Mattia Papa

I aim to show how experience is constructed through a process that can be called ‘metaphorical’. I will do this by beginning with Paul Natorp’s view of the problem of consciousness and some reflections on metaphor in Paul Ricoeur. I will go through some of the basic concepts of Natorp’s Allgemeine Psychologie and focus on the role that ‘re-presentation’ plays in determining how things appear to consciousness. In this way, and through Ricoeur’s remarks on metaphor, I will propose a parallel that aims to show how experience is constituted through the use of metaphor by consciousness.

The paper aims to reconstruct Schiller’s presence in Natorp’s philosophy, focusing on the role of Schiller’s aesthetics in the first period of Natorp’s writings (1880-1914). Its purpose is to show that, in the development of Natorp’s thought, particularly from a theoretical standpoint, Schiller was as important to him as Kant. The paper then examines how aesthetics plays a crucial role within Natorp’s theoretical perspective, especially in relation to his effort to identify the “ultimate unity” on the objective side of knowledge. Finally, it seeks to indicate, through a brief outline, how this is central to understanding Natorp’s conception of the individual as a concrete moment of objectivity and its relation to with his critical psychology.

The aim of this article is to present Paul Natorp’s position in the debate over the allocation of chairs in philosophy to experimental psychology. Natorp triggered the public controversy within psychology when an experimental psychologist, Eric Jaensch, was awarded the chair of Hermann Cohen in 1912. Natorp published an editorial in the «Frankfurter Zeitung» and in the following year, 1913, submitted a petition for the establishment of new chairs for experimental psychology in Germany. In this way, Natorp hoped to prevent the abolition of “pure” philosophy from German universities. When the controversy began, Natorp wrote another essay, Philosophie und Psychologie. Natorp’s article aimed to clarify the logical domains of philosophy and psychology and to present his philosophical psychology as a solution to their conceptual overlap. Natorp’s article is also important for Natorpforschung because it was the last time that Natorp discussed his psychological point of view, only to apparently abandon his project of a philosophical psychology.

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.

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.

The aim of this paper is to trace one of the deepest roots of Hegel's concept of history within Kant's doctrine of schematism. I propose to draw a line of continuity between Kant's Einbildungskraft and Hegel's Selbstbewusstsein. The concept of Selbstbewusstsein of the young Hegel is to be understood, in my view, as the moment when the extreme and radical consequences are drawn from the schematism of the first Critique, revised in the light of Kant's reflections on teleology developed in the Critique of Judgment. In this sense, Hegel can be seen as the 'solution' to the rift that opened up in the heart of Western culture during the Enlightenment.