [n. 19], 136f. Cf. auch Franz Brentano, Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig 1929, 147. 32 Tiefensee, Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838–1917) [n. 27], 229. Cf. Franz Brentano, Über die Zukunft der Philosophie [n. 19], 87 und 91f. 33 Edmund Husserl, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano, in: Kraus, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 151–167, 159. 34 Cf. Brentano, Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit [n. 30], 8f.
606 35
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Cf. Jacquette, Introduction: Brentano’s philosophy [n. 10], 12; Jan T. J. Srzednicki, Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth. The Hague 1965, 10f. 36 Antonelli, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano [n. 9], 238. 37 Antonelli, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano [n. 9], 443. 38 Cf. Eliam Campos, Die Kantkritik Brentanos. Bonn 1979, 9f. 39 Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 6. 40 Cf. Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 7–23. 41 Stumpf, Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano [n. 12], 89f. 42 Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 7. 43 Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 4. 44 Franz Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis, from the estate, ed. Alfred Kastil, extended and with a new introduction by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. Hamburg 1970, 6. 45 Josef Hasenfuß, Hermann Schell als Wegbereiter zum II. Vatikanischen Konzil. Sein Briefwechsel mit Franz Brentano. Paderborn 1978, 92. 46 Cf. Albertazzi, From Kant to Brentano [n. 24]; cf. Smith, Austrian Philosophy [n. 14], 44f. 47 Franz Brentano, Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, from the estate, ed. Franziska MayerHillebrand. Bern 1956, 184. 48 Cf. Vctor Faras, Sein und Gegenstand. Der Gegenstand des Denkens als ontologisches Problem im Werk von Franz Brentano, Dissertation. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br. 1968, 91f. 49 Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis [n. 44], 40. 50 Cf. Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 2, ed. Oskar Kraus, with new essays from the estate. Hamburg 1955, 205; Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis [n. 44], 48; Franz Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes, ed. Alfred Kastil. Hamburg 1968, 104f. 51 Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes [n. 50], 105. 52 Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes [n. 50], 109. 53 Franz Brentano, Kategorienlehre, ed. Alfred Kastil. Hamburg 1968, 139. 54 Franz Brentano, Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung. Darmstadt 1967, 46. 55 Cf. Campos, Die Kantkritik Brentanos [n. 38], 33–37 and 40–43. 56 Kamitz, Franz Brentano [n. 9], 163. 57 Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [n. 50], vol. 2, 53f. 58 Cf. Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis [n. 44], 7–45; Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes [n. 50], 78–101. 59 Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes [n. 50], 110. 60 Franz Brentano, Nieder mit den Vorurteilen, ein Mahnruf im Geiste von Bacon und Descartes, sich von allen blinden a-priori loszusagen (1903), in: Brentano, Versuch über die Erkenntnis [n. 44], 11f. 61 See Campos, Die Kantkritik Brentanos [n. 38], 56–59. 62 Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [n. 50], vol. 2, 43f. 63 Massimo Libardi, Franz Brentano (1838–1917), in: Albertazzi, Libardi, Poli (eds.), The School of Franz Brentano, 25–79, 47f. 64 Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [n. 50], vol. 2, 11. 65 Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [n. 50], vol. 2, 40/41.
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Cf. Andrea Borsato, Innere Wahrnehmung und innere Vergegenwärtigung. Würzburg 2009, 23ff. 67 Tiefensee, Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838–1917 [n. 27], 169. 68 Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [n. 50], vol. 2, 138ff. 69 Cf. Brentano, Vom Dasein Gottes [n. 50], 420; Brentano, Kategorienlehre [n. 53], 123. 70 Cf. Tiefensee, Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838–1917) [n. 27], 224. 71 Kant, Prol, AA IV, 315. 72 Franz Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand (1895), in: id., Die vier Phasen der Philosophie, ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig 1926, 9, 19f. Cf. id., Ueber die Zukunft der Philosophie. Wien 1893, 6. 73 Franz Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie [n. 4], 23. 74 Franz Brentano, Meine letzten Wünsche für Oesterreich. Stuttgart 1895, 32f. 75 Gerhard Benetka, Geschichte der Fakultät für Psychologie, url: http://psychologie.uni vie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/fak_psychologie/files/Geschichte_der_Fakult% C3%A4t_f%C3%BCr_Psychologie.pdf (10 March 2015). 76 Werner Sauer, Österreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufklärung und Restauration. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frühkantianismus in der Donaumonarchie. Amsterdam 1982. 77 Wolfgang Künne, Zur Geschichte der philosophischen Bolzano-Rezeption bis 1939, in: Helmut Rumpler (ed.), Bolzano und die Politik. Staat, Nation und Religion als Herausforderung für die Philosophie im Kontext von Spätaufklärung, Frührationalismus und Restauration. Wien 2000, 311–352; 313. Cf. id., ‘Die Ernte wird erscheinen …’. Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1849–1939), in: Heinrich Ganthaler, Otto Neumaier (ed.), Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte. St. Augustin 1997, 9–82. 78 Franz Prihonsky, Neuer Anti-Kant oder Prüfung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft nach den in Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre niedergelegten Begriffen. Bautzen 1850, 49f. 79 Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Leipzig 1874, 115. 80 Brentano, Psychologie [n. 79], 115. 81 Brentano, Psychologie [n. 79], 167. 82 Kazimierz Twardowski, Idee und Perception. Eine erkenntnis-theoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes. Wien 1892. 83 Kazimierz Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung. Wien 1894, 17. 84 Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und größtentheils neuen Darstellung der Logik, 4 vols., vol. 1. Sulzbach 1837, § 67, 304. 85 Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen [n. 83], 24. 86 Alexius Meinong, Zum Terminus “Objektiv”, in: id., Gesamtausgabe, ed. Rudolf Haller, Rudolf Kindinger, 7 vols., vol. 4 “Über Annahmen”. Graz 1977, 99, § 14. Cf. id., Über Gegenstandstheorie, vol. 2: Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie. Graz 1971, 502. 87 Alexius Meinong, Abhandlung IV. Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 86], vol. 2, 381. Cf. 483. 88 Alexius Meinong, Selbstdarstellung, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 86], vol. 7: Selbstdarstellung. Vermischte Schriften. Graz 1978, 14. 89 Meinong, Selbstdarstellung [n. 88], 15; id., Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 486, 514–524. 90 Meinong, Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 486.
