Abstract
Based on Paul Natorp’s (1854–1924) late post-Neo-Kantian “Logic of Boundary” (German: “Grenzlogik”) I will offer a methodically controlled, non-reductionist and equally anti-essentialist reconstruction of the notion of religion. The pre-eminent objective of this reconstructive work is to overcome the well-known epistemological as well as methodological problem of a dichotomy between inside and outside perspectives on the subject of religion. Differently put, the objective consists in an attempt to demonstrate that there actually is “reason in religion” that is intellectually accessible for academic knowledge production. Following Natorp’s splendid formulation I will argue that religion operates neither ‘within’ nor ‘beyond’ the ‘boundary of humanity’ but exactly on [or ‘in’] this boundary. More precisely, I will explicate that religious praxis (including its specific production of knowledge) from Natorp’s standpoint can be understood as the performative realization, and habitual embodiment of the (contextually concrete) boundary of humanity or human reason itself. Due to its principial self-referentiality this boundary carries the crucial sense of a first and last positive and, therefore, both in theoretical terms definitive and in practical terms eminently instructive notion of boundary with no outside. This paradoxically all-enclosing, positive boundary, while explicitly including life’s inevitable negativity but, nonetheless, able to ideally sublate it, is the reason why the practice of religion, as empirical evidence unmistakably documents, can provide an incommensurably fulfilling, significant and meaningful closure with regards to the innermost self-perception of its practitioners (concerning their self-determination or agency).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Kottak provides a basic definition of the mostly in ethnographic (or cultural-anthropological) and sociological research contexts employed differentiation between “emic” (or inside) and “etic” (or outside) perspectives (or approaches) towards formations of religion and culture in general. See: Kottak (2013), p. 47.
- 2.
Concerning the influential knowledge-sociological concept of an “invisible religion” see: Luckmann (1967).
- 3.
For a detailed, constructive as well as critical theological evaluation of the relevance of outside perspectives (on religion) for the praxis of religion and theology see: Barth (2003), pp. 29–87.
- 4.
While (mainly) varying between the two expressions, “Logic of Boundary” (German: “Grenzlogik”) and “Philosophy of Boundary” (German: “Grenzphilosophie”), quantitatively seen, Natorp tends to the first formulation. Three times Natorp makes use of the term Logic of Boundary: (1) in his last major manuscript finished for publication, his Lectures on Practical Philosophy (German: “Vorlesungen über Praktische Philosophie”) appearing posthumously in 1925, (2) In a letter to his student and colleague Hinrich Knittermeyer stemming from 8 April 1924, and (3) In a letter draft addressed to Theologian Wilhelm Siebel dating only one day before his death on 17 August 1924. See: Natorp (1925), p. 534; Natorp (2000), p. XXXVIII; Siebel (1927): p. 599. In contrast, only once, namely in a letter to his student Hinrich Knittermeyer stemming from 23 September 1923, Natorp prefers the term Philosophy of Boundary. See: Natorp (2000), p. XXXVII. Apart from the two abovementioned expressions Natorp in three earlier texts written during the years 1915–1918 speaks in the same regard of a methodical “Consideration of Boundary” (German: “Grenzerwägung” or “Grenzbetrachtung”). See: Holzhey (1986), pp. 105–40; Natorp (1918a), pp. 35–38, Natorp (1918b), pp. 27–30. In concordance with, first, Natorp’s own latest favoured use, second, the already established convention within Natorp scholarship, as well as, third, Natorp’s son and editor, Hans Natorp, I will exclusively use the formulation Logic of Boundary in the following. See additionally Hans Natorp’s editor’s note in: Natorp (1925), p. II.
- 5.
Concerning Natorp’s earlier understanding of religion see: Natorp (1908).
- 6.
It is a common feature of speculative philosophers that they, similar to poets and literary writers, work on developing their own distinct terminology and idiolect. The reason, despite frequently misrepresented and turned upside down, is not to obscure but to bring to light what is unintentionally veiled by the conventional use of language: the principial or originally presentative dimension of sense/thought (or Being).
- 7.
- 8.
The use of this expression as well as its explication is closely related to Hegel’s infamous Vorrede zu Hinrichs’ Religionsphilosophie. More exactly he speaks of “finite” or “formal reflection” (German: “endliche Reflexion” or “formelle Reflexion”) in the sense of his notion of “rationality” (German: “Verstand”) that—according to Hegel—has to be seen in opposition to “reason” (German: “Vernunft”). See: Hegel (2003), pp. 42–67; esp. 48, 64.
- 9.
Expanding Hegel’s profound analysis and critique of European Enlightenment philosophies (including Kantianism and the post-Kantian philosophies) to the current context(s) of academic and intellectual discourse(s) (not exclusive in the Global North), I hold the position that the vast majority of today’s modern or so-called “postmodern” (mainly post-structuralist) conceptions of knowledge production in fact are not to be seen as a negation but rather as the progressive realization and, that way, an emphatic affirmation of the prevalent principle of European Enlightenment, namely the (thought-)paradigm of finite human reflection.
- 10.
Hegel, elucidating the devastating consequences of “formal reflection” on the praxis of religion as well as its theological and philosophical understanding, can even speak of it metaphorically as the “weapon of finite thought” (German: “Waffe des endlichen Denkens”) or as a “formalist weapon” (German: “formelle Waffe”). See: Hegel (2003), pp. 48, 50, 61.
- 11.
