This book is the product of a renewed interest in neo-Kantianism in the Anglophone world, an interest that grew out of the long overdue realization that one of the most influential philosophical movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been badly neglected. This interest has been evident in four recent anthologies: The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science, edited by Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordmann (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Back to Kant: Neo-Kantianism and its Relevance Today, edited by Andrew Chignell, Terence Irwin and Thomas Teufel (The Philosophical Forum, Summer 2008); Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Rudolf Makkreel and Sebastian Luft (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010); and, last but not least, The Impact of Idealism: The Legacy of Post-Kantian German Thought, eds Nicholas Boyle, Liz Disley and Ian Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4 vols. This interest has been the motivation for three academic conferences: the first one at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT in November 2000; another at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in September 2007; and the final one in Cambridge, England, in May 2008. I was fortunate enough to attend the conferences at MIT and Cornell; but because of family circumstances, I had to cancel plans to attend that in Cambridge, England. The stimulus I received from these conferences, either in attending or helping to plan them, was the main source of the present book.
The aim of this book, though intended as an introduction, is ambitious: to provide an account of the main ideas of the leading neo-Kantians from the 1790s to 1880s, the period before the institutionalization of the movement in the late 19th century. My subject is therefore the neo-Kantians before neo-Kantianism, the chief figures of the movement before its formation and division into distinct “schools”. This is a study in the origins of neo-Kantianism, how and why it arose as a reaction against speculative idealism in the late 18th century, and as a response to the great cultural crises of the mid-19th century.
My approach to this subject is old-fashioned: I focus on the main writings of major authors, attempting to understand their chief ideas in historical context. I have not attempted to write an institutional history of the neo-Kantian schools, or to trace the social and political factors behind the rise of neo-Kantianism as a whole. While I find all these alternative approaches admirable, they should not replace the more basic knowledge of the philosophy of the neo-Kantians. We are far from such a basic knowledge, especially in the Anglophone world. The leading neo-Kantians and their main writings are still largely untreated in English. My main focus has therefore been upon them, and I have given philosophical content priority over social and political context.
Though my chief focus has been content, I do not ignore context. Since my main theme has been the origins and genesis of neo-Kantianism, it has been necessary to study the intellectual development of the major neo-Kantians. It is only through the study of the intellectual development of particular figures that we gain insight into the origins of neo-Kantianism, especially the goals and motivations behind the movement.
The study of neo-Kantianism is still in its infancy. It has taken two great strides forward in the work of Klaus Christian Köhnke, Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986) and Ulrich Sieg, Aufstieg und Niedergang des Marburger Neukantianismus (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994). Yet what Köhnke has done so brilliantly for the origins of the movement should be done for its establishment and fall; and what Sieg has done so well for the Marburg school should be done for the Southwestern and Göttingen schools. Not much will be known about neo-Kantianism unless and until we can recover the correspondence of its many participants. Though much has been destroyed, some has been preserved, though it lies mouldering in archives. Fortunately, we have much of the correspondence of the early neo-Kantians (Fries, Herbart and Beneke). It is a sad truth, however, that the only published correspondence we have of the later neo-Kantians is that of Hermann Cohen, which is lamentably brief because of the destruction of the Cohen family archives. Let me declare my hope here that future German scholars will make up for this terrible deficiency in the preservation of their cultural inheritance.
My debts to previous scholars are evident throughout, in the various footnotes in the fourteen chapters. I have been especially indebted to the work of Klaus Christian Köhnke, who has done more than anyone else to place neo-Kantian scholarship on a sound footing. I have honoured Köhnke, however, more by my many disagreements with him, which appear in the many footnotes in various chapters.
I have also great debts to many colleagues with whom, over the years, I have discussed various aspects of neo-Kantianism: Michael Friedman, Paul Guyer, Paul Franks, Gideon Freudenthal, Reinier Munk, Ingo Farin, Sebastian Luft, Michael Zank and Daniel Dahlstrom. In more ways than I can count or recall, their thinking about neo-Kantianism has been a major stimulus for this book.
Just as I was putting the finishing touches on this manuscript, I received the fruits of the Cambridge conference: The Impact of Idealism: The Legacy of Post-Kantian German Thought, eds Nicholas Boyle, Liz Disley and Ian Cooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4 vols. These volumes have a much wider scope than the present book, which is confined to neo-Kantianism in the more narrow scholastic sense. The present book can be considered an addendum or supplement to these splendid volumes.
Syracuse, New York
December 2013