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Meinong, Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 485–488. Meinong, Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 487. Cf. Meinong, Das Objektiv, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 86], vol. 4, 42–105. 93 Meinong, Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 489. 94 Ernst Mally, Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie des Messens. n.p., n.d., 126f. 95 Meinong, Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie [n. 86], 489. 96 Meinong, Selbstdarstellung [n. 88], 19. 97 Meinong, Selbstdarstellung [n. 88], 22. 98 Ernst Mally, Logische Schriften, ed. Karl Wolf, Paul Weingartner. Dordrecht 1971, 54–62. 99 Bertrand Russell, On Denoting, in: Mind 14 (1905), 479–493. 100 Cf. Rudolf Haller (ed.), Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung. Graz 1972; Kenneth J. Perszyk, Nonexistent objects. Meinong and Contemporary Philosophy. Dordrecht 1993; Dale Jacquette, Meinongian Logic. The Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence. Berlin 1996; Jocelyn Benoist, Repr¦sentations sans objet. Aux origines de la ph¦nom¦nologie et de la philosophie analytique. Paris 2001; The School of Alexius Meinong, ed. Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette, Roberto Poli. Aldershot 2005; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Gegenstandstheorie und Theorie der Intentionalität bei Alexius Meinong. Dordrecht 2007. 101 For biographical data see Hans Rainer Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung, Zeugnisse in Text und Bild. Freiburg/München 1988; Thomas Rentsch, Edmund Husserl, in: Bernd Lutz (ed.), Metzler Philosophen-Lexikon: Von den Vorsokratikern bis zu den Neuen Philosophen. Stuttgart 1995, 412–419; Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant. Den Haag 1964 and Peter Prechtl, Edmund Husserl – Zur Einführung. Hamburg 1998. 102 Rentsch, Edmund Husserl [n. 101], 412. 103 Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], 271. 104 Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], 271. 105 Cf. Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], 345. 106 Cf. Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], 101. 107 Cf. Rentsch, Edmund Husserl [n. 101]. 108 Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], 46–50. 109 Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], “Vorwort”. 110 Cf. Nathan Rotenstreich, Synthesis and Intentional Objectivity. Dordrecht 1998. Cf. in general Tom Rockmore, Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago 2011. 111 Robert Sokolowski, Husserl und Kant, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26/1 (1965), 132–134. 112 Cf. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology [n. 1] 113 Cf. Sokolowksi, Husserl und Kant [n. 111], 132. 114 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [n. 5], 48. 115 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana, vol. 4, ed. Marly Biemel. Den Haag 1952, Beilage XIII (1936), 438. 116 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [n. 5], 48. 117 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie [n. 5], 48. 118 ˇ apek, Gespräche mit Masaryk. München 2001, 107. Karel C 119 Cf. Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], 132. 92
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Cf. Robin D. Rollinger, Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano. Utrecht 1996. Stephan Körner, On Brentano’s Objections to Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, in: Topoi 6 (1987), 11–17. 122 Wei Zhang, Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung des gegenständlichen Apriori bei Husserl, in: Prolegomena 10/2 (2011), 265–280, 266, url: http://hrcak. srce.hr/file/110496 (22 September 2014) 123 Jocelyn Benoist, Husserl and Bolzano, in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Dordrecht 2003, 98–100. 124 Cf. Karl Schuhmann, Intentionalität und intentionaler Gegenstand beim frühen Husserl, in: id., Selected Papers on Phenomenology, ed. Cees Leijenhorst, Piet Steenbakkers. Dordrecht 2004, 119–136, 120. 125 Zhang, Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung [n. 122], 267. 126 Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana, vol. 22, ed. Bernhard Rang. Den Haag 1979, 156. 127 Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana, vol. 7, ed. Rudolf Boehm. Den Haag 1956, Beilage XX (1908), 387. 128 Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/4) [n. 127], 281. 129 Zhang, Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung [n. 122], 266. 130 Edmund Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, mit ergänzenden Texten (1890–1901), in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana, vol. 12, ed. Lothar Eley. Den Haag 1970, 311. 131 Cf. Moritz Schlick, Gibt es ein Materiales Apriori? (1930), in: id., Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926–1936). Wien 1969, 20–30. 132 Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], 324. 133 Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], 321.. 134 Cf. Zhang, Schelers Kritik an der phänomenologischen Auffassung [n. 122], 273. 135 William Johnston, Österreichische Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte. Wien 2006, 303. 136 Edmund Husserl on 1 February 1922 to Paul Natorp, in: id., Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl Dokumente, vol. 3/5, ed. Karl Schuhmann. Den Haag 1994, 147f. 137 Rentsch, Edmund Husserl [n. 101], 412. 138 Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung [n. 101], “Tagebucheintrag vom 4. November 1907”, 225. 139 Cf. the schedule of lectures and seminars in app. 1 of Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101]. 140 Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], 326. 141 Cf. Kern, Husserl und Kant [n. 101], 2nd part, ch. 1–7. 142 Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/4) [n. 127], 281. 143 Christian Bermes, Philosophie der Bedeutung – Bedeutung als Bestimmung und Bestimmbarkeit: eine Studie zu Frege, Husserl, Cassirer und Hönigswald. Würzburg 1997, 176. 144 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Hamburg 1982, 77. 145 For Heidegger’s biography cf. Helmuth Vetter, Grundriss Heidegger. Hamburg 2014, 385–402; Rüdiger Safranski, Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main 2001; Dieter Thomä, Reinhard Mehring, Leben und Werk Martin Heideggers im Kontext, in: Dieter Thomä (ed.), Heidegger-Handbuch. Stuttgart 2013, 541–568. 121
610 146
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Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 10: Der Satz vom Grund. Frankfurt am Main 1997; English translation published in: Man and World 7/3 (August 1974), 207–222 147 Martin Heidegger, Das Wort, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 12: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Frankfurt am Main 1985, 205–225. 148 For an overview of the different positions which developed in the course of the controversy since the 1940s see Dieter Thomä, Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus, in: id. (ed.), Heidegger-Handbuch. Stuttgart 2013, 108–132. 149 Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 94: Überlegungen II–VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931–1938). Frankfurt am Main 2014; vol. 95: Überlegungen VII–XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/ 39). Frankfurt am Main 2014; vol. 96: Überlegungen XII–XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1941). Frankfurt am Main 2014. 150 Even before the publication of the “Black Notebooks” in spring 2014, the debate was sparked again after editor Peter Trawny had announced the publication of the hitherto unknown “Thought Diaries”. Ever since, the discussion has been receiving high media response. In the light of the publication of the “Black Notebooks” in January 2015, the chairman of the Heidegger Society, Günther Figal, felt impelled to resign. Hereto, see the press release of SWR2 from 16 January 2015. 151 For an overview of the comprehensive and diverse reception of Heidegger’s works see the anthology by Dieter Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch. Stuttgart 2013. 152 An involvement with the first Critique can be found in the lectures of the 1920s (Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs; vol. 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie; vol. 25: Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft; vol. 27: Einleitung in die Philosophie; in Sein und Zeit (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 2), in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 3), in Vorlesungen und Seminaren aus den dreißiger Jahren (Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 41: Die Frage nach dem Ding; vol. 84.1: Seminare: Kant – Leibniz – Schiller), but also still in the 1960s (Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 9: Wegmarken). 153 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 6.1: Nietzsche. Frankfurt am Main 1996. 154 Cf. esp. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 31: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main 1982. 155 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Vorwort zur ersten Ausgabe der “Frühen Schriften”, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 1: Frühe Schriften. Frankfurt am Main 1978, 56. 156 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 56/57: Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main 1987; English translation by Ted Sadler, London 2000. 157 See Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 2: Sein und Zeit. Frankfurt am Main 1977, 32; English translation: Being and Time, a translation of “Sein und Zeit”, transl. by Joan Stambaugh. Albany 1996. 158 See Heidegger, Vorwort zur vierten Auflage [n. 6], XIV; unless otherwise stated all following translations of Heidegger by Richard Taft. Bloomington 1990. 159 See Heidegger, Vorwort zur vierten Auflage [n. 6], XIV. 160 See Heidegger, Vorwort zur vierten Auflage [n. 6], XIV. 161 See Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Über Heideggers Verhältnis zu Kant, in: Neue Jahrbücher (1933), 225–226. 162 Kant, KrV, A805/B833.
