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Translated from the Italian by Herbert Garrett. I would like to thank Hartwig Wiedebach for his suggestions after reading the manuscript. Cf. E. Husserl, Husserliana, vol. 19/1 (1984), 393–401. Husserl had already used this image in Psychologische Studien zur elementaren Logik (1894), cf. Husserliana, vol. 22, 116. In this case Husserl sought to explain the difference between Anschauung and Repräsentation, which he sees as different ‘modes of consciousness’, to a ‘completely changed psychic situation’; the different situation of consciousness becomes established according to the mode in which one’s interest or intention is moving. Husserl declares himself to be indebted to Lotze, Wundt and, above all, Lipps, as also to Stumpf, Ehrenfels, Meinong.
E. Ströker puts it very well in her ‘Husserls Evidenzprinzip. Sinn und Grenzen einer methodischen Norm der Phänomenologie als Wissenschaft’, in: Phänomenologische Studien (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 1–34: ‘That the Erlebnis does not in any way have the character of’ simple’ intention is made clear in Husserl not only by his repeated refusal of ‘feelings of evidence’ and ‘representations of evidence’. Rather, evidence becomes established only in those complexes of acts that Husserl presents as acts of synthesis’ (9).
See M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie (Freiburg/München, 1994), 63.
Cf. L. Geldsetzer, ‘Metaphysische Tendenzen der philosophischen Entwicklung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1945’, in: W. Prinz und P. Weingart (Hrsg.), Die sogenannten Geisteswissenschaften (Frankfurt am Main, 1990), 437.
I. Kern, Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantismus (The Hague, 1964).
Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 306, B 362
Kants Begründung der Ethik (18771), 64–65; (19102), 77.
Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 103–105.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 189–190. Cohen dwells on the distinction between Gehalt and Inhalt — though admittedly not by any means in a univocal manner — in Ästhetik I, 39 and 135; but the important thing is that he wants to distinguish a notion of content as object produced by one of the forms of consciousness as constitutive legality from a notion that refers to the presence of a specific quality of feeling in its disposition for production. I repeat: the operated distinction seems undoubtedly to go in this direction, but with the use of the two terms that is sometimes inverse.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 212 and 213.
Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 268; (18711), 89. Herbart’s passage is to be found in Sämtliche Werke, published by K. Kehrbach and O. Flügel (Aalen, 1989), vol.7, 5572–56. The italics in Herbart’s passage are Cohen’s, only in the first edition.
The reference text to be used here is, inevitably, E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation. Zur Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passiven Genesis bei E. Husserl (The Hague, 1970). Holenstein underscores perfectly that it was Herbart who brought the entire problem of apperception back to the domain of psychology and that it has therefore, even within the psychological studies, either maintained or reacquired a complex acception in which passivity and synthesis do not mutually exclude each other.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 261.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 304 and 276 (my italics).
Cf. Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 399.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 30–31 and 39–40. Cf. also 53. Cohen underscores this concept twice.
Cf. Ästhetik I, 98.
Cf. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 149–150: ‘Just as — something that Kant failed to do for aesthetics — the metaphysical a priori prepares the transcendental a priori, so also will it be both appropriate and instructive to clearly distinguish in consciousness such an originary element for aesthetic judgment and therefore for psychological genesis before demonstrating its transcendental validity as the condition of art’.
Cf. Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, especially 152–158.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 392, ‘Untergrund des Bewusstseins’, ‘Urbewusstsein’.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 201.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 394.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 394.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 396.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 406.
Ästhetik I, 143.
Ästhetik I, 139.
Ästhetik I, 142.
H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp (Basel/Stuttgart, 1986), vol. 2, 408.
P. Natorp, Hermann Cohen als Mensch, Lehrer und Forscher (Marburg, 1918), 10–11.
The term had been used in aesthetics, perhaps especially by Vischer, father and son Theodor and Robert, ever since the end of the nineteenth century. Robert claims to have constructed it autonomously (together with such other terms as ‘zufühlen’ and ‘nachfühlen’), without knowing that it had already been used by Herder, for whom, however, it did not have this sense of an act of productive intuition. Cf. Drei Schriften zum Ästhetischen Formproblem (Hall/Saale, 1927), 77. Cohen shows that he knew of its use by T. Lipps, an author meriting recognition for his reserved role in the ambit of the Einfühlung with regard to apperception. Cf. Ästhetik II, 205. Cf. also Supplementa, 2, Die Hermann-Cohen-Bibliothek, 418.
