Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism

1. Introduction

The Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism designates a current of late 19th‑ and early 20th‑century German philosophy that reinterpreted Immanuel Kant in order to clarify the foundations of the exact sciences and, increasingly, modern culture. Centered at the University of Marburg, it is typically associated with Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer, along with a broader circle of students, interlocutors, and critics.

Where earlier Neo-Kantians often framed Kant as a psychologist of experience or a defender of traditional metaphysics, the Marburg philosophers treated Kant primarily as a theorist of scientific objectivity. They emphasized a transcendental method that investigates the conditions under which knowledge-claims in mathematics, physics, and other disciplines can be valid. This method, in their reading, analyzes the logic of pure knowledge rather than inner mental states.

A distinctive feature of the School is its shift from substance-based to functional and relational conceptions of objects. Instead of viewing objects as ready-made things, Marburg thinkers described them as the systematically constituted correlates of conceptual rules, laws, and methods. This view informed their broader program of critical idealism, which aimed to preserve objectivity without endorsing metaphysical realism or psychologism.

Over time, the Marburg program expanded from the natural sciences to domains such as ethics, law, religion, and art, culminating in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. Historians usually treat the School as a major node in the broader Neo-Kantian movement and as a precursor to developments in philosophy of science, structuralism, and theories of culture.

The following sections outline its temporal boundaries, historical context, basic foundations, internal evolution, and later influence, while presenting major interpretations and controversies in an even-handed way.

2. Chronological Boundaries and Periodization

Scholars generally date the Marburg School from the early 1870s to the early 1930s, though there is debate about precise boundaries and internal phases.

2.1 Conventional Dating

A widely used periodization links the School’s emergence to Hermann Cohen’s appointment at Marburg (1869) and the first edition of Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1871). Its effective end is often associated with the political and institutional rupture of 1933, when National Socialism dismantled the conditions for Jewish and liberal scholars at German universities and ended the Marburg seminar’s role as a living center.

2.2 Internal Phases

Most historical accounts distinguish at least three phases:

• Formative phase (1870–1895): Establishment of the Marburg reading of Kant and of the seminar; focus on criticizing psychologism and empiricism.
• Classical systematization (1895–1914): Production of major treatises on logic, science, and ethics; Cassirer’s early works; intense engagement with rival currents.
• Late Marburg and transition (1914–1933): World War I and Weimar transformations; shift toward culture and symbolism; increasing fragmentation and emigration.

Some scholars propose finer-grained periodizations, for example treating Cassirer’s Philosophie der symbolischen Formen as inaugurating a “post-Marburg” phase, or identifying a separate “ethical‑religious turn” in Cohen’s later writings. Others question how far the “School” remained unified after Cohen’s death, suggesting that the label designates an evolving tradition rather than a stable movement.

3. Historical Context: Empire, Science, and Universities

The Marburg School arose in the German Empire after 1871, when rapid industrialization, political consolidation, and educational expansion reshaped intellectual life.

3.1 Imperial Politics and Society

The newly unified Reich combined nationalist aspirations with internal conflicts such as the Kulturkampf, socialist agitation, and growing antisemitism. Marburg philosophers taught and wrote within an academic culture that was broadly patriotic and secular, yet often socially conservative. Several of the School’s key figures were of Jewish background, navigating both opportunities created by university expansion and constraints imposed by discriminatory attitudes.

3.2 Scientific and Technological Environment

The period was marked by dramatic advances in:

• Mathematics (rigorous analysis, set theory, non-Euclidean geometry)
• Physics and chemistry (thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, early relativity and quantum ideas)
• Life and human sciences (experimental psychology, sociology, historical philology)

Positivism and scientific naturalism gained influence, while older metaphysical systems appeared increasingly obsolete. Marburg Neo-Kantians interpreted these developments as requiring a refined account of how scientific objectivity is possible without naively identifying knowledge with raw sense data or reducing it to psychological facts.

