Neo-Kantianism

1. Introduction

Neo-Kantianism designates a heterogeneous set of philosophical movements that, from the mid‑19th to the early 20th century, sought to renew Immanuel Kant’s “critical philosophy” under dramatically altered scientific and social conditions. Its proponents did not simply “repeat” Kant; they reinterpreted his ideas to address the status of modern science, the autonomy of ethics and law, and the understanding of culture, history, and religion after the decline of speculative metaphysics.

While there is no single doctrine uniting all Neo‑Kantians, a family resemblance can be traced across the different schools:

• a shared commitment to critique rather than system‑building metaphysics;
• an emphasis on conditions of possibility and validity (the transcendental method) instead of on an ontology of things‑in‑themselves;
• a normative, anti‑psychologistic conception of logic and the a priori;
• a concern to secure the objectivity of both natural sciences and human sciences.

The movement coalesced institutionally in German‑speaking universities (especially Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiburg) but spread across Europe. It interacted closely with contemporary mathematics, physics, and the emerging social sciences, and it became a major interlocutor for later phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and logical empiricism.

Historians increasingly describe Neo‑Kantianism less as a brief “school phase” between German Idealism and 20th‑century philosophy than as a wide‑ranging reworking of Kant that structured debates about knowledge, values, and culture for several generations. Subsequent sections examine its periodization, social and scientific context, main schools, central debates, and long‑term impact.

2. Chronological Boundaries and Periodization

Dating Neo‑Kantianism is contested. Scholars nonetheless converge on a loose framework that distinguishes several phases rather than a sharply bounded “era.”

2.1 Conventional Chronology

Proponents of this chronology often take the publication of Otto Liebmann’s Kant und die Epigonen (1865) as a symbolic starting point and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 as a practical end, given the dismissal, emigration, or marginalization of many Neo‑Kantian and affiliated scholars.

2.2 Debates over Periodization

Some historians argue for an earlier starting point, emphasizing mid‑19th‑century Kant scholarship (e.g., Kuno Fischer) and the anti‑materialist writings of Friedrich Albert Lange and Hermann von Helmholtz. Others propose a later terminus, suggesting that figures like Ernst Cassirer or Hans Reichenbach continue a “post‑classical” Neo‑Kantian line into the 1940s.

Alternative periodizations stress intellectual ruptures rather than calendar dates: for example, the rise of the Baden school’s value‑theoretical program or the impact of relativity theory and new logic around 1900. Still others recommend speaking of a “Neo‑Kantian constellation” spanning roughly 1860–1933 and then tracing transformations beyond that frame, rather than enforcing hard boundaries.

Despite disagreements on details, there is broad agreement that Neo‑Kantianism passes from early calls for a critical turn, through a phase of doctrinal and institutional consolidation, to a period of internal differentiation and external challenge that ultimately reconfigures its identity.

3. Historical and Socio-Political Context

Neo‑Kantianism developed against the backdrop of far‑reaching political and social changes in Central and Western Europe, especially in the newly unified German Empire.

3.1 Nation‑State Building and Liberalism

The unification of Germany in 1871 and the consolidation of modern nation‑states framed Neo‑Kantian debates about law, rights, and the state. Many Neo‑Kantians were associated with liberal or left‑liberal currents, favoring constitutional government, rule of law, and educational reform. Their emphasis on autonomous reason and normative principles was often read as a philosophical counterpart to liberal constitutionalism.

At the same time, the crisis of liberalism—exacerbated by mass politics, social democracy, and rising nationalism—raised doubts about whether rational norms could still guide public life. Some Neo‑Kantians pursued a “critical” defense of liberal ideals; others turned to more cultural or historical formulations of normative order.

3.2 Industrialization, Urbanization, and Social Question

Rapid industrialization and urban growth produced new class configurations and social conflicts. Debates about the “social question”—workers’ rights, poverty, social insurance—intersected with Neo‑Kantian reflections on ethics, law, and the human sciences. Legal and social‑philosophical Neo‑Kantians used Kantian concepts of autonomy, dignity, and right to analyze emerging welfare legislation, criminal law, and economic institutions.

3.3 Jewish Emancipation and Academic Life

Neo‑Kantianism was closely intertwined with Jewish emancipation and integration into German and Central European academic culture. Many leading figures were Jewish or of Jewish origin, and some saw Kantian critical philosophy as a vehicle for articulating a non‑dogmatic, ethical religiosity compatible with modern citizenship. This association also made Neo‑Kantian circles vulnerable to growing antisemitism in the late Empire and Weimar Republic.

3.4 War, Revolution, and Political Polarization

World War I and the subsequent revolutions profoundly affected Neo‑Kantian self‑understanding. Some thinkers supported the war effort or interpreted it through national‑cultural categories; others emphasized cosmopolitan and legal‑internationalist ideals. The instability of the Weimar Republic heightened reflection on the normative foundations of law and democracy, themes that several Neo‑Kantian jurists and philosophers addressed in explicitly political terms.

These overlapping socio‑political dynamics shaped Neo‑Kantian concerns with normativity, culture, and the conditions for rational public life without determining a single political line within the movement.

4. Scientific, Cultural, and Academic Developments

Neo‑Kantianism emerged in a period often described as the “age of science” and the “age of the research university.” Its projects were closely bound to developments in the natural sciences, the human sciences, and academic institutions.

4.1 Transformations in the Natural Sciences

Classical mechanics, thermodynamics, and electrodynamics reached high levels of mathematical sophistication in the 19th century, while non‑Euclidean geometries and new understandings of space and time challenged older assumptions. Later, relativity theory and the beginnings of quantum theory raised questions about the status of scientific objectivity and the meaning of the a priori.

Neo‑Kantians generally interpreted these developments through the lens of conceptual frameworks and conditions of validity rather than as discoveries of a metaphysically pre‑given reality. Debates about whether new physics undermined, modified, or confirmed critical philosophy became central to their theory of science.

4.2 Rise of the Human Sciences

The second half of the 19th century saw the professionalization of history, philology, jurisprudence, sociology, and economics. Historicism and archival scholarship emphasized the individuality of events and cultures, while social theorists sought lawful regularities. Neo‑Kantians, particularly in the Baden school, framed these tensions as methodological and axiological issues, asking how disciplines oriented to meaning and value could claim objectivity.

4.3 Cultural Modernism and Critique

Culturally, realism and naturalism in literature gave way to symbolism and early modernism, raising questions about representation, myth, and expression. Neo‑Kantian thinkers interested in art and culture treated these as domains structured by symbolic forms, interpretive categories, and value‑orientations rather than as mere reflections of nature or social causes.

4.4 The Modern Research University

The Humboldtian research university model, with its emphasis on Wissenschaft (systematic scholarly inquiry), underpinned Neo‑Kantian aims. Philosophy was often conceived as a “theory of science” (Wissenschaftslehre) that clarified the foundations and methods of specialized disciplines. Neo‑Kantianism thus became a dominant orientation in several philosophy faculties and influenced curriculum design, doctoral training, and disciplinary self‑conceptions.

These scientific, cultural, and institutional developments provided both the problems and the audiences for Neo‑Kantian attempts to recast Kant’s critical project.

5. The Zeitgeist: Crisis of Metaphysics and Rise of Science

Neo‑Kantianism is frequently described as a response to a dual crisis: the decline of traditional metaphysics and the ascendancy of modern science as a cultural authority.

5.1 Disenchantment with Speculative Systems

By the mid‑19th century, many philosophers viewed post‑Hegelian speculative systems as exhausted. Attempts to derive reality from absolute spirit or dialectical logic faced criticism for their lack of empirical grounding and internal disputes. At the same time, materialist and positivist movements promised scientific rigor but were accused of neglecting consciousness, freedom, and value.

Neo‑Kantians framed Kant’s “critique” as an alternative: neither speculative metaphysics nor reductive naturalism, but a reflective inquiry into the conditions of experience, knowledge, and normativity.

5.2 Authority of Science and Anxiety about Meaning

The spectacular successes of natural science generated confidence in mathematical‑experimental method, but also anxiety about the status of values, religion, and culture. If science became the paradigm of rationality, did ethics and aesthetics lose cognitive standing? Could history and law be “scientific” without imitating physics?

Neo‑Kantian projects characteristically tried to save the phenomena of value and meaning without sacrificing scientific seriousness. Their analyses of the a priori, objectivity, and value‑relation aimed to show how different domains of culture could be both autonomous and rationally assessable.

