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ABSTRACT
The article compares Fritz Kaufmann and Ernst Cassirer’s conceptions of aesthetics, focusing in particular on their characterisation of the experience of apprehension of art objects. Firstly, analysing Kaufmann’s early investigation of the experience of the reception of art images and Cassirer’s observations on art as a symbolic form, it argues that the two philosophers conceptualise the reception of art objects in a similar way, as an experience structured across different layers of meaning constitution that are based on specific functions of consciousness.While these similarities seem to suggest a convergence between Kaufmann’s early phenomenological reflections and Cassirer’s revised Marburg Neo-Kantianism, an account of Kaufmann’s direct confrontation with Cassirer shows that there remain profound differences regarding their final understanding of the aims of their philosophical inquiries as well as of the epistemological premises of their approaches. These differences become clearer in Kaufmann’s later reflections where he articulates the implications of his interpretation of transcendental phenomenology, stressing in particular the role of eidetic reduction.
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which have greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. I also would like to thank Younghwan Noh and Tullio Viola for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Kaufmann was one of Husserl’s students in Göttingen who followed him when Husserl accepted the chair at Freiburg. He remained an enthusiastic adherent of Husserl’s approach, publishing profusely on different aspects of aesthetic phenomenology and actively contributing to the spread of phenomenology even after his exile. Biographical information can be found in Landgrebe, “In memoriam.” For remarks on Kaufmann’s active role within the International Phenomenological Society and his editorial contributions to the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research see Ricci, “Importing Phenomenology,” 324–25.
2. Fritz Kaufmann is scarcely mentioned in texts dealing with the history of aesthetic phenomenology such as Scaramuzza, Le origini dell´ estetica fenomenologica; and Bensch; Vom Kunstwerk zum ästhetischen Objekt. The importance of Fritz Kaufmann for aesthetic phenomenology has been only recently recognized. See Sepp, “Bild und Sorge”; Oppenheim, “Fritz Kaufmann’s Literary Aesthetics”; Rudnick, “Fritz Kaufmann’s Aesthetics”; and Lotz, “Fritz Kaufmann (1891–1958).”
3. On this point, see the many texts that have focused on the influence of Heidegger on Kaufmann’s phenomenology, Gadamer, “Nachwort,” 400; Scaramuzza, Le origini dell´ estetica fenomenologica, 241; Sepp, “Bild und Sorge”; and Lotz, “Fritz Kaufmann (1891–1958),” 178.
4. Kaufmann and Cassirer were both Jews who were raised in Germany and took exile in the United States after the Nazi regime seized power in the early 1930s. The history of the dispersal of German philosophical schools and ideas between the two world wars is particularly complex. Concerning the diffusion of phenomenology in USA, see Ferri, The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology. On the history of Cassirer’s exile see Bishop, “Die Philosophie im Exil.” For a more general study of the exile of Jews intellectuals, Zakai and Weinstein, Jewish Exiles and European Thought. On the history of German speaking emigration, see Krohn et al., Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration; and Röder et al., Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration.
5. Kaufmann discussed Cassirer’s philosophy of culture in a long article, see Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology”; and Kaufmann, “Review of ‘An Essay on Man’,” Other remarks on Cassirer’s work can be found in Kaufmann,“On Imagination”; and Kaufmann, “In Memoriam Edmund Husserl.”
6. Kaufmann focuses mainly on paintings, although he does also mention the aesthetic experience of sculpture. Kaufmann, Das Reich des Schönen, 42 and 44–53.
7. Ibid., 13.
8. Ibid.
9. In a later article, Kaufmann uses the expression of vernehmender Vernunft in reference to Karl Jaspers’ philosophy of communication. There he relates this to the “supernatural sensualism” of post-Enlightenment aesthetics (Hamann, Herder and Jacobi), see Kaufmann, “Karl Jaspers,” 200. According to the Deutsches Wörterbuch by Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, one of the meanings is the “noticing caused by an extraordinary sensual impression”. This seems to be close to Kaufmann’s use of the word. https://www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/vernehmen.
10. Ibid., 13.
11. Ibid., 12.
12. Ibid., 42. Cf. Husserl’s analysis in Ideen, 243f, and Husserl’s remarks on the modification of neutrality, Ibid., 251.
13. Since the neutrality modification of consciousness is fundamental to the method of reduction in general, a central question would be what is the relationship between the neutrality modification characteristic of aesthetic consciousness and the neutrality modification which is specific to the transcendental reduction. On this see Sepp, “Bild und Sorge,” 237.
14. Das Reich des Schönen, 18.
15. Ibid., 56–57.
16. Ibid.
17. Cassirer had planned to publish a volume on art but the book was never completed. Capeillères found a draft of a fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms which Cassirer planned to write on art. See Capeillères, “‘K’ for ‘Kunst’.”
18. Some works that focus on the problem of art in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture: Capeillères, “Artistic intuition”; Hinsch, Die kunstästhetische Perspektive; Krüger, “Die Produktivität der Kunst”; Recki, “Die Fülle des Lebens”; Matherne, “The Status of Art”; and Matherne, “Art.” An historical reconstruction of Cassirer’s aesthetic reflection can be found in Lauschke, Ästhetik im Zeichen des Menschen.
19. This aspect of Cassirer’s symbolic theory is quite evident considering the profound relationship that symbolic forms have to perception. For an account of Cassirer’s theory of perception, see Endres, Ernst Cassirers Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. For a confrontation between Cassirer and Husserl’s theory of perception, see Martell, “Cassirer and Husserl”; Orth, “Kulturelle Perspektiven der Wahrnehmung”; and Plümacher, Wahrnehmung, Repräsentation und Wissen.
