Background
Hans Vaihinger was born on September 25, 1852, in Nehren, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Nehren, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) to the family of a parson Johann Georg Vaihinger and Sophie Haug. He was raised in a very religious atmosphere.
1890
Germany
Hans Vaihinger in the late 1880s - early 1890s.
1902
Germany
Hans Vaihinger in 1902.
1927
Germany
Hans Vaihinger in 1927.
1930
Germany
Hans Vaihinger in the early 1930s.
1930
Germany
Hans Vaihinger in the early 1930s.
Tübinger Stift, Tübingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Hans Vaihinger studied theology, philosophy, languages, philology, and archeology at Tübinger Stift in 1870-1874.
Leipzig University, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
Hans Vaihinger became a Doctor of Philosophy at Leipzig University.
Hans Vaihinger was born on September 25, 1852, in Nehren, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Nehren, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) to the family of a parson Johann Georg Vaihinger and Sophie Haug. He was raised in a very religious atmosphere.
Hans Vaihinger was tutored by Sauer in Leonberg, Germany, from age twelve. He then attended Stuttgart Grammar School. He studied theology, philosophy, languages, philology, and archeology at Tübinger Stift in 1870-1874.
After completing his studies Vaihinger needed to fulfill his military services. So he moved to Leipzig. He chose Leipzig primarily because of the university. There he came especially under the sway of F. A. Lange and his Geschichte des Materialismus. He became a Doctor of Philosophy at Leipzig University. Vaihinger then moved to Berlin to study under his fellow Schwabian Eduard Zeller. During his time in Berlin Vaihinger’s first work Hartmann, During und Lange appeared (1876). Family concerns, however, prompted him to move back to Southern Germany where he habilitated at Strassburg under Ernst Laas. Vaihinger’s Habilitationsschrift was entitled Logische Untersuchungen. I. Teil: Die Lehre von der wissenschaftlichen Fiktion. This work was to serve later as the basis of his major work Die Philosophie des Als Ob (1911).
Hans Vaihinger taught philosophy at the University of Halle from 1884 to 1906, when nearsightedness forced his retirement. His major work, Die Philosophie des Als Ob (1911; The Philosophy of “As If”), begun in 1876, went through many editions. Vaihinger began writing Kantstudien (“Kant Studies”) in 1896 with the assistance of international scholars and eight years later founded the Kant Society. Vaihinger realized that he would need help in editing Kant-Studien. In 1903 he had Max Scheler from Jena assist him. For this volume (number 8) Vaihinger provided a review of a book by Bruno Bauch. The following year Bauch replaced Scheler as co-editor of the journal.
Vaihinger’s contributions to the Kant-Studien volume for 1905 included an article on Schiller as well as a report on the Kant jubilee from the previous year. He wrote of the enthusiastic meetings that took place in Königsberg, Heidelberg, Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Warsaw, Chicago, Berkeley, and other cities.
His health, especially his failing eyesight, forced Vaihinger to step down from his professorship. It also began to give him a sense of urgency regarding his manuscript of Philosophie des Als Ob.10 As a result, Vaihinger reduced the number of his contributions to Kant-Studien. Nonetheless, he continued to write reports on the Kant-Gesellscbaft and also occasional articles.
Bruno Bauch was replaced in 1918 (volume 22) by Max Frischeisen-Köhler from Halle and Arthur Liebert from Berlin. The latter took over from Vaihinger the task of the Kant-Gesellschaft reports. In 1923 (volume 28) Vaihinger stepped down as Editor; Frischeisen-Köhler and Liebert were co-editors. But the next year Paul Menzer replaced Frischeisen-Köhler.
In 1926 Vaihinger finally retired from the Kant-Gesellschaft citing old age and complete blindness. He had been at the head of the Society for twenty-one years. On June 10, 1927, the Kant-Gesellschaft voted to make him "Ehrenvorsitzender" as an expression of the members’ deep appreciation for all of his efforts as "Gesellschaftsführer."
Vaihinger turned 80 in 1932 and in honor of his birthday a number of scholars offered him a "Festschrift." Entitled Die Philosophie des Als Ob und das Leben, this collection demonstrates both Vaihinger’s wide range of interests as well as his strong international reputation. Professors from all parts of Germany and a number from Italy and Sweden contributed papers on political philosophy, economy, science, religion, the history of philosophy, Chinese writing; all this in addition to papers on the "philosophy of as-if." No doubt Vaihinger appreciated this outpouring of respect as he had when he received the title "Ehrenvorsitzender" for the Kant-Gesellschaft.