3.3 Universities and Academic Competition

German universities during the Wilhelmine and early Weimar periods became research-oriented institutions with specialized faculties and seminar systems. Philosophy competed with:

• Neo-Hegelianism and speculative idealism
• Various forms of materialism and monism
• Emerging phenomenology
• Early mathematical logic and analytic trends

Within this environment, the University of Marburg developed into a recognized center for Neo-Kantian “critical idealism,” partly due to the seminar model that trained students in close textual work and systematic theorizing. The School’s emphasis on scientific rigor and methodological reflection reflected—and responded to—the prestige and authority of the natural sciences within the imperial university system.

4. The Zeitgeist of Late 19th-Century Rationalism

Marburg Neo-Kantianism is often characterized as part of a broader late 19th‑century rationalist reaction to both speculative metaphysics and materialist naturalism.

4.1 Rationalism after Hegel

After the decline of classical German Idealism, many philosophers sought a non-metaphysical basis for reason’s authority. The “back to Kant” movement framed Kant as a model of critical reflection, while distancing itself from Hegelian system-building. Marburg thinkers adopted this stance but reinterpreted Kant in terms of the contemporary sciences.

They argued that reason’s authority is expressed in the exact sciences’ capacity for systematic, law‑governed explanation, rather than in an all-encompassing metaphysical narrative. This reorientation contributed to what historians describe as a “scientific turn” in philosophy.

4.2 Anti-Psychologism and Formal Methods

The period witnessed intense debates over whether logic and mathematics could be reduced to empirical psychology. Marburg authors aligned with a general anti-psychologistic Zeitgeist, shared in different ways by Frege, Husserl, and others. They emphasized formal and normative aspects of thought, arguing that logical laws prescribe how one ought to think if one is to claim objective validity.

This orientation mirrored broader cultural trends: the rise of formal legal codes, bureaucratic administration, and standardized methods in science and education.

4.3 Historicism and Cultural Fragmentation

Simultaneously, historicism—the view that all concepts and values are historically conditioned—gained strength in the human sciences. Many intellectuals worried about the fragmentation of culture into specialized disciplines and competing value-spheres.

Marburg philosophers shared these concerns but responded by positing a regulative ideal of rational unity: science, ethics, law, and art were to be seen as distinct yet related expressions of an underlying critical rationality. Their work thus reflects a characteristic tension of the age between recognition of historical contingency and commitment to universal norms.

5. Foundations of Marburg Neo-Kantianism

The foundational commitments of the Marburg School concern how to read Kant, how to conceive experience, and how to ground objectivity.

5.1 Reinterpretation of Kant

Marburg authors proposed a distinct “scientific” reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Instead of treating Kant’s categories as fixed psychological structures or metaphysical entities, they understood them as rules of synthesis articulated in and through modern science.

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“The object of experience is not given but is first produced through the laws of thought.”
— Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung

This line is often cited (in various formulations) as emblematic of the School’s approach, though its precise wording and emphasis are debated.

5.2 Transcendental Method

Central to their foundation is the transcendental method, understood as:

• Starting from actual, successful scientific knowledge
• Asking what conditions must hold for such knowledge to be possible
• Analyzing these conditions as normative structures of thought, not as psychological facts

Marburg philosophers insisted that such conditions are historically refined and improved, yet retain a claim to universality as regulative ideals.

5.3 Experience and the Object of Knowledge

They reconceived experience as a dynamic process of theoretical construction, rather than as a passive reception of sense data. The object of knowledge is the systematically organized outcome of this process, constituted by conceptual and mathematical relations.

This view underpins their rejection of:

• Thing‑in‑itself realism, which posits an unknowable substrate behind appearances
• Empiricist foundationalism, which treats raw sensations as epistemic bedrock

Instead, they adopt a form of critical idealism: reality-for-knowledge is inseparable from the functions and methods by which it is investigated.

