Hartmann, Eduard von, Philosophie des Unbewussten. Berlin: Duncker, 1869.
Helmholtz, Hermann, Über das Sehen des Menschen. Leipzig: Voss, 1855.
Herbart, Johann Friedrich, Ueber philosophisches Studium. Göttingen: Dieterich, 1807.
Herbart, Johann Friedrich, Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie. Königsberg: Unzer, 1813.
Lange, Friedrich Albert, Geschichte des Materialismus. Iserlohn: Baedeker, 1866.
Lask, Emil, Gesammelte Schriften. Tübingen: Mohr, 1923. 3 vols.
Liebmann, Otto, Kant und die Epigonen. Stuttgart: Schober, 1865.
Paulsen, Friedrich, ‘Idealismus und Positivismus’, Im Neuen Reich 10 (1880), 735–42.
Rickert, Heinrich, ‘Vom Begriff der Philosophie’, Logos I (1910), 1–35.
Rickert, Heinrich, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Tübingen: Mohr, 1902.
Rickert, Heinrich, ‘Über logische und ethische Geltung’, Kant-Studien 19 (1914), 182–220.
Rickert, Heinrich, ‘Das Leben der Wissenschaft und die griechische Philosophie’, Logos XII (1923/24), 303–39.
Rickert, Heinrich, ‘Vom System der Werte’, Logos IV (1913), 295-327.
Riehl, Alois, Der philosophische Kriticismus. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1876.
Schaarschmidt, Carl, ‘Vom rechten und vom falschen Kriticismus’, Philosophische Monatshefte 14 (1878), 1–12.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1819.
Vogt, Carl, Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft. Gießen: Ricker, 1855.
Volkelt, Johannes, Kant’s Kategorischer Imperativ und die Gegenwart. Vienna: Selbstverlag des Lesevereins der deutschen Studenten Wien’s, 1875.
Windelband, Wilhelm, Präludien. Tübingen: Mohr, 1924.
Zeller, Eduard, Ueber Bedeutung und Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie. Heidelberg: Groos, 1861.
Secondary
Beck, L. W. ‘Neo-Kantianism’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967. V, pp. 468–73.
Blencke, Erna, ‘Zur Geschichte der neuen Fries’schen Schule und der Jacob Friedrich Fries-Gesellschaft’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (1978) 199–208.
Gerhardt, Volker, et al., Berliner Geist. Eine Geschichte der Berliner Universitätsphilosophie bis 1946. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999.
Friedman, Michael, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court, 2000.
Gordon, Peter, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Holzhey, Harold, ‘Neukantianismus’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe, 1984. VI, pp. 747–54.
Köhnke, Klaus Christian, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986.
Kronfeld, Arthur, ‘Geleitworte zum zehnjährigen Bestehen der neue Friesischen Schule’, in Das Wesen der psychiatrischen Erkenntnis. Berlin: Springer, 1920, pp. 46–65.
Ollig, Hans-Ludwig, Der Neukantianismus. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979.
Sieg, Ulrich, Aufstieg und Niedergang des Marburger Neukantianismus. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994.
Willey, Thomas, Back to Kant. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.
* * *
1 Johannes Volkelt, Kant’s Kategorischer Imperativ und die Gegenwart (Vienna: Selbstverlag des Lesevereins der deutschen Studenten Wien’s, 1875), 5.
2 These facts are taken from Klaus Christian Köhnke’s seminal study, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), 314–17, 381–5.
3 Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus, 385.
4 On the Marburg school, see Ulrich Sieg, Aufstieg und Niedergang des Marburger Neukantianismus (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994). Unfortunately, there is no counterpart history for the Southwestern school. On the neo-Friesian school, see Arthur Kronfeld, ‘Geleitworte zum zehnjährigen Bestehen der neuen Friesischen Schule’ in Das Wesen der psychiatrischen Erkenntnis (Berlin: Springer, 1920), 46–65; and Erna Blencke, ‘Zur Geschichte der neuen Fries’schen Schule und der Jakob Friedrich Fries-Gesellschaft’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (1978), 199–208. Though neglected by standard histories, the group surrounding Nelson was especially eminent. Among its members were the theologian Rudolf Otto (1869–1937), the psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld (1886–1941), and the Nobel prize winner Otto Meyerhoff (1884–1951). The group published their own journal, Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule, Neue Folge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1907–37), 6 vols. Histories of the Southwestern and neo-Friesian are desiderata of future research.
