»Mit Heideggers Eintreffen in Marburg begann … für das philosophische Denken eine neue Epoche.« – So erinnert sich Hans-Georg Gadamer an Heideggers Marburger Zeit, und nicht nur Heideggers eigenes Schaffen, auch die anhaltende Wirkung von Sein und Zeit und den anderen in Marburg verfassten Schriften und Vorlesungen, geben diesem Diktum recht. Seit diese Texte in der Gesamtausgabe vorliegen, wird immer deutlicher, wie sich Heidegger in Marburg philosophisch entwickelt hat, welche Ideen, Lektüren und Begegnungen diese Zeit prägten und (...) welche Wege Heideggers Denken in Marburg nahm. Als Ergebnis der »Übergangsarbeit« der Marburger Zeit hat Heidegger mit Sein und Zeit einen Text geschaffen, der zur Mitte seines Denkens werden sollte, und dies auch und gerade deshalb, weil dieses Werk Heideggers unvollendet geblieben ist. In einer Anmerkung zur letzten Seite heißt es in diesem Sinne, das Buch stelle einen Weg des Denkens da, aber »nicht ›den‹ einzigen«. Dass Sein und Zeit das in der Einleitung gesteckte Ziel nicht erreicht und Fragment geblieben ist, ist nur ein Anzeichen für die Komplexität, die wesentliche Schwierigkeit und innere Spannung der Themen, Argumente und Konstellationen, mit denen Heidegger sich in Marburg beschäftigt hat. ... (shrink)

This article concerns genealogy of ideas from the Marburg school of neo-Kantian philosophy in’s early works in the context of intellectual and educational tendencies in Europe and the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century. Yevhen Spektorskyi (1875–1951) is known as a prominent philosopher and lawyer, professor, and the last president at the Saint Volodymyr University. Analyzing his early works, which were strongly connected to his teaching and scientific activities at the law faculty of Warsaw University, the (...) author recognizes several key factors as the reasons for considerable development of the main neo-Kantian ideas of the philosopher. Firstly, Spektorskyi’s research interests were strongly influenced by the intellectual communication with his teacher, professor, and lawyer Oleksandr Blok (1852–1909), whose research was concentrated on the idea of classification of the sciences and its further substantiating. Secondly, we know that at the beginning of 20th century Spektorskyi was on several long-term educational secondments in European educational institutions, which allowed him to immerse into intellectual life of that time. In the article, the author focuses on analysis of Spektorskyi’s published works and unpublished manuscripts of the years 1903–1910. It is clarified that their main issues concern essential notions and arguments of critical idealism and its implications for the procedures of rational argumentation of sciences (mainly, social sciences) by setting ideal goals and clarification of regulative ideas for the social scientists in their research. The article also examines Spektorskyi’s logical structure of critique of the founder of the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism Hermann Cohen (1842–1918). The critique concerns the development of ethics as “mathematics of natural science” and argues for the creative and productive rethinking of neo-Kantian ideas by Spektorskyi. (shrink)

In A Parting of the Ways Michael Friedman proposed to conceive the contemporary divide between analytic philosophy (AP) and continental philosophy (CP) as the outcome of the bifurcation between the Neokantians of Heidelbarg and Marburg. According to Friedman, Carnap can be characterized as the executor of the Marburg school, while Heidegger is to be considered as the heir of the Southwest Neokantianism. In this paper it is argued that Carnap was much closer to the Southwest Neokantianism than usually (...) recognized. To some extent, Carnap’s project in the Aufbau may be described as an attempt to modernize the Neokantian approach of the Southwest school with the help of modern relational logic. This entails that Carnap cannot be lined so easily with the Marburg school as Friedman assumes. (shrink)

This paper looks at the ways in which Mikhail Bakhtin had appropriated the ideas of Kant and of the Marburg neo-Kantian school. While Bakhtin was greatly indebted to Kantian philosophy, and is known to have referred to himself as a neo-Kantian, he rejects the main tenets of neo-Kantianism. Instead, Bakhtin offers a substantial re-interpretation of Kantian thought. His frequent borrowings from neo-Kantian philosophers (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and others) also follow a distinctive pattern of appropriation, whereby blocks of interconnected (...) ideas are removed from their original context, and made to serve Bakhtin’s own—substantially different—philosophical purposes in the context of his own thought. Bakhtin’s thought thus remains original even as he is borrowing ideas from others. (shrink)