5.4 Anti-Psychologism and Logic

Finally, the School’s foundations include a stringent anti-psychologism. Logical and mathematical principles are treated as conditions of objectivity, not as generalizations about human cognition. This stance differentiates Marburg Neo-Kantianism from contemporaneous psychological interpretations of Kant and aligns it with emerging formal logic, while preserving its own transcendental vocabulary.

6. Central Philosophical Problems and Debates

From its inception, the Marburg School concentrated on specific philosophical problems shaped by contemporary science and academic disputes.

6.1 Foundations of Scientific Knowledge

A primary concern was explaining how exact science can yield necessary and universally valid knowledge despite historical change. Marburg thinkers argued that:

• Scientific laws express a priori structures of thought, yet
• These structures are historically developed and refined

Proponents described this as a “dynamic a priori,” while critics questioned whether such a notion could sustain genuine necessity.

6.2 Status of Concepts and Rejection of Psychologism

The question of what concepts are—mental images, abstract generalizations, or something else—was central. Marburg philosophers claimed that concepts are functions: rules that organize phenomena by relating them in lawful ways.

They opposed psychologism, contending that:

• Logical norms are independent of empirical psychology
• The validity of a proof or law does not depend on how humans in fact think

Alternative views (e.g., from empirical psychologists or some positivists) held that any account of concepts must ultimately rest on observable mental processes.

6.3 Objectivity and the Nature of the Object

The School’s conception of the object of knowledge as constituted by theoretical frameworks sparked debates with both realists and idealists. Marburg authors insisted that:

• Objects are not pre‑given substances
• Objectivity arises from the coherence and systematicity of scientific laws

Critics from realist camps maintained that this underplays the independence of the world, while some idealists accused the Marburgians of reducing reality to scientific theory.

6.4 Science, Ethics, and Culture

Another cluster of problems concerned the relationship between science, values, and culture. Marburg philosophers sought to:

• Extend the transcendental method from natural science to ethics, law, and art
• Preserve a unified conception of rational culture

Here, they engaged in sustained debates with the Baden School, which emphasized value-theory and the autonomy of cultural sciences, and with historicists who stressed the relativity of norms. The extent to which Marburg thought can reconcile universality with historicity remains a central topic of interpretation.

7. Internal Chronology and Generational Shifts

The development of the Marburg School is often analyzed in terms of generations and shifting emphases, rather than as a homogeneous tradition.

7.1 Formative Generation (c. 1870–1895)

The founding phase centers on Hermann Cohen, influenced by earlier figures such as Friedrich Albert Lange and Adolf Trendelenburg. Cohen’s early works, especially Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, establish the School’s core focus on the exact sciences and the critique of psychologism. Paul Natorp joins Marburg and contributes to consolidating the seminar as a training ground.

7.2 Classical Systematizing Generation (c. 1895–1914)

During this phase, Cohen and Natorp elaborate comprehensive systems:

• Cohen’s Logik der reinen Erkenntnis and ethical writings
• Natorp’s works on logic, epistemology, and pedagogy

Ernst Cassirer emerges as a key figure, extending Marburg themes into the history of science, mathematics, and early philosophy of culture. The School engages intensively with rival Neo-Kantians (e.g., Heinrich Rickert) and with early phenomenology and formal logic.

7.3 Transitional and Late Generation (c. 1914–1933)

World War I and its aftermath lead to significant shifts:

• Cohen’s death (1918) and Natorp’s declining influence mark the end of the founding leadership.
• Cassirer becomes the most prominent representative, developing the philosophy of symbolic forms, which some interpret as both a continuation and transformation of Marburg principles.
• Younger scholars (e.g., Nicolai Hartmann, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Richard Hönigswald) engage with Marburg ideas while also moving beyond them toward existential, phenomenological, or realist positions.

Some historians emphasize continuity across these phases, while others stress a significant transformation—especially in Cassirer’s later work—leading to debates about whether to speak of a single “Marburg School” or of multiple, partially divergent strands.

8. Major Figures and their Interrelations

The Marburg School is often defined through the interactions among its leading figures, their students, and their interlocutors.