5 On neo-Kantianism in Berlin, see Volkert Gerhardt, Reinhard Mehring, and Jana Rindert, Berliner Geist. Eine Geschichte der Berliner Universitätsphilosophie bis 1946 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), 179–93.
6 Among these earlier manifestos were Friedrich Beneke, Kant und die philosophische Aufgabe unserer Zeit (Berlin: Mittler, 1832); Christian Hermann Weiße, In welchem Sinn die deutsche Philosophie jetzt wieder an Kant sich zu orientiren hat (Leipzig: Dyk, 1847); and Carl Fortlage, ‘Die Stellung Kants zur Philosophie vor ihm und nach ihm’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, Heft IV (1838), 91–123.
7 The slogan has been attributed to Otto Liebmann’s Kant und die Epigonen (Stuttgart: Schober, 1865). Liebmann concluded several chapters with the declaration ‘Also muß auf Kant zurückgegangen werden.’ He never used the more brief and punchy slogan.
8 The reaction against speculative idealism began in the late 1790s. In the Winter of 1796 the young Fries retired into his garret and sketched his programme for a revision of Kant’s philosophy. In the same year Herbart wrote several short essays critical of Schelling.
9 None of these figures are treated by Hans-Ludwig Ollig, Der Neukantianismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979); Thomas Willey, Back to Kant (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978); L. W. Beck, ‘Neo-Kantianism’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967); and H. Holzhey, ‘Neukantianismus’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel: Schwabe, 1984), VI, 747–54. Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg, treats Beneke but neither Fries nor Herbart.
10 As Friedrich Schlegel once said. See his ‘Fragmente’, Athenaeum I (1798), 202.
11 This conception of neo-Kantianism has been popularized by Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 4, 131–2.
12 See above all K. L. Reinhold, Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen (Jena: Widtmann und Mauke, 1790–4) and Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens (Jena: Widtmann und Mauke, 1791).
13 See Fries, Reinhold, Fichte und Schelling (Leipzig; Reinicke, 1803); Herbart, Ueber philosophisches Studium (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1807); and Beneke, Die Philosophie in ihrem Verhältnisse zur Erfahrung, zur Spekulation und zum Leben (Berlin: Mittler, 1833).
14 The first book of Kant Fries read was the Prize Essay. After that he immediately read Reinhold. The contrast was evident and from there came Fries’ methodological ideas. See Ernst Henke, Jakob Friedrich Fries: Aus seinem handschriftlichen Nachlasse dargestellt (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1867), 26.
15 See Hermann Helmholtz, Über das Sehen des Menschen. Ein populär wissenschaftlicher Vortrag gehalten zu Königsberg in Preussen. Zum Besten von Kant’s Denkmal. Am 27. Februar 1855 (Leipzig: Voss, 1855).
16 Thus in 1878 Carl Schaarschmidt wrote of the weaknesses of Reinhold’s methodology as ‘bekannte Dinge’. See his ‘Vom rechten und vom falschen Kriticismus’, Philosophische Monatshefte 14 (1878), 1–12, 1.
17 Kuno Fischer, Die beiden kantischen Schulen in Jena (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1862).
18 Jürgen Bona Meyer, Philosophische Zeitfragen (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1870), 1.
19 See Kuno Fischer, Kant’s Leben und die Grundlagen seiner Lehre (Mannheim: Friedrich Bassermann, 1860), 89–115; and Eduard Zeller, Ueber Bedeutung und Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie (Heidelberg: Groos, 1861).
20 Carl Vogt, Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft (Gießen:
Ricker, 1855).
21 Louis Büchner, Kraft und Stoff (Frankfurt: Meidinger, 1855); and Heinrich Czolbe, Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus (Leipzig: Costenoble, 1855).
22 Friedrich Albert Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus (Iserlohn: Baedeker, 1866). A second edition, twice the size of the original, appeared in two volumes in 1873 and 1875.
23 See K. L. Reinhold, Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (Leipzig: Göschen, 1790–2).
24 See Heinrich Rickert, ‘Vom Begriff der Philosophie’, Logos I (1910), 1–35.
25 See Carl Schmid, Empirische Psychologie (Jena: Cröker, 1791) and Fries, ‘Propädeutik einer allgemeinen empirischen Psychologie’, ‘Allgemeine Uebersicht der empirischen Erkenntnisse des Gemüths’, Psychologisches Magazin III (1798), 203–67, 354–402.