With the crucial notion of a logico-metaphysical idea I am highlighting the inevitable “fact” (or problem) that, since human knowledge production, inseparably bound to the medium of sense or thought in all of its irreducible and most general implications, can itself exclusively be known and become knowledge via an operation of radical self-application, any attitude or stance in this regard necessarily is—if more or less implicit (“unconscious”) or explicit, “trivial” or “sophisticated”, non-systematic or to which exact degree ever systematic—meta-physical in the concrete sense that it per definitionem transcends the realm of physical realities in the strict meaning. Simpler put, nothing (no thing and no instance) can make human beings understand their (own) understanding other than their (own) understanding itself; and this understanding (of understanding) obviously is not a tangible and empirically testable physical object. An intellectual and methodically adequate investigation about this meta-physical subject-object, however, because its “matter” is sense or thought, has to be strictly logical (however, of course not in the narrow sense of formal logics). Thus, I think, it is easy to see that logics and metaphysics in this precise sense coincide. This is the sense in which I am using the expression of a logico-metaphysical idea. Coming back to the absolutely uncircumventable “circle” (concerning an understanding of understanding), that of course is not per se a merely tautological circulus vitiosus, I again have to underline the following: the uncircumventability of this circularity implies that in regards to an attitude or a stance towards knowledge production, knowing or understanding in all of its irreducibly general implications there is no way around logico-metaphysics or—if not made explicit—silent logico-metaphysical presuppositions (in the sense elaborated!). In other words, the question of logico-metaphysics cannot be “if”; instead it has to be “how”. Moreover, asking and answering this question is of highest significance, since how human beings understand their ability of understanding determines their understanding of themselves, their surroundings and their “other(s)” fundamentally (in a systematic and problem-oriented perspective this question, if taken to its full radicality, actually is identical with the quest of religion for—simply put—first and last knowledge). The notion of a logico-metaphysical idea, as I use it, therefore, does not per se carry a pejorative connotation actually quite the opposite; it does, however, point to the most fundamental and significant implications of any attitude or stance in regards to knowledge production, knowing or understanding (in/through the medium of thought or sense) including the paradigm of finite human reflection.
- 12.
In the following I use the signifier “sense” in order to refer to the medium of the (self-)conscious, categorial processuality of mediation, including thought, reflection, imagination and perception as (qualitatively) differing, differentiated and differentiable, forms of its realization. “Sense-performance” then implies processes of qualitatively differing (self-)conscious categorial mediation (thinking, reflecting, imagining and perceiving). Self-evidently, however, sense is not just identical with the (purely) psychic or phenomenal immediateness of sensation, meaning sensual perception according to the five human senses (or sensory organs). Yet, as soon as perception “leaves” the realm of the pre-/subconscious awareness of sensation by identifying something as something, it “enters” the realm of sense or (self-)conscious categorial mediation and, thereby, ceases its (pure) sensual immediateness; and only due to this transformative sense-performance (this “act” of mediation) perception is meaningful in an – which way ever – intentional and articulable fashion.
- 13.
See footnote 91.
- 14.
For the concept of a “myth of the given” see: Sellars (1997), pp. 14, 45.
- 15.
What I—referencing and expanding on Sellars’ critique of the “myth of the given”—propose here to call a “myth of giving or gift” can be reconstructed as a (logico-metaphysical) lowered-down positivism or ultra-positivism. More precisely, I am talking about a notion of positivism from the standpoint of a metaphysics of reflection or simply a positivism of reflexivity. In sharp contrast, Hegel’s project in the second part of his Science of Logic, the Doctrine of Essence, can be seen as an attempt to “deconstruct” and to sublate this myth. According to Hegel’s Doctrine of Essence, the truth of pure thought/knowing can only insufficiently be explicated in the context of a metaphysics of reflection, namely as that which is “given by essence” as reflection and not how it is “in and for itself” (as the notion of notion or the logical Self). See: Hegel (1978), p. 243. Looking for concrete examples of this “myth of giving or gift” one might prominently think of Derrida’s (non-)notion of “différance”, Deleuze’s concept of a “negationless difference” or Heidegger’s concept of “Ereignis”. See: Derrida (1999), pp. 31–56; Deleuze (2007), pp. 12, 15–47; Heidegger (1988), pp. 5–30.
- 16.
See: Footnote 51.
- 17.
This is to say that the logico-metaphysical foundations of the paradigm of finite human reflection endanger its application to successively take on sceptic or even (normatively) nihilist tendencies.
- 18.
For explicatory reasons I am adopting the notion of a praxeological standpoint (or praxeology) from Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-anthropology, although I do not agree with him concerning his epistemology (that in my eyes actually is one of the prime examples in modern sociology of the aporetic consequences of the paradigm of finite human reflection). For Bourdieu’s concept of praxeology see: Bourdieu (2012), pp. 137–388; Bourdieu (1993).
- 19.
Hegel puts this (explicit or implicit) negation of truth, meaning the impossibility of true knowing, as a consequence of the unquestioned predominance of “finite reflection” (or “rationality”; German: “Verstand”) pointedly when he states (my translation): “The one [sic!] of the absolute presuppositions of the culture of our time is that humanity does not know anything about the truth. The Enlightened rationality has not so much come to the conscious realization and the statement of this, its own, result, it rather has simply brought it about.” For the German original see: Hegel (2003), p. 52 and also 53–56.
- 20.
Paradigmatic for such an approach towards religion and of considerable historical influence on theology as well as religious studies for instance was/is Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy. See: Otto (2014). For a proper appreciation as well as concise critique of Otto’s approach see: Carsten (1990), pp. 40–49.
- 21.
