-
INTRODUCTION: ON GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAINphil_345 1..16
PETER GILGEN
Lucien Goldmanns observation that between 1910 and 1925 a true
philo-sophical turning-point occurred, might well have served as
the guiding intuitionof this special issue on The Fate of Kant in a
Time of Crisis.1 To be sure, it providesthe working hypothesis of
its opening essay, in which Peter Uwe Hohendahl deftlymaps the
philosophical scene between the World Wars in relation to Kant.
Aroundthis hypothesis, Hohendahl arranges five case studies of
Lukcs, Carnap, Husserl,Heidegger, and Horkheimer, respectively. The
often invoked new thinkingwhich was by no means a homogenous form
of philosophydid not simplyreplace the old neo-Kantianism but ran
parallel to it for the duration of theWeimar Republic, although the
signs for a changing of the guards became increas-ingly apparent.
Arguably, this transition was fully accomplished in the
disputationbetween Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos in the spring of
1929. By then, asCassirer realized, neo-Kantianism had become the
scapegoat of the more recentphilosophy [der Sndenbock der neueren
Philosophie].2
With the help of his strategically selected dramatis personae,
Hohendahlfocuses the philosophical options of the dayMarxist
critique, phenomenology,Lebensphilosophie, and logical positivism,
to name the most prominentbyexamining how Kants philosophy gets
reassessed and adopted in each case, more
1 Lucien Goldmann, Lukcs and Heidegger, trans. William Q.
Boelhower (London, UK: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1977) 4, quoted
in Peter Uwe Hohendahls essay below (n. 1).
2 The text of the entire exchange is available as appendix IV
in: Martin Heidegger, Kant und dasProblem der Metaphysik, 6th ed.
(Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998) 27496. Cassirersremark
occurs right at the opening of the debate. But he continues by
questioning the category of theneo-Kantian. For if neo-Kantianism
is not determined substantially but functionally as thedirection of
a mode of posing questions [eine Richtung der Fragestellung], then
Heidegger wouldhimself qualify as a neo-Kantian according to
Cassirer (p. 274).
2010 The Philosophical Forum, Inc.
1
-
often than not in direct defiance of the central tenets of
neo-Kantianism. This shiftcannot be understood in isolation. The
period between the World Wars is markedsimultaneously by economic
and political upheavals that call for philosophicalanalysis and, in
turn, have their own philosophical consequences. Extremelyunstable
economic circumstances and the prolonged crisis of the political
order ofthe Weimar Republic contributed to undermining in equal
measure enlightenmentprogressivism and the philosophical
justification of liberal democratic politics. Itis probably not too
far-fetched to hold the chaos of the Weimar years at least
partlyresponsible for the newly emerging existential and political
orientations in phi-losophy in the 1920s and 1930s.
Peter Gordon has suggested that after World War I, a new hunger
for meta-physical speculation emerged that led many of the younger
generation who hadbeen in the trenches to turn away in droves from
the critical model and in itsstead forge diverse philosophies of
religion, revolutionary utopia, and exist-ence.3 As Andrew Chignell
remarks, this may well be true for such figures asHeidegger and
Rosenzweig but does not explain the antimetaphysical positionsof
Carnap or Husserl. In fact, this reading also tends to lose sight
of Rosenz-weigs and Heideggers sustained engagement with Kant (as
opposed to theirmuch less charitable treatment of neo-Kantianism).
The same is true for figuressuch as Lukcs and Benjamin.
Many of the thinkers presented in the following pages performed
a sort ofsecond return to Kant after being disaffected by the
official Schulphilosophie ofneo-Kantianism.4 The general view
seemed to be that Kant marked the zero degreeof philosophy, the
decisive turn behind which there was no going back. Conse-quently,
numerous programs for a complete renewal of philosophy reclaimed
theCopernican turn and the critical method as the only inheritance
of the old traditionworth preserving. Moreover, unlike, say, in the
case of Hegel, who had himselfbeen the subject of a more limited
revival in the early years of the century, it waspossible to adopt
merely the negative, critical Kant without accepting his
largersystematic claims such as, for instance, the postulates or
the teleology. If Hegelsfull potential became apparent only when he
was put from his feet on his head,as Marx famous remark in Capital
would have it,5 one merely needed torediscover Kant as the
Alleszermalmer (all-crusher), as Mendelssohn had called
3 Peter Eli Gordon, Science, Finitude, and Infinity:
Neo-Kantianism and the Birth of Existentialism,Jewish Social
Studies, 6 (1999) 3053, 33.
4 It should be noted that there was no such thing as one
neo-Kantianism. For an overview over thecomplex constellations of
neo-Kantian philosophical issues, personalities, generations, and
schoolssee Andrew Chignell, Introduction: On Going Back to Kant,
The Philosophical Forum 39 (2008)10924.
5 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, 43 vols., ed. Institut
fr Marxismus-Leninismus (Berlin:Dietz, 19561990) 2327.