5.3 Historicization of Reason

Historicism and evolutionary thinking fostered the sense that even fundamental categories—space, time, causality, personhood—might be historically contingent. This raised questions about whether reason itself was merely a product of history. Neo‑Kantians spoke of a “historicization of the a priori”, while attempting to preserve a distinction between changing empirical conditions and relatively stable structures of validity.

5.4 Critique as Cultural Task

Within this zeitgeist, critique was not simply a technical philosophical method but a cultural vocation: to clarify the presuppositions of scientific and cultural practices, to defend the autonomy of ethics and law, and to resist both dogmatic metaphysics and unreflective relativism. Different Neo‑Kantian schools interpreted this task in divergent ways, but all situated their work within this broader tension between scientific modernity and the search for normative foundations.

6. Foundational Problematics and Core Debates

Neo‑Kantianism organized itself around a set of recurring philosophical problems rather than a single doctrine. These problems structured internal debates and differentiated schools.

6.1 Objectivity and the A Priori

A central question concerned the foundations of scientific objectivity. Neo‑Kantians generally agreed that knowledge rests on a priori structures or conditions of validity, but they disagreed on their status:

Arguments turned on how to reconcile the historical development of science with the claim that its basic principles are not empirical generalizations.

6.2 Natural vs. Human Sciences

Another core problematic was the relation between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften. Baden Neo‑Kantians proposed methodological dualism—a principled difference between law‑seeking, nomothetic inquiry and value‑related, idiographic understanding. Critics within and beyond Neo‑Kantianism argued either for greater unity of method or for more radical pluralism. The debate concerned not only epistemology but also the cultural legitimacy of the human sciences.

6.3 Values, Normativity, and Relativism

How can values be both historically situated and objectively valid? Some Neo‑Kantians posited hierarchies of values or formal principles of valuation; others emphasized the role of cultural traditions and “value‑relations” in selecting objects of inquiry. Opponents raised worries about value relativism or, conversely, about smuggling metaphysics back into value‑theory. The status of ethical, legal, and aesthetic judgments thus became a central and contested theme.

6.4 Anti‑Psychologism and Logic

Neo‑Kantians vigorously criticized psychologism, the reduction of logical laws to empirical facts about thinking. They defended logic as a normative discipline dealing with validity, not with mental processes. Disputes arose over how to ground such normativity—through transcendental arguments, value‑theory, or formal axiomatization.

These foundational problematics provided the framework within which the major schools developed their distinctive programs.

7. Major Schools: Marburg, Baden, and Beyond

While Neo‑Kantianism was diverse, two schools—Marburg and Baden (Southwest)—became paradigmatic. Additional currents in Göttingen and other countries extended and modified their approaches.

7.1 Marburg School

Centered in the University of Marburg, this school focused on the theory of the natural sciences and mathematics. Its key theses included:

• Knowledge is constituted by conceptual functions rather than by givens of intuition.
• The a priori is understood as the methodological framework of ongoing scientific inquiry, not as a fixed set of forms.
• Objects of knowledge are “results” or “tasks” (Aufgaben) of thought, defined through systematic theories.

Marburg thinkers emphasized the continuity of critical philosophy with modern mathematics and theoretical physics, often minimizing or reinterpreting Kant’s thing‑in‑itself and sensibility.

7.2 Baden (Southwest) School

The Baden school, associated with Heidelberg and Freiburg, centered on the methodology and axiological foundations of the human sciences. Its characteristic positions included:

• A principled distinction between nomothetic (law‑seeking) and idiographic (individualizing) sciences.
• The claim that selection and interpretation in the human sciences are guided by values and value‑relations.
• An insistence that such value‑relatedness does not undermine scientific objectivity, because values can have a formal, non‑subjectivist structure.

Baden philosophers were influential in historiography, sociology, legal theory, and cultural studies.

7.3 Göttingen and Related Currents

Around Göttingen and other centers, a more logic‑ and ethics‑oriented strand of Neo‑Kantianism developed, often with a strong emphasis on critical method and sometimes on formal logic. Some figures here stressed the continuity with Kant’s practical philosophy and attempted to reconstruct his system on stricter logical grounds.

7.4 International Variants

Neo‑Kantian ideas traveled widely:

• In France, “critical” philosophers reworked Kant to analyze mathematical and physical theories, often integrating them with Cartesian and positivist traditions.
• In Italy, legal and political theorists used Kantian concepts to ground jurisprudence and state theory.
• In Russia and Eastern Europe, Marburg‑inspired ideas influenced debates in law, ethics, and theory of science, even as many thinkers moved beyond classical Neo‑Kantian frameworks.

These schools and currents shared a critical, anti‑metaphysical orientation but diverged in their preferred domains (nature vs. culture), methods, and interpretations of Kant.

8. Key Figures and Generational Shifts

Neo‑Kantianism unfolded across several generations, each redefining core themes and institutional positions.

8.1 Pioneering Generation

The earliest figures of the “return to Kant” included historians and critics of post‑Hegelian thought. They emphasized Kant as an antidote to speculative metaphysics and materialism, often through detailed exegesis and historical work. Their writings prepared the ground for more systematic programs but did not yet form cohesive schools.

8.2 Classical School Founders

In the late 19th century, founding figures of the Marburg and Baden schools articulated distinct systematic projects:

• Marburg leaders developed a logic of pure science, recasting the a priori in terms of conceptual functions and methods.
• Baden founders formulated the nomothetic/idiographic distinction and elaborated the concept of value‑relation as central to the human sciences.

This generation secured institutional footholds in universities and journals, making Neo‑Kantianism a dominant academic orientation.

8.3 Systematizers and Interpreters

A subsequent cohort deepened and diversified the schools’ programs:

• In Marburg, systematic treatises on epistemology, psychology, and education elaborated a dynamic view of objectivity.
• In Baden, more detailed accounts of value, historical understanding, and logic appeared, sometimes modifying earlier axiological claims.

Some thinkers at this stage also began to engage more explicitly with new mathematics, logic, and physics, adjusting classical formulations.

8.4 Transitional and “Post‑Classical” Figures

The early 20th century brought a generation whose work both extended and transformed Neo‑Kantian themes:

• Figures associated with the philosophy of symbolic forms reinterpreted critical philosophy as an analysis of culture, language, and myth.
• Others bridged Neo‑Kantianism with phenomenology, early analytic philosophy, or logical empiricism, adopting more formal or logical vocabularies.
• Some thinkers who began in Neo‑Kantian circles later turned toward realism or ontology, criticizing earlier idealist or formalist tendencies.

These generational shifts illustrate how Neo‑Kantianism evolved from a relatively unified “return to Kant” into a complex field of intersecting and diverging critical projects.

9. Neo-Kantian Theories of Science and the A Priori

The theory of science and the re‑interpretation of the a priori lay at the heart of Neo‑Kantian philosophy, especially in the Marburg school but also in broader debates.

9.1 Science as a System of Validities

Neo‑Kantians typically defined science not as a collection of psychological beliefs or empirical regularities, but as a system of valid judgments governed by norms of justification. The task of philosophy was to clarify the conditions under which such judgments can claim objective validity.

This perspective led to an emphasis on:

• conceptual structures (categories, principles, functions);
• methodological rules (idealization, limit processes, hypothetical construction);
• the role of mathematical form in constituting objects of inquiry.

9.2 Dynamic A Priori

While Kant had described space, time, and the categories as fixed a priori forms, many Neo‑Kantians argued that the a priori must be understood dynamically. Scientific revolutions seemed to show that fundamental concepts (e.g., geometry, causality) change over time.

Neo‑Kantian responses varied:

These views sought to preserve a distinction between empirical discovery and the normative conditions of science while accommodating historical change.

9.3 Anti‑Psychologism and Logic of Science

Neo‑Kantian theories of science were strongly anti‑psychologistic. Logical and methodological principles were treated as norms—they prescribe how one ought to reason to claim objectivity. Scientific knowledge thus depends on adherence to logical laws and methodological ideals, not on how scientists in fact think.

9.4 Natural Science and Mathematics

Many Neo‑Kantians gave special attention to mathematics and theoretical physics as paradigms of objectivity. They analyzed:

• the role of infinitesimals, limits, and functions in constituting continuous magnitudes;
• the conceptual construction of physical objects via equations and measurement procedures;
• the implications of non‑Euclidean geometry and relativity for Kant’s views on space and time.

Some interpreted these developments as refinements of critical philosophy, others as requiring significant reinterpretation of Kantian doctrines.

In all cases, the a priori was re‑conceived less as a set of psychological forms and more as a network of logical‑methodological conditions that make scientific experience and theory possible.