Vaihinger died the following year (1933) on December 18. Vaihinger’s scholarly background was considerable. He had studied Sanskrit and Darwin, Greek and archeology. His philosophical interests were wide-ranging; he thought highly of the British philosophers, studied Newton and Mill, but his main interests were with his German predecessors. Of these, it seems that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche ranked highly, but obviously, Vaihinger’s primary concern was with Kant. Scholars may quarrel with Vaihinger’s theses; especially the "patchwork theory" that he maintains is in the first Critique.12 But no one interested in Kant can ignore Vaihinger’s major contributions to Kantian studies: the books, the articles, and especially, Kant-Studien.
Hans Vaihinger was raised in a religious atmosphere. His religious inclinations began to change while at the Stuttgart Gymnasium where he became interested in pantheism and then, under the influence of Darwin, in evolutionary philosophy.
Vaihinger planned to write a history of English philosophy but a Stuttgart publisher, perhaps familiar with Vaihinger’s work Eine Blattversetzung in Kants Prolegomena (1879), wanted him to publish a commentary on Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft in honor of the centennial anniversary. The year 1881 saw the appearance of the first volume of Vaihinger’s massive Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. On the basis of this work Vaihinger was called to Halle as Extraordinarius in 1884. He had hoped that the second volume would appear shortly; however, lecture preparations demanded far more time than he had initially thought. This, coupled with poor health and failing sight, continued to delay work on the second volume. He finally completed it and it appeared in 1892.
Vaihinger’s commentary was his first major contribution to the back to Kant movement. By 1895 the "Rückkehr zu Kant" had been in progress for decades. Five years later Liebman gave the movement its "Schlagwort" "Rückkehr zu Kant" in his book Kant und die Epigonen.3 As Klaus Christian Kühnke has so richly documented, German philosophy was preoccupied with the back to Kant movement for decades.
In the "Allgemeine Einleitung" to his Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft Vaihinger complained that in the realm of Kantian research there was a "universal war of all against all." Vaihinger’s complaint of 1881, which was a reference to Thomas Hobbes’ remark about the State of Nature, continued to be true. The decades of 1880 and 1890 saw the various neo-Kantian schools continue to advance their own interpretations and their own students, often to the detriment of other interpretations and students. Vaihinger himself was not immune to polemics; indeed, one finds his Kommentar to be as much a commentary on the errors and misinterpretations of his colleagues as it is a commentary on the first seventy-five pages of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
Between 1892 and 1895 Vaihinger appeared to have grown weary of the partisan approach to Kant research. As a result in 1895 he turned his attention to starting a journal that would attempt to steer clear of such infighting. The first issue of the journal Kant-Studien appeared in 1896 with Vaihinger as editor, and in his capacity of editor he took the opportunity to spell Out the direction that the journal would take and how the editorial staff would operate. He declares that it is the right time to offer a journal which would have two goals. One would be to focus on historical aspects of Kant’s thinking. He suggests that there are numerous questions that need attention, among these the difference between analytical and synthetical judgments, the creation of the Table of Categories, and the genesis of the Analogies of Experience. But the journal’s focus was not to be limited to epistemological and metaphysical questions. Instead, it should include topics from Kant’s ethical, religious, and aesthetic writings as well. Furthermore, the journal would encourage scholars to consider carefully Kant’s relations to his predecessors, not just Leibniz and Newton, but also to Malebranche and Swedenborg.
Vaihinger maintains that the other goal of Kant-Studien is to focus on the "systematical" questions regarding Kant’s writings. These include the examination of the "Schwerpunkt" which lies on the theoretical or the practical side of Kant’s writings as well as the question of: was Kant’s philosophy primarily negative-skeptical or positive-constructive. Vaihinger insists that the entire modern philosophy grows out of, or is in opposition to, Kantian thinking. Thus, he continues, we must clarify Kantian philosophy before we can fully understand modern thought.
The "Turnierplatz" for all of these issues is Kant-Studien. Vaihinger insists that it should be international in scope and, perhaps more importantly, it is designed to encourage discussion from a wide variety of disciplines, including natural science, theology, and law. The discussions ate to be free, and by that it is clear that submissions are to avoid the invective and nastiness that has pervaded much of the writing on Kant. Vaihinger wanted to be extremely clear in spelling out the goals of Kant-Studien.