26 Jürgen Bona Meyer, Kant’s Psychologie (Berlin: Hertz, 1870).
27 See Fries, ‘Ueber das Verhältniß der empirischen Psychologie zur Metaphysik’, Psychologisches Magazin III (1798), 156–202.
28 Alois Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1876), I, 8.
29 On the distinction, see Hermann Lotze, System der Philosophie: Erster Theil. Drei Bücher der Logik (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1874), I, 465–97. See also Mikrokosmus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1888) Book VIII, Chapter 1, ‘Die Wahrheit und das Wissen’, III, 185–243.
30 The neo-Kantians fully recognized Lotze’s importance. A student of Lotze, Windelband paid full tribute to him as ‘the greatest thinker’ of the post-idealist age. See his article ‘Die philosophischen Richtungen der Gegenwart’, in Grosse Denker, ed. Ernst von Aster (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1911), II, 376. Erich Jaensch, a student of Riehl, tells us how Riehl enthusiastically agreed with him that the decisive shift in recent philosophy came with Lotze and his distinction between validity and existence. See his ‘Zum Gedächtnis von Alois Riehl’, Kant-Studien 30 (1925), i–xxxvi, xix–xx. Also note the comment by Emil Lask: ‘Lotzes Herausarbeitung der Geltungssphäre hat der philosophischen Forschung der Gegenwart den Weg vorgezeichnet.’ See his Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre, in Gesammelte Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1923), II, 15.
31 See Johann Friedrich Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie (Königsberg: Unzer, 1813), §§34, 52.
32 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1819).
33 Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophie des Unbewussten. Versuch einer Weltanschauung (Berlin: Duncker, 1869). The book was reprinted eight times in the 1870s alone. Windelband referred to the ‘meteorhaften Erfolg’ of Hartmann’s work, ‘Die Philosophischen Richtungen’, 365.
34 Rudolf Haym, Arthur Schopenhauer (Berlin: Reimer, 1864); Jürgen Bona Meyer, Arthur Schopenhauer als Mensch und Denker (Berlin: Carl Habel, 1872); Kuno Fischer, Schopenhauers Leben, Werke und Lehre, second edition, vol. IX of Geschichte der neuern Philosophie (Heidelberg: Winter, 1898); Johannes Volkelt, Arthur Schopenhauer. Seine Persönlichkeit, seine Lehre, sein Glaube (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1900).
35 On this event and its importance for neo-Kantianism, see Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg, 186–94.
36 Fries, Herbart and Beneke made this point in the early 1800s. It was accepted almost as a datum in the 1860s and thereafter.
37 The most important exception was Beneke. His Grundlegung zur Physik der Sitten (Berlin: Mittler, 1822) sketched an empiricist and situationist ethics.
38 Friedrich Paulsen, ‘Idealismus und Positivismus’, Im Neuen Reich 10 (1880), 735–42, 738–9.
39 Hermann Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik (Berlin: Dümmler, 1877), 184, 198–9.
40 See Wilhelm Windelband, Präludien II, 161–94, esp. 164, 166, 172, 182, 191, 193–4.
41 See Emil Lask, Rechtsphilosophie (Heidelberg: Winter, 1905).
42 Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1896), 731–2. Rickert made some attempt to sketch this transcendental ethics in his ‘Vom System der Werte’, Logos IV (1913), 295–327.
43 See his Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, Dritte Auflage (Heidelberg: Winter, 1924), 142–58, esp. 145–8.
44 See his ‘Über logische und ethische Geltung’, Kant-Studien 19 (1914), 182–220, 207. Rickert would later prove to be a harsh critic of what he called ‘intellectualism’, that is, the attempt to prove values through logical or rational means. See his ‘Das Leben der Wissenschaft und die griechische Philosophie’, Logos XII (1923/24), 303–39.
45 On that dispute see Peter Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open Court, 2000).
46 The exceptions were Leonard Nelson and Ernst Cassirer. Nelson’s school adopted an admirable pacifist stance. On Cassirer’s attitude toward the War, see Sieg, Aufstieg und Niedergang, 391–2.