Rigorously pointing out the devastating consequences of the aporetic constitution of the paradigm of finite human reflection for both the sciences as well as religion (and their relation) Hermann F. W. Hinrichs wrote in 1822 (my translation): “If, therefore, science [here in the wide sense of academic as well as scientific knowledge production] is brought in opposition to religion, and vice versa religion in opposition to science, and this opposition is fixated by imagination as absolute, then either this fixation is strictly against the mind that’s element is knowledge, and as such it is mindlessness itself, or it even is a negative dissolution, namely subsistence of religion without science, and science without religion, which is the most godless skepticism, because it annihilates both religion and science.” For the original German version of this quotation see: Hinrichs (1822), p. 6.
- 22.
- 23.
I am adopting this label from Kurt Walter Zeidler with a slight modification: differing from Zeidler I also apply it to Paul Natorp’s late thought. While Zeidler surprisingly does not explicitly mark Natorp’s late philosophy as “post-Neo-Kantian”, he—already in the subtitle of his book—uses this label programmatically in relation to Bruno Bauch’s oeuvre. It is, however, rather obvious that Natorp’s last publications are—systematically seen—even further apart from a classical (Neo-)Kantian stance than the works of the abovementioned author. Clear evidence for this assertion can be found in one of Natorp’s own texts, his critical review of the second fully reworked edition of Bauch’s book Immanuel Kant (from 1917). In this review Natorp criticizes Bauch as much as Kant himself for attempting but failing to present a “concrete unification of Ought and Being” in a philosophical system and notes that he instead hopes to publish a more successful alternative (meaning his own philosophical system) in the near future. In general, the old Natorp (after 1914)—Zeidler himself underlines this fact several times—much more has to be considered a speculative-dialectically logical Idealist along the lines of Hegel and (the later) Fichte than a (Neo-)Kantian of some sort. See: Natorp (1918a), pp. 426–59; esp. 428, 459; Zeidler (1995), pp. 31–47.
- 24.
This is my translation. For the German version of this exact formulation see: Holzhey (1986), p. 474. An almost identical formulation is to be found in: Natorp (1918d), p. 35. Another very close formulation appears in: Natorp (1911), p. 115. Natorp in his meta-critical postscript to the second reworked edition of Plato’s Theory of Ideas from 1922 as well as in a newspaper article of the same year and his lectures on Philosophical Systematic from 1923 can also use a slightly differing formulation which I have added in squared brackets: instead of “on this boundary” he writes “in [...] this boundary”. Compare: Natorp (1961a), p. 512; Natorp (1922a); Natorp (2000), p. 401.
- 25.
- 26.
In the context of the autobiographical retrospective on his intellectual journey Hans-Georg Gadamer (himself a doctoral student of Natorp) describes the Marburg School as “one of the most impressive schools of modern philosophy”. See: Gadamer (1995), p. 60.
- 27.
Given the unfortunate, by now almost 100 years old, desideratum of a comprehensive biography, Jegelka’s monograph Paul Natorp so far is the most detailed source of information regarding Natorp’s life and work. The greatest strength of this book lies in a thorough display of Natorp as a (socio-)politically highly engaged public intellectual. See: Jegelka (1992).
- 28.
Natorp (1903).
- 29.
Natorp (1912).
- 30.
- 31.
Knittermeyer (Natorp’s closest doctoral student), Hans-Georg Gadamer (one of Natorp’s last doctoral students) and—under some reserve—Wilhelm Siebel all report independently from each other that Hermann Cohen’s departure in 1912 from his position at Philipps-University Marburg to his new position at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin had a considerable relieving effect on Natorp’s philosophical work. See: Knittermeyer, Hinrich: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der “Philosophischen Systematik”, in: Natorp (2000), p. XIX; Gadamer (1995), p. 223; Siebel (1927), p. 602.
- 32.
Natorp frequently speaks of this speculative turn himself using expressions like the religiously connoted term of “repentance” (German: “Umkehr”), the musicological formulation “inversion” (German: “Umkehrung”) and the mystical-theological “inward-turning” (German: “Innenwendung”). See for instance: Natorp (1918e), p. 11; Natorp (1923a), p. 166; Natorp (2000), p. 124. For a well-versed investigation into the notoriously underrated relation between late-Natorp’s speculative turn and Heidegger’s “Kehre” see: von Wolzogen (1984), pp. 152–63. Moreover, see: Footnote 34.
- 33.
Even if Natorp’s late lectures on “Philosophical Systematic” (German: “Philosophische Systematik”) were only edited and published by his son, Hans Natorp, in 1958 (actually Hans Natorp just published their latest version stemming from the summer semester of 1923; the extensive manuscripts of the previous versions from 1920 and 1922 have not been fully edited and published yet), Gadamer as Natorp’s last doctoral student was of course very familiar with their main ideas ever since the 1920s. It is, therefore, astounding that, without any mention of Natorp, Gadamer develops one of the key concepts of his own magnum opus, Truth and Method (1960), namely the idea that “Being” (German: “Sein”) has to be understood as performative “self-presentation” (German: “Sich-darstellen”) through “language” (German: “Sprache”), in unmistakable proximity to Natorp’s explication of “the wondrous fact of language” (German: “die wundersame Tatsache der Sprache”) that without question was the central idea of his late work. “Language” (German: “Sprache”), following Natorp, performatively presents every possible being (“X”) and its sense (“A”) equiprimordially in the form of a medial, neither active nor passive, “self-presentation” (German: “Sichdarstellen”). In the context of his lectures on practical philosophy that were published posthumously in 1925, that Gadamer also undoubtedly must have known (even before they were published), Natorp even identifies “Being” itself (German: “Sein über allem Sein”, “Ur-Sein”) with that all-giving self-presentation (German: “das Letztgebende”). See: Gadamer (2010), pp. 387–494; esp. 487, 490. And compare: Natorp (2000), pp. 22–24, 386–387; Natorp (1925), pp. 10–11, 242–274; esp. 250–251, 256–257, 272–273.
