Volume 73, Issue 3

This essay describes the linguistic phenomenon of false statements being made in public without their falsity being concealed. The phenomenon is referred to as spitting. It consists in the demonstration of the ability to make false statements and thus indicates a powerful discourse position. Through its speech act, it also makes a comment on the character of discourse in the public sphere: this is detached from the orientation of truth and reduced to a power play. The essay distinguishes the phenomenon of spitting from lying and from Harry Frankfurt’s concept of bullshitting. In the analysis of the speech act of spitting, its linguistic character is explained and linked to psychological and social functions. Finally, the essay argues that there are certain political positions that have a greater tendency to spit due to their background beliefs. The essay concludes with reflections on how to counter the destructive effects of spitting.

In modern philosophy, language is often understood as the outer representation of an inner subjective idea in intersubjectively shareable signs. However, following this representational account of language, the unity of speaker, listener and the object of reference cannot be properly accounted for. Starting from Kant’s two-fold concept of language, it is shown how representational and early romantic theories of language around 1800 fail to give a satisfying account of the relation between speech acts and other non-linguistic actions. Taking up elements from both post-Kantian traditions, Wilhelm von Humboldt argues that language should be understood as a self-consciously shared activity between speakers. This can be shown with recourse to the systematic relationship between Humboldt’s most fundamental characterisations of language, according to which it must be an interrelated whole of speech acts whose formal-material unity is only real through linguistic activity. This makes it possible to understand the actual unity of language as the shared self-consciousness of rational speakers in their usage of linguistic expressions.

Racist statements in Kant’s writings have been discussed since the 1990s. A comparison of biographical and systematic overviews that were published around 2004 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Kant’s death with those published to celebrate the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2024 shows a different treatment of racist statements in Kant’s writings. In 2004 Kant’s racist statements were completely ignored, whereas this no longer seemed possible in 2024. Based on recent publications, the contribution shows that the question of racism in Kant is addressed and integrated in very different ways (e. g. person-centred or, in the context of reconstructions of the history of science, as philosophically irrelevant, or as a systematic part of the work). This in turn can have very different consequences, ranging from problematic trivialisation to demanding self-criticism. As result, the article argues for a self-critical and self-reflective approach to racist statements in philosophical writings, which includes the consideration of such consequences under current conditions.

The 200th anniversary of Kant’s birthday in 1924 was an occasion in Weimar to celebrate Kant – and to seek references in his philosophy to help tackle questions of the crisis-ridden politics of the day. Diverging Kant perceptions in 1924 show how the simultaneity of readings, shared concepts, and different political options open up a range of possibilities for interpretation. The German Philosophical Society met on April 19th, 1924, with a speech on “Kant’s significance for German intellectual life”. This Kant reception was antithetical to the democratic demands of the Weimar Republic. On the other hand, on April 6, 1924, the German Democratic Party’s convention debated the topic of “Kant and German Freedom”. Public debate on Kant was closely connected to either the future or the end of the Weimar Republic, the evolution or, respectively, the termination of (cultural) political options. 100 years later, a review of practices and schemes of interpretation provides an insight into the political function of referencing philosophical classics.

In this paper we present a comparison of Immanuel Kant’s and Moses Mendelssohn’s essays on Enlightenment with respect to the Prussian late absolutistic estate-based society and the so-called “Jewish Question”. Our comparison consists of three aspects: firstly, the relation between theory and practice, secondly, the relation between state and Enlightenment and thirdly, the relation between progress and the dangers of Enlightenment. We argue against an individualising and ahistoric reading of philosophical texts and the focus on philosophers as individual geniuses. Instead, we show that the content of terms like “the public” (Kant) and “education” (Mendelssohn) only becomes comprehensible when the correlation of context and systematicity is reflected.

In this interview, Klaus-Michael Kodalle gives insight into more than five decades of his philosophical career, covering various topics such as the relationship between politics and religion in the present and in his research on Hobbes; historic guilt, especially concerning National Socialism, forgiving and reconciliation; the philosophy of individual nonconformity; the role of the negative and the imaginative in historical and political conflicts. The second half of the interview touches on the post-1945 philosophical developments in Jena and Kodalle’s own activities in Jena after Reunification.