PETER GILGEN
2
-
him,6 to arrive at the irreducible baseline of modern philosophy
that could then beused as an orientation for seemingly less Kantian
philosophical sorties. In thisway, Kants own philosophy became at
the same time the interpretive battlegroundand the critical tool
that helped overturn the hegemony of neo-Kantianism.
It is for this reason that reading a number of the leading
thinkers of the age asreaders of Kant offers a revealing glimpse of
at least three things: the renewedreception of Kant after the
collapse of post-Kantian metaphysics; the developmentof new
philosophical positions under the influence of, or in reaction to,
Kant or atleast certain Kantian themes; and the institutional and
generational shifts duringan extremely fertile period in the recent
history of philosophy.
Most of the neo-Kantians were committed politically to a
meliorist social-democratic agenda. But as the scathing reactions
to the political deadlock of theWeimar Republic and, by extension,
social-democratic progressivism on the partof younger thinkers as
diverse as Benjamin, Heidegger, and Schmitt show, thiswas
considered anything but a recommendation. If the pointless and
increasinglyviolent political quarrels of the day did not seem
conducive to a belief in incre-mental social and political
progress, the increasingly technical concerns of neo-Kantian
philosophy were seen as similarly missing the point when it came
toexistential questions.
The struggle with and against neo-Kantianism was conducted by a
youngergeneration. Although thinkers such as Lukcs and Scheler,
Rosenzweig andHeidegger, Benjamin and Schmitt may not have agreed
on a program for a comingphilosophy or a new thinking, they all
assumed that a radical renewal of philoso-phy was necessary. Except
for Scheler, who was born in 1874, all the otherthinkers in
question were born between 1885 (Lukcs) and 1903 (Adorno).
Bycomparison, the founders of the Marburg and Southwestern schools
of neo-Kantianism, Hermann Cohen and Wilhelm Windelband, were born
in 1842 and1848, respectively. Natorp was born in 1854. Most of the
remaining major neo-Kantians were born between 1863 and 1877.7
6 The precise term in Mendelssohns Morgenstunden actually was
des alles zermalmenden Kants. Itquickly became a topos and was
proliferated by the likes of Borowski and Heine. See Ernst
Cassirer,Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, ed. Rainer A. Bast (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1991) 182, Editors Note 139. ThatCassirer quickly dismisses
Mendelssohns remark (p. 96) would seem to confirm a certain
nervous-ness on the part of the neo-Kantians when it came to Kants
negativity.
7 Here is a partial list: Bruno Bauch (1877); Ernst Cassirer
(1874); Jonas Cohn (1869); Emil Lask(1875); Heinrich Rickert
(1863); Ernst Troeltsch (1865); Karl Vorlnder (1860). Vaihinger was
bornin 1852. Nicolai Hartmann (one of Gadamers teachers) is an
interesting transitional figure thatwould seem to confirm the
theory of a generational shift. Born in 1882and thus
chronologicallybetween the campshe started out as a Marburg
neo-Kantian only to go on to develop his ownidiosyncratic brand of
existentialism. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode [=
GesammelteWerke, vols. 1 and 2], 2 vols. (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1993) 1:69f. remarks that it was Schelers
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
3
-
Max Weber could be seen as a hinge between these two
generations. Born in1864, he drew heavily on the work of Heinrich
Rickert to construct a socialscience that differed from the natural
sciences.8 Not being an academic philoso-pher, he took the liberty
to expand on and, if necessary, alter Rickerts ideas
whenconstructing his social theory. Moreover, it is not entirely
clear how familiarWeber was with Kants philosophy.9
Although Weber is often grouped with the neo-Kantians,10 Hans
Henrik Bruundoes not find the Kantianizing or neo-Kantianizing
interpretations convinc-ing. In the years from 1903 until 1917,
Weber thought and wrote a great deal aboutthe methodological
foundation of the social sciences and the closely linkedproblem of
values. In both of these areas, as well as in Webers political
thought,Bruun discovers significant differences from the Kantian
legacy. Among the mostconsequential contributions of Webers theory
is his famous distinction of differ-ent value spheres. Of no less
importance, from an ethical perspective, andentirely in opposition
to Kantian moral philosophy, is Webers insistence on theimportance
of consequences of action. As far as Webers method is concerned,
hecould build on the advances made by Dilthey, Windelband, and
Rickert in theirrespective attempts to provide a methodological
foundation for the historical orcultural sciences. Rickert saw
values as the central concern of those sciences.Weber diverged from
Rickerts search for absolute value by insisting on theirreducible
conflict of values. It was on the basis of this insight that he
formulatedhis famous distinction between facts and values and
insisted on the value freedomof science (a concept he probably
derived from Friedrich Albert Lange, a neo-Kantian of the first
hour). Although, as Bruun rightly observes, this distinction
isreminiscent of Kants distinction between the realms of nature and
freedom,Weber denied, unlike Kant, that any transition [bergang]
(Ak 5:176)11 was
phenomenological critique of neo-Kantianism that precipitated
Hartmanns turn from neo-Kantianism to his own conception of a
metaphysics of cognition.
