THE RECEPTION AND ACTUALITY OF CARL STUMPF. AN INTRODUCTION

DENIS FISETTE (UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL)

Abstract. This study aims to account for the reception of the philosophy of Carl Stumpf since the turn of the twenty-first century and to emphasize the actuality of some of the aspects of his philosophy. The present text is subdivided into several sec- tions, each corresponding to one of the main topics discussed in the recent literature on the work of Stumpf. In the first section, I try to show, using his classification of sciences, that Stumpf’s empirical work is driven by a unitary philosophical program. I then examine the ramifications of this program in several areas of philosophy that have been the subject of recent commentaries and publications. I begin with the com- mentaries on the recent publication of Stumpf’s thesis on mathematical axioms, which stress Stumpf’s contribution to the philosophy of mathematics and to theory of knowledge, and more specifically to the debate on logical psychologism that Frege and Husserl will address a few years later. I conclude this section by examining the second of two major themes in the work of Stumpf that have been the subject of sev- eral recent studies, namely, on the one hand, logic and the nature of states of affairs and, on the other hand, Stumpf’s contribution to the mind-body problem and to the topic of relations. The third section is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to briefly account for the vast literature on Stumpf’s contribution to psychology under- stood broadly enough as to include his work on the psychology of sound, Gestalt psy- chology, animal psychology and the psychology of child development. I provide, in the second part of this section, a summary of his studies in the area of aesthetics and musicology in general, i.e. his contribution to the history of music and its origins, to ethnomusicology, and to acoustics. Although this study does not aim at being exhaus- tive, it provides an overview of the important aspects of Stumpf’s contribution to phi- losophy.

The work of Carl Stumpf has never aroused as much interest as it has since the turn of the twenty-first century. Over the past fifteen years, in addition to the publication of numerous translations and reprints of Stumpf’s writings, several articles and books have been devoted to examining and evaluating different aspects of his work. The recent re- 12 Denis Fisette ception of Stumpf’s work is very diversified and it reflects the inter- disciplinary nature of his research and his many accomplishments at an academic as well as an institutional level. Indeed, Stumpf is con- sidered as one of the main architects of what has been called the “new psychology”, and he is also regarded as the founder of the Institute of Psychology in Berlin, which is at the root of Gestalt psychology. It is within this institute that many of Stumpf’s students received their edu- cation, the best known being Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin along with the author of The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil. In 1900, Stumpf created the phonograph Archives on the basis of phonograph recordings of a Siamese troops that were then in Ber- lin, and which are now under the protection of the UNESCO. (A. Simon, 2000) We owe him many studies in the general field of musi- cology and in particular, in history of music, acoustics, and ethnomu- sicology, where he is regarded as a precursor to twentieth century con- tributions to the fields. Several of these studies were collected in the journal Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, which he himself founded in 1898, and in the monumental work that he published with his assistant E.M. von Hornbostel in 1923 under the title Sammel- bände für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft.

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As a student of Franz Brentano and Hermann Lotze, the supervisor of Husserl’s habilitation thesis, a correspondent of Frege and of William James, Stumpf is first and foremost a philosopher. He may have pub- lished more extensively in the field of empirical sciences than in that of philosophy proper, but his research and publications were neverthe- less undoubtedly driven by a unitary philosophical project. His phi- losophical work is rich and diversified, as shown by the recent publi- cation of some of his important studies and many articles and books on various aspects of his philosophical work, which I will briefly comment in this study. In a recently published intellectual biography of Stumpf, H. Sprung (2006) shows that Stumpf had an outstanding academic career thanks in part to the support from Lotze, Brentano and later Dilthey. At the age of 22, he held a position in Göttingen along with Lotze and then held five important chairs of philosophy at Würzburg, Prague, Halle, Munich and Berlin. Stumpf had therefore taught philosophy for over fifty years and the lecture notes and sylla-