Metrisch gebundene Texte sind aus dem altsprachlichen Unterricht nicht wegzudenken: Vergil, Ovid, Horaz, Catull und Martial sind nur einige typische Autoren für die Dichtungslektüre im Lateinunterricht; Homer, Sophokles und Euripides sind typische Beispiele für den Griechischunterricht. Die Curricula schlagen eine Vielzahl poetischer Texte als mögliche Lektüren vor. Allein diese unvollständige Autorenauswahl zeigt schon, dass man allein mit der Behandlung von daktylischem Hexameter und elegischem Distichon nicht besonders weit kommt, will man nicht die Textauswahl nach solchen rein formalen Kriterien unnötig und (...) unzulässig einschränken oder bei allen anderen Metra so tun, als läse man Prosa. Denn ein solches Vorgehen ermöglicht zwar eine Übersetzung, ein wirkliches Verständnis der Texte bleibt den Schülern aber verwehrt, da ihnen die Wirkung des Metrums, der Einschnitte, der Betonung bestimmter Positionen im Vers und nicht zuletzt ästhetische Aspekte verborgen bleiben oder allenfalls indirekt durch den metrischen Vortrag des Lehrers oder eine stilistische Analyse erschlossen werden. -/- Der vorliegende Band widmet sich daher grundlegenden Fragen zum Thema lateinischer und griechischer Prosodie und Metrik im Unterricht unter Einbeziehung der Lehrpläne und einer Befragung von Lehrkräften. Daneben finden sich Praxisbeispiele zu Catull, Ovid, Terenz und Homer, Überlegungen zur Beziehung von Musik und Metrik sowie eine Anregung zum Dichten in lateinischer Sprache. -/- Mit Beiträgen von: Gregor Bitto, John Bulwer, Fabiola Dengler, Boris Dunsch, Magnus Frisch, Hans-Joachim Glücklich, Christoph Kugelmeier, Immanuel Musäus, Jens Pickenhan, Anna Elissa Radke, Wolfgang Schoedel, Katharina Waack-Erdmann und Heike Wolf. (shrink)

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

We seek to elucidate the philosophical context in which one of the most important conceptual transformations of modern mathematics took place, namely the so-called revolution in rigor in infinitesimal calculus and mathematical analysis. Some of the protagonists of the said revolution were Cauchy, Cantor, Dedekind,and Weierstrass. The dominant current of philosophy in Germany at the time was neo-Kantianism. Among its various currents, the Marburg school (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer, and others) was the one most interested in matters scientific and mathematical. (...) Our main thesis is that Marburg neo-Kantian philosophy formulated a sophisticated position towards the problems raised by the concepts of limits and infinitesimals. The Marburg school neither clung to the traditional approach of logically and metaphysically dubious infinitesimals, nor whiggishly subscribed to the new orthodoxy of the “great triumvirate” of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass that declared infinitesimals conceptus nongrati in mathematical discourse. Rather, following Cohen’s lead, the Marburg philosophers sought to clarify Leibniz’s principle of continuity, and to exploit it in making sense of infinitesimals and related concepts. (shrink)

A basic thesis of Neokantian epistemology and philosophy of science contends that the knowing subject and the object to be known are only abstractions. What really exists, is the relation between both. For the elucidation of this “knowledge relation ("Erkenntnisrelation") the Neokantians of the Marburg school used a variety of mathematical metaphors. In this con-tribution I reconsider some of these metaphors proposed by Paul Natorp, who was one of the leading members of the Marburg school. It is shown (...) that Natorp's metaphors are not unrelated to those used in some currents of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper deals with Natorp’s version of the Marburg mathematical philosophy of science characterized by the following three features: The core of Natorp’s mathematical philosophy of science is contained in his “knowledge equation” that may be considered as a mathematical model of the “transcendental method” conceived by Natorp as the essence of the Marburg Neo-Kantianism. For Natorp, the object of knowledge was an infinite task. This can be elucidated in two different ways: Carnap, in the Aufbau, contended that (...) this endeavor can be divided into two distinct parts, namely, a finite “constitution” of the object of knowledge and an infinite incompletable empirical description. In contrast, and more in the original spirit of Cohen and Natorp, the physicist and philosopher Margenau in The Nature of Physical Reality (Margenau. 1950) conceived the infinity of this “Aufgabe” as an infinite dialectical process, in which relative “data” and “conceptual constructs” determine each other. This dialectical process eliminates the dichotomy between Anschauung and Begriff that distinguished the Marburg Neo-Kantianism from Kantian orthodoxy, namely, the abandonment of the difference between intuition and concept. Finally, the paper deals with the non-Archimedean geometrical systems that played a central role in Natorp’s defence of Cohen’s “infinitesimal” metaphysics. (shrink)