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Cf. Kant, Log, AA IX, 25. See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 217. 165 See Dieter Sturma, “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik”. Die Endlichkeit menschlicher Erkenntnis, in: Dieter Thomä, Heidegger-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Stuttgart 2003, 103–110, 108. 166 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 127. 167 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 22. 168 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 91. 169 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 91. 170 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 160. 171 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 168. 172 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 138. 173 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 116. 174 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 176. 175 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 196. 176 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 9. 177 See Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [n. 6], 218. 178 Cf. Heidegger, Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage [n. 6], XVII. 179 Exceptions are for example Steven Crowell, Jeff Malpas (eds.), Transcendental Heidegger. Stanford 2007; Christian Steffen, Heidegger als Transzendentalphilosoph. Heidelberg 2005; Tom Rockmore (ed.), Heidegger, German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism. New York 2000; Frank Schalow, The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue. Action, Thought, and Responsibility. Albany 1992. 180 See Sturma, “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik” [n. 165], 109. 181 Heidegger refers to Hansgeorg Hoppe, Wandlungen in der Kant-Auffassungen Heideggers, in: Vittorio Klostermann (ed.), Durchblicke. Frankfurt am Main 1970, 284–317; cf. Heidegger, Vorwort zur vierten Auflage [n. 6], XIV. 182 Cf. Sturma, “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik” [n. 165], 109f. 183 See Heidegger, Anhang. Aufzeichnungen zum Kantbuch, in: id., Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 3: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Frankfurt am Main 1991, 251. 184 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe [n. 6], vol. 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Frankfurt am Main 1979. 185 See Emerich Coreth, Heidegger und Kant, in: Johannes B. Lotz S. J. (ed.), Kant und die Scholastik heute. München 1955, 207. 186 See Coreth, Heidegger und Kant [n. 185], 225. 187 See Coreth, Heidegger und Kant [n. 185], 225. 188 For biographical data on Richard Hönigswald cf. Gerd Wolandt, Hönigswald, in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 9 (1972), 345–346 [online version], url: http://www.deutsche-biog raphie.de/sfz32869.html (6 May 2014); also Roswitha Grassl, Der junge Richard Hönigswald. Eine biographisch fundierte Kontextualisierung in historischer Absicht. Würzburg 1998; cf. Roswith Grassl/Peter Ichart-Willmes, Denken in seiner Zeit. Ein Personalglossar zum Umfeld Richard Hönigswalds. Würzburg 1997; cf. Utz Maas, Verfolgung und Auswanderung deutschsprachiger Sprachforscher 1933–1945, vol. 2. Tübingen 2010, “Richard Hönigswald” and Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, Richard Hönigswalds transzendentalanalytische Philosophie in Abgrenzung von Cassirer, Heidegger Hegel, in: Mi164
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chael Benedikt, Reinhold Knoll, Cornelius Zehetner (eds.), Verdrängter Humanismus – verzögerte Aufklärung, vol. 5. Wien 2005, 325–343, 332. 189 Cf. Roswitha Grassl and Peter Richart-Willmes, Denken in seiner Zeit. Ein Personenglosar zum Umfeld Richard Hönigswalds. Würzburg 1997, “Meinong, Alexius”, 86–87 and “Riehl, Alois”, 105–106; cf. Kurt Walter Zeidler, Richard Hönigswald: Prinzip und Tatsache, in: Sabine S. Gelhaar (ed.), Zur Präsenz der Philosophie. Kleine Studien zu N. Hartmann. E. Husserl und R. Hönigswald. Dartford 2004 (= Transzendentalphilosophie heute, vol. 14), 129–156, 130ff. 190 Cf. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology [n. 1], 1–22. 191 Cf. Zeidler, Richard Hönigswald [n. 189], 137ff. 192 Hönigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 158f. Cf. Kurt Walter Zeidler, Hönigswalds Kritik der Husserlschen Phänomenologie, in: Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Darius Aleksandrowicz (eds.), Studien zur Philosophie Richard Hönigswalds. Würzburg 1996, 147–162, 148). 193 Cf. Hönigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 181f. Cf. Peter Richart-Willmes, Denken in seiner Zeit. Ein Personenglosar zum Umfeld Richard Hönigswalds. Würzburg 1997, “Husserl, Edmund”, 57–58). 194 Cf. Hönigswald, Grundlagen der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 232. 195 Cf. Gerd Wolandt, Richard Hönigswald: Philosophie als Theorie der Bestimmtheit, in: Josef Speck (ed.), Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen. Philosophie der Gegenwart II. Göttingen 1973, 43–101, “Hönigswald und der Neukantianismus”, esp. 56f.). 196 Hönigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 182f. Cf. Hönigswald, Grundlagen der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 62f. 197 Richard Hönigswald, Die Philosophie der Renaissance bis Kant. Berlin/Leipzig 1923, 276f. 198 Cf. Sturma, “Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik” [n. 165]. 199 Hönigswald, Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie [n. 7], 182f. 200 Martin Heidegger on 25 June 1933 to Einhauser, in: id., Gesamtausgabe, ed. Hermann Heidegger, vol. 16. Frankfurt am Main 2000, 132 f; translation in Tom Rockmore, Philosophy or Weltanschauung? Heidegger on Hönigswald, in: History of Philosophy Quarterly 16/ 1 (1999), slightly corrected by Susanne Costa-Krivdic´. 201 Cf. Schmied-Kowarzik, Richard Hönigswalds transzendentalanalytische Philosophie [n. 188], 332.