- 34.
The German philosopher Christoph von Wolzogen has extensively published on this issue. See e.g.: von Wolzogen (1988), pp. 313–337; von Wolzogen (1994), pp. 397–417; von Wolzogen (1984). Also see: Noack (1965), p. 153. Sebastian Luft effectively disregarding the abovementioned literature comes to a diametrically opposed conclusion. Compare: Luft (2015), p. 104.
- 35.
See: Natorp (1923b), p. 169.
- 36.
See exemplary: Ibid., 160–186; esp. 167–177.
- 37.
In the summer semester 1917 Natorp gave his first lectures on “General Logic and Theoretic” (German: “Allgemeine Logik und Theoretik”). During the summer semester 1920 he then entitled these lectures “General Logic as Systematic of Philosophy” (German: “Allgemeine Logik als Systematik der Philosophie”). By the summer semester 1922 he finally changed the title to “Philosophical Systematic” (German: “Philosophische Systematik”). This reconstruction was only possible because I was allowed access to Paul Natorp’s Nachlass stored under the signature Ms. 831 in the archive of the library of Philipps-Universität Marburg. The same is true for knowledge I present in the footnotes 33, 43 and 101. In this regard I owe special thanks to the people responsible for the archive especially Dr. Bernd Reifenberg and Gesine Brakhage.
- 38.
Actually, it was not least his long-term Marburgian colleague Hermann Cohen’s philosophy of religion that in Natorp’s eyes represented such an ethicistic reductionism of religion along the lines of Kant. See: Natorp (1918a), p. 34.
- 39.
Concerning the fundamental intention behind his Logic of Boundary, namely the attempt to overcome the essentialist and reductionist tendencies of the philosophy of religion of his days, Natorp wrote paradigmatically in a draft of a letter addressed to theologian Wilhelm Siebel that is dated only one day before his death (my translation): “This is not philosophy of religion but contains everything that philosophy has to say about religion.” For the original version see: Siebel (1927), p. 599.
- 40.
After a personal conversation with Tagore in Darmstadt (in June 1921) Natorp published an essay in which he describes the Nobel prizewinner in literature from 1913 as a “wondrous man”. See: Natorp (1921a). Also see: Natorp (1921b). Gadamer also reports that the late Natorp used to read dramas by Tagore to a small circle of his students and friends at his house on Sundays. See: Gadamer (1995), p. 19.
- 41.
See: Footnote 23.
- 42.
Natorp himself in an expressive or actually “confessional” passage of his essay “Student and World-view” (German: “Student und Weltanschauung”) points to the beginning of the war as the starting point of his turn (my translation): “It literally struck me concerning the terrible event of this war, I can almost say, exactly since the first of August 1914 [the date of the German Empire’s declaration of war against the Russian Empire], and since then no day, almost no hour let loose of me. I asked myself: What are you doing all the time? Can it really satisfy you and those that you are meant to educate? Epistemology [German: “Erkenntnistheorie”], ever again epistemology, Plato and Kant, and Kant and Plato; barely the post-Kantians, and the pre-Kantians, the Old almost entirely in relation to Kant and Plato, Plato and Kant and—epistemology. That is your world! That is called your world.” For the original text see: Natorp (1918b), p. 7.
- 43.
An important role in this process has to be ascribed to Natorp’s lectures on Kant and the post-Kantian Idealists (“Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel”) during the winter semester 1916/1917. The hand-written manuscript of these lectures is stored in the archive of the library of Philipps-Universität Marburg under the signature Ms. 831, A11 (see: footnote 37). Also see: Natorp (2000), p. X.
- 44.
For an explanation of the distinction between an analytic-regressive and synthetic-progressive reading of Kant’s transcendental see: Zeidler (2013), pp. 85–111.
- 45.
For Natorp’s trans-subjective-objective notion of the “Logos itself” (as the productive medium of sense or thought) see for example: Natorp (1961b), p. 526.
- 46.
Already in his Logical Foundations of the Exact Sciences (German: “Die Logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften”) from 1910 Natorp introduced a transcendental-logical notion of sense more or less “replacing” the (classical) Kantian notion of reason. See: Natorp (1921a), p. 1–52.
- 47.
There are obvious parallels to Hegel’s (mature) philosophical project that Natorp does not hesitate to admit. See for example: Natorp (2000), pp. 68, 82.
- 48.
See: Kant (2001), p. 18.
- 49.
See: Hegel (2013), p. 533.
- 50.
In his lectures on Philosophical Systematic from 1923 Natorp openly states that his “acknowledgment of the full positivity not only of negation but also of contradiction” is one of the “point[s], in which [he] entirely agree[s] with Hegel”. See: Natorp (2000), p. 61.
- 51.