20. Cassirer, “The Problem of the Symbol.”
21. Kaufmann produced a report on the congress for Kantstudien in 1928. He there praises the “fruitfulness” of Cassirer´s approach to the symbol. Kaufmann, “III. Kongress für Ästhetik,” 334–5. Cfr. Collenberg-Plotnikov, Die Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 245–246.
22. Ibid., 226. On Cassirer’s theory of pregnancy see Bosch, “Symbolische Prägnanz”; and Krois, Cassirer; Möckel, “Symbolische Prägnanz.”
23. Cassirer, Phenomenology of Cognition, 268.
24. Although Loft, in the new translation of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, translates Darstellungsfunktion as “presentational function,” I prefer the translation “representational function” because it emphasises more clearly the referential function, the capacity of referring to something, that is central to the Darstellungsfunktion of language.
25. “The Problem of the Symbol,” 269. Translation slightly modified.
26. Ibid., 269.
27. Of course, one could say that language too is described as a combination of expressive and representational functions. However, it does not seem to me that Cassirer focuses so much on this issue. One gets the impression that Cassirer regards the expressive function of language as a “relic” of an old phase of development of symbolism. On the contrary, in art the expressive function, like the representational, is constitutive, and no resolution in one or the other dimension seems possible.
28. Ibid., 156.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 157.
31. Ibid., 154.
32. Ibid., 183.
33. Ibid., 168.
34. Ibid., 167.
35. A recurring example which Cassirer uses in order to stress the coexistence of expressive-figurative and thematically symbolic elements is landscape painting. See Cassirer, Essay on Man, 182 and Cassirer, The Logic of the Cultural Sciences, 61 and 81–82.
36. Das Reich des Schönen, 45–46.
37. Cassirer, Essay on Man, 24–25.
38. Cassirer, Mythical Thinking, 32n.
39. For an updated discussion of the comparison between Cassirer and Husserl see Antonucci et al., Husserl and Cassirer.
40. Perhaps because of Kaufmann’s insistence on the correlation between the analysis of the content of aesthetic experience and the constituting functions of consciousness, Ingarden regarded Kaufmann’s phenomenology as merely “subjectivist.” Ingarden, “Phenomenological Aesthetics,” 259.
41. Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology.”
42. Ibid., 810.
43. Regarding this issue, Kaufmann rightly emphasizes Paul Natorp’s role in the development of Husserl’s critique of psychologism. Kaufmann, “In Memoriam Edmund Husserl,” 69; and Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology,” 803–804. The influence of Natorp on Husserl was later recognized in works such as Kern, Husserl und Kant; and Luft, “Reconstruction and Reduction.”
44. Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology,” 823. Kaufmann also stresses Husserl’s enduring interest in the study of the structures of culture, thus placing Husserl’s Logical Investigations within a larger framework of reflection that characterised the late 19th/early 20th century German philosophy. “In Memoriam Edmund Husserl,” 67.
45. Ibid., 809.
46. Ibid., 818.
47. Ibid., 816–817.
48. Ibid., 817.
49. Kaufmann, “Art and Phenomenology,” 187.
50. To be fair, there is another issue that, according to Kaufmann, Cassirer fails to address: the investigation of passive synthesis, Kaufmann, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology,” 811, 814.
51. These issues also play a fundamental role in the confrontation between Husserl and Cassirer, as it has been well highlighted in Möckel, “Die anschauliche Natur,” 255–257; and Möckel, “Phänomenologische Begriffe bei Ernst Cassirer.”
52. An anonymous reviewer rightly suggests that this may not be true if we consider the investigations into the “metaphysics of the symbolic” that Cassirer undertakes in the fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. While I certainly agree that Cassirer’s exploration of the Basisphänomene is an attempt to investigate the grounds of the symbolic, it seems to me that even within Cassirer’s “metaphysics”, which is only sketched in any case, there is no place for the identification of an ultimate ground of the symbolic process. Just as there is no place for any kind of intuitive comprehension of the symbolic. If a metaphysical reflection on symbolism is possible, it can only be possible within the limits of a “critique” of symbolic forms. See Cassirer, “Metaphysik des Symbolischen”, 262. (I addition to this, I do not see Cassirer’s theory of pregnancy as having this foundational role. Here I follow Dubach’s criticism of Krois’s thesis regarding the foundational role of Cassirer’s theory of pregnancy, Dubach, “‘Symbolische Prägnanz’”).
53. One aspect that may help to clarify this issue are Kaufmann remarks regarding the link between eidetic and metaphysical reduction. Kaufmann, Art and Phenomenology, 198–202. In short, for Kaufmann, the exploration of the eidetic dimension of phenomenological investigation eventually allows the philosopher to grasp the fundamental connection between phenomenological investigation of art and experience of the divine. The point is relevant because it also ties in with Kaufmann’s modification of Cassirer’s definition of homo symbolicum into homo dei, developed in his critique of Cassirer’s anthropology. “Review of ‘An Essay on Man.’” We cannot, of course, provide a discussion of this, but it is clear that such a conception could not be more distant from Cassirer. (One could say that here Kaufmann is also moving beyond an Husserlian framework of investigation).
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Elio Antonucci
Elio Antonucci is former PhD Fellow at the A.r.t.e.s. Graduate School of the University of Cologne and visiting scholar at the Husserl Archive in Cologne. He is currently completing his PhD project on the concept of subjectivity in Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture.