References
- This essay, “Über objective und subjective Begründung der Erkenntnis”, was published in Philosophische Monatshefte xxiii (1887), pp. 257–286. In Natorp's Einleitung in die Psychologie (Freiburgi. B., 1888), published the following year, section 14bears the same title and covers similar arguments.
- “In this view, that the normative notion of ought' does not form part of the content of logical laws, I am glad to find myself in agreement with Natorp…. There are certain other equally important rapprochements between these Prolegomena and the distinguished thinker's present work, which unhappily came too late to assist in forming and expounding these thoughts. Two previous writings of Natorp, the above quoted article from Phil. Monatshefte, xxiii and the Einleitung in die Psychologie, stimulated me, however—though other points in them provoked me to controversion.” (Logical Investigations, “Prolegomena to Pure Logic,” section 41; Findlay translation, p. 169n. Cf. also section 19.)
- Logical Investigations, V, section 8, and Ideas, section 57.
- The changes in Natorp's later philosophy are lucidly discussed in Ernst Cassirer's memorial to Natorp, “Paul Natorp”, Kunststudien xxx (1925), pp. 273–298.
- “The ‘Theory of knowledge’… is at bottom the metaphysics and ontology based on truth as the certainty of guaranteed representation… this business ot guaranteeing is only a consequence of the reinterpretation of Being as objectivity and representedness…. ‘Theory of knowledge’ is the title for the increasing essential powerlessness of modern metaphysics to know its own essence and the gound of that essence.” (“Überwindung der Metaphysik,” Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen, 1967), I, p. 67; The End of Philosophy New York, 1973), pp. 88–89. For Heidegger's evaluation of the Marburg approach to Kant, cf. his remarks in Die Frage nach dem Ding (What is a Thing?), sections B., I., 1 and B., II., 3, e., as well as the polemic against overly epistemological interpretations of Kant which runs all through Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.
- Platons Ideenlehre, Leipzig, 1902; the systematic works include, among others, Die Logische Grundlagen der Exakten Wissenschaften, Leipzig and Berlin, 1910; Allgemeine Psychologie nach Kritische Methode, Tübingen, 1912; Vorlesungen über praktische Philosophie, Erlangen, 1925. A brief description of Natorp's life and bibliography of his books can be found in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy under his name and also under ‘NeoKantianism’; the latter is perhaps the more useful article.
- Though what Natorp means by “Logik” is closer to what is called in English “epistemology”, I have kept the cognate translation “logic” to preserve the Kantian emphasis and indicate kinship to both German Idealism and Logical Positivism.
- Throughout the essay Natorp uses “Objekt” and “Gegenstand” and their derivatives interchangeably. I have translated both by “object”.
- The first section of the essay provides a compressed statement of the principles Natorp will use to settle his questions later. The reader who finds this section obscure should persevere with trust that at least some further explanation will be forthcoming.
- Natorp uses “Sinn” and “Bedeutung” and their derivatives in a somewhat confusing fashion. I have preserved the difference by translating “Sinn” as “meaning” and “Bedeutung” as “significance” throughout.
- The comparison of knowing an object to solving an equation is elucidated (with familiar echoes) in the Logische Grundlagen, pp. 32–33: “The word ‘Object’, a Latin term which in literal German would be ‘Gegenwurf’ (that which is thrown over against) or, more freely rendered, ‘Vorwurf’ (that which is thrown ahead), stands as the almost exact translation of the Greek “pro-blema' (that which is thrown forward)…. So just as the x, y, etc. of an equation only have meaning in and for the equation, on the basis of the meaning of the equation as a whole and in relation to the known constant quantities… so and only so is the great X of knowledge, the object, comprehensible…. The basic sorts of relation which makes knowledge possible are presupposed and already sketched in advance in the 'Vorwurf of knowledge, they are ‘cast forward’ (‘entworfen’). The object of knowledge becomes a project (das Objekt… Projekt, das Gegenwurf Vorwurf).”
- I.e. sub-ject, hypo-keimenon, that which underlies.
- Natorp has in view as opponents not only the empiricists and classic positivists but those “Kantians”, such as Lange, Riehl, Vaihinger, and Helmholtz, who interpreted Kant psychologistically.
- I have inserted the German “Zusammenhang” occasionally to show the varying ways it has been translated. The concept is unusually important for Natorp, as he makes it the key to the Kantian transcendental constitution of knowledge. “What is primal is neither affirmation nor negation, neither identity nor difference (let alone contradiction), neither synthesis nor analysis, but connection-in-context (Zusammenhang), and this not through a subsequent harmonizing and unifying but through radical unity of origin” (Logische Grundlagen, p. 21).
- Cf. Cassirer's discussion of this 'appearing itself and his references to the Allgemeine Psychologie, chapter 2, in the article cited above, p. 282.
- “Subjectivity and objectivity are only the two directions on one and the same road of knowledge. Knowing is in itself neither subjective nor objective; both subjectivity and objectivity find their place only in knowing, in an unremovable mutual relation to one another” (Logik in Leitsätzen (Marburg, 1910), p. 7).
- Compare what follows with the arguments advanced by Wilfrid Sellars in his essay “Phenomenalism” in Science, Perception, and Reality (New York, 1963), pp. 60–105.
- “Plato's deepest discovery was that the knowledge found in science exists through an infinite process of limiting the unlimited, that in this process there are no absolute beginning nor ending points, but… for every relative beginning an earlier beginning, for every relative conclusion a further conclusion, and even in the center where thought might seem to take a firm stand, always a yet more central point to search for and ultimately to find. Thus there can be no more talk of a 'fact in the sense of completed knowledge” (Logische Grundlagen, pp. 13–14). The hypothetical character of all knowledge means that for Natorp the “fact” of the sciences, on which Cohen had based his analysis of knowledge, becomes the process of scientific advance (their “factum” becomes “fieri”, as Natorp says in the Logische Grundlagen, p. 14).
- No single essay of Natorp's fulfills the promissory note with which this essay ends, but the topics are treated in his larger systematic writings, the Logische Grundlagen and the Allgemeine Psychologie, and in such essays as “Quantität und Qualität in Begriff, Urteil und gegenständlicher Erkenntnis”, Philosophische Monatshefte xxvii (1890), pp. Iff and 129ff, and “Zur Frage der logischen Methode. Mit Beziehung auf E. Husserls Logische Untersuchungen”, Kantstudien vi (1901), pp. 270ff.