8.1 Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp

Hermann Cohen is commonly regarded as the School’s founder. His seminars and writings set the tone for rigorous Kant interpretation and the focus on scientific objectivity. Paul Natorp, initially a student of Cohen, became a close collaborator and co-architect of the School’s system. Their relationship combined mutual reinforcement with occasional doctrinal differences, for instance regarding the role of psychology and pedagogy.

8.2 Ernst Cassirer and the Second Generation

Ernst Cassirer, a student of both Cohen and Natorp, represents the second generation’s most influential figure. His early works on the history and philosophy of science closely follow Marburg themes, while Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff and later Philosophie der symbolischen Formen push the School toward a broader philosophy of culture. Interpretations vary on whether Cassirer remains a “Marburg Neo-Kantian” in his mature work or becomes an independent thinker with Marburg roots.

8.3 Wider Circle and Interlocutors

Other thinkers are linked to the School through study, collaboration, or critical dialogue:

• Nicolai Hartmann: Initially influenced by Marburg idealism, later moved toward critical realism, thereby illustrating a trajectory from within to beyond the School.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer: Studied with Natorp; later hermeneutics reflects both proximity to and distance from Neo-Kantian themes.
• Heinrich Scholz: A logician who engaged with Marburg positions on logic and science.
• Heinrich Rickert (Baden School) and Moritz Schlick (logical empiricism) served as important external interlocutors, shaping and challenging Marburg views.

These interrelations illustrate how the School functioned as both a tightly knit seminar community and a node in broader philosophical networks.

9. The Marburg Conception of Science and Objectivity

Marburg Neo-Kantians made the exact sciences the primary model for understanding knowledge and objectivity.

9.1 Science as a Constructive Activity

They viewed scientific inquiry as an active, constructive process in which concepts, mathematical structures, and laws generate the very objects they investigate. Rather than conceiving measurement and experiment as merely recording pre‑given facts, they argued that such practices presuppose a prior logical organization of phenomena.

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“Nature is the system of laws of our knowledge.”
— Paraphrase of a central Marburg thesis, echoing Kant

This emphasis aligns with their notion of concepts as functions: tools that relate quantities, events, or properties in a systematic way.

9.2 Objectivity without Metaphysical Realism

For the Marburg School, objectivity does not require positing a realm of things‑in‑themselves independent of all cognition. Instead:

• Objectivity is secured by the intersubjective validity and systematic coherence of scientific theories.
• Scientific progress is seen as an open-ended approach toward a regulative ideal of complete systematization, not as a gradual unveiling of a fixed metaphysical reality.

Critics argued that this conception either collapses into a form of idealism that denies genuine independence of the world, or smuggles in realism under the guise of regulative ideals. Marburg authors responded by stressing the distinction between conditions of possible experience and speculative claims about things‑in‑themselves.

9.3 Functional Concepts and the Shift in Science

Ernst Cassirer highlighted a historical transition from substance concepts to functional concepts:

On this view, modern physics no longer seeks underlying “stuff” but relational structures captured in equations. Marburg philosophers interpreted this shift as confirmation of their thesis that mathematics and theory play a constitutive role in objectivity.

9.4 Historicity and Scientific Change

While affirming the historical development of science, the School maintained that scientific revolutions (e.g., from Newtonian mechanics to relativity) exhibit a form of rational continuity: new theories refine and reorganize the conceptual functions that underlie experience. This stance differs from later views that emphasize discontinuity or paradigm incommensurability, and it remains a point of ongoing interpretation and critique.

10. Ethics, Law, and the Unity of Culture

Beyond science, Marburg Neo-Kantians sought to show how ethics and law fit into a unified conception of rational culture.

10.1 Extension of the Transcendental Method

They extended the transcendental method from theoretical reason to practical reason, asking:

• What conditions must be presupposed for moral judgments to claim validity?
• How can legal and political norms be understood as rational rather than merely conventional?

