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References
M. Heidegger,’ Vorlesung Sommersemester 1919. Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie’, in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 56/57 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 129.
Heidegger, Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie, 124.
A nice picture of the mood among former Cohen disciples is drawn by Heinz Heimsoeth in his letter of 6 April 1918, which he wrote to Nicolai Hartmann on the occasion of Herman Cohen’s death on 4 April 1918. He expresses his own feelings as follows: ‘I would often like to throw in the towel and forget all (European) philosophy — and all the ossified tradition of “culture” in general — and to start simply in the soul, with the primal activity of the inner life — but how should I do this: to whom precisely this has almost never been given as it really is, but rather only in the form of gaps in an intellectual net.’, F. Hartmann und R. Heimsoeth (Hrsg.), Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel (Bonn, 1978), 296.
This judgement was first prominently put forward by J. M. Krois, Cassirer — Symbolic Forms and History (New Haven and London, 1987), 38ff. and is now shared by many interpreters, mostly without being discussed in more detail. On the other hand T. Göller, Ernst Cassirers kritische Sprachphilosophie (Würzburg, 1986) points to systematic similarities. M. Ferrari, Il giovane di Cassirer e la scuola di Marburgo (Milano, 1988) and T. Knoppe, Die theoretische Philosophie Ernst Cassirers. Zu den Grundlagen transzendentaler Wissenschafts-und Kulturtheorie (Hamburg, 1992) demonstrate parallels between Cassirer’s early work and the Marburg school.
See extensively H. Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, two volumes (Basel, 1986) and J. Stolzenberg, Ursprung und System. Probleme der Begründung systematischer Philosophie im Werk Hermann Cohens, Paul Natorps und beim frühen Martin Heidegger (Göttingen, 1995).
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, three volumes. Translation by R. Manheim (Yale, 1953–1957) of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Berlin, 1923–1929). This quotation is from Philosophy of Symbolic Forms I, 80.
Cassirer’s turn to culture has often been read as such a rejection. Cf. e.g. O. Schwemmer, Ernst Cassirer. Ein Philosoph der europäischen Moderne (Berlin, 1997), 200 or T. Knoppe, Die theoretische Philosophie Ernst Cassirers, 80ff. Esp. Marx argues against this interpretation, W. Marx, ‘Cassirers Philosophie — ein Abschied von kantianisierender Letztbegründung’, In: H.-J. Braun, H. Holzhey und E. W. Orth (Hrsg.), Über Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), 75–88.
The fact that neo-Kantianism saw itself as a philosophy of culture is often disregarded. This is not a new phenomenon, however. As early as 1912 Paul Natorp reacts to the desideratum of a philosophy of culture with the comment:’ so if, as an important new requirement, that of a ‘philosophy of culture’ is held out towards us, we can only answer: we have Kant’s philosophy and from the outset it is the philosophy of transcendental methodology, which, proceeding from Kant, we have endeavoured only to carry through more strictly and consistently, which we have understood and explicitly designated as philosophy of culture.’ P. Natorp, ‘Kant und die Marburger Schule’, in: Kant-Studien 17 (1912), 218f.
The critical concern of Cohen’s philosophy is emphasized in A. Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Albany NY, 1997).
The discussions on the value of culture derive from the fundamental characteristic of Cohen’s and Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. My concern here is to describe the relation of culture and value more precisely than and differently from the way in which it is often done in the present-day discussion of values. The term ‘value’ itself rarely occurs in the Marburg neo-Kantians and not in the sense used here. As Holzhey made clear in his lecture on the concept of value at the Zurich conference on ‘Ethik oder Ästhetik’, the concept of value is used in Cohen in its economic sense. On the relation of culture and morality, cf. also Krois, Cassirer — Symbolic Forms and History, and B. Recki, ‘Der Tod, die Kultur, die Moral’, in: D. Kaegi und E. Rudolph (Hrsg.): Cassirer — Heidegger. 70 Jahr Davoser Disputation (Hamburg, 2002), 106–129.
