Classical German Research Articles

Marx the Fichtean

We ignore the history of philosophy at our peril. Engels, who typically conflates Marx and Marxism, points to the relation of Marxism to the tradition while also denying it. In his little book on Feuerbach, Engels depicts Feuerbach as leading Marx away from Hegel, away from classical German philosophy, away from philosophy and towards materialism and science. This view suggests that Marx is at best negatively related to Classical German philosophy, including Hegel. Yet Engels elsewhere suggests that Marx belongs to the classical German philosophical tradition. In the preface to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels wrote: “We German socialists are proud that we trace our descent not only from Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel” (Marx & Engels, Collected Works). In this paper I will focus on Marx’s relation to Fichte. This relation is rarely mentioned in the Marxist debate, but I will argue, it is crucial for the formulation of Marx’s position, and hence for assessing his contribution accurately. One of the results of this study will be to indicate that Marx, in reacting against Hegel, did not, as is often suggested, ‘leave’ philosophy, but in fact made a crucial philosophical contribution.

Ethical Theory in Classic German Philosophy Then and Now

The volume brings together contributions in the spirit embodied by Marek J. Siemek († 2011) and Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz († 2021), two Warsaw philosophers truly devoted to Classical German Philosophy. They were simultaneously in a relationship between thinker and adept, and thinker and thinker. They both taught philosophy, with a strong emphasis on classic German philosophy, at Warsaw University. Under the theme “Ethical Theory in Classic German Philosophy Then and Now,” students and companions continue their discussions with both of them.

Research of German Classical Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy

The article analyzes the work of the staff of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which relates to the study of German classical philosophy. Ideologically unbiased studies of German idealism at the Institute became possible only after it was headed by Pavlo Kopnin. The Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv became the center from which all researchers of German idealism emerged in the first half of the 1960’s. At first more attention was paid to Hegel’s philosophical system, which was reflected in the monograph of V. Shinkaruk (1964). In the mid-1970’s, Kant’s critical philosophy came to the fore, various aspects of which were analyzed in the collective monograph “Critical Essays on Kant’s Philosophy” (1975). In the early 1980’s, researchers engaged intensively in Feuerbach’s “anthropological materialism” by publishing the collective monograph “Essays on Feuerbach’s Philosophy” (1982). The works and ideas of Hegel, Kant and Feuerbach were the main subject of attention of researchers at the Institute, which was reflected in numerous publications in the journal “Philosophical Thought”. Instead, Schelling’s philosophical systems, and especially Fichte’s, remained almost neglected until 1991.

Anschauung, Anschauen (Intuition)

Since Plato’s metaphor of the light of knowledge used in the “Allegory of the Cave” from his dialogue Politeia, the concepts of Anschauen or Anschauung (intuition) and their corresponding lexical field, including the terms light, sun, and eye, represent key notions and much-debated issues in philosophical thinking. In his literary, scientific, and philosophical writings, Goethe does not articulate a systematic and explicit theory of these concepts; on the contrary, most of his remarks on the topic of “intuition” are aphoristic or tacitly integrated into his poetic and scientific works. One of his main contributions to the philosophical debates surrounding Anschauen and Anschauung is that he developed and integrated into his works different modes of a specifically creative and productive—as opposed to a merely receptive and sensory—form of Anschauen. This productive form of Anschauen, for which he also uses the terms “Phantasie” (phantasy), “Einbildungskraft” (imagination), “exakte sinnliche Phantasie” (exact sensory phantasy or imagination) or “anschauende Urteilskraft” (intuitive power of judgment) in various contexts, can serve as both a creative faculty in his poetry and a precise scientific or philosophical instrument of cognition. Within the context of the philosophical tradition, and apart from the heritage of Plato and Platonism, Goethe’s notion of Anschauen can be understood, on the one hand, in the context of classical German philosophy and its debates on “anschauender Verstand” (intuitive understanding) and “intellektuelle” or “intellektuale Anschauung” (intellectual intuition). On the other hand, it is also phenomenologically grounded and anticipates the main insights of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and the phenomenological movement in the 20th century, one of the most important of which is the so-called phenomenological Wesensschau (eidetic intuition).

