Cohen’s long-time co-worker and friend, Paul Natorp, carried out a more concrete, thorough, and insightful examination of ancient and modern philosophy by means of a systematic understanding of the problems. In the autumn of 1881, Natorp habilitated at Marburg University; in 1885 he became a lecturer at the university; in 1893, as successor to J. Bergmann (see below), he became Ordinarius Professor of Philosophy. In 1922 he became Emeritus, in spite of the fact that he was still active with lectures and classes. Natorp died shortly after his 70th birthday in August 1924. Because Natorp’s philosophical work initially took place scrupulously in the same spirit as Cohen’s, he could later see the essential gaps and one-sided aspects of the system more clearly, and he could bring it to a more originally grounded, independent level of development. Natorp’s earliest investigations were concerned with the loosening up of ancient philosophy through the history of [philosophical] problems. The work Forschungen zur Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems im Altertum (1884) had a strong influence on science. The work Platos Ideenlehre. Eine Einführung in den Idealismus (1903) indeed met with fierce opposition. Regardless of the tenability of individual interpretations, it performed the urgent task of clarifying that the history of Philosophy cannot dispense with a systematic understanding of the problem as a hermeneutical presupposition of its work. In a treatise that is too seldom considered, called Über Thema und Disposition der aristotelischen Metaphysik (Philos. Monatshefte, vol. XXIV, 1888), Natorp anticipated results and problems in which the present age first became more accessible.

The transcendental laying-of-the-ground for logical, ethical and aesthetic conduct has its “highest point” in the subject. Thus the ground-laying itself first comes to the ground through a thematic consideration of consciousness in the sense of a nonempirical Transcendental Psychology. Natorp communicated his first experiments in this direction in his Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (1888). During the following two decades, in the course of his debate with the more spirited, well-formed, fundamental conception of  psychology (Dilthey and Husserl), the importance of which psychology itself can only grasp today, Natorp pushed forward to a radical formulation of the problem. The new position was in evidence in the re-casting of the earlier Einleitung, which appeared in 1912 as Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode I. In this work, as was the case with all of his philosophical work, Natorp increasingly aimed for a systematic unfolding of the systematic unity of philosophy. In order to overcome a superficial and after-the-fact condensation of the transcendental philosophical disciplines, which had always fundamentally remained standing for Cohen, it was above all a matter of breaking away from the leveling, which Cohen forced, of all possible ways of comportment of Spirit to the sciences of these ways of comportment. With the elimination of the methodical priority of the sciences, theoretical comportment draws “along-side” the “atheoretical,” i.e., the moral, the artistic, and the religious. The idea of logic was freed from the confines of a laying of the grounds for the sciences, that is, from a “theorizing,” and along with the “practical” and the “poetic,” it was pre-classified as universal doctrine of categories. The freer posing of philosophical questions concerning the originality of the individual areas of spiritual life, prepared for in this way, resulted in a more open interpretation of spiritual history. At the same time, it made possible the positive evaluation of the fundamental meaning of a phenomenological categorical analysis of “subjective” and “objective” spirit. Natorp’s own Vorlesungen über praktische Philosophie, which were still being readied for publication and which first appeared after his death (1925), offered a concrete glimpse into the new and comprehensively systematic tendencies in his thought.

From the Philosophical Seminar that was established in 1900 a series of valuable investigations have emerged which, since 1906, have been assembled in Philosophische Arbeiten, edited by H. Cohen and P. Natorp.

The continuation and re-casting of the “Marburg School” is manifest today in the work of Ernst Cassirer (Ordinarius Professor in Hamburg) and Nicolai Hartmann (habilitated in Marburg in 1909, außerordentlicher Professor 1920, Ordinarius Professor as Natorp’s successor 1922, since Autumn of 1925 in Cologne). While A. Görland (Professor in Hamburg) and W. Kinkel (Professor in Gielßen) for the most part held to the position established by Cohen, for years Cassirer strove to lay out a universal “Philosophy of Culture” on the basis of Neo-Kantian questioning. His Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Part 1, Language, 1923; Part 2, Mythical Thinking, 1925) attempted to layout the comportment and shaping of spirit, guided by the idea of the “expression” of a systematic interpretation. Cassirer converges with Natorp’s efforts in a particular way, which has its importance more in the universal categorial founding of the system, and not in the concrete interpretation of the individual “symbols” of spirit.

Hartmann’s investigations (Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 1921, and Ethik, 1926) move in the direction of a fundamental change in the problematic of the “school.” The understanding of the ontological problem, which was newly awakened and guided by phenomenological research and the theory of the object, and which since Antiquity has determined the great tradition of scientific philosophy, led Hartmann to attempt to twist not only epistemological questioning, but rather philosophical questioning in general, out of the narrow confines of the idealistic-critical horizon. In so doing, he nevertheless held fast to the traditional standing of the philosophical disciplines and the prevailing perspectives on problems that they held. As a consequence of this systematic reformation of the “Marburg School,” a new understanding is awakened for the history of universal and special ontology. Through his investigation into the ontological antecedents of Kantian philosophy, H. Heimsoeth (habilitated in Marburg, 1912, since autumn of 1923 Ordinarius Professor in Königsberg) advanced in an essential way the knowledge of the development of metaphysics.

Outside of the “school,” Julius Bergmann, as Ordinarius in Philosophy from 1874-93, exhibited an urgency and independence in his teaching. As of October 1, 1893, he resigned and relinquished the stipend earned from his lecturing obligations, but he still remained in full possession of his rights as a faculty member until his death in 1904. Bergmann was a student of Lotze and Trendelenburg. His work in the area of the logic of metaphysics (Allgemeine Logik, 1879; Sein und Erkennen, 1880; Die Grundprobleme der Logik, 1882; Untersuchungen über Hauptpunkte der Philosophie, 1900) left an impression just as unobtrusive as it was strong: Bergmann established the journal Philosophischen Monatshefte in 1868, which was the leading technical journal during the final decade of the last century and which was merged with the “Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie” in 1894.

In 1908, those who managed to attain Extraordinarius in Philosophy were P. Menzer (in Marburg since 1906, called to Halle in 1908 as Ordinarius); H. Schwarz (1908-10, after being Ordinarius in Greifswald); G. Misch (1911-17, after being Ordinarius in Göttingen); M. Wundt (1918-20, after being Ordinarius in Jena); N. Hartmann (1920-22).

REFERENCES FOR APPENDICES

“Besprechung: Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. 2. Teil: Das mythische Denken.” Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1925 [Appendix II in this volume — tr.]. Appeared in: Deutsche Literaturzeitung (Berlin), new series 5 (1928), no. 21, 1000-1012. [This review appeared previously in English in the volume The Piety of Thinking (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976 — tr.]

“Davoser Vorträge: Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft und die Aufgabe einer Grundlegung der Metaphysik” [Appendix III in this volume — tr.]. Appeared in Davoser Revue, IV (1929), no. 7, pp. 194-196.

“Zur Geschichte des philosophischen Lehrstuhles seit 1866” [Appendix VI in this volume — tr.]. Appeared in Die Philipps-Universität zu Marburg 1527-1927 (Marburg: N. G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung [G. Braun], 1927), pp. 681-687.

EDITOR’S AFTERWORD

This third volume of [Heidegger’s] Collected Works contains the text of the expanded fourth edition of the book “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics,” which was published in 1973. This expanded fourth edition was overseen by Martin Heidegger himself and was accomplished through the inclusion of an Appendix. This volume, the appendix to which has again been expanded to now include four [additional] texts, appears simultaneously as a separate, augmented fifth edition.

The first edition from 1929 was published by Friedrich Cohen Press of Bonn, which had been under the management of Vittorio Klostermann since 1928. When this publisher was closed following a period of financial difficulty, a reprinting of the first edition was published by the Gerhard Schulte-Bulmke Press of Frankfurt am Main. Since the publication of the second edition in 1951, the Kantbook, as Heidegger himself called it, has been published by the Vittorio Klostermann Press, which in 1929 had overseen the publishing of the first edition.

In editing this volume, the editor consulted the manuscript of “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.” A comparison of the printed text of the fourth edition, which had been newly typeset after the publication of the third edition, and a comparison of the second edition with the first, showed that with the resetting of the second edition in 1951, apart from a few spelling or notational mistakes that had simply been corrected without comment, four serious errors had been allowed to creep in as well. On page 28 the word “vorstelliger” replaces “vorstellig“; on page 159 “Selbst” replaces “Seins”; on page 185 the omitted phrase “daß dieses jetzt anwesende Seiende dasselbe sei, wie das” has been put back; on page 197 “ursprünglicheren” replaces “ursprünglichen.”

As was the case with volumes 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, and 12 of the first section [of Heidegger’s Collected Works] that have been published to date, so too this volume 3 contains Heidegger’s marginalia from his personal copy of the first edition. His personal copies of the later editions do not have any marginalia. The placement of the marginalia results from Heidegger’s own reference marks. In print, they are designated in footnotes with superscripted small letters, in a sequence that begins again with each numbered section. The majority of the longer or shorter marginal notes were written in ink, with the rest done in pencil. Several of the longer marginalia were written by Heidegger on inserted slips of paper with a page or section reference. Many of the marginalia date from the time when the reviews of the Kantbook by Ernst Cassirer (1931) and Rudolf Odebrecht (1931/32) appeared. Most of these marginalia have an immanent explanatory character; only a few of them make note of the later level of consideration pertaining to the history of Being. Several entries are also merely small stylistic improvements.

