Neo-Kantianism

Neo-Kantianism, Revival of Kantianism in German universities that began c. 1860. At first primarily an epistemological movement, Neo-Kantianism slowly extended over the whole domain of philosophy. The first decisive impetus toward reviving Immanuel Kant’s ideas came from natural scientists. Hermann von Helmholtz applied physiological studies of the senses to the question of the epistemological significance of spatial perception raised by The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Neo-Kantianism reached its apex in the early 20th-century Marburg school, which included Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) and Paul Natorp (1854–1924). They repudiated Helmholtz’s naturalism and reaffirmed the importance of the transcendental method. Ernst Cassirer, another Marburg-school figure, brought Kantian principles to bear on the whole realm of cultural phenomena. Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) introduced Kantianism into the philosophy of history. Neo-Kantianism also influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and of the early works of Martin Heidegger.