How to save Kant from Einstein: On the work of Ilse (Rosenthal-)Schneider

How to save Kant from Einstein: On the work of Ilse (Rosenthal-)Schneider

Julia Franke-Reddig

Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider is known as a German and later Australien physicist and philosopher, primarily through her correspondence with Albert Einstein. Less known is her early work on the space-time problem in Kantian philosophy against the background of Einsteins relativistic physics: At the beginning of the 20th century, some philosophers, such as Moritz Schlick, took the position that Kantian philosophy was no longer defensible in the face of relativistic physics. In his view all attempts to reconcile “apriorism” with Einstein's physics have failed (Moritz Schlick, „Space and time in Contemprorary Physics“). One of the best known arguments for this position is the empirically successful application of non-Euclidean geometries in modern physics.

In contrast, Schneider stated that evaluating Kantian philosophy as dependent on the question, whether physical space is Euklidean or not, means a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of Kant's concept of space: it would mean to lay something empirical into “pure perception”. She concluded: “If one does not interpret Kant in an arbitrary and deliberately misleading way, one can see the supposedly so sharp contradictions to the modern relativistic ideas fading away.“ (Ilse Schneider, „Das Raum-Zeit-Problem bei Kant und Einstein“)

In my talk, I will contrast the two positions and show that Schlick’s reading of Kant is too superficial. In contrast, Schneider’s work provides us the key to understand Kantian philosophy in connection with Einstein’s relativistic physics correctly.