Hermann Cohen and His Idea of the Logic of Pure Knowledge

Hermann Cohen, as it is well known, criticised the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. And before him the Kantian thing-in-itself was criticised by Fichte and other German idealists. Probably for this reason, Hermann Cohen is sometimes regarded as a person who said things similar to Fichte. This gives a completely wrong perspective, making it impossible to understand the philosopher's ideas. The basis for his critique of the Kantian thing-in-itself is quite different from the motives, determining the criticism of Kant in the classical German Idealism. Such interpretation does not allow to see close connection of Cohen's theoretical philosophy with revolution in physics which took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article explains how Cohen's demand that pure thinking must form its own content is connected with transformations taking place in physics and mathematics, and the peculiarity of Cohen's understanding of idealism is demonstrated: for him, correct idealism must realize that autonomous, free thinking should work seriously with sense data. The closeness of Cohen's ideas to the postpositivist thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation is explained. For Cohen, serious work with sense data is opposite to uncritical acceptance of them as given. The origin of scientific thinking is thinking itself. It responds to the challenge of sensory material by creating its own constructs. Mathematized natural science becomes for Cohen both an example and a confirmation of this thesis. For him, what is real is what is described in the language of mathematical analysis, i.e. continuous processes, in spite of the fact that any data are discrete. It is shown that the source of Cohen's assertions on this issue is in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely in the doctrine of the Principles of pure natural science and, more specifically, in the Anticipations of Perception. Cohen's conviction of the constructive character of the theories of mathematized natural science is confirmed in the article by references to the authority of A. Einstein.

Hegel’s Answer to the Agrippian Trilemma

Abstract In his Encyclopedia, the late Hegel makes the highest demands on truth and justification from the first paragraph onward. With this, Hegel takes up the skeptical challenge and believes that he can overcome this problem. However, it is not easy to see how Hegel tries to meet this challenge in the Science of Logic, which plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s encyclopedic project. The present article argues that the question of the justification of the claim to truth is a fruitful perspective for the interpretation of the Science of Logic. For this purpose Hegel’s answer to the Agrippan Trilemma is examined, which P. Franks analyzed as a basic problem for Classical German Philosophy. One possible interpretation of Hegel sees him solving the skeptical trilemma at the beginning of the Logic. The article argues against this possibility that the Logic of the Concept contains Hegel’s actual solution. This solution consists in (1) that the concept represents the principle of logic and (2) that the concept itself must be presented in the form of an apagogical argument. Finally, the article gives a reason why Hegel sees an analogy to the ontological argument in this attempt of an ultimate justification.

„Werde, der du bist!“. Selbsterkenntnis, Handeln und Selbstgestaltung bei Nietzsche in einem Ineditum von Georges Canguilhem

Abstract In an unpublished text from the early postwar period, Georges Canguilhem deals with Nietzsche’s maxim “Become who you are!” Is this “apparently contradictory formula of a philosopher full of contradictions” really only seemingly inconsistent? Canguilhem regards it as a norm whose supposed metaphysical or objective content dissolves upon further analysis. So he here discerns a new instance of the same potential confusion he had already addressed in his classical essay on The Normal and the Pathological (1943). According to him, the formula “become who you are!” must not be misunderstood in a naturalistic sense, a tendency from which not even Nietzsche himself, Canguilhem thinks, was entirely free. Besides the French philosophy of his time, his philosophical inquiry into “Become who you are!” critically engages two classic German Nietzsche scholars, Ernst Bertram and Karl Jaspers, as well as the French interpreters of the latter’s philosophy of Existenz, Mikel Dufrenne and Paul Ricoeur. Finally, the paper highlights Nietzsche’s specific importance for Canguilhem and the ambivalence in his privileged relationship to the German thinker.

„Werde, der du bist!“. Selbsterkenntnis, Handeln und Selbstgestaltung bei Nietzsche in einem Ineditum von Georges Canguilhem

Abstract In an unpublished text from the early postwar period, Georges Canguilhem deals with Nietzsche’s maxim “Become who you are!” Is this “apparently contradictory formula of a philosopher full of contradictions” really only seemingly inconsistent? Canguilhem regards it as a norm whose supposed metaphysical or objective content dissolves upon further analysis. So he here discerns a new instance of the same potential confusion he had already addressed in his classical essay on The Normal and the Pathological (1943). According to him, the formula “become who you are!” must not be misunderstood in a naturalistic sense, a tendency from which not even Nietzsche himself, Canguilhem thinks, was entirely free. Besides the French philosophy of his time, his philosophical inquiry into “Become who you are!” critically engages two classic German Nietzsche scholars, Ernst Bertram and Karl Jaspers, as well as the French interpreters of the latter’s philosophy of Existenz, Mikel Dufrenne and Paul Ricœur. Finally, the paper highlights Nietzsche’s specific importance for Canguilhem and the ambivalence in his privileged relationship to the German thinker.

