Magdalena Aebi

Magdalena Aebi (born February 4, 1898 in Burgdorf ; † September 12, 1980 in Oberburg ) was a Swiss philosopher who was known for her fundamental criticism of Immanuel Kant .

Life

Aebi attended high school in Burgdorf, where she received her Matura in 1919 . She studied classical philology , Indo-European studies , art history and archeology in Zurich and Munich . She then studied philosophy with Albert Görland and Ernst Cassirer in Hamburg until Cassirer was expelled from Germany in 1933. Then she continued her studies in Zurich, a. a. with Karl Dürr . The main subject of her interest was the philosophy of Kant, in whose Critique of Pure Reason she believed she had discovered a fundamental error since 1929. Dürr pointed them out to the writings of Heinrich Scholz . She then worked her way into the works of modern logic and the tradition of anti-Kantian philosophers such as Franz Brentano and Bernard Bolzano and completed her dissertation Contributions to the Critique of Kant's Transcendental Logic , with which she received her doctorate in 1943. After the sensation caused by the publication of her book, Aebi continued to work on philosophical questions, but turned down an offered university career.

She did not publish any other books, but continued her criticism of German philosophy in lectures and essay publications. She also worked on questions of value theory , science and epistemology . Their draft of a natural systems theory is known from a letter to Wolfgang Pauli , but was just as little published as a criticism of Hegel's logic.

Aebi became a board member of the Philosophical Society Zurich. She often took part in the history and science seminars organized by Paul Bernays and Ferdinand Gonseth at the ETH Zurich, but did not spare Gonseth with her sharp logical criticism.

Work and effect

The Kant book, published in 1947, contains, in addition to the text of the dissertation, which has increased from 250 to over 500 pages, a hundred-page introduction. The title of Kant's Justification of "German Philosophy". Kant's transcendental logic, a critique of its justification, is an allusion to Wilhelm Windelband's textbook on the history of philosophy . The main part of the work contains a fundamental criticism of the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in Kant's first major work. Aebi tries to prove that the entire text is unclear, incoherent and contradicting itself. As a central mistake, she identified a quaternio terminorum in which two different meanings of transcendental apperception appear in the middle term of the syllogism . In the introduction she explains that the entire post-Kantian German philosophy up to Heidegger is to be understood as a consequence of the decay of logical thinking caused by Kant.

The publication of the book made Aebi an international celebrity among philosophers and the educated public. Numerous reviews have appeared, both in feature sections and in specialist journals. Logicians and scientific theorists (often known to her personally) such as Heinrich Scholz, Evert Willem Beth , Max Bense , Herman Meyer and Paul Bernays gave positive opinions . On the other hand, the work was rejected by German and non-German Kantians alike, whereby the fact that “Fräulein Aebi” was female led to condescending ( Julius Ebbinghaus ) and emphatically ironic (Jan van der Meulen) omissions. All negative reviewers endeavored to provide detailed refutations, and were accused of misunderstandings as well as neglecting all of the newer Kantian literature (especially the works of Klaus Reich and Herbert James Paton ). Gerhard Lehmann replied to Aebi that it was nonsensical to want to prove Kant's errors of thought, since philosophy is primarily an illuminating of meaning.

Aebi had hardly any influence on Kant research, since the interpretation of the transcendental deduction in Friedrich Tenbruck's dissertation already in 1944 embarked on the discussion of the "structure of evidence" that preoccupied Kant research in the second half of the 20th century. But Dieter Henrich came back to Magdalena Aebi in the context of his groundbreaking treatise Identity and Objectivity . In Kant's research, Ebbinghaus' explanation of Kant's theory of perceptual judgments in his essay Magdalena Aebi and Immanuel Kant , through which the name Aebis was immortalized, is regarded as the factual outcome of the debate . On the other hand, some logicians still refer to Aebi when they claim the baselessness of Kant's company. The re-publication of Aebis book by Albert Menne in 1982 can be traced back to this fact.

Fonts

• Contributions to the critique of the transcendental logic of Kant. Dissertation, University of Zurich 1938. Publishing house for law and society, Basel 1945 (247 pages).
• Kant's justification of "German Philosophy". Kant's transcendental logic, critique of its justification. Verlag für Recht und Gesellschaft, Basel 1947 (xix, 107, 525 pages). Reprint Hildesheim 1984 with a foreword by Albert Menne.