In spite of Ernst Cassirer’s criticisms of psychologism throughout Substance and Function, in the final chapter he issues a demand for a “psychology of relations” that can do justice to the subjective dimensions of mathematics and natural science. Although these remarks remain somewhat promissory, the fact that this is how Cassirer chooses to conclude Substance and Function recommends it as a topic worthy of serious consideration. In this paper, I argue that in order to work out the details of Cassirer’s (...) psychology of relations in Substance and Function, we need to situate it within two broader frameworks. First, I position Cassirer’s view in relation to the view of psychology and logic endorsed by his Marburg Neo-Kantian predecessors, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. Second, I augment Cassirer’s early account of the psychology of relations in Substance and Function with the more mature view of psychology that he presents in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. By placing Cassirer’s account within these contexts, I claim that we gain insight into his psychology of relations, not just as it pertains to mathematics and natural science, but to culture as a whole. Moreover, I maintain that pursuing this strategy helps shed light on one of the most controversial features of his philosophy of mathematics and natural science, viz., his theory of the a priori. (shrink)

Consider the claims that representations of physical laws are intersubjective, and that they ultimately provide the foundation for all other intersubjective knowledge. Those claims, as well as the deeper philosophical commitments that justify them, constitute rare points of agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer and their positivist rival, Ernst Mach. This is surprising, since Natorp and Cassirer are both often at pains to distinguish their theories of natural scientific knowledge from positivist views like Mach’s, (...) and often from Mach’s views in particular. Thus the very fact of this agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians and their positivist stalking horse points to a deep current of ideas that runs beneath the whole of the post-Kantian intellectual context they shared. (shrink)

This article analyses the text of Natorp's lecture given at the Kantgesellschaft in Halle in 1912 (Kant und die Marburger Schule) and attempts to describe what is meant by "transcendental method" for Paul Natorp. The aim is to compare the theses of the Marburg philosopher with the Kantian dictates of the first Critique and to show how Kant's philosophy of culture can be defined. Furthermore, it will be shown here how the dense account of '12 is also a fundamental (...) tool from the point of view of the critical examination of the New Kantian's reflection, since it was presented in the same year as the publication of the Natorpian Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, one of the philosopher's most controversial and debated works. (shrink)

This article aims to readdress Hans-Georg Gadamer's first encounter with Plato's philosophy through his earlier academic journey, the direct and indirect influence exerted by his celebrated mentors at the University of Marburg, and his early publications. For this, I will resort not only to his intellectual biography, but also to neglected texts of Gadamer, such as his 1922 doctoral thesis, reviews and articles published between 1924 and 1928, correspondence, both edited and unpublished, philosophical interviews, as well as archive footage. (...) I will seek to determine the role of his early mentors around Plato’s interpretation through the analysis of the evolution of Gadamer's theoretical positions in order to elucidate his critical reassessments. In the conclusions, I will make an attempt to deepen on Gadamer's process of reception, rupture and emancipation around the then-dominant interpretations of Marburg neo-Kantianism, especially on the link between the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the transformative character of Gadamer’s approach to the phenomenology of Scheler and Heidegger, and his incursion into classical philology. (shrink)

The article elucidates and assesses the Marburg School’s account of the cognition. The characteristic feature of epistemology from this School is the rejection of the mirroring and acceptance of the cognitive transformation. The criticism of the mirroring theory is implicitly contained in Paul Natorp’s and Hermann Cohen’s cognitive relationism. Ernst Cassirer articulated this critical epistemology in his philosophy of the symbolic form and his conception of the symbolic representation. The historical bases of this criticism has been reconstructed as a (...) main purpose of this article. (shrink)