8 Richard Swedberg, neo-Kantianism, The Max Weber Dictionary:
Key Words and Central Con-cepts (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2005) 174f.
9 Ibid: 175. Hans Henrik Bruun reviews some of the arguments on
this important point in footnote 5of his essay. It is of some
importance that he also raises the question whether Rickerts
ideasconcerning the basis of historical knowledge can, strictly
speaking, be said to be Kantian at all.
10 Thus, Gordon lists the value-free sociological science of Max
Weber as one of the neo-Kantianschools (32).
11 References to Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed.
Kniglich-Preuische [later: Deutsche]Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin, 29 vols. to date (Berlin: Reimer, later, de
Gruyter,1900present) are given parenthetically as Ak, followed by
volume and page numbers, except in thecase of the Critique of Pure
Reason, where I adopted the standard practice of citing the
pagenumbers of the 1781 edition (A) and the revised second edition
of 1787 (B). For my translations Ihave frequently consulted, and
relied on, the relevant volumes of the Cambridge edition of
Kantsworks and, in the case of the first Critique, Norman Kemp
Smiths translation.
PETER GILGEN
4
-
possible between the two domains. In keeping with this strict
separation, Webersaw the world as ethically irrational: there is no
scientific method to prove a valueright or wrong.
In Webers theory, modernity consisted precisely of the retreat
of religion and thesubsequent differentiation of mutually
independent value spheres. Each of thesespheres makes, in Bruuns
words, its own absolute demands on those that embracethem; the
value sphere has its own categorical imperative, so to speak.12
Such aproliferation of functionally differentiated categorical
imperatives can only under-mine the Kantian primacy of practical
reason. Therefore, Weber needed a differentethical theory. In his
view, the ethical sphere is internally divided by
conflicts.Moreover, strict deontology is insufficient since good
intentions alone cannotguarantee corresponding outcomes in an
ethically irrational world. For this reason,Weber supplements the
ethic of conviction with an ethic of responsibility.13 AsBruun
shows, Kants ethical theory does not completely abstract from the
latter.Nonetheless, the mere fact of value conflict and the
necessity of making a choicewhose consequences are determined by
valuational irrationality (in Bruunsfelicitous wording) render a
harmonization of ends in the Kantian sense impossible.
As its own value sphere, politics is determined for Weber by the
use of power inorder to achieve ones political goals. Predictably,
Webers political theory movesfar away from Kants thoughts on the
matter. The autonomy of a value sphere is anefficient way of
dealing with the irrationality of facts.14 The application of
therules that are based on the constitutive value of the sphere in
question thus becomesincreasingly a matter of a mere technique15a
social technology that proceedsaccording to its own regulations.
Hans Henrik Bruuns mapping of Kants distinc-tion between the moral
politician and the political moralist in the appendix toToward
Perpetual Peace (see Ak 8:37280) onto Webers political
categoriesproves most revealing in this respect. While Kant and
Weber both agree in theirdismissal of the political moralistbe it
as the politician who acts on the basis ofthe ethic of conviction
or his cynical counterpart, the practitioner of realpolitiktheir
views of the moral politician differ. As Kant sees it, the conflict
betweenmorals and politics is merely subjective. Objectively (in
theory) there is no conflictat all (Ak 8:379). Such harmonization
has no place in Webers theory of valueconflict. For him, politics
must legitimate itself on its own grounds.
12 Webers theory of functional differentiation was subsequently
picked up and developed further bysocial theorists as diverse as
Parsons, Habermas, and Luhmann.
13 See the helpful entries ethic of responsibility
(Verantwortungsethik) and ethic of ultimate
ends(Gesinnungsethik)the latter of which Bruun renders as ethic of
convictionin Swedberg(2005): 8991.
14 Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der
verstehenden Soziologie (Frankfurt amMain: Zweitausendeins, 2005)
649.
15 Ibid: 650, eine bloe Technik.
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
5
-
In her reply to Bruun, Susan Buck-Morss points out that Kants
practicalphilosophy and Webers sociology on (partial) neo-Kantian
grounds are separatednot just by conceptual and methodological
differences but also by their respectivehistorical moments. If
Kants project is brought to its conclusion in a philosophyof
history (embedded within a larger teleology16), Buck-Morss
discovers a sus-pension of the historical in Weber. In keeping with
Walter Benjamins negativejudgment on neo-Kantianism,17 she
chastises the neo-Kantian return to Kant asa deliberate turn away
from Hegel and, a fortiori, Marx. The corrective was to befound in
Georg Lukcs revival of Marxist method, which laid the ground for
thework of the Frankfurt Institut fr Sozialforschung.