Praxis and Practice: Ways of Distinguishing

The article exposes diverse historical-philosophical meanings of the concepts of praxis and practice. Using the works of Aristotle, I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, H. Lotze, and H. Arendt, the author demonstrates the main ways of distinguishing between these two notions. The article clarifies meanings of praxis and prudence in Aristotle’s philosophy. The crucial transformation of the sense of practice in classical German philosophy, its further neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian interpretations are also considered. The author reveals a range of categorical forms of comprehending the practical and traces the basic directions of the development of definitions of praxis and practice, indicating the historical-philosophical contexts of their evolution. The article compares the conceptions of the acting subject developed by I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, K. Marx, and H. Lotze. Special attention is given to the explication of H. Lotze’s practical philosophy in building and distributing the conception of active life. Marxist and Lotzean approaches to praxis are compared, and their role in the formation of its current interpretations is revealed. These interpretations are problematized, taking into account the partly reconstructed initial meanings of praxis in Aristotle’s philosophy. The author justifies the relevance of H. Lotze’s legacy in Russian philosophy, examining the categories of social action and active life, the acting subject and society. The article demonstrates prospects for their reconsideration in social philosophy by approaching H. Lotze’s practical philosophy. The conclusion highlights consequences of the replacement of the Aristotelian definition of praxis with the Lotzean version, the possibility and necessity of reproducing the initial sense of praxis as different from practice in diverse historical-philosophical interpretations.

Эстетические представления и понятия индуистской традиции: особенности и аналогии

This article deals with the main ideas and basic concepts of Hindu aesthetics. The problem area reveals itself in the question of European culture’s perception of Hindu aesthetics. In this connection, the following questions are actualized: what can be considered as original aesthetic conceptions of Hinduism? is it possible to find direct analogies in other cultures? how relevant and correct is the conceptual apparatus describing various aesthetic phenomena? what is the role of the religious thought in the proposed aesthetic context? Proceeding from the historical and cultural position of aesthetic knowledge as it is presented in the European tradition, key approaches to the phenomenon of the aesthetic are shown, with the ideas of classical German philosophy – the cradle of aesthetic science (A. Baumgarten, I. Kant) – at the centre. The marked heterogeneity of aesthetic knowledge indicates its problematic status in the European historical-philosophical discourse and at the same time allows one to see, against its background, the harmonious place of aesthetics in Hindu culture. It mainly concerns the peculiarities of religious and worldview systems. Further, the paper studies the similarities and differences between the theoretical and ritual ideas and practices in Christianity and Hinduism. In particular, what they have in common is the importance of “threshold people” – liminal personae – in the spiritual life of society. Among the radical differences is the natural embedding of aesthetics in the religious system of India, while for European aesthetics, the religious world is just one of the spheres of the aesthetic. Using the method of comparative text analysis with reference to leading Russian orientalists and foreign researchers (V. Shokhin, D. Zilberman, E. Torchinov, R. Guénon, N. Gupta), the author takes a number of concepts as an example to demonstrate identity of religious and aesthetic ideas in Hindu and European cultures, as well as a possibility of mutual “cultural translation” of such basic concepts as aesthetics, the aesthetic, rasa and bhava.

Rethinking the relationship between Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Science of Logic: The tradition of creative Soviet Marxism

This article sheds light on the little known and poorly understood extensive discussion on the relationship between Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Science of Logic in the tradition of creative Soviet Marxism. The exploration of the mechanism of ascending from the abstract to the concrete and its relation to the movement of thought from the concrete to the abstract was one of the key points of this discussion. The ascending from the abstract to the concrete is a crucial issue of the dialectical logic developed in German Classical Philosophy, especially in Hegel’s Science of Logic. Marx implemented the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete to investigate a historically concrete object (the capitalist mode of production) as an organic whole.

Max Weber’s Way from Social Economics to Sociology

Abstract One of the most outstanding intellectual achievements in the history of classical thought in social sciences which have remained influential up until today are undoubtedly associated with the name of Max Weber. Through a detailed text analysis and a conceptual mapping of the logic of the argumentation, this paper sets out to offer a profound insight into the classical German sociologist’s approach to science, both “early” (about 1903/4) and “late” (post-1913), in terms of some fundamental matters of epistemology and methodology. The first part of this paper investigates social economics in terms of its theoretical and methodological foundations and applicability, while the second part looks at interpretive sociology from the same perspectives, with an emphasis on the differences between the two approaches. We argue that Weber’s dualist methodological attitude became explicit and dominant in his later writings. In addition, as he brought in focus the theory of social action, he not only became an explicit proponent of methodological individualism, but he also revisited and specified the logic and role of “causal explanation” and “interpretation”. Interpretive sociology no longer seeks a causal explanation for individual historical events by applying nomological knowledge, but instead commits itself to finding “causally adequate” explanation for the course and consequences of different types of social actions. Interpretation, in turn, no longer means an analysis of effects concerning the cultural significance of individual historical events in a special sense, but an interpretive understanding of various types of social actions, rational or “irrational”, directly or in a motivation-like manner. The paper concludes with a summary designed to highlight key legacies of Weber’s oeuvre that have remained valid and valuable for any analytical and empirical research in sociology.

