Description
Book SynopsisRecovering a lost world of the politics of science in Imperial Germany, Gregory B. Moynahan approaches the life and work of the philosopher and historian Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) from a revisionist perspective, using this framework to redefine the origins of twentieth-century critical historicism and critical theory. The only text in English to focus on the first half of the polymath Cassirer’s career and his role in the Marburg School, this volume illuminates one of the most important – and in English, least-studied – reform movements in Imperial Germany.
Trade ReviewJournal of the History of Science Society
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: “Reading a Mute History”: Ernst Cassirer, the Marburg School and the Crises of Modern Germany; PART I: THE MARBURG SCHOOL AND THE POLITICS OF SCIENCE IN GERMANY: Chapter One: The Twentieth-Century Conflict of the Faculties: The Marburg School and the Reform of the Sciences; Chapter Two: Cassirer and the Marburg School in the Administrative and Political Context of the “Kaiserreich”; Chapter Three: “The Supreme Principles of Knowledge”: Cassirer’s Transformation of the Tenets of Cohen’s “Infinitesimal Method” (1882) and “System of Philosophy” (1902–1912); PART II: CRITICAL SCIENCE AND MODERNITY: Chapter Four: Leibniz and the Foundation of Critical Science: “Leibniz’s System in its Scientific Foundations” (1902); Chapter Five: Science and History in Cassirer’s “Substance and Function” (1910); PART III: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND LAW: Chapter Six: Liberalism and the Conflict of Forms: “The Knowledge Problem” (1906–1940) and “Freedom and Form” (1916); Chapter Seven: Law as Science and the “Coming-into-Being” of Natural Right in Cohen, Cassirer and Kelsen Conclusion Critical Science, the Future of Humanity and the Riddle of “An Essay on Man” (1944); Index
