Description:

Samantha Matherne (Philosophy, UCSC)

Location: Crowe 1-140 

Abstract:
While there can be no doubt that Kant’s philosophy shaped the thought of both the Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer and the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger, these 20th century philosophers received Kant’s views in very different ways. In this paper, I shall focus on one aspect of this asymmetry, viz., with regards to their appraisal of the value of science and art, the topics of the first and third Critiques respectively. Although Cassirer acknowledges that both science and art play a unique and important role in our cultural lives, he argues that science represents the height of our cultural achievements, indeed, the end toward which all other cultural endeavors are directed. Meanwhile Heidegger remains suspicious of science as something that is under the sway of the technological (‘en-framing’) perspective that dominates modern thought. Though art qua aesthetics can fall into this perspective as well, Heidegger nevertheless holds out hope that there might again one day be great art that elevates us beyond the technological perspective. My goal in this paper will thus be twofold: I want to, one, explore the difference in Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s evaluation of science and art, and, two, examine what lens they adopt to read Kant, which allows them to reach such divergent positions.