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The cover of Véronique Liard's study features a close-up of Arnold Böcklin's famous painting, The Isle of the Dead (1880-1886), of which five different versions exist (the one in question here is the third [1883], displayed in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin). Although Böcklin's masterpieces were produced in the 1880s, they and many of his
other works could well represent—as his Sacred Grove did for Thomas Mann—a world of values and ideas that can be summed up in one word: Kultur. As the title of her book suggests, Liard proposes to examine Jung's work in the light of his status as a Kulturphilosoph, and thus from an unusual angle (p. 15). If Kulturkritik, a term in perhaps more current use, concerns itself with the (mis)match between cultural praxis and human socio-economic relations, then Kulturphilosophie investigates the general conditions that give rise to culture(s), and it is in this richer, broader sense that Liard understands the concept. For she defines Kulturphilosophie as ‘a reflection on cultural objects’ that can ‘start from, say, a philosophical, psychological, historical, or sociological analysis, often in order to evolve a critique and to open up possible future perspectives or to formulate suggestions for improvement’ (p. 17). Although Jung himself frequently maintained that he was an empiricist (cf. pp. 18, 140, 271), and only reluctantly accepted the label of ‘philosopher’ in the ancient sense of ‘lover of wisdom’ (cf. p. 72), any reader of his works knows that his thought involves a number of methodological assumptions—as, when he was being frank, Jung himself was prepared to admit.
Liard sets out a persuasive argument for seeing Jung in his intellectual context, one formed and shaped by such contemporary thinkers as Georg Simmel (in his The Concept and the Tragedy of Culture [1911]), Freud (in Civilization and its Discontents [1930]) and Ernst Cassirer (in his Essay on Man [1944]) (pp. 26-27). For Jung, civilization is essentially founded