Nicolai Hartmann, The Seminar Papers Manuscript Edition, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Joachim Fischer; Professor Dr. Gerald Hartung
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy ; Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284961833

The subject of our proposal are the Circel-Protokolle, which are a documentation of the philosophical courses, organized by Nicolai Hartmann between 1920 and 1950. The corpus of the texts has recently been incorporated to the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and represents an important document of the intellectual history of the 20th century. Nicolai Hartmann has invited from 1920 to 1950, in his times as Professor of Philosophy at the universities of Marburg, Cologne, Berlin and Göttingen his students, his scholars and colleagues to his circle of debate, to discuss several philosophical problems. There are four reasons to characterize these documents as a treasure of the history of german philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. A) Concerning the widespread field of philosophical topics, crossing the disciplines from epistemology to ethics, from philosophy of language to philosophy of religion, from philosophical anthropology to social philosophy. B) Concerning the dialogical form, which is almost unique in this time. C) Concerning the embedding of the debates in a changeful political and social situation (from the Kaiserreich across the Weimar Republic and the years of National Socialismus to the young federal Republic). D) And finally as a source of Hartmanns philosophy, because the debates were accompanying the formation of his main works, from the Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1921) to the Aesthetics (1950). The status of Hartmanns philosophy was in his times unquestioned. The Cirkel-Protokolle are a document of outstanding importance for 20th century philosophy. We are going for an annotated edition of the entire document as an open access publication and an book edition of selected parts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants