In the second edition of Hermann Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience, he abandons the interpretation of Kant’s Anticipations of Perception that he gave in the first edition, in favourof a radically different one. On his early interpretation, the Anticipations is largely of psychological interest for its influence on, and continuing significance for, physiological psychology and psychophysics. But on his mature interpretation, it defends the superiority of a dynamic conception of nature over a mechanical conception. Further, on his early interpretation, Cohen (...) thought the Anticipations was not a central part of Kant’s critical theory of knowledge. But on his mature interpretation, he thinks it is absolutely central to that project. What is more, Cohen seems to have revised his interpretation in a relatively short period of time, in 1880-1. This paper argues that Cohen’s change in views about Kant’s Anticipations is explained by his reception of Leibniz in the very early 1880s, and specifically Cohen’s reception of Leibniz’s arguments against Descartes’ view that extension is the essence of matter. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relation between Cohen's approach to differential calculus and his doctrine of pure thinking. We claim that Cohen's logic of origin is firmly based on his interpretation of infinitesimal analysis. More precisely, the transcendental method, when applied to differential calculus, reveals the productive capacity of thinking expressed by the judgment of origin.

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest school, between (...) Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity. (shrink)

This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradition, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this reassessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of (...) this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to what was at the time the most powerful philosophical movement in Europe. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the problem of anthropodicy in the philosophical system of Hermann Cohen and its interpretation by Jacob Gordin (1896—1947). Gordin was one of the last followers of Cohen in Russia. He developes his interpretation in the lecture “Anthropodicy”, which was given in the Philosophical Circle at the Petrograd University in December 1921. For the study of the problem of anthropodicy he was apparently inspired by the discussions at the Free Philosophical Association in 1919—1921. Gordin places Cohen’s concept (...) of man in the wide intellectual context given by the ideas of the Russian religious philosophy, German classical philosophy, Neo-Kantianism, and the West European and Jewish mysticism (cabbala). Gordin compares Cohen’s anthropodicy with Vladimir Soloviev’s one and shows that there is a similarity in their approaches. Both philosophers point out that the justification of man is possible only in form of the justification of humanity and not as for Berdyaiev in form of the justification of personality. But Gordin uses Soloviev’s concept of all-unity and Berdyaiev’s concept of creativity in order to “improve” Cohen’s conception and to reveal the contribution of a person to the justification of humanity. Stronger as Cohen Gordin connects the programm of anthropodicy with individuality and underlines the participation of the individual in creating culture. (shrink)

The volume Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania is the first contribution that aims at showing to the Japanese reader a sample of contemporary philosophy in Romania. At the same time a volume of contemporary Japanese philosophy is translated into Romanian and will be published by the University of Bucharest Press. -/- Applied Ethics. Perspectives from Romania includes several original articles in applied ethics and theoretical moral philosophy. It is representative of the variety of research and the growing interest in applied (...) ethics in the last few years in Romania. The philosophy practised here is at the same time an international activity, but also a kind of research deeply involved in Romanian realities. The contributors to the volume are Romanian philosophers from the most important Universities in the country, including members of the Romanian Academy, but also junior researchers. -/- This volume was made possible thanks to the relationship established between the Applied Ethics Centres of the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Hokkaido University, Japan. (shrink)

This book proposes to identify three long-term structures in causal reasoning - in particular, in terms of the relationship between cause and identity - that appear to be of value in categorizing and organizing various trends in philosophical thought.<br>Such conceptual schemes involve a host of philosophical dilemmas (such as the problem of relativism), which are examined in the first chapter. A number of naturalistic and transcendental approaches to this problem are also analysed.<br>In particular, the book attempts to construct a theoretical (...) basis for Foucault's tripartite classification of epistemological structures in European thought.<br>The final chapter attempts to buttress the above schema by extending the analysis from cause and identity to growth, change, and stability, critiquing certain ideas of Foucault and Heidegger, as well as examining the contemporary thought of process philosophy and complexity theory.<br><br>Contents<br><br>Contents: Plurality and Causality - What is a Paradigm? - Paradigms and Causal Structure - Universality and Mathesis Universalis - Temporality and Visibility - Classical and Modern Probability Theory - The Environment and Non-Monotonicity - The Marburg School and the Limit Concept; Foucault's concept of 'Man' - Nineteenth Century Philosophy of Science - A Dynamic Model - Foucault and the Birth of the Clinic - Process, Growth and Complexity - Time and History. (shrink)

The kantian idea according to which only people can claim respect and only for them can moral rights exist, yet, at the same time, not all human beings are people in this strict prescriptive sense, contains considerable potential of exclusion. From this view, the present article reconstructs the architecture of Kant’s moral philosophy and investigates thescope and the limits of the different proposals of solution based on his theory.

Environmental philosophers have argued that Kant’s philosophy offers little for environmental issues. Furthermore, Kant scholars typically focus on humanity, ignoring the question of duties to the environment. In my dissertation, I turn to a number of underexploited texts in Kant’s work to show how both sides are misguided in neglecting the ecological potential of Kant, making the case for the green Kant at the intersection of Kant scholarship and environmental ethics. I build upon previous literature to argue that the green (...) Kant matters for both sides. Rather than a liability, Kant is indeed a conceptual resource. Though many conceive of Kant’s philosophy as environmentally problematic, I argue that underappreciated evolutionary, aesthetic, and holistic sides of Kant’s philosophy can provide conceptual resources for issues in climate change and environmental ethics. Some aspects, such as the pre-critical view of nature, are quite green and merely require an application, while others, such as Kant’s philosophy of history, require a green appropriation to be relevant. The theoretical foundations I develop in these texts will allow Kantians to articulate duties regarding nature and duties for sustainability. This re-thinking of Kant redresses the complaints environmental thinkers hold against Kant. By means of a philosophical interpretation, defense, and application of particular texts from Kant’s works such as Universal Natural History, Critique of Judgment, and Idea for a Universal History, I show how the greening of Kant is not only helpful for contemporary issues, but also defensible. This will make the green Kant agreeable to Kant scholars yet all the while relevant for today with regard to environmental ethics and, more importantly, climate change. (shrink)

En este trabajo nos proponemos estudiar los vínculos que Cassirer establece entre los conceptos de causalidad, invariancia y sistematicidad en el conocimiento de la física. Para ello, comenzaremos considerando el marco general en el que se inscribe el análisis que Cassirer realiza. Este marco es el provisto por el método trascendental. En segundo lugar, consideraremos el principio de causalidad de Kant a la luz de su distinción entre principios constitutivos y principios regulativos de la experiencia. Luego, discutiremos las dificultades que (...) Cassirer encuentra en la doctrina kantiana de la causalidad. Más adelante nos referiremos al sistema de los enunciados de la física, para poder así determinar el modo en el que se relacionan los conceptos de causalidad, invariancia y sistematicidad. (shrink)

This paper challenges the hitherto common distinction between Hermann Cohen’s early phase of Völkerpsychologie and his later phase as a critical idealist. Recently, it has been claimed that Cohen’s turn was not a rapid conversion but a development that was already inherent to his early view. This paper argues that even in Cohen’s mature critical idealism, a thin basis of Völkerpsychologie continues to exist. Cohen’s critical programme is presented as having a twofold aim: On the one hand, it strives to (...) give an account of pure, formal, and logical laws that regulate critical thinking; on the other hand, it offers a reading of Kant’s dualism between matter and form that allows critical thinking to be seen as inevitably embedded in causal laws of psychology, history, and physiology. Concerning the latter, the paper argues that Cohen remained in the tradition of Völkerpsychologie in his mature ethical thought. (shrink)

This article examines Cohen’s “transcendental method”, Windelband’s “critical method”, the neo-Kantian distinctions between natural science and the humanities (i. e., human or cultural sciences), and Weber’s account of ideal-typical explanations. The Marburg and the Southwest Schools of neo-Kantianism have in common that their respective philosophies of science focused on method, but they substantially differ in their approaches. Cohen advanced the “transcendental method”, which was taken up and transformed by Natorp and Cassirer; later, it became influential in neo-Kantian approaches to 20th (...) century physics. Windelband distinguished between facts and values, linking the former to the “genetic” method of history and the latter to the “critical” method of philosophy; and between the “nomothetic” and “idiographic” methods of the empirical sciences, a distinction further elaborated by Rickert. The distinction does not give rise to a sharp discrimination but is rather what Weber would later call an ideal type. All these approaches contribute in different ways to understanding the structure of scientific knowledge, focusing on different aspects of the general path of the empirical sciences between rationalism and empiricism. (shrink)