Cf. Ursula Renz, ‘Der problematische Ort des Kulturbegriffs’, In: P.-U. Merz-Benz und G. Wagner (Hrsg.), Kultur in Zeiten der Globalisierung (Weilerswist, 2004, forthcoming).
The concept of system has constantly been discussed in the literature on Cohen. Cf. e.g. D. Adelmann, Einheit des Bewusstseins als Grundproblem der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Heidelberg, 1968), W. Marx, Transzendentale Logik als Wissenschaftstheorie. Systematisch-kritische Untersuchungen zur philosophischen Grundlegungsproblematik in Cohens’ Logik der reinen Erkenntnis’ (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp and Stolzenberg, Ursprung und System.
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms I, 80.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs (Darmstadt, 1956), 175. As D. Kaegi, ‘Jenseits der symbolischen Formen’, In: Dialektik 1 (1995), 73–82, 74, and B. Naumann, Philosophie und Poetik des Symbols. Cassirer und Goethe (München, 1998), 131, already emphasize, the passage quoted is the only definition of symbolic form in Cassirer’s entire work.
Symbol, Technik, Sprache. Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1927–1933, Hrsg. von E. W. Orth und J. M. Krois (Hamburg, 1985), 8.
Cassirer’s attitude to the question of system can also be indirectly traced in his discussion with the Enlightenment. Cf. U. Renz, ‘Cassirers Idee der Aufklärung’, In: T. Leinkauf, Dilthey und Cassirer (Hamburg, 2003), 109–125.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 743.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 2–4 and 342f.
Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 335.
Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 5 and 151f.
Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode, 31f. On the diverse mathematical and metaphysical traditions, cf. P. Schulthess:’ Einleitung’, in: Cohen, Werke vol. 5/1, 7*–46*.
Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 748. It is striking that Cohen still refers dismissively to culture here. On the whole an ambivalent attitude to the concept of culture can be observed up till Kants Begründung der Ästhetik. For Cohen, the reference of philosophical foundations to cultural givenness, which became accepted in historicism, is as much to be rejected as a materialistic reference to nature. At the same time, however, a positively valued dimension of the concept of culture also emerges from the time of the first edition of Kants Begründung der Ästhetik. As the embodiment of the changeability of human condition, culture also constitutes the basis on which an idealistically founded ethics has any chance at all of attaining its goals. Cf. U. Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur. Zur Kulturphilosophie und ihrer transzendentalen Begründung bei Cohen, Natorp und Cassirer (Hamburg, 2002), 45–53.
Logik, 80.
Logik, 35f.
Seen in this way, Cohen’s theory of knowledge has a function comparable to constructivistic feminism. Cf. e.g. J. Butler, Bodies that Matter (London/New York, 1993).
Ethik, 3.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 172.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 171f.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 175.
‘It [language] is not itself work (ergon) but an activity (energeia)’, W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Berlin, 1907), 46.
Der Begriff der Religion, 6.
Ästhetik I, 120f.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 112.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 79. On the consequences, cf. Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur, 209f.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 188.
Religion der Vernunft, 196.
Cf. Religion der Vernunft, 61.
Wesen und Wirkung des Symbolbegriffs, 188f. In doing so he argues both from a historico-cultural and an anthropological point of view. However such an assumption can only be justified in an anthropological respect.
Cf. e.g. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 286.
Zur modernen Physik (Darmstadt, 1957), 118.
Cf. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 283: ‘To the constant construction of the mythical image-world corresponds the constant pushing beyond it’.
Cf. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms II, 122f. and 129.
On Southwest German neo-Kantianism, cf. in this connection H. Schnädelbach, Geschichtsphilosophie nach Hegel. Die Probleme des Historismus (Freiburg/München, 1974).
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 367.
Kants Begründung der Ethik, 368.
The main adversary in the background here is of course Hegel with his speculative philosophy of history. But also Marxist philosophy of history, which links up with Hegel, is rejected here on theoretical grounds. Cf. S. S. Schwarzschild, ‘The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen’, In: Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 27, (Cincinnati, 1956/1994), 209 and H. van der Linden,’ Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants’, in: H. Holzhey (Hrsg.), Ethischer Sozialismus. Zur politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 164.