However, as Hohendahls essay and especially Chignells reply to
Hohendahlmake clear, Lukcs may have given a powerful critique of
bourgeois reason butit is doubtful whether his reading of Kants
philosophy as an allegory of bourgeoisconsciousness really hits the
mark. As Chignell puts it, where Lukcs criticism ofKantianism does
hit a target, that target is usually a neo-Kantian
philosopherrather than the Sage of Knigsberg himself.
Yet, Kant was not immune to, or exempt from, the criticism of
the new gen-eration. Jacobis and Hegels earlier criticisms of
Kantian ethics for its indeter-minateness and abstraction were
renewed by Max Scheler. But the critique ofKants formal ethics
leaves all these thinkers, as Rodolphe Gasch puts it, withrecourse
solely to material values in founding an ethics, a problem that we
havealready encountered in Weber. Of course, as Gasch implies, much
of the talk ofKants formalism may be based on a simple
misunderstanding. Kant did notpresent his full-fledged moral
philosophy in the Groundwork or the Critique ofPractical Reason but
only in the later, less familiar Metaphysics of Morals. Therichness
of detail and specificity in this presentation shows that Kants
actualmoral theory cannot by any measure be described as simply
formal.
These additional resources that Kants mature ethical theory may
have to offernotwithstanding, Schelers guiding question is whether
a universally bindingethics is possible, as Kant believed, only on
the basis of formal a prioriness orwhether there actually are
non-formal ethical intuitions that are evident andcan neither be
tested by something that has been found, prior to such testing,
byobservation and induction nor be refuted by observation and
induction, and onwhich an ethics could be based that is both
non-formal and a priori.18 Clearly, thea priori Scheler has in mind
is not a formal condition of possibility of acts of
16 See esp. 8285 in the Critique of Judgment (Ak 5:42542).17 See
Max Penskys essay in this issue.18 Gasch quotes these passages from
Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of
Values. A New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical
Personalism, trans. M. S. Frings andRoger L. Funk (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1973) 47f.
PETER GILGEN
6
-
judgment but something more material: the immediate intuitive
content19 thatone is left with when the subjects and objects that
stand in relation to it arebracketed. For Scheler, there are
intuitable essences (and their interconnections)that are a priori
true, independent of all acts of judgment. Gasch points out thatone
might well ask whether this Schelerian material a priori does not,
in fact,replace Kants a priori (rather than merely expand on it, as
has been suggested).According to Scheler, values are given a
priori. Their materiality consists in thefact that they can be
felt. This also implies that they depend for their actualexistence
on a bearer who feels them. In other words, the relation between a
valueand its bearer is in each case singular (which, however, does
not mean that thesame value could not be felt by another).
Michelle Kosch takes exception to Gaschs apparent endorsement of
Schelersclaim that by starting out from the ought, as does Kant,
without grounding it intoan insight into what is good, one can at
best only distinguish between an ought thatis universal and
necessary, and an ought that is merely subjective and
pathologi-cal. According to Scheler, Kant runs into a problem of
moral motivation thatScheler himself hopes to solve with an account
that makes duties specific toindividuals. Perhaps thinking a bit
too much in the terms of contemporary ethics,Kosch overlooks that
the problem for Scheler is not so much the
practicalityrequirementthat is, the question why I ought to do
something that in myjudgment everyone ought to dobut rather how the
judgment becomes truly mineand the ensuing act an autonomous and
thus truly moral act. As a consequence, shedisregards an important
point in Gaschs and Schelers respective accountsnamely, that which
they address under the label material. It has to do withthe
specificity of a call that is addressed to me and, as I see it, to
me alone. Thecontent of this call is not just the moral law in its
universal formulation or theuniversal good. Rather, as Scheler
describes it, this call calls to me as the one thatI could and
would want to be. Thus, what would seem to be addressed to me
fromoutside and thus would constitute pure heteronomy meets with a
resonance in methat discloses to me what I could really be and
thereby elicits my autonomous andauthentic response/ibility.
Even on the basis of this condensed summary of some of the main
points ofSchelers complex material ethics, it should come as no
surprise that in 1928, inreaction to Schelers death, Heidegger
praised him as the strongest philosophi-cal force in modern
Germany, nay, in contemporary Europe and in contempo-rary
philosophy as such.20 In Scheler, Heidegger saw a kindred spirit
who
19 Ibid: 48.20 Martin Heidegger, In memoriam Max Scheler, The
Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans.
Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 5052,
50.
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
7
-
rejected not only neo-Kantianism but also the scientistic
aspirations of Husser-lian phenomenology.
Taylor Carman reads Heideggers own sustained attack on
neo-Kantianism asan attempt to save Kant from the neo-Kantians.