*

The Appendix to the fourth edition of 1973, which contained two texts, has here been expanded to include four additional pieces. It now begins with the new Notes on the Kantbook which Heidegger had inserted in his personal copy of the first edition. The note which was reproduced in facsimile form and transcribed as part of the foreword to the fourth edition [and which is found on page xii of the Gesamtausgabe edition — tr.] belongs to this same piece. An analysis of both the writing and content show it to date from the 1930s or 1940s.

The second piece is Heidegger’s Review of Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Part 2: Mythical Thinking (1925), which has not appeared in print since it was first published in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung in 1928. The published text was proofread against the manuscript found in Heidegger’s surviving papers — a careful clean copy. A reprint of this piece is among the insertions in Heidegger’s personal copy of the Kantbook.

The third place belongs to the summary, first published in the fourth edition and overseen by Heidegger himself, of his 1929 course at the second Davos Hochschule (March 17-April 6, 1929). This course consisted of three lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Task of a Laying of the Ground for Metaphysics and is reprinted anew here. There is no manuscript of this summary or of the three lectures themselves in Heidegger’s surviving papers. The division of the three lectures mentioned in the summary shows that it arises from the division of the first three of the four total sections of the Kantbook. In the three Davos lectures, Heidegger carried forward the train of thought from the first three sections of the Kantbook, which appeared at the end of that same year. During the proofreading of the fourth edition of 1973, he informed the editor of the present volume that following his return from Davos, he immediately began working out the manuscript for the Kantbook and that after three weeks of uninterrupted work he had set it down in writing.

The next piece, which appeared previously in the fourth edition, is a summary of the Davos lectures, the account of the Davos Disputation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. This disputation occurred in connection with a course of lectures held by Heidegger and Cassirer. Otto Friedrich Bollnow and Joachim Ritter, who were participants in the lecture course at the Davos Hochschule, prepared the summary. Because Heidegger did not have his own typewritten copy on hand during the time that the fourth edition was being prepared, Professor Otto Friedrich Bollnow graciously furnished his own copy for use as the book was being typeset. Since that time, however, Heidegger’s own copy has been located among his surviving papers. As a result of a new comparison of the typewritten text with the text as printed in the fourth edition, a few omissions have now been replaced.

Among the insertions in Heidegger’s personal copy of the first edition of the Kantbook is also an envelope bearing the handwritten inscription “Odebrecht’s and Cassirer’s Critique of the Kantbook. Basic question: Essence and grounding of the finitude of human knowledge — Problem of finitude in genera!.” The hand-written notes on the two reviews of the Kantbook (which appeared in 1931/32) contained in this envelope have been published in the Appendix [V in the present volume] under the title “On Odebrecht’s and Cassirer’s Critiques of the Kantbook.” The separata of both reviews have also been inserted in [Heidegger’s] personal copy. Some of them have been heavily worked through and supplied with numbered marginal notes, the content of which nevertheless continues to advance Heidegger’s critical response to both reviews. They are also arranged with numbers which, however, are consistent with the marginal notes from [Heidegger’s] personal copy of the Kantbook as printed in this volume. Ernst Cassirer’s review, entitled “Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics: Remarks on Martin Heidegger’s Kant Interpretation” appeared in Kantstudien XXXVI, number 1/2 (1931), pp. 1-26. Rudolf Odebrecht’s book review was published in Blätter für deutsche Philosophie V(1) (1931-32), pp. 132-35.

The Appendices conclude with a reprinting of the text “On the History of the Chair in Philosophy since 1866,” which Heidegger had published in 1927 in the Festschrift “Die Philipps-Universität zu Marburg 1527-1927.” Because Heidegger presented in this text the origin, development, effect, and re-constitution of the neo-Kantianism of the “Marburg School,” to which Ernst Cassirer also belonged, he decided that within the context of a Collected Edition of his writings, it should be included in the Appendix to the Kantbook.

* * * * * * * *

The transcription of the marginal notations and the various other pieces published for the first time in the Appendix was collated with Dr. Hermann Heidegger and Dr. Hartmut Tietjen. For this help in safeguarding lexical and textual continuity, I offer my sincere and heartfelt thanks.

Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander helped me do the proofreading with proven circumspection and care, for which I also sincerely thank him.

Freiburg i. Br., May 1990
F.-W von Herrmann

The page numbers from the lecture manuscripts, to which Heidegger occasionally refers in his marginal notes, were replaced by the editor with the corresponding page numbers from the published versions that have appeared in the Gesamtausgabe in the interim. Likewise, references in Heidegger’s notations to editions, years, and page numbers of the work Vom Wesen des Grundes have been brought up to date.