Cf. H. Wiedebach, ‘Hermann Cohens Theorie des Mitleids’, in: S. Moses und H. Wiedebach (Hrsg.), Hermann Cohen’s Philosophy of Religion. International Conference in Jerusalem 1996 (Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 1997), 231–244, and U. Renz,’ Affektivität und Geschichtlichkeit: Hermann Cohens Rehabilitation des Affekts’, in: A. Engstler und R. Schnepf (Hrsg.), Ethik und Affekt. Zur Affektenlehre von Spinoza (Hildesheim, 2002), 297–319.
Cassirer’s earlier philosophy of culture, in particular Freiheit und Form and the studies collected in Idee und Gestalt in 1918, is for a large part committed to a historico-cultural understanding of culture. Reading these texts against the background of the later philosophy of symbol, one gets the impression that Cassirer is in fact struggling for an understanding of culture which does not force him into the philosophico-historical aporias of historicism. Thus the aspect of ‘Formgebung’ is already central to Freiheit und Form, without it being explained in a theoretically satisfying way. Only after turning to the symbol does he stop looking at the problem of meaning from the hypothesis of a historical meaning and understands it as a question of structure. For this, cf. also Renz, Die Rationalität der Kultur, 159.
Cassirer states this explicitly in An Essay on Man (Yale, 1944), 69: ‘This structural view of culture must precede the merely historical view’.
An Essay on Man, 175.
An Essay on Man, 174.
An Essay on Man, 69.
An Essay on Man, 228.
Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, 73.
Ästhetik I, 16. Cf. also Kants Begründung der Ästhetik, 422, where he says that the defect of Romanticism is ‘that it does not seek to found art in its characteristic properties and only starting from the latter seeks the connection of art with the other directions of the mind.’
Cf. his remarks on Heidegger in Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen. Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, vol. 1. Hrsg. von J. M. Krois und O. Schwemmer (Hamburg, 1995), 219ff.
Cf. Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, 3–54, 207–229 and Geist und Leben. Schriften zu den Lebensordnungen von Natur und Kunst, Geschichte und Sprache. Hrsg. von E. W. Orth (Leipzig, 1993), 3272–60.
Geist und Leben, 33.
Geist und Leben, 43.
Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Fünf Studien (Darmstadt, 19612), English transl. by S.G. Lofts, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies, (Yale, 2000)
In my view, the debate with philosophy of life — and with Heidegger — also forms an important background to Cassirer’s Rousseau studies. A particularly central concept here is that of form: ‘The incomparable power which Rousseau the thinker and writer exercised over his time was ultimately founded in the fact that in a century that had raised the cultivation of form [Kultur der Form] to unprecedented heights, bringing it to perfection and organic completion, he brought once more to the fore the inherent uncertainty of the very concept of form.’, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, transl. by P. Gay (New York, 1954), 35f., original: Das Problem Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (Darmstadt, 1975). This characterization almost functions as a reply to Simmel, who links the conflict of modern culture to the principle of form: ‘We are now experiencing this new phase of the ancient struggle, which is no longer the struggle of today’s life-filled form against the old, now lifeless one, but the struggle of life against form in general, against the principle of form.’, G. Simmel, Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur. In: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 16 (Frankfurt am Main, 1999),181–207, 185. Cf. Renz,’ Cassirers Idee der Aufklärung’, 120 and 124.
Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, 209.
Georg Simmel, Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, in: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 12 (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 194.
Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 196.
Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 199.
Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 219.
Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 221.
Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 105.
Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur, 206.
Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, 108.
Cohen does not play off the physiological origin of feeling against its historicity. See more extensively U. Renz, ‘Ethik oder Ästhetik? Das System als Interpretament der Kulturproblematik’, in: P.-U. Merz-Benz und U. Renz, Ethik oder Ästhetik? Neukantianische Kulturphilosophie vor den Herausforderungen postmoderner Existenz (Würzburg, forthcoming).
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Renz, U. (2005). Critical Idealism and the Concept of Culture: Philosophy of culture in Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer. 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_12
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