On the distinction between Formal Logic and Transcendental Logic in Cassirer and Natorp

Abstract

The paper compares the distinction between formal and transcendental logic as it is presented by Kant in the CPR, with the understanding of the same distinction by the Marburg’s School, especially Cassirer (1907) and Natorp (1910). The comparison shows some simulitudes and some differences. Between late eighteenth century and late nineteenth century, the meaning of “formal logic” deeply mutates, and with it the meaning of the distinction that interests us. In Cassirer (1907), formal logic reappears as a Leitfaden for the discovery and systematization of transcendental structures responsible for the production of knowledge, but for very different reasons. Cassirer has in mind the logicist program of Frege and Russell. Formal logic is not, as in the CPR, a "canon" of thinking, but a fundamental mathematical discipline that leads exact sciences to its highest point—according to a process initiated in the Rennaissance, in which natural sciences gradually abandon the concept of substance in favor of an increasing operability of the concept of function. In this sense, “formal logic” embodies the “new Faktum” of natural sciences. We also show, in this paper, that both Kant and the Marburg’s philosophers understand transcendental logic as an inquiry into the conditions of possibility of the science of nature, and not as a philosophy of consciousness (in contrast to what happens in phenomenology).