Ulrich Barth and Christoph von Wolzogen both indepenent from each other hold that the neologism “Letztbegründung”, the German expression for final justification, was coined by Paul Natorp. However, it actually was Georg Simmel that introduced the German adjective “letztbegründend” (English: “final justifying”) from which the noun “Letztbegründung” stems in the epistemological part of his The Philosophy of Money published in 1900. Natorp seems to have adopted the adjective from Simmel using it for the first time in his book from 1911 with the title Philosophy. Its Problem and its Problems. Both Barth and Von Wolzogen point mistakenly to Natorp’s Plato’s Theory of Ideas from 1903 as the text in which Natorp supposedly should have introduced the adjective. Apart from their common general error they commit another mistake together in identifying the text in which Natorp first used the adjective: although pointing to the first edition of Plato’s Theory of Ideas from 1903 both of them cite the second revised edition of the book from 1922 that indeed features the expression while the first edition does not—in the first edition Natorp speaks of a “letzte radikale Begründung” (English: “final radical justification”). Concerning the astonishing “career” of the expression I can add that Husserl (a friend and correspondent of Natorp) maybe adopting it from Natorp used the said adjective in 1913 in the context of his widely received and highly influential book Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology. See: Simmel (1900), p. 61; Natorp (1911), p. 71. And compare: Natorp (1903), p. 192. With: Natorp (1961b), p. 192. See: Barth (2003), pp. 6–7; Von Wolzogen, Es gibt, 332 footnote 14. Also see: Albert (1991), pp. 1–34 and 257–263.
- 52.
For further information about and investigation into the complex entanglement of the questions of last justification and mediation as (one of) the most fundamental and pressing philosophical problems see: Zeidler (2016), pp. 10–60.
- 53.
The most concise formulation of these complexly entangled problems that is also frequently quoted in Natorp research reads as follows (my translation): “Two [?] questions I want to bring to attention [...]: the [question] of the final universalization of the problem of logics, and its ultimate sharpening towards the question of the individual.” See: Natorp (1918c), p. 428. Also see: Cassirer (1925), p. 289.
- 54.
- 55.
Natorp explicates this idea several times. For some of his clearest explications see: Ibid., pp. 72–4, 21, 32.
- 56.
See: Ibid., p. 73.
- 57.
See: Ibid.
- 58.
See: Ibid., p. 72.
- 59.
As I will explicate in the following, it would be more precise to formulate: sense itself is the fundament or better the foundation; and this foundation is its own dialectical (self-)founding. Natorp highlights this idea in the context of the meta-critical post-scriptum for the second edition of Plato’s Theory of Ideas. See: Natorp (1961a), pp. 463–467; esp. 463.
- 60.
Natorp is everything but alone with his inside in the systematic, and actually logico-metaphysical, inescapability or non-negateability of sense. Influential authors like Edmund Husserl, Ernst Cassirer, Jean Hyppolite, Niklas Luhmann and Jean-Luc Nancy (and many other less influential authors), each in their own way, held or hold the position that sense is the unnegatable, operational principle or principial medium of human knowing (knowledge production). A less well-known author who seems to have taken up on Natorp’s notion of sense is Richard Kroner. For Kroner’s—in my opinion—adaptation of Natorp’s notion of sense see: Kroner (1928), pp. 1–16; esp. 3, 11, 13.
- 61.
If this argumentation by Natorp is not accepted for argumentation-logical reasons since it—following the argumentative figure of the Elenchos—by design shifts the burden of proof to the sceptic (that sharply formulated can also be rejected as a “straw man”) and, all in all, is only capable of an indirect justification (via negationis), there is an alternative: Kurt Walter Zeidler (through a detailed analysis of Plato’s later theory of ideas as well as Aristotle’s, Hegel’s and Peirce’s explications of the logic of inference) has developed a highly elegant and convincing argumentation to reach the same goal of a constructive overcoming of the paradigm of finite human reflection. See: Zeidler (2017), pp. 23–34, 132–164.
- 62.
This is my translation. For the German original see: Natorp (2000), p. 72.
- 63.
Already in the context of a lecture held in front of the Kant Society in Berlin on 8 December 1913 Natorp pointed to this positivity of sense when he insistently argued for the notion of a logical “coincidence” of thought (or sense) and being. See: Natorp (1914), pp. 3–32; esp. 12.
- 64.
Highlighting the dynamicity of thought/sense Natorp coins the notion of a “motion-sense” of thought/sense (German: “Bewegungssinn”). See: Natorp (2000), p. 74.
- 65.
Mostly Natorp points to this radical positivity of sense with his notion of “There is” (German: “Es ist” or “Es gibt”). See e.g.: Ibid., p. 78. He also undertakes an attempt to reconstruct this positivity as the fundamental characteristic of subjectivity (or the Self). See: Ibid, pp. 383–96.
- 66.
Due to this inescapability Natorp in a letter to his student and friend Hinrich Knittermeyer (from 20 April 1922) righteously points out sense (or in his terms “the Word”) as “the aporia and the euporia” of (systematic) philosophy and human culture in general. See: Ibid., p. XXXVI.
- 67.
See: Ibid., p. 383–96.
- 68.
See e.g.: Ibid., p. 18.
- 69.
Natorp frequently highlights the dialectical character of the self-giving of sense. For a concise and clear passage see: Natorp (1923a), pp. 176–177.
- 70.
See e.g.: Ibid., p. 22–3, 386–87.
- 71.
See: Natorp (1925), p. 259.
- 72.
Ibid.
- 73.
For this idea see also: Zeidler (2015), pp. 213–26; esp. 225–26.
- 74.
Explicating the absolutely unique or singular operationality of the medium of sense or—as I also put it with a reconstructive terminus technicus—the specific mediality sense, Natorp uses the notion of “method” (German: “Methode”) in the sense of a “methodicity of the law in its complete universality” (German: “Methodik des Gesetzes in ihrer vollen Allgemeinheit”) as the positive boundary of human reason. See: Natorp (1918c), p. 28; Natorp (1918d), p. 35. Also see: Natorp (2000), pp. 120, 125. And compare Natorp’s earliest attempt of this explication dating to the year 1914: Holzhey (1986), p. 92.