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

The subject of the paper is a polemic between Leonard Nelson and Ernst Cassirer mainly concerning the understanding of the critical method in philosophy. Nelson refutes the accusation of psychologism and attacks the core of the philosophy of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism. In response to those allegations, Cassirer feels obliged to defend the position of his masters and performs this task brilliantly. The present paper considers similarities and differences in the positions of both sides in this debate. I (...) try to evaluate the arguments of both sides and argue that they took basically the same positions, while the existing discrepancies did not justify such an intense polemic. If the disputing sides had approached the discussion in a less emotional way, it could have led to substantive and interesting conclusions. (shrink)

The Marburg neo-Kantians argue that Hermann von Helmholtz's empiricist account of the a priori does not account for certain knowledge, since it is based on a psychological phenomenon, trust in the regularities of nature. They argue that Helmholtz's account raises the 'problem of validity' (Gueltigkeitsproblem): how to establish a warranted claim that observed regularities are based on actual relations. I reconstruct Heinrich Hertz's and Ludwig Wittgenstein's Bild theoretic answer to the problem of validity: that scientists and philosophers can depict (...) the necessary a priori constraints on states of affairs in a given system, and can establish whether these relations are actual relations in nature. The analysis of necessity within a system is a lasting contribution of the Bild theory. However, Hertz and Wittgenstein argue that the logical and mathematical sentences of a Bild are rules, tools for constructing relations, and the rules themselves are meaningless outside the theory. Carnap revises the argument for validity by attempting to give semantic rules for translation between frameworks. Russell and Quine object that pragmatics better accounts for the role of a priori reasoning in translating between frameworks. The conclusion of the tale, then, is a partial vindication of Helmholtz's original account. (shrink)

The German text of Cohen’s Spinoza on State & Religion, Judaism & Christianity (Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum) first appeared in 1915 in the Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur. Two years before, in the winter of 1913, Cohen taught a class and a seminar on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. This was Cohen’s first semester at the Hochschule, after retiring from more than thirty years of teaching at the University of (...) Marburg. Cohen’s fame at the time was at its zenith, and his move to the Hochschule was a cause for celebration and excitement. According to the testimony of some students who attended the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus seminar, Cohen left no place for any expression of dissent (regrettably, the academy frequently encourages such authoritarian behavior). The text of Spinoza on State, which was the product of this seminar, still bears the marks of this “didactic” attitude. It is bombastic and feebly argued. Thus, in one moment of emotional crescendo in the text, we can literally hear Cohen shout: When Spinoza, with merciless severity, makes his own nation the object of contempt – at the time that Rembrandt lived on the same street and immortalized the ideal type of the Jew - no voices rises in protest against this humanly incomprehensible betrayal. Such patriotic rhetoric is quite typical of Cohen’s Spinoza on State, as the work reads more like a series of rants against the devil incarnated (“the demonic spirit of Spinoza”) in the figure of the traitor from Amsterdam than like a sustained and serious philosophical polemic. From time to time, one can observe hints of critical arguments, but hardly any are fleshed out. The text is also replete with rudimentary factual and interpretative errors. Thus, when Cohen argues that Spinoza traces his pantheism to Jewish sources, Cohen erroneously cites Spinoza’s reference in E2p7s to “some of the Hebrews [quidam Hebraeorum]” who argued for the identity of Sekhel, Maskil, and Muskal (the Intellect, the Intellecting Subject, and the Intellected Object) – a Maimonidean doctrine that has nothing to do with pantheism – while the text Cohen clearly had in mind was Spinoza’s claim, in Letter 73, that the traditions (traditionibus) of the “ancient Hebrews [antiquis Hebraeis]” agree with Spinoza’s claim that “all things are in God.” Similarly, and on the very same page, Cohen ascribes to Spinoza the claim that “the God of the Old Testament is only a body,” a claim which is nowhere to be found in Spinoza’s works, and which can be inferred from Spinoza’s text only through a patent fallacy. If I may add one last example, consider the following passage from Cohen’s Spinoza on State: [For Spinoza] divine law is grounded in our mind. Yet this does not mean that our mind bears responsibility for producing and obeying the law. Instead, it means that, by definition, the human mind and God are identical, inasmuch as He exists in the human mind. Hardly any claim in this brief passage is correct. Yet, what is most striking is Cohen’s derivation of the identity of God and the human mind from the claim that God exists in the human mind. If I exist in North America, this obviously does not imply that I am identical to North America (there are, for example, a couple of North American porcupines and alligators that are distinct from me). What rule of inference Cohen sought to employ in this argument, and how this impressive inference of the identity of God and the human mind is supposed to square with Cohen’s view of Spinoza as a pantheist – i.e., as considering the physical nature to be divine – is beyond my grasp. Instead of tracking down the dozens of crude errors and fallacies in Cohen’s text, I would like to concentrate here on one crucial issue: Cohen’s critique of Spinoza’s pantheism. By doing this, I will have to pass silently over a couple of surprising agreements between the two figures, such as the (false) claim that all of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible taught the same universal and simple morality. My discussion of pantheism will be divided into two sections. In the first, I will examine Cohen’s understanding of Spinoza’s pantheism. In the second, I will briefly examine the historical validity of Cohen’s claim that pantheism is a Christian doctrine, diametrically opposed to Judaism. (shrink)

