Timothy Franz | Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (original) (raw)
Books by Timothy Franz
Maimon's 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking', 2024
The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon’s hard-won success after a life... more The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon’s hard-won success after a lifetime’s pursuit of philosophical wisdom, originally published in Berlin in 1794.
Timothy Franz presents its first English translation, with the goal of allowing the New Logic to be an object of further study, accessible to the philosophical tradition. Maimon’s work is the product of philosophical genius, and at its heart it is a serene account of reflection on thought that determines the principles of logic, on the one hand, and the principles of scientific cognition of the world, on the other, culminating in a thought-provoking metaphysics and philosophy of religion.
Maimon also intended the work to be the foundation of his ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. However, as a Jewish philosopher from Lithuania, he had learned his subject as a wanderer, and he struggled to be understood by his fellow Jews, by Germans, and by the philosophical community. Consequently, there is considerable tension between Maimon’s philosophical vision and his persona and presentation.
Franz translates the New Logic, the Letters of Philalethes to Aenesidemus, in which Maimon defends his views against the thinkers closest to him, two hostile reviews he vigorously annotated, and the letter to Kant introducing his idea for a critical philosophy of logic. Franz prefaces the work with a brief history of Maimon’s philosophical development and an introduction that attempts to reconcile Maimon’s presentation with his argument and to understand both of them together.
Conferences by Timothy Franz
Sept. 16-17, Heidelberg University
Papers by Timothy Franz
Revue Roumaine de Philosophie, 2024
What is Kant's justification of deductive reason at the most basic level? This article suggests r... more What is Kant's justification of deductive reason at the most basic level? This article suggests reading the 'Critique of Pure Reason' according to this question. Since Leibniz, Wolff, and their fellow rationalists tried to justify deductive reason via their metaphysical principles, it makes sense that Kant, in proposing a 'metaphysics of metaphysics', proffered a justification of it by other, more sophisticated means. Here, I attempt to show that Kant's answer to this question clarifies for us both the general significance and the fine details of the 'Critique of Pure Reason'. I focus specifically on Kant's 'Amphiboly', transcendental reflection, table of judgments, and philosophical approach to truth itself. I preface the investigation with detailed criticism of recent scholarship regarding Kant, the principles of logic, and the table of judgments.
Religions, 2023
By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this arti... more By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this article shows, first, how Maimon radically criticized his previous metaphysical systems while painstakingly reestablishing Kantian transcendental philosophy on a theory of reflexive cognition. Second, it shows how he employed this theory to ground innovative accounts of both formal and transcendental logic, including a reformulation of Kant’s schematism. Third, it shows how he employed it to ground his axiotic philosophy. Specifically, he argued that his reflexive theory of cognition constituted the necessary condition for the theories of Kantian morality, natural rights, works of art, and finally for a metaphysics according to which God creates the world ex nihilo. Maimon’s achievement is impressive and unique. It is a theory of the systematic unity of theoretical and axiotic philosophy that rivals other Enlightenment systems and, if anything, anticipates later works of Hans Wagner and Wern...
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
This is the first English translation of Maimon's important 'World-Soul'. The essay originally ap... more This is the first English translation of Maimon's important 'World-Soul'.
The essay originally appeared as Salomon Maimon, “Über die Weltseele
(Entelechia universi),” Berlinisches Journal für Aufklärung 8 (1790), pp.
47–92. A slightly modified version was also included in Maimon’s 'Philosophisches Wörterbuch, oder Beleuchtung der wichtigsten Gegenstände der Philosophie, in alphabetischer Ordnung', in vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Valerio Verra (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), pp. 203–32. A new version of the German appears in Maimon's 'Gesamtausgabe' vol 1, Edited by Ives Radrizzani and Caterina Marinelli. Stuttgart- Bad Cannstatt: fromann- holzboog, 2023.
