Natorp, Paul

NATORP, PAUL. - Philosopher, b. in Düsseldorf on 24 Jan. 1854, d. in Marburg on 17 Aug. 1924, professor of philosophy at that University from 1885.

He belongs to the Marburg school and follows essentially the direction of Hermann Cohen (v.). A disciple of F. A. Lange (v.), he develops in the purest and most coherent form the logistic interpretation of Kant. With the concept of the thing in itself resolutely excluded, a pure idealism is established. More original is perhaps his social pedagogy, which in its sentimental motifs recalls Schleiermacher rather than Kant, to whom the latter adheres more strictly in the Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der Humanität (Freiburg 1894). His studies in ancient philosophy are of notable importance. But his Platos Ideenlehre (Leipzig 1903) maintains the singular thesis that the "ideas" are methods and not things; indeed positions of thought and not "objects" in themselves. In substance Plato is understood or misunderstood through Kant.

Other principal works: Descartes Erkenntnistheorie (Freiburg in Br. 1882); Forschungen zur Gesch. des Erkenntnisproblems im Altertum (ibid. 1884); Pestalozzis Ideen über Arbeiterbildung und soziale Frage (ibid. 1894); Platos Staat und die Idee der Sozialpädagogik (ibid. 1895); Herbart, Pestalozzi und die heutigen Aufgaben der Erziehungslehre (Stuttgart 1899); Sozialpädagogik (ibid. 1899, 3rd ed. 1909); Logik (Marburg 1904); Der Idealismus Pestalozzis (Leipzig 1919); Autobiography in Die deutsche Philos. d. Gegenwart in Selbstdarst., I (Leipzig 1921).

Andrea Ferro