10. Values, Ethics, Law, and the Human Sciences

Neo‑Kantianism devoted extensive attention to values and to domains where meaning, normativity, and culture play central roles—ethics, law, and the human sciences.

10.1 Formal Ethics and Value Theory

Building on Kant’s practical philosophy, many Neo‑Kantians defended a formal conception of ethics: moral principles are grounded in the structure of rational will rather than in empirical desires or religious commands. At the same time, they extended this framework to a broader axiology (theory of value), analyzing moral, aesthetic, and cognitive values.

Debates arose over whether values form objective hierarchies, how they are grasped (through intuition, reasoning, or cultural mediation), and whether they can be reduced to a single supreme value (e.g., autonomy, truth).

10.2 Methodology of the Human Sciences

The Baden school made the relationship between values and the Geisteswissenschaften a central topic. Two key ideas were:

• Value‑relation (Wertbeziehung): selection and interpretation of historical and cultural phenomena presuppose reference to values that render certain features significant.
• Methodological dualism: human sciences, oriented toward meaning and individuality, differ fundamentally from natural sciences, which seek general laws.

Proponents argued that this value‑relatedness does not introduce subjectivism, because the relevant values can be justified or criticized within a rational framework.

10.3 Philosophy of Law and the State

Neo‑Kantian legal theorists used critical philosophy to ground juridical normativity. They distinguished:

They debated how to relate Kantian right to contemporary issues such as constitutionalism, criminal law reform, social rights, and international law. Some construed law as a central “cultural value sphere,” parallel to morality and art.

10.4 Objectivity and Relativism in Cultural Studies

A recurring concern was whether cultural and historical studies, permeated by values, could claim objectivity. Neo‑Kantian proposals included:

• separating subjective value preferences from formal value structures that guide scientific selection;
• grounding objectivity in intersubjective validity claims rather than in value‑free description;
• distinguishing empirical cultural relativism from the normative status of evaluative principles.

Critics contended that these strategies either did not avoid relativism or reintroduced metaphysics. Nonetheless, Neo‑Kantian work in this area significantly shaped subsequent theories of history, sociology, and jurisprudence.

11. Religion, Culture, and the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

Neo‑Kantianism approached religion and culture through a critical lens that emphasized meaning, symbolism, and normativity rather than metaphysical dogma.

11.1 Religion as Practical or Symbolic

Following Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, many Neo‑Kantians interpreted religion as an expression of moral consciousness or as a symbolic representation of ethical ideals. Typical claims included:

• Religious doctrines do not provide theoretical knowledge of transcendent realities.
• Religious symbols articulate moral and communal orientations, often in imaginative or mythic form.
• The legitimacy of religious practices depends on their compatibility with moral autonomy and rational critique.

Some thinkers developed specifically Jewish or Protestant reinterpretations of religious traditions along these lines, emphasizing ethical monotheism, prophecy, or community.

11.2 Culture as a System of Value Spheres

Neo‑Kantian discussions of culture frequently employed the notion of value spheres (e.g., truth, beauty, right, holiness). Cultural institutions—science, art, law, religion—were seen as organized around distinct values and norms. The task of philosophy was to elucidate the a priori structures or formal principles that make such spheres possible and intelligible.

This approach influenced classifications of cultural domains and analyses of their relative autonomy and interrelation.

11.3 Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

A particularly influential development was the philosophy of symbolic forms, which reconceived critical philosophy as an analysis of the various symbolic media through which humans relate to the world. On this view:

• Language, myth, art, religion, and science are distinct symbolic forms.
• Each form has its own structuring principles—ways of forming objects, expressing meaning, and organizing experience.
• There is no immediate, unmediated access to reality; human world‑experience is always articulated through such forms.

Religion, in this framework, becomes one symbolic form among others, characterized by specific modes of mythic and ritual expression. Culture as a whole is understood as a symbolically mediated world, and philosophy investigates the formal features of these mediations rather than their empirical origins.

11.4 Tensions and Critiques

Some critics within and outside Neo‑Kantianism worried that such symbol‑ and value‑oriented accounts either dissolved religion into ethics or reduced it to a cultural phenomenon among others, neglecting its claims to truth. Others questioned whether the plurality of symbolic forms could be reconciled with a unified conception of reason. These tensions framed later debates in religious studies, cultural theory, and hermeneutics.

