Emil Lederer · 1911
Emil Lederer’s short review introduces the cultural-philosophical journal Logos, edited by Georg Mehlis, covering the three issues of its first volume and the first issue of its second. Drawing explicitly on the journal’s introductory statement, Lederer presents its program, defines its intellectual boundaries, and closes with a selection of contributions. His account foregrounds a project of preparing systematic philosophy through the philosophical interpretation of diverse cultural domains.
Es gilt, die ganze Fülle der in der Kultur vorhandenen und treibenden Motive in das philosophische Bewußtsein zu erheben.
English translation: The task is to raise into philosophical consciousness the whole abundance of the motives present and at work in culture.
Science, art, social ethics, law, political and national life, and religion supply the material for this undertaking. The conceptual movement is from cultural plurality toward philosophical integration: specialized inquiry is to provide the groundwork for a system, rather than remain an accumulation of independent findings. The journal’s internationalism follows a parallel pattern. It recognizes distinct national cultures while seeking a supranational synthesis of their philosophical results, distancing itself from both cosmopolitanism and narrow nationalism.
The name Logos expresses the premise that makes such integration possible:
Der Name Logos will ferner darauf hindeuten, daß die Philosophie der Kultur überall die Vernunft in der Kultur suchen müsse; denn nur die Vernunft gibt dem Kulturleben Sinn und Bedeutung.
English translation: The name Logos is further meant to indicate that the philosophy of culture must everywhere seek out the reason within culture; for only reason gives sense and significance to cultural life.
Reason is thus presented as the condition of cultural meaning and of the hope that detailed philosophical work can contribute to a system. Yet this systematic ambition does not entail allegiance to a particular doctrine:
Der Logos wird endlich, wie sich schon aus dem bisherigen ergibt, undogmatisch sein, keine bestimmte philosophische Richtung, noch weniger eine Schule vertreten.
English translation: The Logos will finally, as already follows from what has been said, be undogmatic; it will represent no particular philosophical tendency, still less a school.
Lederer’s exposition makes clear that openness still has methodological limits. Mere materials and exclusively specialist investigations are excluded, as are histories of philosophy confined to historical description and psychologies restricted to establishing facts. Breadth of subject matter must therefore be joined to philosophical interpretation. Philosophy of history has a complementary role: it situates modern phenomena within historical development and promotes mutual understanding among cultural traditions.
The closing survey demonstrates this range through essays by Rickert and Boutroux on philosophy and science, Simmel on death and the tragedy of culture, Croce on value judgments, Troeltsch on Christianity, Windelband on transcendental idealism, and Struve on economic thought, alongside discussions of Bergson, mysticism, and philosophical systems. Lederer notes reviews and shorter notices without assessing the individual contributions. The review’s significance lies in its compact articulation of a program: culturally comprehensive and internationally oriented philosophy, committed to rational integration while remaining open across schools.
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