The answer, in their view, lies in a shared structure of normativity that underlies both scientific and ethical discourse.

10.2 Ethics as a Realm of Pure Norms

Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp elaborated a Kant‑inspired ethics emphasizing:

• The autonomy of the moral law
• The ideal of an ethical community grounded in mutual respect
• The progressive realization of justice as a regulative ideal

Cohen, in particular, linked ethics to notions of social democracy and legal reform, interpreting the state and law as historical means for approximating rational justice. Critics have questioned whether this linkage adequately accounts for power, conflict, and non‑rational aspects of social life.

10.3 Law and the State

In legal philosophy, Marburg thinkers argued that:

• Law embodies rational norms that structure social interaction
• Positive legal systems are historically contingent but oriented toward an ideal of right (Recht)

They thus positioned themselves between legal positivism, which focuses on enacted statutes, and natural law theories, which posit timeless moral truths. Their approach has been interpreted as a form of critical jurisprudence, seeking to evaluate law by reference to transcendental conditions of normative validity.

10.4 Unity of Culture

The School aimed to reconcile the apparent fragmentation of modern culture into specialized spheres:

They posited an underlying unity of culture grounded in reason’s capacity to legislate norms in different domains. While some commentators regard this as an overly rationalistic idealization, others see it as an important attempt to articulate a non-theological basis for cultural cohesion.

11. Marburg Neo-Kantianism and Religion

Marburg philosophers approached religion through the lens of critical philosophy, seeking neither to endorse traditional dogma nor to dismiss religion as mere superstition.

11.1 Autonomy of Philosophy from Theology

They insisted on the autonomy of reason: philosophy should not derive its principles from revealed doctrine. Religious beliefs and institutions were treated as historical-cultural phenomena subject to rational critique. This stance distinguished them from confessional philosophies that grounded epistemology or ethics in theological premises.

11.2 Ethical Interpretation of Religion

Hermann Cohen’s later works advanced an influential ethical reading of Judaism and of monotheistic religion more broadly. He argued that:

• Biblical and rabbinic traditions articulate ideals of justice, love, and community
• These ideals can be translated into a philosophical ethics compatible with Kantian principles

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“The task of religion is the establishment of the ethical community.”
— Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums

Supporters see this as a pioneering attempt to integrate Jewish thought with modern philosophy; critics note tensions between the universalism of Kantian ethics and the particularism of specific religious traditions.

11.3 Religion as Symbolic Form

Ernst Cassirer, in the context of his philosophy of symbolic forms, treated religion as one among several symbolic frameworks—alongside language, myth, art, and science—through which humans constitute reality. For him:

• Religious symbols express fundamental orientations toward the world (e.g., dependence, transcendence)
• These orientations are not reducible to dogmatic propositions but reveal structures of meaning

Interpretations differ on whether this view preserves any distinct truth-claim for religion or subsumes it under a general theory of culture.

11.4 Critiques and Alternative Views

Contemporaries from theological and existentialist perspectives sometimes criticized Marburg Neo-Kantianism for:

• Over-intellectualizing religion and neglecting lived faith or revelation
• Reducing religion to ethical or symbolic functions

Conversely, secular critics argued that retaining religious vocabulary risks blurring the boundary between philosophy and theology. The School’s position thus occupies a middle ground in debates about religion’s role in modern, rational culture.

12. Relations to Other Movements: Baden School, Phenomenology, and Positivism

The Marburg School developed in constant dialogue—sometimes cooperative, often polemical—with other philosophical currents.

12.1 Baden (Southwest) School of Neo-Kantianism

The Baden School (Windelband, Rickert, and others) shared the Neo-Kantian banner but diverged in focus:

Marburg thinkers emphasized the continuity of method across sciences, while Baden authors stressed the methodological and value‑related differences between natural and cultural inquiry. Debates concerned whether values could be given a transcendental grounding analogous to that of scientific knowledge.