12. Relations to Phenomenology, Analytic Philosophy, and Logical Empiricism

Neo‑Kantianism did not exist in isolation; it interacted intensively with emerging philosophical movements that both drew on and criticized its ideas.

12.1 Phenomenology

Early phenomenology shared with Neo‑Kantianism a concern for anti‑psychologism and the objectivity of logic. Husserl’s critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations was influenced by Neo‑Kantian debates, and he praised their insistence on validity.

However, phenomenologists criticized:

• the Neo‑Kantian focus on formal conditions at the expense of concrete, lived experience;
• the tendency to treat consciousness primarily through the lens of logic and science rather than intentional structures.

Phenomenology proposed a descriptive analysis of intentional acts and essences as an alternative “transcendental” approach.

12.2 Early Analytic Philosophy

Early analytic philosophers engaged with Neo‑Kantian themes, especially in logic and philosophy of science. Points of contact included:

• rejection of psychologism in logic;
• interest in the structure of scientific theories and the role of axiomatization;
• concern with meaning, reference, and the logical form of propositions.

Nonetheless, analytic thinkers often objected to Neo‑Kantian transcendental vocabulary and value‑theory, favoring more formal and linguistic approaches. Some regarded references to the “a priori” and “conditions of possibility” as obscure or insufficiently tied to logical analysis.

12.3 Logical Empiricism

Logical empiricism (or logical positivism) emerged partly from within Neo‑Kantian milieus and theory‑of‑science discussions. Its proponents:

• adopted the anti‑metaphysical and science‑centered orientation of Neo‑Kantians;
• accepted the importance of conventional elements and framework principles in scientific theories;
• emphasized logic, formal languages, and empirical verification as tools for clarifying scientific discourse.

At the same time, they sought to eliminate or reinterpret the transcendental. A priori principles became, in many accounts, linguistic conventions or framework choices subject to pragmatic justification. Value‑theoretical and cultural concerns receded in favor of logical analysis and empirical testability.

12.4 Mutual Critiques and Overlaps

These interactions produced both convergences and sharp criticisms:

These relationships significantly shaped the transformation and eventual decline of classical Neo‑Kantianism, even as many of its concerns persisted in new forms.

13. Internal Critiques, Crises, and Transformations

Neo‑Kantianism was riven by internal debates that, together with external pressures, led to significant transformations of its core ideas.

13.1 Critiques of Formalism and Intellectualism

Within the movement, some thinkers argued that classical programs treated reason too formally and intellectualistically. Concerns included:

• insufficient attention to affect, embodiment, and will;
• limited engagement with social and economic conditions;
• an overly abstract conception of culture and values.

These critiques pushed certain Neo‑Kantians toward more concrete analyses of historical life, symbolic practices, and institutions.

13.2 Historicization of the A Priori

As historical and scientific studies advanced, the problem of the historicity of reason grew more acute. Some argued that:

• the a priori must be reconceived as historically evolving structures;
• critical philosophy should become a critical history of concepts and forms.

Others feared that such moves threatened to collapse the distinction between validity and factual development. Efforts to balance transcendental and historical approaches produced new hybrid models but also undermined earlier claims to timeless structures.

13.3 Tensions between Science and Culture

There were disagreements over the relative primacy of natural science versus culture and values. Marburg‑oriented projects sometimes appeared to subjugate ethics, art, and religion to the model of theoretical science; Baden‑oriented approaches, conversely, risked fragmenting reason into separate value spheres.

Some later Neo‑Kantians attempted to reconcile these tendencies by emphasizing overarching structures of symbolic mediation or by seeking more unified accounts of rationality across domains.

13.4 Responses to New Logic and Physics

Developments in mathematical logic, set theory, relativity, and quantum mechanics complicated traditional views of space, time, and logic. Within Neo‑Kantian circles:

• some embraced new logical and physical theories as confirmations of critical method;
• others struggled to integrate them, leading to revisions of earlier interpretations of Kant.

Disagreements over how far to modify core doctrines contributed to a sense of crisis in the 1910s and 1920s.

13.5 Institutional and Political Strains

The First World War, political radicalization, and growing antisemitism placed additional strain on Neo‑Kantian networks. Divergent responses to war and politics sometimes mapped onto philosophical differences, further fragmenting the movement. The eventual dismantling of academic positions in the early 1930s accelerated the shift from a coherent “school” identity to more dispersed, individualized projects.

