Substance as Function: Ernst Cassirer’s Interpretation of Leibniz as Criticism of Kant

Abstract

It cannot now be denied that Cassirer distanced himself significantly — not only in the philosophy of science — from the eponym of his school: Neo-Kantianism. The question therefore is only how far he distanced himself- did he become so original that one can no longer call him a Kantian, or did he merely skilfully exploit the hermeneutic latitude that Kant himself allowed without crossing the bounds of transcendental criticism. This question can be discussed on the basis of numerous individual fields of Cassirerian philosophy — philosophy of science is just one of them. It seems to me that from the confrontation between the epistemological requirements that Cassirer derives in his book “Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik” and episte-mology in Kant’s sense there follows a difference from Kant’s position that can be explained by the choice of a theory of concept formation that Cassirer already made and elucidated in 1902 in connection with his interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophy, and to which he remained true.

translated from German by Julian Barbour, Oxon, UK.