Kant is a fixture in Heideggersphilosophy, a reference point from
which not only the errors of his successors canbe measured but also
the radicality of Heideggers own achievement. Carman seestwo
contrary tendencies in evidence in the opening sections of Being
and Time. Onthe one hand, Heideggers existential analytic
[existenziale Analytik]21 is clearlyintended to echo the
transcendental analytic [transzendentale Analytik] of theCritique
of Pure Reason. But on the other hand, one of the key features
ofHeideggerian existentialism is its insistence on the radical
finitude of Daseinvery unlike the Kantian transcendental
subject.
In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger reads Kant as
a sort ofprecursor, who recognized the finitude of Dasein and also
saw that reason derivesfrom more fundamental strata of human
existence. But, according to Carmansstraightforward reading,
Heideggers adoption of Kant as his secret precursor hadto fail,
precisely because Heideggers facticity and thrownness have
noequivalents in Kant.
Kants epistemology distinguishes between sensibility and the
understanding,the former passive faculty providing the content, the
latter active faculty providingthe form in the production of
knowledge. The two stems of human cognition(A15/B 29) are brought
together in the mediation effected by the transcendentalschema
(A138/B177) that the imagination provides. As Carman reminds us,
mostpost-Kantiansfrom the German Idealists to current analytic
philosophershaverejected Kants insistence on the fundamental role
he assigns to passive intuition.This is certainly the case with the
Marburg school of neo-Kantianism and withCassirer in particular,
for whom there was only a gradual difference betweenthought and
experience.
Heidegger, by contrast, rejects the view of humans as mere
autonomous rationalagents and the corresponding exalted status of
spontaneity (Carman). Accordingto Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, Kant had come close to recognizing thatthe imagination
was the deeper but to us unknown root from which both stemsof our
cognition spring (A15/B29)a point that is not made explicit by
Kant.According to Heidegger, Kant shrank back [zurckgewichen] from
this unknownroot in the second edition of the Critique.22
21 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 16th ed. (Tbingen: Niemeyer,
1986) 13.22 Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,
6th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Kloster-
mann, 1998) 160. For my translations I have consulted, albeit
not always followed: Martin Heideg-ger, Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana
UniversityPress, 1997).
PETER GILGEN
8
-
As Carman points out, this view of the imagination runs counter
to its status asa mediating power in the schematism argument.
Furthermore, as the notes inKants own copy of the Critique make
clear, he saw the imagination itself asspontaneous. Therefore,
recourse to Kants imagination, in whatever form, wouldnot be
sufficient to tackle the Western philosophical tradition based on
spontane-ous reason nor to undermine Cassirer. Instead, Cassirer is
criticized for not havingelucidated how the forms of intuition and
thought that he investigates in hisPhilosophy of Symbolic Forms
originate from a more fundamental form of life[Lebensform].23 In
short, then, Heideggerian Dasein (and the existential analytic)have
no equivalents in Cassirer. In fact, the distinction between
Heidegger andCassirer (and with him the whole tradition, including
Kant) boils down, accordingto Carman, to the simple question:
spontaneity or thrownness? Not only isHeidegger anti-neo-Kantian,
but anti-Kantian through and through.
In her reply to Carman, Anette Schwarz proposes a different
reading of Heideg-gers reading of Kant that she describes as
nothing less than a fundamentalre-evaluation of the tasks of
philosophy as such and the task of a radically revisedgrounding of
metaphysics in particular. What is at stake in Heideggers readingis
the moment when Kant looked into the unknown toward which he
hadadvanced: namely, that which pushes against us as something
disquieting.24Heideggers reading is centered around this moment in
which concealment andunconcealment intertwine, and which thus
determines, in Schwarz words, notonly Daseins facticity but also
Heideggers method of reading/viewing the unsaidthat is brought
before our eyes through what is said. It is the coming into view
ofthis zero degreethis nothingthat discloses, in anxiety [Angst],
the de-severance25 of Dasein. In other words, Dasein discovers its
own existentialsituatedness in this moment of utter disorientation
that discloses (or, in Kantianterms, is the transcendental
condition of) orientation, which Heidegger alwaysunderstood, as
Schwarz reminds us, as orientation both in space and in lan-guage.
Being affected (as much as Cassirers wish26) is grounded in this
spaceof thrownness. In fine, Heidegger aims at a complete
philosophical renewal. Forhim, it is not Kant but philosophy itself
that is in need of being rescued from theneo-Kantians and the
entire history of Western metaphysics that precedes them.
23Ernst Cassirer: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. 2.Teil:
Das mythische Denken. Berlin1925 in Heidegger (1998) 255270,
266.
24 Heidegger (1998): 160. It is of some consequence that
Heidegger insists in a footnote on the samepage that the claim that
Kant shrank back from this unknown root makes sense only if one
admits[zugibt] that Kant had been moving in some way toward the
transcendental imagination [myemphasis].
25 See esp. Heidegger (1986): 105. De-severance is John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinsonsrendering of Heideggers Ent-fernung;
Schwarz prefers dis-location.