Ästhetik I, 185.
I am referring particularly to the one by P. Stern published in Zeitschrift für Ästhethik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1913), vol. 8, 291–303. A little later, the same journal published another one, signed by A. Buchenau, 615–623. Also to be consulted: W. Kinkel in: Deutsche Literaturzeitung, No.27, vol. 33, July 1912, 1669–1740, and G. Falter in: Archiv für Philosophie, Neue Folge, XXV, vol. 4, No.19, 37972–396. 113
Cf. G. Boehm, ‘Einleitung’ to K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst (München, 19912), vol. 1, xlvii–lii.
Cf. K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 2, aforism 127, 83.
K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 28.
K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 52 (my italics).
Cf. K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’, in: Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 1, 111–220.
Cf., in particular, Ästhetik II, 196–197.
Cf. K. Fiedler, ‘Über den Ursprung der künstlerischen Tätigkeit’, 136.
Cf. Ästhetik II, 248–249. Cf. also Ästhetik I, 355: ‘Das Problem der Sichtbarkeit ist vielmehr das Problem der Fühlbarkeit; nicht allein der rezeptiven, sondern nicht minder auch der schöpferischen.’
I cannot here indulge in giving even a brief outline of Zimmermann’s work that Fiedler appeals to. Certainly his Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft, which in 1865 followed the Geschichte der Aesthetik als philosophische Wissenschaft published seven years earlier (1858), represents an important moment of Herbart’s presence in the philosophy of the entire nineteenth century, which we know to have been extremely important for both neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. I shall therefore limit myself to the incipit of the work: ‘Philosophy is the science that springs from the elaboration of concepts’. Allgemeine Aesthetik als Formwissenschaft (Vienna, 1865), 3. And then, the entire treatment of representation and of its components introduced by feeling, the evidence of the aesthetic judgement, and so on. As regards the polemic with Vischer, see R. Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl (Leipzig, 1873), and R. Zimmermann’s 115 review thereof in Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. 9, 2.
Cf. K. Fiedler, Schriften zur Kunst, vol. 2, 9.
Ästhetik I, 64.
Cf. Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, published by G. Jachmann (Dresden, 1927), 85–86, 91. The letters are dated 1877.
Cf. Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, 103–104.
Adolf von Hildebrands Briefwechsel mit Conrad Fiedler, 129.
E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation, 85.
As regards this aspect, see A Poma, ‘Humor in Religion: Peace and Contentment’, in: Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion, edited by S. Moses and H. Wiedebach (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1997), 183–204.
Ästhetik II, 191–193; I, 329–330.
Ästhetik I, 86.
Ästhetik I, 97.
Cf. Der Begriff der Religion, 121.
Der Begriff der Religion, 41.
Der Begriff der Religion, 95. As regards this matter, see A. Poma’s introduction, 32f. Poma notes with extreme delicacy that Cohen, in the case of the relationship between aesthetic and religion, proceeds directly to a confrontation of the concepts they have in common — love, feeling, excitement, distress — to demonstrate that the meanings are really profoundly different (31–32). I would ask him here whether he would agree that the reason for this unusual procedure may reside also in the peculiar nature of these cultural facts which are not homogeneous with scientific facts, and this over and above the’ subjective motives’ so rightly invoked by Poma. As regards the relations with Natorp in connection with the aesthetic-religious nexus, see also H. Holzhey, ‘Dieu et l’âme. Les rapports entre la critique de la métaphysique et la philosophie de la religion chez Hermann Cohen’, in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3 (1998), 327–346, esp. 341–344.
Cf. H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, vol. 2, 102 and 99 (my italics). P. Natorp, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität (Tübingen, 1908), 98.
Cf. E. Völmicke, ‘Gewissheit und Geltung. Zur Auflösung der Geltungsproblematik bei Fries’, in: W. Marx und E.W. Orth (Hrsg.), Hermann Cohen und die Erkenntnistheorie (Würzburg, 2001), 31–48.