Citations and Key to Abbreviations
Standard editions and translations are to be used wherever possible. All references will be printed in endnotes. Complete references will be given the first time a work is mentioned. Subsequent references will use an abridged format. Text emphasised in the original will be printed in italics throughout. Additions or explanations will be enclosed in square brackets, followed by the initials of the author. Unless otherwise noted, translations are the author’s own. Apart from the references to the Critique of Pure Reason, all references to Kant’s works must use volume and page numbers of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. References to the Critique of Pure Reason should, if applicable, use the pagination of the first edition of 1781 (A) and the second edition of 1787 (B). The abbreviations listed below are to be used for individual works. References should look like this: Kant, abbreviation or title [of the specific work], abbreviation [of the edition] vol. number, page[s]. Examples: Kant, Anth, AA VIII, 182. Kant, KU, AA V, 174–176. Kant, KrV, B 23. “Kant, Anth, AA VIII, 182” refers to page 182 in Kant’s Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht [Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View] in the seventh volume of his Gesammelte Schriften; “Kant, KrV, B 23” refers to page 23 of the second edition (B) of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] published in 1787.
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Citations and Key to Abbreviations
List of Abbreviations AA:
Anth: EEKU: GMS: GSK: IaG:
KpV: KrV: KU: Log: MAN: MS: MSTL: NTH: OP: Prol:
Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–22 ed. Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 23 ed. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, from vol. 24 on ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin 1900ff. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (AA VII). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge 2007. Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft (AA XX). First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Eric Matthews, Paul Guyer. Cambridge 2000. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (AA IV). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge 1996. Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (AA I). Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, trans. Jeffrey B. Edwards and Martin Schönfeld. Cambridge 2012. Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (AA VIII). Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent, trans. Lewis White Beck. Indianapolis 1963; trans. Allen W. Wood. Cambridge 2007. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (AA V). Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge 1996. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer, Allen W. Wood. Cambridge 1998.; trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York 1929; trans. John M. D. Meiklejohn. London 1855. Kritik der Urteilskraft (AA V). Critique of the Power of Judgement, trans. Paul Guyer, Eric Matthews. Cambridge 2000. Logik (AA IX). Logic, transl. J. Micheal Young. Cambridge 1992. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (AA IV). Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, trans. Michael Friedman. Cambridge 2002. Die Metaphysik der Sitten (AA VI). The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge 2002. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre (AA VI). Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue, trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge 2002. Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (AA I). Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, trans. Olaf Reinhardt. Cambridge 2012. Opus Postumum (AA XXI and XXII). Opus Postumum, trans. Eckart Förster, Micheal Rosen. Cambridge 1993. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik (AA IV). Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Paul Carus. Chicago 1902; trans. Gary Hatfield. Cambridge 2002.
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Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (AA VI). Metaphysical Principles of Jurisprudence, trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge 1996. RGV: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (AA VI). Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. George di Giovanni. Cambridge 1996. SF: Der Streit der Fakultäten (AAVII). Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor. New York 1979; trans Mary J. Gregor, Robert Anchor. Cambridge 1996. TG: Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch die Träume der Metaphysik (AA II). Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, trans. Emanuel F. Goerwitz. New York 1900; trans. David Walford, Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge 1993. TP: Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis (AAVIII). On the Proverbial Saying: All is Very Well in Theory, but No Good in Practice, trans. Mary J. Gregor, Allen Wood. Cambridge 1996. VAZeF: Vorarbeiten zu Zum ewigen Frieden (AA XXIII). Drafts for Toward Perpetual Peace, trans. Frederick Rauscher, Kenneth R. Westphal. Cambridge 2016. WA: Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (AA VIII). An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge 1970. ZeF: Zum ewigen Frieden (AA VIII). Toward Perpetual Peace, trans. Hans S. Reiss. Cambridge 1991; trans. Minneapolis 2007; trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge 1996.
RL:
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Preface Fig. 1: Map of Vienna, 1798, source: Wien Museum, shelfmark: HMW 169791. Fig. 2: Kant-frieze, main building of the University of Vienna, photo: Georg Soulek. Fig. 3: Karl Goetz, Immanuel Kant, silver medal commemorating Immanuel Kant’s 200th birthday with sailing ship on globe garlanded with clouds, 98 mm, 309.94 g, 1924, source: Münzenhandlung Harald Möller GmbH.
Kant and Censorship Fig. 1: Max Pollak, View of ‘Universitätsplatz’ [University Square] with the Academy of Sciences and the University Church, colored etching (mixed technique), around 1910, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pk 3003, 473. Fig. 2: Auditorium of the old University of Vienna, nowadays Academy of Sciences, in: Franz Grillparzer, Tagebücher und Reiseberichte. Mit zeitgenössischen Illustrationen [Journals and Travelogues. With Contemporary Illustrations], ed. Klaus Geißler. Wien 1980, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 3: University of Vienna, 2015, photo: Aurelia Littig. Fig. 4: Decree that condemns and prohibits the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, 1827, source: Christian Göbel, Kants Gift. Wie die ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ auf den ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’ kam [Kant’s Poison. How the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ got on the ‘Index Librorum Prohibitorum’], in: Norbert Fischer (ed.), Kant und der Katholizismus. Stationen einer wechselhaften Geschichte [Kant and Catholicism. Stages of a Chequered History]. Freiburg i. Br./Wien 2005. Fig. 5: Franz Anton Zauner, Joseph II., Josefsplatz, Vienna, 1807, photo: Aurelia Littig. Fig. 6: Kaspar Clemens Eduard Zumbusch, Franz Joseph I., Juristenstiege,
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University of Vienna, 1886, photo: Ing. Alexander Arnberger, room and resource management, University of Vienna. Fig. 7: Pompeo Marchesi, Emperor Franz II./ I., Inner Castle Court, Hofburg, Vienna, 1846, photo: Alexander Wilfing. Fig. 8: Lazarus Bendavid, Vorlesungen über die Critik der reinen Vernunft [Lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason] [title page]. Wien 1795, source: Google Books. Fig. 9: Peter Miotti, Über die Falschheit und Gottlosigkeit des Kantischen Systems nebst einer Antwort auf A. Kreil’s Bemerkungen über die jüngste Schrift des Herrn Miotti [On the Falsehood and Impiety of the Kantian System With a Response to A. Kreil’s Remarks on the Latest Paper of Mr. Miotti] [title page]. Wien 1801. Fig. 10: Carl Kundmann, Franz Exner, Leopold Graf von Thun and Hohenstein, Hermann Bonitz, Arcade Court, University of Vienna, 1893, photo: Ren¦ Steyer and Armin Plankensteiner, source/copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 11: Konrad Geyer, Johann Friedrich Herbart, in: Die großen Deutschen im Bilde [The Great Germans in Contemporary Portraits]. N.p. 1936, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 12: Alois Flir, Die Neugestaltung der österreichischen Universitäten [The Restructuring of Austrian Universities] [title page]. Wien 1853, source: ANL Vienna, shelfmark: 207018-C. Fig. 13: August Steininger, Robert Zimmermann, lithograph, before 1898, source: Austrian Academy of Sciences, shelfmark No. P-2273-B. Fig. 14: Moses Samuel Lowe, Lazarus Bendavid, in: Bildnisse jetztlebender Berliner Gelehrten mit ihren Selbstbiographien [Portraits of Contemporary Berlin Scholars with Their Autobiographies]. Berlin/Leipzig 1806, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 15: Stephan Tichy, Philosophische Bemerkungen über das Studienwesen in Ungarn [Philosophical Remarks on the University System in Hungary] [title page]. Pest/Ofen/Kaschau 1792. Fig. 16: Rosenstingl/Schmitner, Melk Abbey, 1736/1750, source: Melk Abbey Archive. Fig. 17: Matern Reuß, Soll man auf katholischen Universitäten Kants Philosophie erklären? [Should Catholic Universities Teach Kant’s Philosophy?] [title page]. Wirzburg 1789, source: Google Books. Fig. 18: Benedictine University in Salzburg, in: Prospectus Elegantiores Splendidissimae Archiepiscopalis Urbis Salisburgensis praecipuarumque in ea Illustrium, ac maxime mirabilium, tam Sacrarum quam profanarum Aedium, around 1912, source: State and University Library Bremen, collection of maps, size: 56 x 48 cm, url: http://gauss.suub.uni-bremen. de/suub/hist/index.jsp?id=V.2.a.235-162 (last access: 16 July 2015). Fig. 19: Vinzenz Eduard Milde, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00012324_01. Fig. 20: Emanuel Pendl, Franz von Zeiller, Arcade Court, University of Vienna,
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1891, photo: Ren¦ Steyer and Armin Plankensteiner, source/copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 21: Franz Egger, Das natürliche öffentliche Recht, nach den Lehrsätzen des seligen Freyherrn C. A. von Martini vom Staatsrechte, mit beständiger Rücksicht auf das natürliche Privat-Recht des k.k. Hofrathes Franz Edlen von Zeiller [The Natural Public Law, According to the Tenets of Freyherr C. A. von Martini on State Law, With Perennial Consideration of the Natural Civil-Law of Imperial and Royal Privy Councillor Franz Edlen von Zeiller] [title page]. Wien/Triest 1809. Fig. 22: Franz von Zeiller, Das natürliche Privat-Recht [The Natural Public Law] [title page]. Wien 21808. Fig. 23: Ernst Gottmann, Ernst Topitsch, 1968, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 42.910:C (1). Fig. 24: Speakers of the AAS-conference ‘Recht – Geschichte – Religion’ [‘Law – History – Religion’], 2004, photo: Austrian Academy of Sciences/Robert Herbst. Fig. 25: Rudolf Langthaler, Herta Nagl-Docekal (ed.), Glauben und Wissen. Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas [Belief and Knowledge. A Symposium with Jürgen Habermas] [title page]. Wien 2007.
Kant and Karl Leonhard Reinhold Fig. 1: Peter Copmann, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, pastel on cardboard, ca. 44 x 54 cm, around 1821, in: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Korrespondenzausgabe der Österreichischen Akademie derWissenschaften. 1. Korrespondenz 1773–1788 [Correspondence Edition of the Austrian Akademy of Sciences. 1st Correspondence 1773–1788]. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt/Wien 1983. Fig. 2: Personal record in the monastery files with a note about Reinhold’s death, photo: Philipp Schaller, source: Barnabiten-Archive of the parish St. Michael, Vienna, Acta R.R. P.P. Provincialu[m] Germaniae ab an. MDCCXLIX. usque ad; Catalogus Omnium Personarum Congregationis Clericorum Regularium S. Pauli Apostoli Provinciae Germaniae additis earum officijs, dignitatibus, meritis, annis publicae Professionis, Primitiarum, aetatis, mortis, aliarumque notabilium rerum Circumstantijs. We thank the parish St. Michael and their staff Constanze Gröger, Mag. Doris Fries and Robert Passini. Fig. 3: Michaelerplatz, Vienna, shot of Michaeler Church from Schauflergasse, around 1900, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number 119.010 – C. Fig. 4: Freemasons’ lodge, Vienna, 1785, oil on canvas, height: 74 cm, width: 94 cm, frame: 96,5 x 119,5 x 8,5 cm, source: Wien Museum, HMW 47927. Fig. 5: Note on Reinhold’s escape from Sta. Margharita in the monastery files, photo: Philipp Schaller, source: Barnabiten Archive of the parish St.
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Michael, Vienna, Acta R.R. P.P. Provincialu[m] Germaniae ab an. MDCCXLIX. usque ad; Catalogus Omnium Personarum Congregationis Clericorum Regularium S. Pauli Apostoli Provinciae Germaniae additis earum officijs, dignitatibus, meritis, annis publicae Professionis, Primitiarum, aetatis, mortis, aliarumque notabilium rerum Circumstantijs. We thank the parish St. Michael and their staff Constanze Gröger, Mag. Doris Fries and Robert Passini. Fig. 6: Der Teutsche Merkur 4 [title page]. Weimar 1786, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 7: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie. [Letters on Kantian Philosophy] [title page]. Leipzig 1790. Fig. 8: Edmund Adolf Schmidt, The Johannisthor [St. John’s Gate] in 1898, with Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s first Jena Auditorium to the right of the gate, drawing, 1898, source: City Museum Jena. Fig. 9: Immanuel Kant, Critik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement] [title page]. Frankfurt/Leipzig 21792, source: Library of Melk Abbey. Fig. 10: Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Immanuel Kant on 9 April 1789, source: Tartu University Library, shelfmark: Dorp. I, 145, 635–638. Fig. 11: Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Immanuel Kant on 12 October 1787, source: Tartu University Library, Signatur F 3, Mrg CCXCI, Bd.1, Nr. 305, 621–624. Fig. 12: Philippus Velijn, Jens Immanuel Baggesen, print from a drawing by Cornelia Scheffer, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00092383_01. Fig. 13: Eduard Eichens, Novalis (Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg), copperplate print, 1845, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pg 302: I(1). Fig. 14: Johann Benjamin Erhard, Über das Recht eines Volkes [On the People’s Right] [title page]. Munich 1795, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 15: Franz Hanfstaengl, Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, print, 1832, source: City Museum Munich, shelfmark G M IV/917. Fig. 16: August Prinzhofer, Paul Freiherr von Herbert, 1859, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00021240_01. Fig. 17: Herbertian white lead factory, around 1900, source: State Museum Carinthia, inventory number LG-photo-504. Fig. 18 Letter, Johann Benjamin Erhard to Franz Paul von Herbert on 13 September 1791, source: ANL Vienna, shelfmark Autogr. 130/1–7 Han. Fig. 19: Alois von Saar, Carinthia. Lake Wörth upon Klagenfurth, lithograph from a drawing by Bonaventura de Ben, around 1830, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number +Z110395806. Fig. 20: P. Merker, Medal showing Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Braunschweig, 1794, source: Library City Museum Saalfeld. Fig. 21: Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens [Attempt at a New Theory of the Faculty of Representation] [title page]. Praha/Jena 1789. Fig. 22: Johann Friedrich Jugel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, lithograph from a
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painting by Heinrich Anton Dähling in 1808, 1814, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00134795_01. Fig. 23: Letter, Karl Leonhard Reinhold to Franz Paul von Herbert on Baggesen’s visit to Jena on 5 July 1793, source: ANLVienna, shelfmark 130/1–3 Han.
Kant and Eastern Europe Fig. 1: Map of Austria-Hungary, a game for young people, source: Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.h./Sascha Rieger. Fig. 2: Smuel Köteles, source: Vasrnapi Ujsg [Sunday News] 24 (1911), public domain. Fig. 3: Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold [title page]. Pestini 1792. Fig. 4: Jûzsef Rozgonyi, Dubia de Initiis transcendentalis idealismi Kantiani, ad viros clarissimos Jacob et Reinhold. Pestini 1792, preface in the form of a letter to Jacob and Reinhold. Fig. 5: Mrkû Laci, Kroly Böhm, bronze plaque in the courtyard of the Protestant diocese, Klausenburg, 2012, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 6: Bernt Alexander, in: Ferenc Halmos (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pannonia. The Hungarians manual. Budapest 1993, 355. Fig. 7: Sndor Tavaszy, source: estate of Sndor Tavaszy, Mrton Tonk. Fig. 8: Franz Jaschke, Klausenburg, lithograph, colorized with oil, 1823, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pk 95, 10. Fig. 9: Gheorghe Laza˘r, anonymous portrait in oil, source: High School “Gheorghe Lazar” Avrig, 2015. Fig. 10: Alexandre Quintet, Titu Maiorescu, 1882, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 11: Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 1400 D2. Fig. 12: Tomsˇ G. Masaryk, Zkladov¦ konkretn¦ logiky [Specifically, the Underlying Logic] [title page]. Praha 1885. Fig. 13: Medal showing Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, manufactured in celebration of his 85th birthday, 1935, source: http://www.ma-shops.at/hardelt. Fig. 14: Anton Weber, Oriel of the Karolinum at the University of Prague, brush, pen and ink drawing, before 1896, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pk 1131, 2305. Fig. 15: Max Steiner, source: Lexikus-Verlag. Fig. 16: Andy Miah, Slavoj Zˇizˇek, 2008, source: Wikipedia, creative commons. Fig. 17: Ljubljana School For Psychoanalysis, f.l.t.r.: Dolar, Krecˇicˇ (journalist), Zupancˇicˇ, Zˇizˇek, source: Mladina Magazine. Fig. 18: Alenka Zupancˇicˇ, source: Mladina Magazine. Fig. 19: Alenka Zupancˇicˇ, Ethik des Realen: Kant, Lacan [Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan]. Wien 1995, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 20: Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto), Suburbia of Kracow seen from the Kracow
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Gate, 1778, in: Bernardo Bellotto/Stefan Kozakiewicz/Henner Menz, Bernardo Bellotto genannt Canaletto in Dresden und Warschau: Ausstellung vom 8. Dezember 1963 bis 31. August 1964 im Albertinum Dresden. [Bernardo Bellotto alias Canaletto in Dresden and Warsaw : Exhibition from 8 December 1963 until 31 August 1964 at Albertinum Dresden]. Dresden 1964, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 21: Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden [Perpetual Peace], 5th preliminary article. Königsberg 1795, source: ANLVienna, shelfmark FRANZ 22177. Fig. 22: Kazimierz Wojniakowski, Anna Sapiez˙yna, 1798, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 23: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Roman Ingarden, 1937, source: Wikipedia, public domain.
Kant and his Poets Fig. 1: Friedrich Schiller, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00002059_02. Fig. 2: Friedrich Schiller, Über Anmut und Würde [On Grace and Dignity] [title page], 1793, source: SLUB Dresden, shelfmark Phil.C.807, url: http:// digital.slub-dresden.de/id417643799 (last access: 7 August 2015), (CCBY-SA 4.0). Fig. 3: Kant’s reaction to ‘On Grace and Dignity’, in: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft [Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone]. Königsberg 21794, 10f., source: Google Books. Fig. 4: Josef Kriehuber, Franz Grillparzer, lithograph, 1841, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00001442_01. Fig. 5: Josefine Wessely as Hero in ‘Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen’ [The Waves of Sea and Love], Burgtheater Vienna, 1885–1887, in: Franz Grillparzer, Tagebücher und Reiseberichte. Mit zeitgenössischen Illustrationen [Journals and Travelogues. With Contemporary Illustrations], ed. Klaus Geißler. Wien 1980, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 6: Note by Franz Grillparzer on his understanding of Kant in ‘Aesthetic Theory’, 1837, source: Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Tgb. 3196, shelfmark H.I.N. 81817, sheet 7r/v. Fig. 7: Viktor Tilgner, Franz Grillparzer, cornice, marble, Burgtheater Vienna, 1988, photo: Georg Soulek. Fig. 8: Rudolf Weyr, Carl Kundmann, Carl Hasenauer, Franz Grillparzer memorial (f.l.t.r. ‘The Ancestress’, ‘A Dream is Life’, ‘The Fortune and Fall of King Ottokar’, ‘Sappho’, ‘Medea’, ‘The Waves of Sea and Love’), Volksgarten Vienna, 1889, photo: Ren¦ Steyer, source/copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 9: Joseph Schreyvogel, contemporary print from a watercolor portrait by Capeller, before 1882, in: Anselm Salzer, Illustrierte Geschichte der
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deutschen Literatur [Illustrated History of German Literature], source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 10: Carl Postl, The old Burgtheater, copperplate print, in: Franz Grillparzer, Tagebücher und Reiseberichte. Mit zeitgenössischen Illustrationen [Journals and Travelogues. With Contemporary Illustrations], ed. Klaus Geißler. Wien 1980, source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 11: Schreyvogelgasse, 1010 Vienna, photo: Aurelia Littig. Fig. 12: Joseph Axmann, Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, from a painting by Joseph Matthäus Aigner, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00010608_01. Fig. 13: Moritz von Schwind, Ein Schubertabend bei Ritter von Spaun [A Schubert Evening at the Home of Ritter von Spaun], reproduction from sepia by Moritz von Schwind, 1868, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number 461.681-B. Fig. 14: Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele [Dietetics of the Soul] [title page]. Wien 1838. Valere aude! [Dare to be healthy!] as a variation of Kant’s motto Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise!], source: ANL Vienna. Fig. 15: Josef Axmann, Friedrich Schlegel, from a drawing by Auguste von Buttlar, 1829, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number PORT_00014012_01. Fig. 16: Adalbert Stifter, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 95: C ( 5). Fig. 17: Dora Kallmus (Madame d’Ora), Karl Kraus, 1908, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number 203430-D. Fig. 18: Karl Kraus, First edition of ‘Die Fackel’ [‘The Torch’] [title page], 1899, source: AAC – Austrian Academy Corpus. AAC-FACKEL, online version: “Die Fackel. Editor : Karl Kraus, Vienna 1899–1936”, AAC digital edition Nr. 1, url: http://www.aac.ac.at/fackel (last access: 15 October 2014). Fig. 19: Karl Kraus, Zum ewigen Frieden [Perpetual Peace], 1918, source: AAC – Austrian Academy Corpus. AAC-FACKEL, online version: “Die Fackel. Editor : Karl Kraus, Vienna 1899–1936”, AAC digital edition Nr. 1, url: http://www.aac.ac.at/fackel (last access: 15 October 2014). Fig. 20: Karl Kraus, Ein Kantianer und Kant [A Kantian and Kant], 1918, source: AAC – Austrian Academy Corpus. AAC-FACKEL, online version: “Die Fackel. Editor : Karl Kraus, Vienna 1899–1936”, AAC digital edition Nr. 1, url: http://www.aac.ac.at/fackel (last access: 15 October 2014). Fig. 21: Rainer Maria Rilke, reprography of a photo from 1906, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 2291:C (1). Fig. 22: Immanuel Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers [Dreams of a Spirit-Seer] [title page], ed. Karl Kehrbach, Leipzig 1902. Fig. 23: Edith Barakovich, Egon Friedell, 1931, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 24: Commemorative plaque for Egon Friedell, Gentzgasse 7, 1180 Vienna, photo: Aurelia Littig. Fig. 25: Robert Musil in his study in exile in Geneva, 1941, source/copyright: Karl Corino, Robert Musil Institute Klagenfurt, Carinthia.
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Fig. 26: Military middle school in Eisenstadt (Burgenland), postcard, around 1900. The boarding school in Musil’s “Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß” [“The Confusions of Young Törless”] is an analogy to this school which the author attended. Fig. 27: Franz Kafka, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 1544:C (5). Fig. 28: Letter, Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer on 16 October 1917, source: Archiv Kritische Kafka-Ausgabe. Fig. 29: Franz Kafka, drawings, source: ANL Vienna, hallmark 655192-B. Fig. 30: Barbara Ruppel, Transformation – Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, insect with human head beneath rotting apple, text and bird, medal, silver casting, 58.3 mm, 67.38 g, 2007, source: Leipziger Münzhandlung Heidrun Höhn. Fig. 31: Heinz Bachmann, Ingeborg Bachmann, Rome, 1962, source/copyright: Heinz Bachmann. Fig. 32: Thomas Bernhard, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pk 3.368, 4. Fig. 33: Michael Maertens as Kant with parrot Friedrich at a photo rehearsal of a production of ‘Immanuel Kant’, Burgtheater Vienna, 2009, source: ANL Vienna/APA, inventory number APA_20090918_PD2267. Fig. 34: Letter, Maria von Herbert to Immanuel Kant in August 1791, source: Tartu University Library, shelfmark F 3, Mrg CCXCI, vol.1, no. 161, 705/ 06. Fig. 35: Roland Schlager, Franz Schuh, source: ANL Vienna/APA, inventory number APA_20091002_PD0315.
Kant and the Vienna Circle Fig. 1: Reconstitution of the ‘Philosophical Society’ of the University of Vienna as a local group of the Kant Society, in: Kant-Studien [Kant Studies] 32, 1927, 556. Fig. 2: Theodor Bauer, Moritz Schlick, around 1930, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number Pf 29.355:E(1). Fig. 3: Floor panel with inscription commemorating Moritz Schlick at the location of the assassination, Philosophenstiege, University of Vienna, 1991, source/copyright: University of Vienna. Fig. 4: Drawing addressing Moritz Schlick’s assassination, in: Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, 23 June 1936, 1, source: ANL Vienna, shelfmark 440.370D.Per. Fig. 5: Edgar Zilsel, Das Anwendungsproblem. Ein philosophischer Versuch über das Gesetz der großen Zahlen und die Induktion [The Application Problem: a Philosophical Investigation of the Law of Large Numbers and its Induction] [title page]. Leipzig 1916. Fig. 6: Otto Neurath, source: VGA Vienna, shelfmark: V3/141. Fig. 7: Rudolf Carnap, 1923, source: IVC Vienna. Fig. 8: Günther Baszel, Robert Reininger, Arcade Court, University of Vienna,
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1967, photo: Ren¦ Steyer and Armin Plankensteiner, source/copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 9: Max Adler, source: ANL Vienna, inventory number 196.808 – B. Fig. 10: Max Adler’s speech on the centenary of Kant’s death, source: ANL Vienna, hallmark 417672-B.2. Fig. 11: Ferdinand Welz, Hans Kelsen, Arcade Court, University of Vienna, 1984, photo: Ren¦ Steyer and Armin Plankensteiner, source/copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 12: Hans Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre. Einleitung in die rechtswissenschaftliche Problematik [Pure Theory of Law. Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory] [title page]. Leipzig/Wien 1934.