The first volume of Kant-Studien clearly demonstrated that Vaihinger met his goals. It was published in Hamburg and Leipzig by the Verlag von Leopold Voss and was five hundred pages in length. It carried the subtitle "Philosophische Zeitschrift" and was produced in cooperation with a dozen scholars. This formidable list included Erich Adickes, Eduard Caird, Wilhelm Dilthey, Benno Erdmann, Alois Riehl, and Wilhelm Windelband. The focus of the articles was on Kant, of course, but in addition there were articles on Goethe and Fichte. The contributors included Adickes, Karl Vorländer, and Georg Simmel. Vaihinger himself was not content merely to be editor. Besides his introduction he contributed to the review of books, which in this case were works by Rudolph Fucken and Lange (the fifth edition of the Geschichte des Materialismus) and a volume of Schopenhauer’s "Nachlaß".
Vaihinger continued to guide and participate in the journal. He wrote articles on a Kant medallion, on Kant as a melancholy thinker, and on a French Kant controversy. While he had insisted in the inaugural issue that Kant-Studien would try to avoid contentious pieces he himself published one in which he attacks Kuno Fischer and his History of Philosophy series. Following Kant’s polemic against Johann August Eberhard, Vaihinger entitled his article "Ueber eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neuen Kommenrare zu Kants Kr. d. r. V. und insbesondere mein eigener durch ein aelteres Werk entbehrlich gemacht werden sollen. "8 It appeared in the third volume (1899).
Vaihinger believed that keeping scholars informed of the latest Kant investigations was extremely important. Wilhelm Dilthey had been appointed General Editor for the new edition of Kant’s works - the Akademie Ausgabe. This edition was being prepared under the auspices of the Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Although the first volume of Kant’s Schriften did not appear until 1910, Vaihinger kept the readers of Kant-Studien informed about the progress.
As the centennial commemoration of Kant’s death approached Vaihinger began to turn his attention to create a society; the function of which would be to contribute to Kantian investigations and whose dues would help support the Journal. The Kant-Gesellschaft was formed in 1904. Besides Vaihinger, members included Dilthey, Liebmann, Riehl, and perhaps surprising, Simmel and Alfred Weber, Max Weber’s brother. We tend to associate these names with sociology and economics, but this should remind us that these scholars were trained in philosophy and continued to have a deep and abiding interest in it. The Kant-Studien volume for 1904 included an article on Kant’s religion by Ernst Troeltsch, who is remembered more for his writings on the sociology of religion. Other articles were contributed by Liebmann, Windelband, and Friedrich Paulsen.
By 1900 Vaihinger’s health had deteriorated again and he realized that he would be unable to finish the proposed third and fourth volumes of his Kant Kommentar. He did, however, believe that sections from Philosophie des Als Ob in conjunction with his articles on Kant, in particular Die Transzendentale Deduktion der Kategorien and Kant als Metaphysiker, were sufficient to address many of the important points of the sections of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft that his Kommentar had not addressed.
Quotations:
"It must be remembered that the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal of reality-that would be an utterly impossible task-but rather to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about in this world more easily."
"Scientific thought is a function of the psyche. Psychical actions and reactions are, like every event known to us, necessary occurrences; that is to say, they result with compulsory regularity from their conditions and causes."
"The opponents of the atom are generally content to point to its contradictions and reject it as unfruitful for science. A rash form of caution, for without the atom science falls."
"We have repeatedly insisted. that the boundary between truth and error is not a rigid one, and we were able ultimately to demonstrate that what we generally call truth, namely a conceptual world coinciding with the external world, is merely the most expedient error."
Aside from brief military service, Vaihinger led a quite, academic life. His career was cut tragically short by his deteriorating eyesight.
Quotes from others about the person
"Vaihinger began to develop a system of philosophy he called the "philosophy of 'as if' ". In it he offered a system of thought in which God and reality might best be represented as paradigms. This was not to say that either God or reality was any less certain than anything else in the realm of man’s awareness, but only that all matters confronting man might best be regarded in hypothetical ways." - George Kelly, an American psychologist.
Hans Vaihinger married Elisabeth Alwine Schweigger. They had two children: Carl Richard Vaihinger and Erna Vaihinger.