Stabreimende Wortpaare in Deutsche Versnovellistik des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts

Abstract The recently published compendium of 175 German verse tales from the 13th–15th century (Deutsche Versnovellistik des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts) includes never-before-published material in critical edition, so that a survey of the alliterating word-pairs within this arguably hard to define genre seems desirable. Some 380 pairs are collected and analysed within the context of each tale, with special attention paid to earlier transmission of the pairs or their innovative nature, respectively. Following a methodology that has been employed to cover all of Old and Early Middle High German and much of classical High German, the history of this durable rhetorical device is extended well into the late medieval era. Further surveys will help to fill in remaining gaps in coverage of the history of the alliterating word-pair in German.

Engels, humanism and revolutionary praxis: The centrality of the dynamic analysis of historical materialism and its inherent relation to overcoming capitalist alienation

At the end of the 19th century, a debate emerged among academics of historical materialism on the apparent divergence between Engels’ and Marx’s theoretical developments. During the 20th century, those who wanted to argue that there was a dichotomy between the two authors identified Engels as responsible for historical materialism’s crises. This paper aims to demonstrate that Engels, far from distancing himself from Marx’s central positions, contributed to the formation of historical materialism as a revolutionary praxis that seeks a more rational regulation of the human metabolism with nature through overcoming the alienating conditions of the capitalist system. For this reason, the paper analyses Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, one of Engels’ most controversial texts, and exposes the correlation with the historical development of the revolutionary praxis in the Engels’ and Marx’s work. The article will be drawing on Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s Philosophy of Praxis, understood as a ‘revolutionary’ activity, and his analysis of Marx’s and Engels’ work. It is argued that one of Engels’ primary purposes, in Ludwig Feuerbach, was to show the demystification process of the Hegelian dialectical method, resulting in the formation of historical materialism as a dynamic epistemic model, that seeks to transform social reality through revolutionary praxis. The Feuerbachian ontological categories and Feuerbach’s perception of nature were the objects of the same process of demystification and critique, resulting in the characterisation of the human being in Marxism as a generic, social and historical being. Finally, it is shown that Engels demonstrates the possibilities for transformation of the human subject; for that reason, Engels’ argument is associated with the revolutionary praxis.

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

Karl Marx, Bruno Bauer and the Ends of Classical German Theology

This paper aims to evaluate the political-theological significance of Karl Marx’s early collaborations with his academic mentor and personal friend Bruno Bauer. For much of the twentieth century, and in part due to Marx’s and Engels’s own later reflections on their intellectual development, the dominant interpretations of this so-called ‘Young Hegelian’ moment in Marx’s career tended to characterise it as excessively theoretical and essentially liberal in its orientation. However, more recent historical and contextual scholarship has revealed the limitations of this approach. Building on new political readings of Bauer’s work in particular, and the theoretical polemics of the Vormärz more generally, I explore the radical and revolutionary implications of Marx’s youthful writings. The salient shift in Marx’s position was less from theory and liberalism to practice and communism, I maintain, than it was from a politics of institutional struggle via the coded discourse of political theology to one of mass mobilisation and democratic action.

The hidden teacher: on Patočka’s impact on today’s Czech philosophy

This article aims to elucidate Patocka’s impact on contemporary Czech philosophy. As a preliminary, it presents Patocka’s general conception of the possible impact of philosophy as such. It seems that for Patocka, the clarifying function of philosophy was the most relevant, much more than its possible capacity to stimulate objective or social processes. It then explains what impact Patocka himself expected from his own activity as a philosopher. Here we can see that his main concern was to pass on the great philosophical tradition neglected by Czech intellectuals, primarily ancient philosophy and German Idealism. Finally, it sketches the impact of Patocka’s writings and lectures that can actually be seen today in Czech philosophy—in the study of ancient and Classical German Philosophy, in new philosophical conceptions inspired by him, in phenomenology, and in debates about modern Czech history.