Most scholars dealing with neo-Kantianism emphasize the existence of an explicit origin that characterizes neo-Kantianism as a clearly defined ‘movement’ with certain objects. In spite of the fact that differences between various neo-Kantian authors are mentioned in the current discourse (e. g. ‘Südwestdeutsche’ and ‘Marburger Schule’) scholars claim a singular unity of all neo-Kantian debates represented in the problem of ‘Geltung’. This is used to construct a certain relevance of neo-Kantianism in today’s philosophy. My contribution will pursue a historical approach (...) following Klaus Christian Köhnke’s and Ulrich Sieg’s demands. Instead of sketching systematic topics I pay further attention to the context in which an essence of neo-Kantianism was claimed or rejected. In doing so I will examine the discussions on the doctrine of postulates in Kant’s philosophy mainly led by Hans Vaihinger’s ‘Philosophy of As If’ and the impact of Eduard von Hartmann on the genesis of neo-Kantianism. I conclude that the definition of a consistent neo-Kantian ‘movement’ was an effect of rejecting spiritualist interpretations of the doctrine of postulates and in the following a rejection of the whole doctrine as ‘mysticism’ in canonical Kant interpretations. (shrink)

This paper assesses the theory, first voiced by Schelling and Kant, according to which an infinite historical process will lead to cosmopolitan institutions.The assessment will mainly be done on the basis of theories about infinitely repeated games. The first part of the paper reconstructs “infinitesimal” historical cosmopolitanism as proposed by Schelling and Kant. The second part confronts this position with the results of the theory of infinitely repeated games among groups. The third part offers reflections on additional conditions and contingencies (...) of the theory and the forth part draws the conclusion: while we can reasonably assume global cooperation to increase and stabilize over time under sustainable conditions, we cannot predict the institutional design of that cooperation. (shrink)

The article focuses on re-evaluating Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic by initially highlighting its seemingly negative function within the Critique of Pure Reason as a mere regulative form for cognition and experience. The Dialectic, however, does not only have such a negative-regulative function but also its very own positive and founding character for cognition that even is present in the supposedly most immediate forms of intuition. In exploring this positive side of the Transcendental Dialectic it becomes clear that it manifests itself as (...) a bridge between the so-called theoretical and practical reason inasmuch as it fills in their gap within Kant’s philosophy. From the practical side, the Dialectic is manifest as an action full of purposiveness, maxims, and imperatives within cognition, from a theoretical side it assumes the form of syllogistic inference, which is the adequate and acting theoretical form of practical reason. Therefore, the unity of reason is shown in presenting its inner gap as a dialectical misunderstanding that Kant not only highlights in the Transcendental Dialectic but also tends to leave unsolved mostly. Nevertheless, the Dialectic can be shown as the a priori synthetic act of unifying reason, if investigated in the context of Kant’s complete critical endeavour. (shrink)

In 1912, Ernst Cassirer contributed to the special issue of the Kant-Studien that honored Hermann Cohen's retirement—his mentor and teacher, and the recognized founding father of the so-called 'Marburg school' of Neo-Kantianism. In the context of an otherwise rather conventional presentation of Cohen's interpretation of Kant, Cassirer made a remark that is initially surprising. It is “anything but accurate,” he wrote, to regard Cohen's philosophy as focused “exclusively on the mathematical theory of nature,” as is usually done. A reconstruction of (...) the genesis of Cohen's thought, Cassirer continued, would already refute this interpretation. Actually, “[t]he... (shrink)

La filosofía jurídico-política kantiana es —desde hace varios años— protagonista de primer nivel en los debates sobre la justicia, la propiedad y la pobreza. El renacimiento vino de la mano del trabajo de varios filósofos y juristas que, afortunadamente, se apartan de los incómodos y desacertados apodos que recibió Kant en la segunda mitad del siglo pasado: “Kant el político moralista”, “Kant liberal”, “Kant, el defensor de la propiedad privada exclusiva y excluyente”. Ha vuelto ahora con renovado y creciente interés, (...) el “Kant republicano”, luego de casi dos siglos de olvidos. No pretendo realizar una reseña de la abundante bibliografía de uno y otro período interpretativo —el del Kant liberal y el del Kant republicano—; el objetivo principal de este trabajo es recuperar algunas piezas del Kant republicano de la mano de la tradición republicana histórica que se inicia con Aristóteles y reaparece, con fuerza renovada, en algunos representantes modernos del derecho natural, siendo Kant uno de ellos. Comenzaré con una reseña acerca de lo que juzgo como la interpretación contemporánea más influyente sobre la justicia en Kant, la de John Rawls; para luego apuntar algunas tesis sobre el valor de la concepción kantiana de la justicia pública, entendida como el imprescindible correlato institucional del derecho a la libertad innata, el único derecho natural inalienable. (shrink)