Sebastian Luft

This paper takes a fresh look at a classical theme in philosophical scholarship, the meaning of transcendental idealism, by contrasting Kant’s and Husserl’s versions of it. I present Kant’s transcendental idealism as a theory distinguishing between the world as in‐itself and as given to the experiencing human being. This reconstruction provides the backdrop for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a brand of transcendental idealism expanding on Kant: through the phenomenological reduction Husserl universalizes Kant’s transcendental philosophy to an eidetic science of subjectivity. He thereby furnishes a new sense of transcendental philosophy, rephrases the quid iuris‐question, and provides a new conception of the thing‐in‐itself. What needs to be clarified is not exclusively the possibility of a priori cognition but, to start at a much lower level, the validity of objects that give themselves in experience. The thing‐in‐itself is not an unknowable object, but the idea of the object in all possible appearances experienced at once. In spite of these changes Husserl remains committed to the basic sense of Kant’s Copernican Turn. I end with some comments on how both Kant and Husserl view the relation between theoretical and moral philosophy.

In diesem Beitrag wird Cassirers Kulturphilosophie als eine besondere Applikation der Kantischen Transzendentalphilosophie dargestellt, sodann in Vergleich gesetzt zu einer anderen Tradition, der Pittsburgh School, hier v.a. McDowell. Der Ausgang ist der Sellars’sche Begriff des „space of reasons“, der sodann von McDowell erweitert wird durch seinen (Aristotelisch inspirierten) Begriff der „zweiten Natur“. Durch eine interessante Auslegung eines frühen Interpreten Cassirers – Howe – wird es möglich, „Marburg“ und „Pittsburgh“ miteinander in Gespräch zu bringen. Das Resultat dieses Vergleichs wird eine Position sein, die beide Traditionen vermittelt und die man mit Howe als „naturalistischen Idealismus“ bezeichnen könnte. Am Schluss wird der Versuch unternommen, die Überlegenheit von Cassirers Position zu demonstrieren, die allerdings keine Widerlegung derjenigen von McDowell bedeutet, sondern seine Position in Cassirers einbettet.

This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradition, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this reassessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to what was at the time the most powerful philosophical movement in Europe.

What does it mean to be a community and to be in a community? Can this social phenomenon be analogized to an individual person with her interwoven opinions, wants, and desires? Or is a community a phenomenon sui generis that requires its own methods and tools for research? Concretely: What does it mean that a community may achieve certain acts? And what about the intentional object of such an act, which has also been referred to as “social act”? These questions raise the methodological ones: how is it even possible to characterize a community, such that it can be said to issue social acts? And how can such an inquiry be carried out, does it require an outside perspective or one from within a community, or can it be done by both?

This edited volume examines women's voices in phenomenology, many of which had a formative impact on the movement but have be kept relatively silent for many years. It features papers that truly extend the canonical scope of phenomenological research. Readers will discover the rich philosophical output of such scholars as Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, and Gerda Walther. They will also come to see how the phenomenological movement allowed its female proponents to achieve a position in the academic world few women could enjoy at the time. The book explores the intersection of social ontology, phenomenology, and women scholars in phenomenology. The papers offer a fresh look at such topics as the nature of communities, shared values, feelings, and other mental content. In addition, coverage examines the contributions of Jewish women to the science, who were present at the beginning of the phenomenological movement. This remarkable anthology also features a paper on Gerda Walther written by Linda Lopez McAlister, former editor of the feminist journal Hypatia, who had met Walther in 1976. This book features work from the conference “Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology,” held at the University of Paderborn. Overall, it collects profiles and analysis that unveil a hidden history of phenomenology.

This essay attempts to spell out what might be left of Husserlian phenomenology when one leaves behind Husserl's own grounding ambitions. Husserl construes transcendental phenomenology as first philosophy. In a pragmatist vein of leaving it behind in the interest of something other, I discuss what would happen if one were to 'pragmatize' phenomenology. After first laying out Husserl's vision, in a second part I reconstruct the motives that led to it in reaction to a 'Cartesian anxiety' of not securing an indubitable ground of knowledge. After that, the article spells out some pragmatic reflections on what phenomenology would be, without the need to secure foundations of knowledge. Such a liberation would in effect enable phenomenology to more fully make true on the ideals of the Enlightenment (which Rorty, too, underwrites) of emancipating oneself of one of the last vestiges of a dogmatic slumber.

In this essay, I first present Husserl's project of phenomenology as first philosophy, its meaning and its scope. My second intention in this text is to lay out the project of the »science of the lifeworld«. But my intention is not merely exegetical; instead, I want to show how both projects hang together systematically. Clarifying this project is a special lacuna in Husserl scholarship as well as in phenomenology and in the reception of Husserl's thought in general. Scholars typically either see the science of the lifeworld as a »hermeneutical« project, disregarding its transcendental underpinnings; or they stick to Husserl's transcendental considerations in conjunction with his focus on subjectivity, ignoring the lifeworld. By showing how both projects belong together I rectify an erroneous Husserl image, and demonstrate how the lifeworld can be a topic within transcendental philosophy.

Immanuel KantKant, Immanuel war für Simmel ein ständiger Begleiter. Bereits Simmels Dissertation von 1881 an der Berliner Universität trug den Titel Die Natur der Materie nach Kants Physikalischer Monadologie und seine Habilitationsschrift aus dem Jahre 1885 handelte von Kants Lehre von Raum und Zeit. Seit dem Beginn seiner Lehrtätigkeit an der Berliner Universität hielt Simmel weiterhin zahlreiche Lehrveranstaltungen zu Kant, so dass Kant – zumindest in Simmels Berliner Zeit bis 1914 – zum ständigen Repertoire von Simmels Lehrtätigkeit gehörte.

Nesta contribuição, a filosofia da cultura de Cassirer é apresentada como uma aplicação especial da filosofia transcendental kantiana, então comparada a outra tradição aqui, a Escola de Pittsburgh, especialmente McDowell. O resultado é o conceito de Sellars de “espaço de razões”, que é então expandido por McDowell com seu conceito de “segunda natureza”. Uma interpretação interessante de um dos primeiros intérpretes de Cassirer – Howe – torna possível trazer “Marburgo” e “Pittsburgo” para a conversa. O resultado dessa comparação será uma posição que transmite ambas as tradições e que Howe poderia descrever como “idealismo naturalista”. No final, tenta-se demonstrar a superioridade da posição de Cassirer, o que não significa uma refutação da de McDowell, mas sim um encaixe de sua posição na de Cassirer.

The present volume is the final tome in the six-volume translation of the main writings of Wilhelm Dilthey, offering a selection of what the series editors, Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, deemed the most important writings of the philosopher-historian. By comparison, Dilthey's Collected Works in the German spans twenty-six volumes and is now complemented by a four-volume edition of his correspondence. Thus, the texts gathered in this set of translations are but the tip of the iceberg of Dilthey's writings.The sixth volume fills...