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

This essay examines Descartes’s impact on medical faculties in the German Reformed context, focusing on the case of the Marburg physician Johann Jakob Waldschmidt (1644–89). It first surveys the wider backdrop of Descartes-reception in German universities, and highlights its generally conciliatory character. Waldschmidt appears as a counterpoint to this tendency. The essay then situates Waldschmidt’s work in the context of confessional politics at the University of Marburg, and specifically of the heightened controversy in Hesse around the teaching of (...) Descartes in the last years of Waldschmidt’s life. The second half of the essay details Waldschmidt’s ambitious program to reform medicine along Cartesian lines, in physiology, pathology, and therapy, and evaluates its merits and limits. (shrink)

“The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates,” by Anne Barnhill, Steven Joffe, and Franklin Miller, is an exceptionally timely contribution to the literature on animal research ethics. Animal research has long been both a source of high hopes and a cause for moral concern. When it comes to infection challenge studies with nonhuman primates, neither the hope—to save thousands of human lives from such diseases as Ebola and Marburg—nor the concern—the conviction that primates deserve especially strong protections—could be much (...) higher. Coming just a few years after the National Institutes of Health adopted the Institute of Medicine's recommendations regarding chimpanzees, Barnhill and colleagues attempt to nudge the clarification and specification—one might say the evolution—of NHP research ethics and regulation. They assert that NHP challenge studies “are not justified by marginal gains in human safety or by efficacy gains that are unlikely to translate directly into saving human lives or preventing morbidity.” How, in turn, is their standard—which, although stringent, does permit causing NHPs to suffer and die for human benefit—to be justified? (shrink)

La théorie de l’organisme social était une approche foncièrement et largement répandue au début du 20ème siècle, qui était acceptée par de nombreuses orientations théoriques dans la sociologie et l’économie. L’approche de Rudolf Steiner s’y rapportant est bien connue. La théorie de Gerhard Stolzmann ne l’est pas autant. Ce dernier était un représentant de ce qu’on appelle le « mouvement des droits sociaux de l’économie politique » et au plan philosophique, il défendait le néo-kantisme (école de Marburg, de l’Allemagne (...) du sud-ouest). Stolzmann a connu et cité les écrits de Steiner sur l’organisme social, comme on peut le prouver. Dans cet essai, on va mettre au jour les communautés et tendances dans le concept de l’organisme social chez Stolzmann et Steiner. Tous deux ont mis en exergue l’importance du spirituel et en conséquence de la sphère du droit, pour la société et l’économie dans leur théorie. Mais Steiner eut essentiellement une amorce plus pratique. Son concept d’organisme social est plus une proposition de réforme pour l’économie et la société, alors que Stolzmann fait ressortir la signification théorique générale toujours valable de sa théorie. (shrink)