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
Yearbook for the Maimonides Centre , 2019
This essayisanoutline of part of afuturecommentary on the philosophyofSolomon Maimon (?1753-1800)... more This essayisanoutline of part of afuturecommentary on the philosophyofSolomon Maimon (?1753-1800).¹ It covers his article entitled "Über die Weltseele (Entelechia Universi)," published in the BerlinischesJ ournal fürA ufklärung in July 1790,a nd how it directlyf ollows on from the problems of his largerw ork, the Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie,p ublished earlier that same year.F irst,o fc ourse, these problems must be specified. As amere outline, this essayworks towardsalarger commentary on Maimon'sp hilosophyf rom 1790 to 1800.S uch ac ommentary is necessary first of all because of the status quaestionis. From at least 1848, historians of philosophyh aveb een discussing Maimon'sw ork. However,e veng iven appreciative and enlighteningb ooks by Ernst Cassirer (1920), Richard Kroner (1921), Martial Gueroult(1929),S amuel Atlas (1964), SamuelH .B ergmann (1967), Frederick Beiser (1987), and Aachim Engstler (1990)(to mention onlys ome), it is nevertheless true that the seven volumes of his works which we currentlyh aver emaina nu nknown quantity.² The samem ay be said about the manyi mportant articles on the subject. One can read the relevant books and articles, understand and learn from them, and stillr easonablya sk: "What preciselyd oM aimon'sw orks argue, and whyd o they arguewhatever it is thatthey do?" At the sametime, we know that Kant,Fichte, and some of Maimon'sc ommentators held him in highr egard. Therefore, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports Manfred Frank'st antalising suggestion that "Maimon is the 'last great philosopher' about to be discovered."³
Papers Slated for Publication by Timothy Franz
Deduktion nach Kant. Strategien der Ableitung und Begründung bei Reinhold, Maimon und Ficht, 2024
When Maimon published the 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking' in 1794, it was wholly ove... more When Maimon published the 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking' in 1794, it was wholly overshadowed by Fichte’s 'Wissenschaftslehre'. Yet Maimon believed until his death that the 'New Logic' was a more perspicacious development of Kant's critical philosophy than Reinhold’s and Fichte’s works. This article attempts to justify Maimon’s belief by reconstructing the underlying argument of the 'New Logic'. Centrally, Maimon conducts a reflection on the principles of the validity of possible cognition. This article outlines the steps of this reflection. It shows how it serves as the common basis of formal logic, as the science of the formal validity of all possible cognition, and transcendental logic, as the science of all possible cognition of objects, while preserving the difference between the two. Then it shows in detail how Maimon deduces formal logic as a science from this argument. Maimon’s reflection on the principles of the validity of cognition may be preferred to Reinhold’s reflection on the conditions of representation because it more successfully establishes the logical structure of cognition comprising both philosophy and the special sciences. And it may be preferred to Fichte’s reflection on the Tathandlungen of the ‘I’ because it does not make similarly immediate ontological commitments. The article concludes that Maimon’s 'New Logic' not only differs radically from his previous works but advances Kant’s critical philosophy in a uniquely important way.
Book Reviews by Timothy Franz
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2021
The Lebensgeschichte of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800) is a "seminal" (p. xiii) and an exceedingly cu... more The Lebensgeschichte of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800) is a "seminal" (p. xiii) and an exceedingly curious text. It was originally published in 1792-1793, with the editorial assistance of novelist and aesthetician Karl Philipp Moritz. Until this edition was published in 2018, it had never been translated according to its original length or order. The original order consists of a first volume of 22 chapters, and a second of an introduction, 16 chapters, and a concluding allegory. The first volume narrates the events following the exile of Maimon's family from his grandfather's sizable lease of some villages near Mirz on the Polish-Lithuanian Nieman River. These events include Maimon leaving his young wife and child in an attempt to enter Berlin to be a philosopher, and his subsequent descent into a "nadir" of beggary. It is supplemented by a critique of religion in general, of the Jewish religion, and of secret societies. The second volume interrupts (or augments) the narration with ten chapters of reflection on the philosophy of Maimonides, to whom Maimon attributes his "intellectual rebirth" (p. 124). It resumes by describing three more vortex-like trips to, from, and around Berlin. Maimon also pays his respects to his friend and benefactor Moses Mendelssohn and catalogues his own recent assorted publications. Lastly, the events segue into an allegory of a philosophical "merry masquerade ball." Caricatures of ancient and modern philosophers cavort for the favor of a "Madame M.," the divine truth of metaphysics, who demurs to show herself so much that they question and progressively limit her reality until she becomes Kant's mere 'thing-in-itself' and until Maimon's "friend" (his stand-in) denies her existence entirely. This new complete translation is eminently readable and accurate. The reestablished order of presentation finally allows the English reader to meaningfully ask about the sense of Maimon's life and its episodes according to the text-and this is especially so, since the editors insist on the essential importance of the 10 chapters on the philosophy of Maimonides for this question, and of the introduction and conclusion to the second volume, which were hitherto mainly omitted.
Talks by Timothy Franz
This talk was given at the conference “Maimon, Cohen, Cassirer: Kantianism in its relationship to... more This talk was given at the conference “Maimon, Cohen, Cassirer: Kantianism in its relationship to Judaism,” in Potsdam, Germany, on Tuesday, December 17th, 2024. It is a draft of a future paper. I show that Maimon, contrary to scholarly consensus, engages seriously with Kant's doctrine of the unity of apperception. He does so mainly in the core chapters of the 'Essay on a New Logic' (1794), but also in 1797, in his last book. In these texts, he shows us how we might best understand the unity of apperception as a philosophical theory and in terms of its relation to formal and transcendental logic.
Talk given at the Bonn International Kant Conference, 2024
Talk given at Academia Românǎ's "Kant 300. Celebrating the 300th Anniversary of Kant’s Birth", 2024
Talk given at the 16th Biennial North American Fichte Society Conference, 2024
Talk given at NAKS Biennial, Mexico City, 2023
How does Kant’s False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures contribute to the Critique of Pure... more How does Kant’s False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures contribute to the Critique of Pure Reason? I find it has three levels of argument. First, Kant debunks the notion that formal validity is a divine logical necessitation which logic should pursue as an esoteric game. Second, Kant argues that the rules of deductive inference are not based on Leibnizian metaphysical principles but on spontaneous acts of judgment. Third, Kant argues that these rules of inference based on acts of judgment are the highest rules of inference: Leibnizians presuppose them when trying to derive them from a higher principle. However, this raises a critical problem. Separated from dogmatic metaphysics, inference is an independent but merely subjective syntax of logical thought. What justifies its objectivity? If we recognize how the Critique begins with this problem of logic, we can read it as a treatise on logic as much as on metaphysics.
Maimon's 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking', 2024
The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon’s hard-won success after a life... more The Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking was Salomon Maimon’s hard-won success after a lifetime’s pursuit of philosophical wisdom, originally published in Berlin in 1794.
Timothy Franz presents its first English translation, with the goal of allowing the New Logic to be an object of further study, accessible to the philosophical tradition. Maimon’s work is the product of philosophical genius, and at its heart it is a serene account of reflection on thought that determines the principles of logic, on the one hand, and the principles of scientific cognition of the world, on the other, culminating in a thought-provoking metaphysics and philosophy of religion.
Maimon also intended the work to be the foundation of his ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. However, as a Jewish philosopher from Lithuania, he had learned his subject as a wanderer, and he struggled to be understood by his fellow Jews, by Germans, and by the philosophical community. Consequently, there is considerable tension between Maimon’s philosophical vision and his persona and presentation.
Franz translates the New Logic, the Letters of Philalethes to Aenesidemus, in which Maimon defends his views against the thinkers closest to him, two hostile reviews he vigorously annotated, and the letter to Kant introducing his idea for a critical philosophy of logic. Franz prefaces the work with a brief history of Maimon’s philosophical development and an introduction that attempts to reconcile Maimon’s presentation with his argument and to understand both of them together.
Revue Roumaine de Philosophie, 2024
What is Kant's justification of deductive reason at the most basic level? This article suggests r... more What is Kant's justification of deductive reason at the most basic level? This article suggests reading the 'Critique of Pure Reason' according to this question. Since Leibniz, Wolff, and their fellow rationalists tried to justify deductive reason via their metaphysical principles, it makes sense that Kant, in proposing a 'metaphysics of metaphysics', proffered a justification of it by other, more sophisticated means. Here, I attempt to show that Kant's answer to this question clarifies for us both the general significance and the fine details of the 'Critique of Pure Reason'. I focus specifically on Kant's 'Amphiboly', transcendental reflection, table of judgments, and philosophical approach to truth itself. I preface the investigation with detailed criticism of recent scholarship regarding Kant, the principles of logic, and the table of judgments.
Religions, 2023
By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this arti... more By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this article shows, first, how Maimon radically criticized his previous metaphysical systems while painstakingly reestablishing Kantian transcendental philosophy on a theory of reflexive cognition. Second, it shows how he employed this theory to ground innovative accounts of both formal and transcendental logic, including a reformulation of Kant’s schematism. Third, it shows how he employed it to ground his axiotic philosophy. Specifically, he argued that his reflexive theory of cognition constituted the necessary condition for the theories of Kantian morality, natural rights, works of art, and finally for a metaphysics according to which God creates the world ex nihilo. Maimon’s achievement is impressive and unique. It is a theory of the systematic unity of theoretical and axiotic philosophy that rivals other Enlightenment systems and, if anything, anticipates later works of Hans Wagner and Wern...
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
This is the first English translation of Maimon's important 'World-Soul'. The essay originally ap... more This is the first English translation of Maimon's important 'World-Soul'.
The essay originally appeared as Salomon Maimon, “Über die Weltseele
(Entelechia universi),” Berlinisches Journal für Aufklärung 8 (1790), pp.
47–92. A slightly modified version was also included in Maimon’s 'Philosophisches Wörterbuch, oder Beleuchtung der wichtigsten Gegenstände der Philosophie, in alphabetischer Ordnung', in vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Valerio Verra (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), pp. 203–32. A new version of the German appears in Maimon's 'Gesamtausgabe' vol 1, Edited by Ives Radrizzani and Caterina Marinelli. Stuttgart- Bad Cannstatt: fromann- holzboog, 2023.
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 2020
Yearbook for the Maimonides Centre , 2019
This essayisanoutline of part of afuturecommentary on the philosophyofSolomon Maimon (?1753-1800)... more This essayisanoutline of part of afuturecommentary on the philosophyofSolomon Maimon (?1753-1800).¹ It covers his article entitled "Über die Weltseele (Entelechia Universi)," published in the BerlinischesJ ournal fürA ufklärung in July 1790,a nd how it directlyf ollows on from the problems of his largerw ork, the Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie,p ublished earlier that same year.F irst,o fc ourse, these problems must be specified. As amere outline, this essayworks towardsalarger commentary on Maimon'sp hilosophyf rom 1790 to 1800.S uch ac ommentary is necessary first of all because of the status quaestionis. From at least 1848, historians of philosophyh aveb een discussing Maimon'sw ork. However,e veng iven appreciative and enlighteningb ooks by Ernst Cassirer (1920), Richard Kroner (1921), Martial Gueroult(1929),S amuel Atlas (1964), SamuelH .B ergmann (1967), Frederick Beiser (1987), and Aachim Engstler (1990)(to mention onlys ome), it is nevertheless true that the seven volumes of his works which we currentlyh aver emaina nu nknown quantity.² The samem ay be said about the manyi mportant articles on the subject. One can read the relevant books and articles, understand and learn from them, and stillr easonablya sk: "What preciselyd oM aimon'sw orks argue, and whyd o they arguewhatever it is thatthey do?" At the sametime, we know that Kant,Fichte, and some of Maimon'sc ommentators held him in highr egard. Therefore, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports Manfred Frank'st antalising suggestion that "Maimon is the 'last great philosopher' about to be discovered."³
Deduktion nach Kant. Strategien der Ableitung und Begründung bei Reinhold, Maimon und Ficht, 2024
When Maimon published the 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking' in 1794, it was wholly ove... more When Maimon published the 'Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking' in 1794, it was wholly overshadowed by Fichte’s 'Wissenschaftslehre'. Yet Maimon believed until his death that the 'New Logic' was a more perspicacious development of Kant's critical philosophy than Reinhold’s and Fichte’s works. This article attempts to justify Maimon’s belief by reconstructing the underlying argument of the 'New Logic'. Centrally, Maimon conducts a reflection on the principles of the validity of possible cognition. This article outlines the steps of this reflection. It shows how it serves as the common basis of formal logic, as the science of the formal validity of all possible cognition, and transcendental logic, as the science of all possible cognition of objects, while preserving the difference between the two. Then it shows in detail how Maimon deduces formal logic as a science from this argument. Maimon’s reflection on the principles of the validity of cognition may be preferred to Reinhold’s reflection on the conditions of representation because it more successfully establishes the logical structure of cognition comprising both philosophy and the special sciences. And it may be preferred to Fichte’s reflection on the Tathandlungen of the ‘I’ because it does not make similarly immediate ontological commitments. The article concludes that Maimon’s 'New Logic' not only differs radically from his previous works but advances Kant’s critical philosophy in a uniquely important way.