Kant and Phenomenology Fig. 1: Vincenc Makovsky, Tomsˇ Garrigue Masaryk, Arcade Court, University of Vienna, 1996, photo: Ren¦ Steyer and Armin Plankensteiner, source/ copyright: Department of Art History, University of Vienna. Fig. 2: Franz Brentano, photograph from the last years of his life, in: Hans Rainer Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung. Zeugnisse in Text und Bild [Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Movement]. Freiburg 1988, 253. Fig. 3: Dean’s invitation to the memorial for Brentano and the unveiling of the bust of Brentano in the Arcade Court at the University of Vienna, 1952, source: Archive of the University of Vienna. Fig. 4: Franz Brentano’s request for reappointment as tenured professor, signed unanimously by the faculty with 38 votes, 1880, source: Archive of the University of Vienna. Fig. 5: Letter, Franz Brentano to the faculty of the University of Vienna, requesting a lectern, 1876, source: Archive of the University of Vienna. Fig. 6: Fragment of one of Brentano’s lectures in which he critically discusses Kant’s concept of the phenomenon, source: Franz Brentano Archive, Karl Franzens University Graz. Fig. 7: Josef Kriehuber, Bernard Bolzano, lithograph adapted from Heinrich Hollpein, 1849, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 8: Alexius Meinong, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 9: Brentano’s annotated copy of ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, ed. G. Hartenstein. Leipzig 1838, source: Franz Brentano Archive, Karl Franzens University Graz. Fig. 10: Edmund Husserl, around 1900, source: Wikipedia, public domain. Fig. 11: Edmund Husserl’s lectures on Kant, source: Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus [Husserl and Kant. An Examination of Husserl’s Relation to Kant and Neo-Kantianism]. Den Haag 1964, 2Double year indications
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represent winter semesters, single year indications represent summer semesters. 3Weekly hours. Fig. 12: Husserl’s annotated copy of ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, edition of 1781 with addition of all deviations of the 1787 edition, ed. Karl Kehrbach Leipzig 21878). With friendly permission of the Husserl Archive Leuven. Fig. 13: Diary entry by Edmund Husserl on 25 September 1906. With friendly permission of the Husserl Archive Leuven. Fig. 14: Edmund Husserl, Kant und die Idee der Transcendentalphilosophie. Nach einer Festrede gehalten bei der Kantfeier der Universität Freiburg i. Br. am 1. Mai 1924 [Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy. From a lecture given at the University of Freiburg’s celebrations of Kant on 1 May 1924], Speech for Kant’s 200th birthday, 1924. With friendly permission of the Husserl Archive Leuven. Fig. 15: Martin Heidegger, in: Frank Schalow, Alfred Denker, Historical dictionary of Heidegger’s philosophy. Lanham 22010. source: Vienna University Library. Fig. 16: Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, in: Hans Rainer Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung. Zeugnisse in Text und Bild [Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Movement]. Freiburg 1988, 321. Fig. 17: Martin Heidegger, Evaluation of Hönigswald, source: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, shelfmark MK 43772.
Authors
Beck, Max (BA), Student, University of Vienna. Bondeli, Martin (PD Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Bern. Bozˇuk, Marek, Student, University of Vienna. Brinnich, Max (Mag.), University Assistant (Pre-Doc), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Dek, Eszter (Dr.), National Sz¦ch¦nyi Library, Budapest. Deibl, Johannes (Mag.), Library of Melk Abbey. Deibl, Helmut Jakob (P. Dr. OSB), University Assistant (Post-Doc), Institute of Systematic Theology, Department for Basic Theological Research, University of Vienna. Diaconu, Ma˘da˘lina (Univ.-Doz. DDr.), Department of Philosophy, Department of Romance Studies, University of Vienna. Diaconu, Marin (Conf. Univ. Dr.), Politehnica University of Bucharest. Egyed, P¦ter (Prof. Dr.), Hungarian Institute for Philosophy, Babes¸-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Fillafer, Franz L. (Dr.), Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole.
628
Authors
Flucher, Elisabeth (Mag.), Doctoral Program “Theory and Methodology of Science of Text and its History (TMTG)”, Department of German Studies, University of Osnabrück. Gerber, Sophie (Dr.), Congress Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Geml, Gabriele (Mag.), Fellow, Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche, Weimar Classics Foundation. Heller, Georg (BA), Student, University of Vienna. Kalteis, Bernadette (Mag.), Library of Melk Abbey. Karsek, Jindrˇich (Dr. phil. habil.), Institute of Philosophy und Religious Studies, Charles University Prague. Kloc-Konkołowicz, Jakub (Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Krappmann, Jörg (doc. Mgr, PhD), Department of German Philology, Palacky´University, Olomouc. Leschanz, Christoph (Ing., BA), Student, University of Vienna. Loidolt, Sophie (Dr.), University Assistant (Post-Doc), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Mester, B¦la (PhD), Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. Nagl-Docekal, Herta (Univ.-Prof. i.R. Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Naschert, Guido (Dr.), Weimar. Perecz, Lszlû (Prof. Dr.), Department for Legal Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Ring, Olga (BA), Student, University of Vienna.
Authors
629
Sauer, Werner (Ao.Univ.-Prof.i.R. Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Graz. Schaller, Philipp (Mag.), University Assistant (Pre-Doc), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Schmidt, Philipp (MMag.), Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, University of Vienna. Schneck, Sebastian (BA), Vienna. Scholzen, Caroline (Mag.), Doctoral Candidate, Department of German Philology, University of Vienna Simoniti, Jure (Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. Stoppelkamp, Bastian (M.A.), University Assistant (Pre-Doc), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Tonk, Mrton (Univ.-Prof. Dr.), Department of European Studies and International Relations, Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca. Ungvri-Zrnyi, Imre (PhD), Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy in Hungarian, Babes¸-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca. Waibel, Violetta L. (Univ.-Prof. Dr., MA), Professor of European and Continental Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Wilfing, Alexander (Mag.), Institute for History of Art and Musicology, Department of Musicology, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Zeidler, Kurt Walter (tit. Univ.-Prof. Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Zouhar, Jan (Prof. PhDr.), Department of Philosophy, Masaryk University Brno. Zovko, Jure (Prof. Dr.), Department of Philosophy, University of Zadar, University of Zagreb.