Aebi's estate is in the Zurich Central Library.

literature

• Angelica Baum: Aebi, Magdalena. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Willy Keller: Swiss biographical archive. Volume 6, 1958, p. 9.
• Albert Menne: Magdalena Aebi 1898–1980. In: The Burgdorfer yearbook. 49: 78-80 (1982).
• Karl von Meÿenn: Comment. In: Wolfgang Pauli: Scientific correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg a. a. Volume IV, Part II: 1953-1954. Published by Karl von Meÿenn. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1999, p. 380f.

Web links

• Publications by and about Magdalena Aebi in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Aebi to Pauli, December 10, 1953, in: Scientific correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg and others. a. Volume IV, Part II: 1953-1954. Published by Karl von Meÿenn. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1999, pp. 381–383. See also Magdalena Aebi: Man in the unity of being . In: Journal for Philosophical Research. Vol. 9 (1955), pp. 377-385.
2. ↑ Magdalena Aebi: The position of Gonseth's "Open Philosophy" in the whole of Philosophia perennis. In: Dialectica. Vol. 14 (1960), pp. 127-150.
3. ↑ Georg Klaus ( Modern Logic. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1964, p. 54) speaks of " Magdalena Aebi, who became herostratically famous for her extremely negative comments about Kant ".
4. ↑ In: Deutsche Literaturzeitung , vol. 70 (1949), col. 342-350.
5. ^ In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 21, 1948; ders .: About Locke's «General Triangle» . In: Kant studies. Vol. 48 (1956/57), pp. 361-380.
6. ↑ In: Universitas . Vol. 4, April 1949, p. 199.
7. ↑ In: Synthesis. Vol. 6 (1947), p. 510 f.
8. ^ Paul Bernays: On the question of the connection to the Kantian epistemology. A critical discussion . In: Dialectica. Vol. 9 (1955), pp. 23-65.
9. ^ Julius Ebbinghaus: Magdalena Aebi and Immanuel Kant . In: Archive for Philosophy. Vol. 2 (1954), pp. 37-56. Again in: Ders .: Collected essays, lectures and speeches. WBG, Darmstadt 1968, pp. 120-139; and in: Interpretation and Criticism. Writings on theoretical philosophy and the history of philosophy 1924–1972. Bouvier, Bonn 1990, pp. 175-194.
10. ↑ Jan van der Meulen: Magdalena Äbi and Kant or The infinite judgment. Westkulturverlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim / Glan 1951 (supplements to the journal for philosophical research, issue 3).
11. ↑ In addition to the above, see (among many others) also: Georg Siegmund: Die overcoming Kantianism. In: Philosophical Yearbook. Vol. 60 (1950), pp. 267-277. - Jürgen von Kempski : Charles Sanders Peirce and pragmatism. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Cologne 1952, p. 54. - Georg Jánoska: The transcendental object. On the formal correctness of the transcendental deduction and the Kant critique by Magdalena Aebis. In: Kant studies. Vol. 46 (1954/55), pp. 193-221.
12. ^ Gerhard Lehmann: A quaternio terminorum in Kant? M. Aebis Kant refutation. (first 1954). In: ders .: Kant's virtues. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1980, pp. 237–249, here: p. 241.
13. ↑ Dieter Henrich: Identity and Objectivity. An Inquiry into Kant's Transcendental Deduction. Winter, Heidelberg 1976, p. 71.
14. ↑ Manfred Baum: Deduction and proof in Kant's transcendental philosophy. Inquiry into the Critique of Pure Reason. Grove near Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1986, p. 40.
15. ^ Albert Menne: Preliminary remark. In: Magdalena Aebi: Kant's justification of the "German philosophy". Kant's transcendental logic, critique of its justification . Reprint Hildesheim 1984. See also Albert Menne: The Kantian judgment table in the light of the history of logic and modern logic . In: Journal for general philosophy of science. Vol. 20 (1989), pp. 317-324; ders .: The infinite judgment of Kant. In: Philosophia naturalis. Volume 19, 1982, pp. 151-162.
16. ↑ Estate directory  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 179 kB)