European Journal of Jewish Studies, 2021
The Lebensgeschichte of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800) is a "seminal" (p. xiii) and an exceedingly cu... more The Lebensgeschichte of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800) is a "seminal" (p. xiii) and an exceedingly curious text. It was originally published in 1792-1793, with the editorial assistance of novelist and aesthetician Karl Philipp Moritz. Until this edition was published in 2018, it had never been translated according to its original length or order. The original order consists of a first volume of 22 chapters, and a second of an introduction, 16 chapters, and a concluding allegory. The first volume narrates the events following the exile of Maimon's family from his grandfather's sizable lease of some villages near Mirz on the Polish-Lithuanian Nieman River. These events include Maimon leaving his young wife and child in an attempt to enter Berlin to be a philosopher, and his subsequent descent into a "nadir" of beggary. It is supplemented by a critique of religion in general, of the Jewish religion, and of secret societies. The second volume interrupts (or augments) the narration with ten chapters of reflection on the philosophy of Maimonides, to whom Maimon attributes his "intellectual rebirth" (p. 124). It resumes by describing three more vortex-like trips to, from, and around Berlin. Maimon also pays his respects to his friend and benefactor Moses Mendelssohn and catalogues his own recent assorted publications. Lastly, the events segue into an allegory of a philosophical "merry masquerade ball." Caricatures of ancient and modern philosophers cavort for the favor of a "Madame M.," the divine truth of metaphysics, who demurs to show herself so much that they question and progressively limit her reality until she becomes Kant's mere 'thing-in-itself' and until Maimon's "friend" (his stand-in) denies her existence entirely. This new complete translation is eminently readable and accurate. The reestablished order of presentation finally allows the English reader to meaningfully ask about the sense of Maimon's life and its episodes according to the text-and this is especially so, since the editors insist on the essential importance of the 10 chapters on the philosophy of Maimonides for this question, and of the introduction and conclusion to the second volume, which were hitherto mainly omitted.
This talk was given at the conference “Maimon, Cohen, Cassirer: Kantianism in its relationship to... more This talk was given at the conference “Maimon, Cohen, Cassirer: Kantianism in its relationship to Judaism,” in Potsdam, Germany, on Tuesday, December 17th, 2024. It is a draft of a future paper. I show that Maimon, contrary to scholarly consensus, engages seriously with Kant's doctrine of the unity of apperception. He does so mainly in the core chapters of the 'Essay on a New Logic' (1794), but also in 1797, in his last book. In these texts, he shows us how we might best understand the unity of apperception as a philosophical theory and in terms of its relation to formal and transcendental logic.
Talk given at the Bonn International Kant Conference, 2024
Talk given at Academia Românǎ's "Kant 300. Celebrating the 300th Anniversary of Kant’s Birth", 2024
Talk given at the 16th Biennial North American Fichte Society Conference, 2024
Talk given at NAKS Biennial, Mexico City, 2023
How does Kant’s False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures contribute to the Critique of Pure... more How does Kant’s False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures contribute to the Critique of Pure Reason? I find it has three levels of argument. First, Kant debunks the notion that formal validity is a divine logical necessitation which logic should pursue as an esoteric game. Second, Kant argues that the rules of deductive inference are not based on Leibnizian metaphysical principles but on spontaneous acts of judgment. Third, Kant argues that these rules of inference based on acts of judgment are the highest rules of inference: Leibnizians presuppose them when trying to derive them from a higher principle. However, this raises a critical problem. Separated from dogmatic metaphysics, inference is an independent but merely subjective syntax of logical thought. What justifies its objectivity? If we recognize how the Critique begins with this problem of logic, we can read it as a treatise on logic as much as on metaphysics.