These internal critiques and crises did not simply end Neo‑Kantianism; they also generated new directions—especially in cultural philosophy and theory of science—that would influence subsequent traditions.

14. Landmark Texts and Their Reception

Several works became focal points for Neo‑Kantian self‑definition and for contemporary and later assessments of the movement.

14.1 Early Manifestos of the “Return to Kant”

Texts calling for a “return to Kant” criticized both speculative idealism and materialism. They argued that only a renewed critical philosophy could reconcile scientific advance with moral and cultural concerns. These works were widely discussed in German philosophy and helped shift attention back to Kantian themes in epistemology and ethics.

14.2 Programmatic Works of the Marburg and Baden Schools

Key Marburg writings elaborated a logic of pure science, arguing that modern mathematics and physics exemplify the constructive activity of thought. They were influential among philosophers and some scientists interested in the conceptual foundations of their disciplines, though critics questioned their distance from empirical practice.

Baden programmatic essays introduced the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic sciences and the concept of value‑relation. Historians, sociologists, and legal theorists engaged intensively with these ideas, sometimes adopting the terminology while modifying its Kantian underpinnings.

14.3 Systematic Treatises and Textbooks

Comprehensive treatises on epistemology, ethics, and the history of philosophy served as textbooks for generations of students. They disseminated Neo‑Kantian interpretations of Kant and critical philosophy, shaping academic curricula in the German‑speaking world and beyond. Reviewers often praised their scholarly rigor but disputed their doctrinal readings of Kant and their exclusion of metaphysical questions.

14.4 The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

The multi‑volume philosophy of symbolic forms marked a major development in Neo‑Kantian thought by extending critical analysis to language, myth, art, and culture. Contemporary reception was mixed: some hailed it as a creative renewal of critical idealism; others saw it as a departure from strict Neo‑Kantianism toward cultural philosophy or even proto‑structuralism.

Later scholars in anthropology, semiotics, and intellectual history have frequently drawn on this work, sometimes independently of its Neo‑Kantian origins.

14.5 Retrospective Assessments

Subsequent movements offered divergent evaluations:

Modern historiography has gradually re‑evaluated these landmark works as central documents in the transition from classical German philosophy to many strands of 20th‑century thought.

15. Legacy and Historical Significance

Neo‑Kantianism’s legacy lies less in a surviving school than in the diffusion of its problems, distinctions, and methods into diverse philosophical traditions.

15.1 Influence on Philosophy of Science and Logic

Neo‑Kantian discussions of objectivity, a priori structures, and the constitution of scientific objects helped shape 20th‑century philosophy of science. Their insistence on anti‑psychologism and normativity informed early logic, phenomenology, and analytic philosophy. Even where later thinkers rejected transcendental language, they often retained concerns about framework principles, theory structure, and conceptual change that had been articulated in Neo‑Kantian terms.

15.2 Impact on Human Sciences, Law, and Culture

The Baden school’s analyses of methodological dualism and value‑relation influenced historians, sociologists, and jurists, including Max Weber and numerous legal theorists. Neo‑Kantian jurisprudence contributed to debates on constitutionalism, rights, and the rule of law, especially in the Weimar period.

Cultural and symbolic‑form philosophies provided resources for later structuralism, semiotics, and cultural anthropology, as well as for theories of myth, art, and religion.

15.3 Contribution to Critical and Normative Theory

Neo‑Kantian attempts to secure the objectivity of values and to articulate the normative foundations of democracy, law, and culture informed later strands of critical theory and political philosophy. Some post‑war thinkers explicitly returned to Neo‑Kantian motifs—such as the autonomy of reason and the critique of reification—while reinterpreting them in light of social theory and historical catastrophes.

15.4 Historiographical Reassessment

Early 20th‑century narratives often portrayed Neo‑Kantianism as a transitional or “epigonal” movement superseded by phenomenology and analytic philosophy. More recent scholarship has emphasized:

• its role as a central matrix from which major 20th‑century currents emerged;
• its pioneering work on normativity, scientific realism, historicism, and cultural pluralism;
• the extent to which later debates replay Neo‑Kantian problematics in new vocabularies.

From this perspective, Neo‑Kantianism appears not as a minor revival but as a key moment in the ongoing project of critical philosophy, mediating between Kant and contemporary discussions of science, values, and culture.