Cohen and Natorp on Transcendental and Concrete Subjectivity

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the way in which Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp deal with the problem of the cognitive subject and, in particular, with the relationship between transcendental and concrete subjectivity. Even though Cohen and Natorp share a certain philosophical method for approaching this problem, their results are quite different. While for Cohen concrete subjectivity remains an open issue, without a proper philosophical account, Natorp manages to put forward a theory of concrete subjectivity within the very limits imposed by the transcendental method. However, Natorp soon encounters difficulties in this doctrine and modifies his initial position. In his late theory of subjectivity, Natorp inverts Cohen's viewpoint and even departs from the framework established by the transcendental method.

I. Hermann Cohen

I.I. Kant and Cohen on the Method of Transcendental Investigation

According to the philosophical method adopted by Cohen, philosophy should take a certain fact as a point of departure for investigation and proceed by searching for the conditions of possibility of that fact. This is the so-called "transcendental method." In the case of theoretical philosophy, the fact to be investigated is experience.¹ Cohen argues:

die Erfahrung ist gegeben; es sind die Bedingungen zu entdecken, auf denen ihre Möglichkeit beruht. Sind die Bedingungen gefunden, welche die gegebene Erfahrung ermöglichen, in der Art ermöglichen, dass dieselbe als a priori giltig angesprochen, dass strenge Nothwendigkeit und unbeschränkte Allgemeinheit ihr zuerkannt werden kann, dann sind diese Bedingungen als die constitueirenden Merkmale des Begriffs der Erfahrung zu bezeichnen, und aus diesem Begriff ist sodann zu deducieren, was immer den Erkenntniswerth objectiver Realität beansprucht. Das ist das ganze Geschäft der Transscendental-Philosophie.

(Cohen 1877, 24)

But Cohen identifies experience with mathematical physics. Accordingly, mathematical physics turns out to be the point of departure for the transcendental method. In this sense, Cohen claims that experience is given in mathematics and in pure natural science and,² more precisely, in Newtonian science (Cohen 1910, 32). Thus, the task of transcendental philosophy, now understood as a theory of experience, will be to determine the conditions of possibility of Newtonian science. Cohen summarizes his interpretation of Kantian philosophy in the following way: "Kants Aufgabe ist also zunächst die Prüfung und Kennzeichnung des Erkenntniswertes und des Gewissheitsgrundes der Newtonschen Naturwissenschaft, welche er bei dem Drohwort der Erfahrung fasste" (Cohen 1918, 93).³

In view of this emphasis on the method of philosophy in Cohen's interpretation of Kant, it may come as something of a surprise that the expression "transcendental method" does not appear in Kant's work (Baum 1980). The transcendental method, as conceived by Cohen, corresponds rather to the method that Kant calls "analytic" or "regressive." This method consists in taking what is looked for as already given and proceeding to the conditions under which only the assumed fact is possible (Kant 1968, 276). Kant contrasts the analytic method to the synthetic one. Let us briefly consider this Kantian distinction.

Kant's critical project aims at establishing the possibility of metaphysics as a science. In contradistinction to other theoretical disciplines of reason (such as mathematics or pure natural science) that already have the status of a science, metaphysics is in an unfavorable situation because, before the investigation of the Critique, there is no synthetic a priori judgment that can be put forward as genuine metaphysical knowledge. In other words, while there is a mathematical science and a pure science of nature, there is no metaphysical science. In this situation, if we wanted to adopt the analytic method, we could not take the science of metaphysics as a fact to study how this fact is possible, for we do not even know whether such science is possible. Rather, this is the question to be answered.

At this point, one may abandon the regressive method and adopt a progressive or synthetic one. This is the choice made in the Critique. In this work, Kant claims, pure reason is investigated to determine both its elements and the laws governing its pure use...