- 75.
- 76.
For an in-depth explication of the notion of a self-regulatory constitutive principiality see: Zeidler (2011), pp. 297–320; esp. 312.
- 77.
It might be of interest that Natorp’s notion of the mediality of sense prefigures a significant aspect of Derrida’s attempt to conceptualize his (non-)notion of “différance”. Compare: Derrida (1999), p. 37.
- 78.
Natorp highlights the principiality of sense several times. One of the clearest passages is to be found in his Practical Philosophy, where he says: “The sense still by all means is the first, the absolutely radical.” In his posthumously published lectures on the Philosophical Systematic Natorp explicates the same idea in similar words: “Nevertheless, at the end even beyond this [questioning] there is something more radical; the sense, the sense of sense itself; since questioning means, searching sense, missing sense.” In the context of a slightly earlier work, Social-Idealism, Natorp points more to the characteristic of self-sufficiency that goes along with the principiality of sense: “[...] the ‘sense’ [is] something containing itself [German: “ein auf sich Stehendes”], interpreting itself and, thereby, forth and forth explaining and deepening itself.” See: Natorp (1925), p. 250. Additionally: Natorp (2000), pp. 28–30; Natorp (1920), p. 232.
- 79.
The very same systematical idea of a differentiated as well as dynamic unity of form and content already appears in Hermann Cohen’s programmatic formula that “the production itself is the product” (German: “Die Erzeugung selbst ist das Erzeugnis.”). The formulation above also loosely references Marshall McLuhan’s famous programme slogan that the “medium is the message”. However, in a critically systematic, speculative-dialectically logical perspective McLuhan’s slogan in the strict sense would really only apply for the medium of sense in its absolute unique mediality—not even for (national) languages as media of communication. See: Cohen (1922), p. 29. For the theory behind McLuhan’s “slogan” see: McLuhan and Fiore (1967).
- 80.
Hegel expresses an analogous idea when he introduces the notion of a “natural logic” (“natürliche Logik”) implying that through and within language logical forms (categories or thought-determinations) always already are an irreducible element of human (self-)conscious life. See: Hegel (1984), p. 10.
- 81.
See: Natorp (1925), p. 250.
- 82.
Interestingly Jean-Luc Nancy in his Hegel reconstruction introduces a quite similar notion of sense. See: Nancy (2011), pp. 205–214.
- 83.
Natorp thematizes the deepest rooting “intimacy” of sense concerning all human life referring to the example of an infant that “creates” or “makes” its own sense out of its experiences and sensual perceptions without being involved in—so to say—“language games” at this early stage of development; a valid developmental-psychological observation that by the way also serves Natorp as an argument for the irreducible primacy of sense over language. See: Natorp (1925), p. 248.
- 84.
- 85.
- 86.
See: Ibid.
- 87.
See: Ibid., p. 119. And: Natorp (1923a), p. 186.
- 88.
Ibid.
- 89.
Even if Natorp prefers the “label” of (critical) Idealism, he is clearly an exponent of a pronounced Ideal-Realism. In other words, Natorp holds the position that a consistent Idealist position necessarily must be an Ideal-Realism. He argued for this position already in 1913. See: Natorp (1914), p. 14.
- 90.
Natorp uses different terms referring to the total (self-)realization of the sense-medial Self. “Self-disclosure” (German: “Selbst-Erschließung”), however, is not only the most genuine but, looking at the originally productive or abductive inference-character of the sense-mediality of the human Self, also systematically seen the most adequate of them all. For Natorp’s use of the term see: Natorp (1920), pp. 213–216, 232–33, 245 and esp. 252.
- 91.
See: Natorp (2000), p. 119.
- 92.
See: Ibid., p. 116. Also see: Natorp (1921a), pp. 7, 11, 21, 23.
- 93.
Natorp speaks in this regard of a “radicalism of logical mindset” (German: “Radikalismus logischer Gesinnung”) or simply a “logical radicalism” (German: “logischer Radikalismus”). See: Natorp (1920), pp. 233, 234. In 1910 Natorp already used the formulation of a “radicalism of logic” (“Radikalismus der Logik”). See: Natorp (1921b), p. 34.
- 94.
See: Footnote 92.
- 95.
- 96.
- 97.
For Natorp’s elaborate explication of the notion of finitism (German: “Finitismus”) see: Natorp (1920), p. 190.
- 98.
See: Footnote 17.
- 99.
See: Footnote 92.
- 100.
In the concrete context of a specific religion this performative realization can happen in—more or less strict—association with one or more natural and or manmade sacred place(s) or space(s), but that must not necessarily be the case.
- 101.
Natorp explicates the fundamentally performative character of religion by referring to Plato’s notion of the “Eros”: first of all, he identifies the Eros itself with “the boundary of humanity” (German: “die Grenze der Menschheit”). Then Natorp continues to point out the mediating performativity of the Eros instituting and maintaining the dialectical relationship between humanity and the Devine. Translating this platonist or—using a slightly ironic but also cherishing nickname for Natorp’s quite original and unique Plato interpretation stemming from his contemporaries—“platorpist” explication by Natorp in my reconstructive terminology, the Eros stands for the sense-mediality of the Self in its irreducible programmaticity to performatively (self-)realize or -unfold itself in its own totality. Looking closer at this performativity character of religion, it implies nothing less than a complete convergence (unity of difference) of theory and praxis. More precisely, as the performance of the sense-medial Self’s absolute self-disclosure religion is the absolute praxis and as such absolutely theoretical (in a non-pejorative sense). The Self “works” here on and in itelf as Self. For Natorp’s boundary-logical notion of the Eros see: Natorp (1961a), pp. 459–513; esp. 512. A slightly more extensive elaboration on the notion of Eros is to be found on the last pages of Natorp’s 1922 lectures on Philosophical Systematic. As alrady mentioned above in footnote 434, unfortunately, this text has not been edited and published yet. The quite extensive manuscript of these lectures is stored in the archive of the library of Philipps-Universität Marburg under the signature Ms. 831 B3 (also see: footnote 37).
- 102.
Natorp developed an elaborate vocabulary trying to express this performative part taking or engagement of the individual Self in religious praxis. The formulation that stands out the most is the “position-taking in the boundary” (German: “Standnehmen in der Grenze”). For this formulation and its precise systematic context see: Natorp (2000), pp. 401–408; esp. 401.
- 103.
Looking at this inevitable performativity specifically, the preposition “in” actually is more precise (than the preposition “on”).
- 104.
See: Natorp (2000), p. 116.
- 105.
See: Natorp (1920), p. 251.
- 106.
See: Ibid.
- 107.
See: Natorp (2000), pp. 116–118.
- 108.
See: Natorp (1918e), p. 127.
- 109.
- 110.
Natorp has developed the speculative-dialectical idea of an ideal sublation of death, that he poetically articulates as “the last death: the death of death itself” (German: “der letzte Tod: der Tod des Todes selbst”), in a short essay entitled About the Actual Death (German: “Vom echten Tode”). See: Natorp (1921c), pp. 27–31.
- 111.
This is my translation. For the original German version of this sentence see: Natorp (2000), p. 120.
References
Albert, Hans. 1991. Traktat über kritische Vernunft. Tübingen: UTB.
Barth, Ulrich. 2003. Religion in der Moderne. Tübingen: Mohr.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. Sozialer Sinn. Kritik der theoretischen Vernunft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
———. 2012. Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis. Auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1925. Paul Natorp. 24 Januar 1854–17 August 1924. Kant-Studien 30: 273–298.
Cohen, Hermann. 1922. Logik der reinen Erkenntnis. Berlin: Cassirer.
Colpe, Carsten. 1990. Über das Heilige. Versuch, seiner Verkennung kritisch vorzubeugen. Frankfurt: Hain.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2007. Differenz und Wiederholung. München: Fink.
Derrida, Jacques. 1999. Randgänge in der Philosophie. Wien: Passagen.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1995. Philosophische Lehrjahre. Eine Rückschau. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.
———. 2010. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr.
Hegel, Georg W.F. 1978. Gesammelte Werke (GW) 11. Hamburg: Meiner.
———. 1984. Gesammelte Werke (GW) 21. Hamburg: Meiner.
———. 2003. Berliner Schriften 1818–1831. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
———. 2013. Jeaner Schriften 1801–1807. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Heidegger, Martin. 1988. Zur Sache des Denkens. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Hinrichs, H. F.W. 1822. Die Religion im Verhältnisse zur Wissenschaft. Nebst Darstellung und Beurtheilung der von Jacobi, Kant, Fichte und Schelling gemachten Versuche dieselbe wissenschaftlich zu erfassen, und nach ihrem Hauptinhalte zu entwickeln. Mit einem Vorworte von Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Heidelberg.
Holzhey, Helmut. 1986. Der Marburger Neukantianismus in Quellen: Zeugnisse kritischer Lektüre, Briefe der Marburger, Dokumente zur Philosophiepolitik der Schule. Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe.
Holzhey, Helmut, and Wolfgang Röd. 2004. Die Philosophie des ausgehenden 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 2. Neukantianismus, Idealismus, Realismus, Phänomenologie. München: Verlag C.H. Beck.
Jegelka, Norbert. 1992. Paul Natorp. Philosophie – Pädagogik – Politik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Kant, Immanuel. 2001. Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können. Hamburg: Meiner.
Kaufmann, Walter A. 2009. Goethe, Kant, and Hegel: The discovering the mind. Vol. 1. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Kern, Iso. 1964. Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Kisiel, Theodore. 2002. Heidegger’s way of thought. Critical and interpretative signposts. New York: Continuum.
Kottak, Conrad P. 2013. A mirror of humanity. A concise introduction into cultural anthropology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kroner, Richard. 1928. Die Selbstverwirklichung des Geistes. Prolegomena zur Kulturphilosophie. Tübingen: Mohr.
Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The invisible religion. The problem of religion in modern society. New York: Macmillan.
Luft, Sebastian. 2015. The space of culture. Towards a Neo-Kantian philosophy of culture (Cohen, Natorp, & Cassirer). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. 1967. The Medium is the message. An inventory of effects. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2011. Hegel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Natorp, P. 1916. Nachlass Natorp Ms. 831, A11. “Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel” (WS 1916/17). Stored at University Library of Philipps-Universität Marburg.
———. 1922a. Paul Natorps geistige Wandlung. Von einem, der ihm sehr nahe steht. Kölnische Volkszeitung (no. 322), April 26.
———. 1922b. Nachlass Natorp Ms. 831 B3. “Philosophische Systematik“ (SS 1922). Stored at University Library of Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Natorp, Paul. 1903. Platos Ideenlehre. Eine Einführung in den Idealismus. Leipzig: Dürr.