Die Theorie des sozialen Organismus war zur Zeit des Beginns des 20. Jahrhunderts ein durchaus weit verbreiteter Ansatz der von vielen verschiedenen theoretischen Richtungen in der Soziologie und Ökonomie aufgenommen wurde. Bekannt ist der diesbezügliche Ansatz von Rudolf Steiner. Eher nicht so bekannt ist die Theorie von Rudolf Stolzmann. Letzterer war ein Vertreter der sogenannten sozialrechtlichen Richtung der Nationalökonomie und philosophisch war er ein Vertreter des Neukantianismus (Marburger Schule, Südwestdeutsche Schule). Stolzmann hat Steiners Schriften zum sozialen Organismus nachweislich gekannt und (...) auch zitiert. In diesem Aufsatz sollen Gemeinsamkeiten und Trennendes im Konzept des sozialen Organismus bei Stolzmann und Steiner gefunden werden. Stolzmann und Steiner haben die Bedeutung des Geistigen und in weiterer Folge des Rechtlichen für die Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft in ihrer Theorie hervorgehoben. Steiner hatte aber den wesentlich praktischeren Ansatz. Sein Konzept des sozialen Organismus ist mehr ein Reformvorschlag für Ökonomie und Gesellschaft, während Stolzmann die theoretische und immer gültige Bedeutung seiner Theorie hervorhebt. (shrink)

This essay addresses the attitude of some leading Neo-Kantian philosophers toward scientific psychology and psychophysics. Early influential figures like Friedrich A. Lange counted Gustav T. Fechner’s psychophysical law among their allies in the rehabilitation of the Kantian standpoint. Later on, however, Neo-Kantian philosophers firmly rejected psychological measurement as a whole and harshly criticized the methods adopted by several psychologists of their time. For example, the Marburg mathematician and philosopher August Stadler reduced the validity of Fechner’s law to the mere (...) physiological sphere, and Hermann Cohen conceived the application of mathematical integration to human sensations as an inane enterprise. (shrink)

Analysing Cassirer's positions in the Nachruf dedicated to Natorp (1925) and in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1929), I will try in this short paper to outline the core, merits, and limitations of Natorp's psychology in Cassirer's interpretation. In doing so, I will emphasise three elements: 1. the cornerstones of Natorpian psychology, which for Cassirer represent Natorp's main contribution to the history of ideas; 2. the thematic unity of Natorp's philosophical production; 3. the fundamental continuity between (...) Natorp's research and that of Cassirer. These three aspects are interwoven and belong in some way to the inner development of Marburg Neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger 1910-1932: An Index -/- Cataloging: -/- 1. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976. 2. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976 -- Concordances. 3. Heidegger, Martin, -- 1889-1976 -- Indexes. 4). Metaphysics. 5). Philosophy, German. 6). Philosophy, German – Greek influences. 7). Heidegger, Martin; -- Wörterbuch. I. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-. -/- First step: 29 whole* volumes from Martin Heidegger’s collect writings (Gesamtausgabe) were combined into one file and then machine indexed. The 29 volumes were selected for their emphasis on Martin Heidegger’s writing (...) around the time of publishing his most well-known writing, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit (1927). This includes his early writings starting in 1910; and his lectures from Marburg University, which lead up to the writing and publication of Sein und Zeit in 1927. This was the period that Martin Heidegger was engaged in the methodology and considerations: Phänomenologische. -/- The main purpose of this Main Index is to help with research regarding Being and Time (Sein und Zeit (1927) GA 2. All words are included in this Main Index (see below) from the 29 volumes have been indexed by machine indexing (pages 10 to 5786 of this book). Because of sorting problems it is best to use the FIND FUNCTION. Nota Bene: use umlauts because the letters sort different as well!! Greek letter may not sort as you might expect, etc. So, again use the FIND FUNCTION to look for words or names (Dignum memoria). Please note the German words that start with umlauts are at the end of the index because of machine sorting of the words. Starting with the German word “ßA” on page 5398: ßA The Greek words start on page 5473: ΐίάνχες Plus, there are typos. -/- This is a machine created index for 29 volumes. (shrink)

Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Sammelbandes basieren auf Vorträgen aus der gleichnamigen fachdidaktischen Vortragsreihe, die seit 2013 am Seminar für Klassische Philologie der Philipps-Universität Marburg stattfindet. Sie beleuchten zentrale und aktuelle Aspekte eines zeitgemäßen altsprachlichen Unterrichts: von Fragen der Kompetenzorientierung (Rainer Nickel) und Individualisierung (Heike Wolf) über Textübersetzung und Wortschatzarbeit (Peter Kuhlmann), multimediale Zugänge zu Realien aus der Sicht des Althistorikers (Florian Krüpe) und Zugänge zum römischen Alltagsleben über die Dichtung (Tobias Brandt) sowie das Verhältnis von Text und Bild (Hans-Joachim (...) Glücklich) bis hin zu Überlegungen, was wir aus dem mittelalterlichen Lateinunterricht für die heutige Unterrichtspraxis lernen können (Jessica Kreutz). (shrink)

