This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ästhetik I, vii–viii.
Cf. R.A. Fritzsche, Hermann Cohen aus persönlicher Erinnerung (Berlin, 1922), 4.
Briefe, 7.
As Walter Kinkel remarks in Hermann Cohen (Stuttgart, 1924), 42ff., from 1869 Cohen started to place his first reflections on the poetic imagination under the head of feeling.
Cf. Ästhetik I, 12–15. It is this which truly constitutes the famous ‘reversal’ of Platonism: the substitution of the philosopher-king by the poet-king or the artist-king — the free ‘genius’, not superman but overman. Cohen clearly refuses to accept that a community of artists, even if they are the geniuses, can replace the ethical community of citizens. On this point and on Cohen’s critique of Romanticism, see Walter Kinkel’s contribution to the Festschrift published to celebrate Cohen’s seventieth anniversary: ‘Beiträge zur Aesthetik des reinen Gefühls’, in: Philosophische Abhandlungen, 299–314.
This is patently the case in his two novels Woldemar and Allwill (‘All will’) and also in his philosophical oeuvre, which is driven by the notion of faith based on instinct (the ‘heart’): ‘I see before me a ghastly, dead sea and no spirit capable of stirring, reviving, arousing it: hence my desire for the arrival of a rising tide, whatever it may be, be it that of barbarians, to remove this horrible morass, clear it away, and to take its place, thus one day giving us back a virgin, savage sun.’, Werke, vol. 5 (Darmstadt, 1980), 93.
Ästhetik I, 15. It is not surprising to find a critique of Wagner in the first systematic reflection which Cohen devotes to aesthetics, Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 320–328. Far from achieving ‘total art’, Wagner merely took ‘programme music’ to its highest point, and, as can be easily deduced from the 1905 article ‘Mozarts Operntexte’ (which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung, 31 December 1905-3 and 4 January 1906), it is Mozart who created the most perfect operas and who has never since been surpassed (cf. Schriften I, 490–519). Also, every art should aspire to its perfection, and hence there is a history of music which corresponds to the recognized independence of strictly instrumental music. So it is not the arts in combination which could represent true progress (cf. Ästhetik II, 165).
Ästhetik I, 14.
Ästhetik I, 14.
Ästhetik I, 9, 26.
Ästhetik I, 75.
Ästhetik I, 92.
The idea of a historicization of aesthetic material was formulated at a very early stage in Germany, partly in reaction to Romanticism, by Carl Gustav Jochmann, who was rediscovered in the thirties by Walter Benjamin. Cf. C.G. Jochmann, Die Rückschritte der Poesie, in: Gesammelte Schriften I (Heidelberg, 1998), P. König, U. Kronauer, and H.-P. Schütt (Hrsg.).
Ästhetik I, 199.
Ästhetik I, 187.
Ästhetik I, 416.
Ästhetik I, 224.
Cf. Logik, 378.
Cf. Ethik, 424.
Ästhetik I, 201.
Logik, 29. This formula is presented again in the Ästhetik I, 159: ‘Thought produces the object’.
Moreover, art is not only a matter of the person who creates it, but also of the person who enjoys it, and Cohen opposes a passive reception of art. The spectator’s pleasure imposes a task on him, namely that of recreating: ‘He must aspire to reduce all content in which his intuition has immersed him to this task of the self imposed by all true lived experience of art’ (Ästhetik I, 209).
Cf. ‘Platons Ideenlehre und die Mathematik’ (1878), in: Schriften I, 336–366.
Ästhetik I, 253.
Ästhetik I, 256.
Ästhetik I, 256.
Ästhetik I, 261.
Ästhetik I, 267.
Ästhetik I, 319ff. In fact, the section of the fifth chapter (of the first volume) dealing with the beautiful devotes some twenty pages to the sublime, but three times as many to humour.
Ästhetik I, 257.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 280ff.
Ästhetik I, 254.
Ästhetik I, 274ff.
Ästhetik I, 288ff.
Ästhetik I, 327.
Ästhetik II, 421.
Ästhetik I, 163.
Ästhetik I, 269.
Ästhetik I, 400.
Ästhetik II, 424.
Ästhetik I, 202ff.
Ästhetik II, 135.
Ästhetik II, 136.
Ästhetik II, 136.
Ästhetik II, 139.
Ästhetik II, 140.
Ästhetik II, 143. Cohen reinforces this conception of time, which agrees perfectly with all his discussions of time in connection with the infinitesimal, by formulating the same idea in a different way: ‘Time is descended from the anticipated future.’ (Ästhetik II, 143).
Ästhetik II, 144.
From the outset rhythm is recognized as the fundamental aesthetic form (Ästhetik I, 159). Cohen already sketches this line of thought in the first volume of his Aesthetics, where he rules out the idea that the aesthetic content can be derived from sensation, as it necessarily arises from the relationship of a plurality of sensations. Plurality as such is no longer of the sensible order, but depends solely on thought (Ästhetik I, 151, 155, 158).
Ästhetik II, 154.
Ästhetik II, 158.
Ästhetik II, 161.
Ästhetik II, 162.
Ästhetik II, 163.
Cf. ‘Mozarts Operntexte’, 501.
‘Mozarts Operntexte’, 491.
So the 1905–1906 article on the texts of Mozart’s operas does not privilege musical analysis; The Ästhetik of 1912 reproduces the gist of the article.
Ästhetik II, 187.
Ästhetik II, 189.
Ästhetik II, 193.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
de Launay, M. (2005). The Statute of Music in Hermann Cohen’s Ästhetik. 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_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4047-4_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-4046-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-4047-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)