———. 1908. Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität. Ein Kapitel zur Grundlegung der Sozialpädagogik. Tübingen: Mohr.
———. 1911. Philosophie. Ihr Problem und Ihre Probleme. Einführung in den kritischen Idealismus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
———. 1912. Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode. Erstes Buch: Objekt und Methoden der Psychologie. Tübingen: Mohr.
———. 1914. Über Platos Ideenlehre. Berlin: Platon.
———. 1918a. Bruno Bauchs ‘Immanuel Kant’ und die Fortbildung des Systems des kritischen Idealismus. Kant-Studien 22: 426–459.
———. 1918b. Die Seele des Deutschen. Jena: Eugen Diederichs.
———. 1918c. Student und Weltanschauung. Jena: Eugen Diederichs.
———. 1918d. Hermann Cohens philosophische Leistung unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Systems. Berlin: Reuther und Reichard.
———. 1918e. Hermann Cohen als Mensch, Lehrer und Forscher. Marburg: Universitaet Marburg.
———. 1920. Sozial-Idealismus. Neue Richtlinien sozialer Erziehung. Berlin: Julius Springer.
———. 1921a. Die Logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften. Leipzig: Teubner.
———. 1921b. Stunden mit Rabindranath Thakkur. Jena: Eugen Diederichs.
———. 1921c. Individuum und Gemeinschaft. Mit einem Anhang vom echten Tode. Jena: Eugen Diederichs.
———. 1923a. Über den Ausgangspunkt der Philosophie. Japanisch-deutsche Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik 1: 121–128.
———. 1923b. Selbstdarstellung. In Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, ed. Raymond Schmidt, 160–190. Leipzig: F. Meiner.
———. 1925. Vorlesungen über Praktische Philosophie. Erlangen: Verlag der philosophischen Akademie.
———. 1929. Philosophie. Ihr Problem und ihre Probleme. Eine Einführung in den kritischen Idealismus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
———. 1961a. Metakritischer Anhang (1920). Logos – Psyche – Eros. In Platos Ideenlehre. Eine Einführung in den Idealismus, ed. Paul Natorp, 457–513. Darmstadt: W. Buchgesellschaft.
———. 1961b. Platos Ideenlehre. Eine Einführung in den Idealismus. Darmstadt: W. Buchgesellschaft.
———. 2000. Philosophische Systematik. Mit der Gedenkrede zum 100. Geburtstag am 24.1.1954 von Hans-Georg Gadamer. Hamburg.
Noack, Hermann. 1965. Die Philosophie Westeuropas. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: Darmstadt.
Ollig, Hans-Ludwig. 1992. Neukantianismus. Texte der Marburger und der Südwestdeutschen Schule, ihrer Vorläufer und Kritiker. Ditzingen: Reclam.
Otto, Rudolf. 2014. Das Heilige. Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (Neuausgabe mit einem Nachwort von Hans Joas). München: C. H. Beck.
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1997. Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Siebel, Wilhelm. 1927. Paul Natorps letzter Brief. Herausgegeben und religionsphilosophisch gewürdigt von Dr. Wilhelm Siebel, Barmen. Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 4 (4): 597–630.
Simmel, Georg. 1900. Philosophie des Geldes. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.
von Goethe, Johann W. 2007. Versepen, Schriften, Maximen und Reflexionen. Frankfurt: Klostermann.
von Wolzogen, Christoph. 1984. Die autonome Relation. Zum Problem der Beziehung im Spätwerk Paul Natorps. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Theorien der Relation. Würzburg: Rodopi.
———. 1988. ‘Es gibt.’ Heideggers und Natorps ‘Praktische Philosophie’. In Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie, ed. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert and Otto Pöggeler, 313–337. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
———. 1994. ‘Den Gegner stark machen.’ Heidegger und der Ausgang des Neukantianismus am Beispiel Paul Natorps. In Neukantianismus. Perspektiven und Probleme, ed. W. Orth Ernst and Helmut Holzhey, 397–417. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Zeidler, Kurt W. 1995. Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie. Der Ausgang des Neukantianismus und die post-neukantianische Systematik R. Hönigswalds, W. Cramers, B. Bauchs, H. Wagners, R. Reiningers und E. Heintels. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag.
———. 2011. Bestimmung und Begründung. Zu Kants Deduktionen der Ideen der reinen Vernunft. In Gegenstandsbestimmung und Selbstgestaltung. Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluss an Werner Flach, ed. Christian Krijnen and Kurt W. Zeidler, 297–320. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
———. 2013. Begriff und ‘Faktum’ der Wissenschaft. In Wissenschaftsphilosophie im Neukantianismus. Ansätze – Kontroversen – Wirkungen, ed. Christian Krijnen and Kurt W. Zeidler, 85–111. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
———. 2015. Protestantismus der Vernunft. Zu Falk Wagners Theo-Logie. In Spekulative theologie und gelebte Religion. Falk Wagner und die Diskurse der Moderne, ed. Christian Danz and Michael Murrmann-Kahl, 213–226. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
———. 2016. Grundlegungen. Wien: Academia.
———. 2017. Grundriss der transzendentalen Logik. Wien: Ferst & Perz.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hensold, J. (2020). Beyond a Dichotomy of Perspectives: Understanding Religion on the Basis of Paul Natorp’s Logic of Boundary. In: Hensold, J., Kynes, J., Öhlmann, P., Rau, V., Schinagl, R., Taleb, A. (eds) Religion in Motion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41388-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41388-0_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41387-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41388-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)