Saying no (to a story): personal identity and negativity

The concept of narrativity and narrative identity has two birth certificates: it is linked to the phenomenological tradition—beginning with Arendt’s “political phenomenology” —and to the tradition of German Idealism gradually slipping into existentialism. In this article, the author focuses on the latter tradition that helped to pave the way of the concept of narrative self. Key among the thinkers of Classical German Idealism has been Hegel, often considered the philosophical storyteller. Yet the author argues that Hegel’s concept of narrativity is not exclusively applied to the self and has hardly any role in the constitution of consciousness. This is the reason why Hegel (rather than thinkers who place the core of personal identity into narrativity) has the means to formulate a more convincing concept of the self and personal identity. The author does not deny that narrativity is seminal, both for leading a life as a human being and as a concrete person; however, originally consciousness and self-hood are born out of negativity. One enacts one’s selfhood, once one realizes that one has to interrupt narrativity, step in, refuse to live by it, or just ordinarily rephrase it consciously and by this appropriate it.

National and State Classical University in a Globalizing Modernity

The classical “university of reason”, the idea of which is defined in German classical philosophy and German romanticism as “preparation for knowledge”, and “mission” - as “the formation of goodwill”, i.e. the education of a citizen, has lost its foundation in modernity: the essential unity of culture, the nation, the state, and the university is removed and the named “elements” of this unity in modern reality, presented in the liberal version of the economic paradigm, mean something else: the article indicates their new meaning, and as such are no longer connected. The thing that has replaced the “university of reason” in modernity has other tasks: to guarantee globalization by producing technical, i.e. directly useful and standardized knowledge, and to participate in the formation of human capital. The products produced by the university are offered on the global market as a competitively priced commodity; the name “university” is still kept as a “technical term” to denote a “bureaucratically and commercially oriented corporation”. (B. Ridings). At the same time, a unified educational space as one of the areas of the global order needs the formation of a cosmopolitan worldview - the structure, the content of educational programs, the form of organization of the modern university-corporation (as now - “multicultural reality”) are aimed at fulfilling such a definite task. The concept of “sustainable development” and its stated agenda, by defining educational goals, represents a way of ’politicizing’ (W. Beck), which aims to limit total market logic and balance necessary inequalities to ensure the unity of the global order; the article asks what this means for a university that has lost its essential identity and is embedded in a global network.

НЕМЕЦКИЙ ЯЗЫК КАК ВТОРОЙ ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК ДЛЯ РОССИЙСКИХ СТУДЕНТОВ – ДИЛЕММА ВЫБОРА: КЛАССИЧЕСКИЙ ИЛИ ПЛЮРИЦЕНТРИЧЕСКИЙ НЕМЕЦКИЙ ЯЗЫК?

The article raises the problem of teaching German as a second foreign language within the framework of a pluricentric approach. Its relevance for the Russian undergraduate and graduate students is dictated by the modern needs and opportunities to obtain further education in the Common European higher institutions of Germany (D), Austria (A), the German-speaking part of Switzerland (CH), as well as the opportunity to participate in various international student exchange support programs of these countries. The aim of this article is to assess the willingness of the bachelor’s and master’s students undertaking the Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication course not only to study the classical German language but also to get familiar with the features of the standard German language in Austria and Switzerland. The pluricentric approach is based on the generally recognized theory of pluricentrism, according to which the German language is considered as a single language incorporating the national linguistic specifics in the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The article conveys the main ideas of the pluricentric theoretical research studies and covers the linguodidactic and methodological foundations in teaching pluricentric German developed by a special research group and described in the so-called ABCB theses. The readiness of students to learn German in the diversity of the linguistic and cultural national specifics of the DACH-Länder is one of the basic requirements of the pluricentric approach. The conducted research allowed assessing the readiness of the bachelor’s and master’s students to study the classical German language, taking into account the existing distinctive linguistic features of the standard German language in Austria and Switzerland. The research was based on the questionnaire method in the form of a written poll. Given the results of the research, students of the bachelor’s and master’s programs are equally willing to learn the standard Austrian and Swiss German vocabulary in the German language classes. Among bachelors, 70% prefer the vocabulary of the Austrian version and 65% of the Swiss version of German; among master’s students, 75% want to learn the vocabulary of both the Austrian and the Swiss versions of German. Besides, knowledge of the features of the standard German language DACH-Länder is considered as a prerequisite for traveling and further education in these countries. These statistics confirm the high motivation of the bachelor’s and master’s students to study German applying the pluricentric approach. The students also demonstrated the thoughtful choice of the Second Language Country Studies as a discipline for studying German, taking into account the diversity of the linguistic and cultural national specifics of DACH-Länder.