26 Heidegger (1998): 268.
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
9
-
There was a contemporary of Heidegger whose philosophizing also
becameincreasingly unconventional; who also called for a complete
renewal of philoso-phy; who also read Kant only to discover the
nothing or naught [Nichts] fromwhich Kant took his departure; and
whoshortly before his untimely deathannounced in a review of the
second edition of Hermann Cohens Religion derVernunft that he sided
with Heidegger against Cassirer.27 This philosopher wasFranz
Rosenzweig. His review cast the Davos disputation explicitly in
terms of arepresentative debate [Auseinandersetzung] between the
old and the new think-ing28 and was published under the telling
title Vertauschte Fronten.
Earlier, in the introduction to the first volume of The Star of
Redemption,Rosenzweig had maintained that Cohens principle of
origins had taught him torecognize the naught not just as mere
nothing but rather as a naught that pointsto a something, its
something.29 It is for this reason that Rosenzweig saw thatCohen in
spite of [the latters] self-understanding and in spite of the
impression[that] his works [may give] was something entirely
different than a meresuccessor [bloer Nachfahr] of that truly
finished course [wahrlich abgelaufenenBewegung]namely, the last
2,000 years of philosophy.30
No doubt, Rosenzweig had the greatest admiration for Cohen. In
fact, Rosenz-weig, the returning Jew, received religious
instruction from Cohen. Nonetheless,nothing can cover up the
textual evidence that would seem to indicate thatRosenzweig was at
philosophical loggerheads with his admired friend as early as1921.
In the cited passage, Rosenzweig adopts a central doctrine of
Cohen, theforemost neo-Kantian, and puts it to rather
non-neo-Kantian use, and yet heclaims that his more extensive
employment of the borrowed conception is consis-tent with its true
meaning. Rosenzweig, then, claims implicitly that he
understandsHermann Cohen better than Cohen understood himself.As
Richard Cohen shows inhis essay, Rosenzweig performs a similar
maneuver with Kant that allows him totransgress the boundaries of
cognition in a way that is, ultimately, quite un-Kantian.Only on
this basis is he able to derive the elements of his Star of
Redemption.
Perhaps it was not so much that Rosenzweig made creative use of
Cohensoriginal insight, as Peter Gordon claims,31 but rather that
he relied on a herme-neutic principle that he had first encountered
in passing in Kants Critique of PureReason, as I argue in my
response to Richard Cohen, and now applied to Hermann
27 Franz Rosenzweig, Vertauschte Fronten, Zweistromland:
Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben undDenken [= Gesammelte Schriften
III], eds. Reinhold Mayer and Annemarie Mayer (Dordrecht:Martinus
Nijhoff, 1984) 235237.
28 Ibid: 236.29 Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlsung, 2nd
ed., 3 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann
Verlag, 1930) 1:30.30 Ibid.31 Gordon (1999): 48.
PETER GILGEN
10
-
Cohen. According to this principle of reading, it is an entirely
plausible assump-tion that Rosenzweig might have understood Cohen
or Kant or Plato better thanthey understood themselves.
If Rosenzweig was impressed with Cohen, especially with Religion
of Reasonout of the Sources for Judaism, so was Walter Benjamin.
But not for long. AlreadyBenjamins first sustained encounter with
neo-Kantianism had been a failure. In1912, at the same time as
Heidegger, he had studied with Heinrich Rickert, theleader of the
Southwestern school of neo-Kantianism. Heidegger and Benjaminnever
met, but both were equally appalled at Rickerts rather dogmatic
andbloodless approach to Kants philosophy. They, as numerous others
of theirgeneration, preferred to find their own way back to Kant.
In Cohens case, as MaxPensky shows in some detail, Benjamin became
disenchanted with the social-democratic incrementalism that seemed
to be the political corollary of neo-Kantianism (and perhaps, or so
Benjamin thought, even of Kants own philosophy).
Instead of the empty time of such meliorist politics, Benjamin
developed anintricate theory of revolutionary time that, according
to Pensky, provides a cor-rective to Kants philosophy of history.
Benjamins Theses on History ought tobe read as an antiuniversal
history. As such, they are intended not only to rejectthe effects
of neo-Kantian theories of moral progress but alsoand arguablymore
soto lay the foundations for a re-reading of Kant. Pensky argues
that theemphasis placed on the messianism in Benjamins Theses has
obscured hiscritique of the discourse of historical progress.
Benjamin insists on commemo-rating the wounds and catastrophes of
the pasta process in which cognition andrage are put into a
relation that is reminiscent of the connection Kant
construesbetween the reflective teleological judgment and his
obstinate contentment thatarises, according to Pensky, from the
suppression of grief. Rather than sublating orsublimating
catastrophe in a Kantian sign of history [Geschichtszeichen]
(Ak7:84), Benjamin undergirds it with an image that serves as a
substitute for theimpossible discursive analysis. In such a view of
history, progress must appear assomething very different from the
progressivism of the Weimar Social-Democrats as well as the
neo-Kantians. Real progress must begin with the enrageddestruction
of the confused discourse of progress. What is needed is a
pragmaticpolitical strategy that is based on a different
understanding of time, on the fulltime of the revolutionary moment
that interrupts the steady flow of progressivehistory and instead
juxtaposes to it the enraging memory of the past that sustainsthe
renewed making of history.