47 On the role of the Marburg neo-Kantians in the war, see Sieg, Aufstieg und Niedergang, 373–92.
CHAPTER 15
EXISTENTIALISM
KATIA HAY
15.1 INTRODUCTION
IN his lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ (L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), delivered in Paris shortly after the end of the Second World War, Sartre denounced the way in which the notion of ‘existentialism’ was ‘so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer mean[t] anything at all’.1 Sartre presented himself here as a representative of atheistic existentialism and conceived his lecture as an attempt to restore and define its precise philosophical meaning. Nevertheless, determining anything like the doctrine or general principles of this ‘philosophical movement’ has been problematic from its very coinage in the 1920s. Even today it remains difficult to find a clear-cut definition as well as to decide whom to include in the list of the so called ‘existentialists’—unless of course we consider Sartre’s philosophy to be the paradigm of existentialism, since he is one of the few philosophers who openly defined himself as such. But identifying the term ‘existentialism’ with Sartre’s philosophy would fall short of providing a satisfactory explanation of the fact that philosophers and writers such as Jaspers, Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel, Malraux, Beckett, Camus, and so on are included in almost all compendiums, compilations and handbooks on existentialism—regardless of whether or not they denied belonging to the existentialists. As Friedman puts it: ‘there is no single philosophy that can claim to set the standard for what existentialism is, despite the claims of Sartre’.2
The difficulty of finding a definite understanding of the term only increases when it is applied anachronistically to authors from the nineteenth century, such as Nietzsche, Schelling, Kierkegaard, or Dostoyevsky. The fact that Sartre was influenced by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard does not necessarily convert the latter into existentialists. And yet, most scholars3 consider them both not only as being the precursors of existentialism, but also as existentialists tout court.
It is not our intention to undertake the impossible task of providing the ultimate answer to the question: what is existentialism?, nor to decide whether authors such as Schelling, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche should be considered existentialists or not. The question to be answered here is: what makes these nineteenth-century philosophers liable to be included in the history or pre-history of existentialism? Or, what makes them ‘form a natural family’4 together with philosophers such as Heidegger, Sartre, or Camus? This chapter is mainly dedicated to the analysis of the meaning of the ‘death of God’, which—at least according to Sartre—constitutes the beginning of existentialism. However, by establishing affinities between Nietzsche, Schelling, and Kierkegaard in relation to Sartre and Camus (as ‘official’ existentialists), this study will also lead us to other ‘typical’ existentialist topics, such as the problem of ‘becoming who you are’ or the conflict between freedom and necessity.
15.2 THE DEATH OF GOD
As Camus writes in his book L’homme révolté (1951) translated as The Rebel, Nietzsche’s anno
uncement of the death of God (i.e. the Christian God) must primarily be understood as the diagnosis of a clinician.5 The proclamation: ‘God is dead!’ is the result of a conscious examination and expresses the awareness of the inexorable process of nihilism shattering western culture: ‘it was not Nietzsche’s plan to kill God, he found Him dead in the souls of his contemporaries’.6 Indeed, this is exactly what Nietzsche depicts through the figure of the madman in §125 of The Gay Science (1882, GS): running around the marketplace, crying, searching for God, he only causes laughter among the people, for they do not believe in God anymore—which does not necessarily mean that they have overcome God,7 quite on the contrary: they are not even aware of the consequences of his irrevocable death, which is first announced to them by the madman. There is, in effect, a huge difference between not believing in God and declaring His death; while the first is the expression of a personal option or subjective realization, the second is a statement about an irreversible event in the history of western civilization, the meaning of which does not depend on our personal belief in God. As Friedman rightly says, ‘the death of God is not a theological statement. It’s a historical one’.8 It is therefore not surprising that, towards the end of the aphorism, the madman’s words should provoke such disconcertion among his already nihilistic listeners.
In a certain sense, Nietzsche’s diagnosis and critique of modernity is very similar to Kierkegaard’s in his book The Sickness unto Death (1849, SD). For, although Kierkegaard’s criticism may appear to be directed solely to the individual Christian who has lost his faith in God, as Dupré rightly observes, his diagnosis is also a diagnosis of a ‘perverse dialectic’ affecting Christianity as a whole.9 Kierkegaard himself speaks of his insight into modernity as that of a ‘connoisseur’ or a ‘physician of souls’ when he writes that:
there is not a single human being who does not despair […] in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness […] an anxiety about a possibility in life or an anxiety about himself, [so that] he goes about with a sickness of the spirit, which only now and then reveals its presence.10
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Page 57