12.2 Phenomenology

With Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, Marburg Neo-Kantianism shared anti-psychologism and interest in the foundations of logic and mathematics. However:

• Phenomenology focused on intentional consciousness and eidetic description.
• Marburg philosophy emphasized conceptual functions and the structure of scientific theories.

Some phenomenologists criticized Marburg thinkers for neglecting lived experience, while Marburg authors worried that phenomenology risked sliding back into a form of psychology or metaphysics of consciousness. Later figures (e.g., Cassirer, Hartmann, Gadamer) engaged in more nuanced cross-fertilization between the two traditions.

12.3 Positivism and Scientific Naturalism

Marburg Neo-Kantians shared positivism’s respect for science but rejected:

• The reduction of knowledge to sense data and inductive generalization
• The view that metaphysical neutrality required abandoning all talk of the a priori

Positivists and early logical empiricists (e.g., Moritz Schlick) often argued that Marburg’s transcendental method smuggled in unverifiable assumptions. Marburg proponents responded that even empiricist reconstructions of science presuppose logical and methodological norms that cannot themselves be justified empirically.

These interactions contributed to the shaping of 20th‑century philosophy of science, with some later scholars reading logical empiricism as both a successor to and critic of Marburg Neo-Kantianism.

13. Landmark Texts and Their Reception

Several works are widely regarded as landmarks for the Marburg School and for Neo-Kantianism more broadly.

13.1 Foundational Treatises

Key texts include:

13.2 Contemporary Reception

Contemporary reactions were mixed:

• Many academic philosophers in Germany regarded these works as exemplary expressions of rigorous, scientifically informed philosophy.
• Critics from phenomenology, Lebensphilosophie, and emerging existentialism saw them as overly abstract and detached from lived experience.
• Some scientists found the analyses illuminating, while others considered them remote from actual research practice.

13.3 Later Influence and Reassessment

In the mid‑20th century, Marburg texts were sometimes overshadowed by logical empiricism and phenomenology. However, later scholarship has re-evaluated them:

• Historians of philosophy of science have highlighted their anticipations of structural realism and theory‑ladenness of observation.
• Cassirer’s Philosophie der symbolischen Formen has been rediscovered in cultural theory, semiotics, and anthropology.
• Renewed interest in anti-psychologism and normativity has led to fresh readings of Cohen and Natorp.

Interpretations differ on how far these texts remain philosophically “live” as opposed to primarily historical sources, but they are widely acknowledged as central documents of late 19th‑ and early 20th‑century thought.

14. Institutional Life and the Marburg Seminar

The identity of the Marburg School is closely tied to its institutional setting, especially the Marburg philosophy seminar.

14.1 The Marburg Seminar

Under Cohen and Natorp, the philosophical seminar at the University of Marburg functioned as a training ground for advanced students. Features included:

• Intensive reading of Kant and contemporary scientific literature
• Seminar-style discussion rather than purely lecture-based instruction
• Promotion of dissertation projects aligned with the School’s program

This environment fostered a strong sense of intellectual community and continuity across generations.

14.2 Academic Positions and Networks

Cohen’s and Natorp’s chairs, along with visiting and adjunct positions, allowed them to attract students from across Germany and abroad. Many went on to hold academic posts elsewhere, thereby spreading Marburg ideas. The School maintained networks with other universities (e.g., Freiburg, Berlin) and participated in professional organizations and journals.

14.3 Social and Political Conditions

Institutional life was shaped by broader social conditions:

• Expansion of universities in the German Empire provided opportunities, but
• Persistent antisemitism limited advancement for Jewish scholars and made the Marburg environment both a refuge and a site of tension.

The seminar’s ethos combined commitment to scientific rationality with liberal or social-democratic sympathies in varying degrees, especially in the case of Cohen and some students.

14.4 Decline of Institutional Cohesion

After World War I, changing student interests, new philosophical movements, and political instability weakened the School’s institutional base. Cohen’s death and Natorp’s retirement reduced central leadership. When National Socialism came to power, Jewish and politically suspect scholars were dismissed or forced into exile, bringing the seminar’s institutional role to an abrupt end, even as its intellectual legacy continued elsewhere.

