Abstract
This paper compares Cohen’s Logic of Pure Knowledge and Cassirer’s Substance and Function in order to evaluate how in these works Cohen and Cassirer go beyond the limits established by Kantian philosophy. In his Logic, Cohen seeks to ground in pure thought all the elements which Kant distinguishes in empirical intuition: its matter (sensation) as well as its form (time and space). In this way, Cohen tries to provide an account of knowledge without appealing to any receptivity. In accordance with Cohen’s project of reformulating the Kantian theory of sensibility, Cassirer undertakes in Substance and Function the task of developing an alternative doctrine of pure and empirical manifolds. But whereas Cohen analyzes the laws of pure thought, Cassirer aims to highlight the functional character of concepts in the development of modern mathematics and physics. I will discuss these two different approaches to the problems raised by Kantian philosophy and I will argue that Cassirer went further than Cohen in the project of critical idealism.
The project leading to this paper has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 777786. The investigation is also part of the project CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular Nº 1190965. The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.
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