In his response to Pensky, Dominick LaCapra focuses on the role
of thehistorical sublime that is bound up with catastrophe and
violence, often seen asepitomized in revolution. For both LaCapra
and Pensky, the historical sublime isconstituted by the
awe-inspiring succession of bloodshed and drama in humanhistory.
And both see, as LaCapra puts it succinctly, Kant as countering
the
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
11
-
historical sublime through a selective reading that reacted to
the derangement ofthe affects. In fact, LaCapra surmises that this
reaction could be understood interms of repression or at least
looking away from, if not working through, thebloodier sides of the
past and their depressing effects. Similarly, Pensky ascribesto
Kant a distinctive form of cognitive hygiene that operates under
the assump-tion that there is an historical sublime that one has
the moral duty not toexperience. Of this, I remain unconvinced. It
seems to me that both readingsshortchange the intricate Kantian
model because they neglect the specific structureof the aesthetic
judgment on the sublime as presented in Kants Critique ofJudgment
and applied to the reading of the sign of history in An Old
QuestionRaised Again (Ak 7:7994).32
What Pensky does not sufficiently recognize (and neither does
LaCapra) is thatthe Kantian sign is itself part of the historical
process. The affect of the historicallysituated spectators is not
related to a view from nowhere. Instead, the real pressureof
political history is directly felt by such spectators, even if they
are far fromParis. Their enthusiastic reaction to the events in
France is itself a social fact sincethey do not choose to repress
their feelings in spite of the real possibility that thismay be
dangerous. For this reason, their reaction is anything but a mere
psychicoccurrence. It is, in Kants precise sense, a historical
event that henceforth willhave to be considered as suchand
therefore will not be forgotten (Ak 7:88).
Be that as it may, Benjamins deliberately fractured take on the
idea of histori-cal progress is, according to Pensky, profoundly
Kantianbut in a dialecticalsense. How is this assessment to be read
if at the same time it is said that in Kantthere is a premature
foreclosure of the problems of suffering, trauma, and catas-trophe?
Is the unthinkability of despair, as Adorno maintains (followed
byPensky and LaCapra), truly the secret of Kants philosophy?
It should be obvious that at this point at the latest, our
discussion of going backto Kant will have moved forward, in a sort
of irresistible prolepsis or Benjaminiantelescoping, to concerns of
the present. This is particularly true for the two essaysthat
conclude this volume, Wolfram Malte Fues essay on The Foe. The
RadicalEvil. Political Theology in Immanuel Kant and Carl Schmitt
and Geoff Waitesresponse that is much more than thatnamely, a plea
for une philosophiebuissonnire et parallactique.
Fues quite deliberate Engfhrung of the ethical and the political
legislation inKant is nothing if not provocative. It certainly runs
against the letter (and, I wouldsurmise, the spirit) of Kants
argument not only in Religion within the Limits of
32 I offer a different reading of the same passages that Pensky
adduces from Kants essays on thephilosophy of history in Peter
Gilgen, In der Wildnis des Denkens: Kant mit Lvi-Strauss, Daswilde
Denken: Liechtensteiner Exkurse V, eds. Norbert Haas, Rainer Ngele,
and Hans-JrgRheinberger (Eggingen: Edition Isele, 2004) 161214.
PETER GILGEN
12
-
Mere Reason but also The Metaphysics of Morals. Perhaps this
provocativeconflation ought to be read as a symptom or a lure. It
tempts the ethical grand-standing that is so widespread in
contemporary academia and yet is so obliviousto the political qua
political. If the perfection of the ethical state (Zustand)
markedthe completion of the political and thereby its overcominga
state in whichWollen and Sollen have indeed become identicalthen we
will have to get to thebottom of Carl Schmitts insistence on the
permanence of the political. Thenecessary intermediary step can be
found, for instance, in the so-called OldestSystem-Program of
German Idealism, where Hegel writes down a thought thatmay not have
been his alone33: every state must treat free human beings as
amechanism [mechanisches Rderwerk]. And this it ought [soll] not to
do. There-fore it ought to end [soll er aufhren].34
Fues translates soll er aufhren as it must stop. This is
problematic for tworeasons. On the one hand, Fues ignores the
double invocation of sollenthat is,the ought that determines Kants
ethical imperative. On the other hand, he passesover the double
meaning of aufhren, which means not merely to stop but alsoto cease
to exist, to end. The point made by the authors of the
System-Programis that the state ought to come to an end because
free human beings ought not tobe treated as mere means. Thus, the
argument that is brought against such a state(in fact, any state at
all) is entirely of Kantian origin. The (ethical) Sollen or
whatought to be doneand this is not quite the same, pace Fues, as
what must bedoneserves as the lever that lifts the political order
off its hinges.
Although the interaction between ego and alter is taken to be
the constitutiveelement of society by Kant as well as Schmitt, Fues
points to a decisive differencein their conceptions. If Kantian
ethics (of which the political is merely an enablingcondition)
moved at the level of the individual, the elements of Schmitts
politicaltheory are sovereign nations. Ego mutates, in Fues words,
from a self-likeindividual subject into a symbolic one,
encompassing a people which is organizedas an entity of unanimous
conduct. For Schmitt, there can be no end of historyand therefore
no political progress. He insists on the continued importance of
thepolitical and thus the foe in the precise sense of an
irreducible ontological categoryon the basis of a Gnostic
understanding of Platonism. The political as the original
33 To this day, the authorship of this brief bit exceedingly
important document of early post-Kantianidealism is hotly
contested. It is written in Hegels hand. However, as certain
features of the textmake clear, it is in all likelihood a copy.
When Franz Rosenzweig discovered and published theSystem-Program in
1917, he ascribed the thoughts expressed in it to Schelling. Later,
cases weremade for Hlderlin and Hegel, respectively, or even for
another person from their immediate circle,such as Sinclair. In any
case, it seems clear that the System-Program was less the work of
onethinker than the result of a communal effort.
34 G. W. F. Hegel, Das lteste Systemprogramm des deutschen
Idealismus Werke, vol. 1, eds. EvaMoldenhauer and Karl Markus
Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971) 234236, 234f.
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
13
-
distinction must be maintainedat all costs, one is tempted to
sayin Schmittsaccount. Turning the antithesis of friend and foe
into a domestic dispute leads toa situation in which a society, in
Fues words, denies [an]other any existentialright and places its
other outside a legal norm which has been decreed [. . .] bythis
society alone. Perhaps, then, the conclusion at which Fues arrives
at the endof his provocative essay could be pushed one step
further. It is certainly true thatunlike Schmitt, Kant sets his
sights on overcoming the need for the political.However, under the
conditions of human frailty and finitude, this goal cannot everbe
achieved but only infinitely approached. Schmitts ontologically
groundedanthropology opposes the purported universal and homogenous
state that appearsat the end, according to Francis Fukuyama, who
sees it, based on his limitedreading of Hegel via Kojve, as resting
on the twin pillars of economics andrecognition.35 But this
quasi-Hegelian totalitarianism is not congruent withKants views.
Instead, the need for distinction is acknowledged in Kants
complexargument in behalf of perpetual peace. After all, no unitary
world government ispropagated but a league of nations which,
however, need not [or: ought not to] bea state of nations [ein
Vlkerbund, der aber gleichwohl kein Vlkerstaat seinmte] (Ak 8:354).
Kant, it seems to me, does not fall prey to the absolute
onenesswithin which, according to Schmitt, reflection would
dissolve or the boredom thatwould prevail, according to Kojve, at
the end of history, when not only wars andbloody revolutions will
have disappeared but philosophy as well.36 After all, thecondition
of peace, as Kant is well aware, is not and never will be a natural
stateor state of nature.37 It is not to be expected that it will
merely come about as aconsequence of history as usual. Rather, it
must be established [gestiftet] (Ak8:349) for it marks a decisive
qualitative rupture in the course of (political)history.38
Perhaps what Geoff Waite has in mind in his response is a
similar rupture at alllevels of psychic and social formation. His
essay resists being summarized and itdoes not stay within the
confines of a response to Fues. Insteadand quitefittinglyit arrives
at the end of the day as a meta-commentary that forces us to
35 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New
York: The Free Press, 1992) 204.36 See the famous note (including
the note to the second edition) in Alexandre Kojve, Introduction
to
the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit,
ed. Allan Bloom, trans. James H.Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1980) 15862, n. 6.
37 Kant uses the ambiguous German Naturstand followed, in
parantheses, by the Latin statusnaturalis that is a more clearly
defined terminus technicus (Ak 8:348f.). Nonetheless, it is of
someinterest that he uses the indefinite kein Naturstand as opposed
to nicht der Naturstand. In otherwords, the emphasis seems to lie
on peace not being a natural state of affairs.
38 The Grimms Deutsches Wrterbuch (18:2879) gives the Latin
fundare as a synonym of stiften.At stake is thus the founding of,
usually, institutions or societies, especially of a religious and
lateralso of a political nature.
PETER GILGEN
14
-
question what it would mean to return towhich is to say: to
understandKant, or Schmitt, or Fues, or Waite, or any other text.
Or again, in other words,Waites parallactic essay poses, in no
uncertain terms, the question of readingspecifically of reading
philosophicallyand most of all of reading between thelines.
Cornell University
GOING BACK TO KANT, AGAIN
15