15. Crisis, Decline, and Political Upheaval

The decline of the Marburg School is intertwined with intellectual crises and political upheavals in early 20th‑century Germany.

15.1 World War I and its Aftermath

The outbreak of World War I disrupted academic life and prompted widespread questioning of liberal and rationalist ideals. Reactions within the Marburg orbit varied:

• Some expressed patriotic support, hoping for a renewal of German culture.
• Others became increasingly critical of nationalism and militarism.

In the postwar Weimar Republic, economic hardship, political polarization, and cultural disillusionment shifted attention toward themes of crisis, finitude, and existential meaning. Marburg Neo-Kantianism, with its emphasis on scientific rationality and systematic unity, appeared to many as out of step with the times.

15.2 Philosophical Competition and Internal Strains

Competing movements—phenomenology, Lebensphilosophie, early existentialism, and logical empiricism—offered alternatives that seemed more responsive to contemporary concerns. At the same time:

• The School’s internal cohesion weakened after Cohen’s death (1918) and Natorp’s diminished role.
• Cassirer’s turn to symbolic forms and culture was seen by some as a departure from the original focus on exact science, raising questions about the School’s identity.

These developments contributed to a perception of Marburg Neo-Kantianism as a “classical” but declining paradigm.

15.3 National Socialism and Institutional Destruction

The rise of National Socialism in 1933 had direct and devastating effects:

• Jewish and politically liberal scholars lost their positions due to discriminatory laws.
• Cassirer had already left Germany in 1933 after conflicts during the Weimar period and the early Nazi ascendancy.
• Remaining Neo-Kantian sympathizers found themselves marginalized in a climate hostile to critical rationalism and cosmopolitan ideals.

This political catastrophe effectively ended the School as an institutional presence in Germany, though its members and ideas continued abroad.

15.4 Interpretations of the Decline

Historians offer different explanations:

Most accounts combine these factors, differing over their relative weight and over whether Marburg Neo-Kantianism should be seen as a concluded chapter or as a resource for contemporary thought.

16. Legacy and Historical Significance

The Marburg School’s legacy spans philosophy of science, logic, cultural theory, and beyond.

16.1 Influence on Philosophy of Science and Logic

Marburg Neo-Kantianism contributed to a non-empiricist understanding of scientific theories as structured systems that constitute their objects. Later developments that some scholars see as indebted to or parallel with Marburg ideas include:

• Structural realism and conceptions of science focused on relational structures
• Theories of theory-ladenness of observation and the role of models
• Anti-psychologistic approaches to logic and mathematics in the analytic tradition

While logical empiricists criticized transcendental terminology, they shared concerns about the logical form of scientific theories and the status of the a priori, leading some historians to trace lines of continuity.

16.2 Cassirer and Philosophy of Culture

Ernst Cassirer’s extension of Marburg methods to symbolic forms influenced:

• Semiotics and structuralism
• Anthropology and cultural studies
• Hermeneutics and theories of meaning

Subsequent thinkers, including Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas, engaged critically with Neo-Kantian themes of normativity, rationality, and the public use of reason.

16.3 Role in 20th-Century German Philosophy

Within German intellectual history, the Marburg School is now often seen as:

• A key participant in the scientific turn of philosophy
• A central opponent of psychologism
• A bridge between classical German Idealism and later movements

Its interaction with phenomenology, positivism, and critical theory has become a major topic of historiographical study.

16.4 Contemporary Historiographical Assessment

Modern scholarship tends to reject earlier portrayals of the School as a merely transitional or dogmatic idealism. Instead, it emphasizes:

Debates persist over how to situate Marburg Neo-Kantianism relative to analytic and continental traditions and over the extent to which its concepts can be fruitfully adapted today. Nonetheless, its role as a major episode in the history of modern philosophy is widely accepted.