T. Elsenhans, Fries und Kant, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zur systematischen Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie. Band I Historischer Teil. J.F. Fries als Erkenntniskritiker und sein Verhältnis zu Kant. Band II Kritisch-systematischer Teil. Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie als Ergebnis einer Auseinandersetzung mit Kant vom Standpunkt der Friesischen Problemstellung (Giessen, 1906).
See ‘Das Verhältnis der Logik zur Psychologie’, in: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 109 (1897), 195–212; ‘Phänonenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, in: Kant-Studien 20 (1915), 224–275; Lehrbuch der Psychologie (Tübingen, 1912); ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, in: Kant-Studien 22 (1918), 243–261.
Cf. ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 249, and ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 260.
See E. Husserl, Prolegomena, in: Husserliana, vol. 18, 215; Ideen I, in: Husserliana, vol. 3/1, 46; the review of Das Verhältnis, in: Husserliana, vol. 22, 203–208. The review originally appeared in ‘Archiv für systematische Philosophie’, published by Natorp, who had asked Husserl’s permanent collaboration as a reviewer of writings on logical topics. As regards this review, see also J. Benoist, Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie. Husserl et la tradition logique autrichienne (Paris, 1997), 225–229. As regards the two cited works published in Kant-Studien, see Husserliana, vol. 25, 226–248, where Husserl defends his Wesenschau against Elsenhans’ criticism by showing him that ‘frei erzeugen’, ‘vorfinden’ and ‘gegeben haben’ are not in contrast with each other (244). See also, P. F. Linke, ‘Das Recht der Phänomenologie. Eine Auseinendersetzung mit Th. Elsenhans’, in: Kant-Studien 21 (1916), 163–221.
Cf. ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 237.
Cf. Husserliana, vol. 25, 242.
Cf. ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 245.
Cf. T. Elsenhans, Kant und Fries, vol. 2, 141–142. Elsenhans cites Cohen and Riehl. When Cohen writes in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung that the concepts valid in science and its conceptual system impose the finding (‘Ausfindigmachen’) in consciousness of the ‘elements’ that constitute the guarantee of its validity, and when in Logik he writes that new problems will bring new categories, when Riehl affirms that a priori laws of knowledge can be laws known inductively, they do nothing than confirm the legitimacy of the problem posed by Fries.
H. Holzhey returned to this matter quite recently in Urteilskraft, Erwägungen zum Verhältnis von Vernunftkritik und empirischer Psychologie, edited by G. Riconda, G. Ferretti and A. Poma, (Genoa, 1992), 97–116. Holzhey does not propose to look to phenomenology, but finds the interest of Fries’ position in a nonpsychologist notion of Gefühl that thematicizes the theme of the becoming consciousness of immediate knowledge in a manner that is original, interesting and full of possible developments. It is the central theme, as we shall see, of Natorp’s psychology or, rather, his unsuccessful psychology. Holzhey writes as follows on 108: ‘Precisely because ‘internal experience’ or’ self-observation’ cannot be identified with the analogous concepts of an empirical psychology of a modern stamp, but — over and above introspection — imply reflection and a particular ‘feeling’, the introduction of an empirical component into the critique of reason is undoubtedly interesting’. Moreover, the theme of Gefühl was of great importance in the philosophies that sought to distinguish the logical from the psychological and shows just how intricate were the bonds they very rightly wished to untie. Not only this, for both Rickert and Husserl found themselves to be reasoning precisely around the Evidenzgefühl, the Geltungsgefühl: though they certainly took different roads, they always started from the problem — and as a problem it was postulated with the greatest clarity by Fries — of the nature of the ultimate justification of the conditions of knowledge. On this front — to give an example I believe to be significant — Rickert and Husserl found themselves on the same side as regards their debt to Hume. Husserl writes: ‘There are works of a psychologist trend that, notwithstanding their extreme aberrations, have earned merit, and even immortal merit, vis-à-vis psychology and philosophy. I am thinking of Hume’s Treatise, a work that failed in principle, and is yet of inestimable value for phenomenology and the critique of knowledge. (Review, 1903, of W. Jerusalem, ‘Die Urteilsfunktion’, in Husserliana, vol. 22, 223). And Rickert: ‘To this day Hume exerts an influence that goes far beyond the specific philosophy of ‘experience”, and this influence depends on his having ‘implicitly’ glimpsed ‘a concept of the matter of knowledge of immediate intuition’ that does not disappear even in the ineludable coordinates of Kantian criticism (‘Die Methode der Philosophie und das Unmittelbare’, in: Logos 12 (1923), 235–280, esp. 255–256). As far as Rickert is concerned, it is my conviction that even though these themes of immediacy and givenness are — all said and done — derived from the confrontation with his contemporaries, this cannot be said of the problem of the nature of the conditions of knowledege.