In recent literature, it has been suggested that Lange’s social and political philosophy is separate from his neo-Kantian program. Prima facie, this interpretation makes sense given that Lange argues for an account of social norms that builds on Darwin and Smith rather than on Kant. Still, this paper argues that elements of psychophysiological transcendentalism can be found in Lange’s social and political philosophy. A detailed examination of the second edition of the History of Materialism, Schiller’s Poems, and the second edition (...) of The Worker’s Question reveals that Lange sought to develop a systematic foundation of psychophysiological transcendentalism that is presupposed in his social and political philosophy. This allows for a more detailed understanding of Lange’s practical philosophy and assures him a position in the tradition of neo-Kantian socialism. (shrink)

Was heißt die existenziale Analytik? Um diese Grundfrage der Fundamentalontologie zu beantworten, geht der Autor von der Problematik des Ich-Sagens aus. Während der Marburger Vorlesungen entstand der Begriff Dasein durch Heideggers Umdeutung der aristotelischen Seele anhand des leiblich-lebensweltlichen Subjektivitätsbegriffs Husserls. Dabei entwickelte Heidegger mittels des Diltheyschen Begriffs Bedeutsamkeit das Noema als Zeug hermeneutisch weiter. Um das Sein eines Ich durch Handlungsprädikate auszulegen, ist es notwendig, mit der Bedeutsamkeit der Welt vorbegrifflich vertraut zu sein. Das Verstehen als Weltvertrautheit ist das Existenzial, (...) d. h. die Bedingung der Möglichkeit für das Ich-Sagen. So schlägt der Autor vor, die Schemata: Das Umwillen seiner , das Wovor und das Um-zu als Schematismus der Handlung zu deuten. Darüber hinaus wird untersucht, warum die geschichtliche Rationalität trotz seiner Aufnahme der praktischen Philosophie Aristoteles’ und Kants von Heidegger vernachlässigt wurde. (shrink)

The present chapter investigates Heidegger's early understanding of Platonic dialectic in its contrast to sophistry as this comes to expression in his lectures on Plato's Sophist.

In this short note we develop an unorthodox panmentalistic and libertarian dualism. Especially we skech a mental-physikal law of free will. Our aim is to to provoke the contemporary scentific common-sense.

Wir geben einen kurzen Überblick über klassische und moderne antimaterialistische Argumente und entwickeln pluralistische Perspektiven.

Im folgenden Text wird es mir um zwei Begriffe des Selbstseins ge­ hen, von denen der eine in Heideggers Sein und Zeit bei der Abgren­ zung der authentischen Existenz des Menschen eine entscheidende Rolle spielt, während der andere in den Modus der Uneigentlich­ keit abgeschoben wird. Ich werde den zentralen Begriff des frühen Heidegger – das Selbstsein – nehmen, um zu zeigen, dass sich hinter seiner Individualitätstheorie eine Entscheidung für einen bestimm­ ten Identitätsbegriff verbirgt. Weiterhin möchte ich eine Alternative bieten, (...) die potentiellen Einwänden von der Heideggerschen Posi­ tion aus standhalten kann, und in der Abschlussüberlegung zeigen, dass es für die Bestimmung der menschlichen Existenz notwendig ist, zwei verschiedene Begriffe des Selbstseins ins Spiel zu bringen. (shrink)

The paper follows the thesis, that the perception of real or virtual media shares the anthropological state of "Ausdruckswahrnehmung" or perception of expression (Ernst Cassirer). This kind of perception does not represent a distant, neutral point of view, but one that is guided by feelings or "vitality affects" (Daniel N. Stern). The prerequisites, however, for triggering these feelings/"vitality affects" are not recognizable objects or motifs, but rather their sensually evaluable “abstract representations” or their formal logical structures. In contrast to aesthetic (...) feelings, however, they affect not only our feelings of lust or unlust or our knowledge (formal aesthetics) but also our actions (semiotics). So, when I extend aesthetic experiences to semiotic effects, I will talk about vitality semiotics. This new concept is of consequence, because the thesis of the responsibility of the producer is based on these effects. This is to be carried out by analyzing and presenting the approach of the Bauhaus master Josef Albers. (shrink)