Cf. T. Elsenhans, Kant und Fries, vol. 2, 138–139.
As regards the vicissitudes of psychologism, I would refer readers to the very detailed historiographic overview in M. Kusch, Psychologism. A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge (London/New York, 1995). See also M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie (Freiburg/München, 1994).
Cf. Bernet’s first chapter of the monograph E. Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens (Hamburg, 1989), authors R. Bernet, I. Kern and E. Marbach: ‘The liberation of objects and logico-formal laws from psychological determination was not the very ultimate purpose of Husserl [in the Prolegomena], but rather a preliminary work intended for the comprehension of the nexus between pure logic and concrete lived (psychological and phenomenological) thought experiences, between ideal knowledge conditions and acts of temporally individuated acts of thought. The Prolegomena have therefore undoubtedly to be understood as a continuation of the problem already touched upon in his Philosophy of Arithmetic.’ See also Derrida’s Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl (Paris, 1990) (but the text goes back to 1953–54), 59: ‘Ever since these first considerations [in the Philosophy of Arithmetic], Husserl clearly overcomes the psychologism of his epoch’. An overcoming that Derrida very rightly identifies with a conception of the synthesis that is not associationist and such that syntheticity was soon to lead Husserl to detach himself from intentionality as a psychological quality of consciousness (as it had been in Brentano).
Cf. Husserliana, vol. 12 (1970), 30, 31, 38–40, 42–43. As regards the theme of the synthesis, see the fundamental text by E. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation.
For example, Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation, speaks of a ‘decisive’ (195) or ‘very important’ (254) influence.
Cf. M. Rath, Der Psychologismusstreit in der deutschen Philosophie, 107–109.
P. Natorp, Allgemeine Philosophie nach kritischer Methode (Tübingen, 1912), 190.
Cf. Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 5 (Dordrecht /Boston/London, 1994), 44–46. These are notes that Natorp sent to Husserl together with the manuscript of his review of K. Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (Vienna, 1894), published that same year in Archiv für systematische Philosophie 3 (1894), 391–402. Twardowski’s text, the reviews by Natorp and Husserl, as also other important pages by Husserl regarding this topic can be found in a French edition prepared and extensively prefaced (9–84) by J. English: Husserl — Twardowski, Sur les objects intentionnels, 1893–1901 (Paris, 1993).
Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Freiburg, 1888), 92.
Elsenhans appeals to Natorp when he wants to criticize what to him seems the weakest point of phenomenology: the union of the non-empirical and the given (cf. ‘Phänomenologie und Empirie’, 243, and ‘Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie’, 270).
Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode, 93.
Cf. Allgemeine Psychologie, 257.
E. Husserl, Briefwechsel, 159. These are words that Natorp wrote to Husserl on 22 September 1922.
Cf. Platos Ideenlehre, 465. The fragment (Diels Kranz 45) already served as exergo for the edition of De anima edited by Trendelenburg.
This reversal or turning upside down of the ‘classical’ Marburg version of the interpretation of Plato’s and later Kant’s idea is somewhat emblematic: “idea’ is therefore not simply [...] a visual penetration of (Durchschau zur) the totality, grasping every detail by entering into it (Hineinschau) [...] but intuitively grasping it in all its profundity (An-und Einschau) starting from the totality’, Platos Ideenlehre, 472.
Platos Ideenlehre, 474.
Platos Ideenlehre, 504. The reference to Heraclitus is to the edition by Diels Kranz, ‘the psyche is the logos that keeps on growing’, which Natorp cites on 499.
Platos Ideenlehre, 493.
Platos Ideenlehre, 508.
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Gigliotti, G. (2005). Beweis and Aufweis: Transcendental a priori and metaphysical a priori in Cohen’s neo-Kantianism. In: Munk, R. (eds) Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4047-4_4
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