## 1. Southwestern Neo-Kantianism vs. Marburg Neo-Kantianism


 

Rickert is considered the head of the so-called Southwestern or
Baden school of Neo-Kantianism, whose exponents worked in the
philosophy departments at Freiburg and Heidelberg, both in the region
of Baden in southwestern Germany. The Southwestern school stands in
contrast to the so-called Marburg school, spearheaded by Hermann Cohen
(1842-1918) and continued by Paul Natorp (1854-1924) and
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945). (For an overview of the two schools
see Crowell 1999.)




In spite of their fierce opposition, the two schools present
elements of similarity alongside the numerous elements of difference.
These have been recently debated among Neo-Kantianism scholars (Krijnen
2001, 77-93; Krijnen/Noras 2012). One indisputably common element
between the two schools is the preoccupation with the problem of
validity, or *Geltung*, which is arguably the systematic core of
Neo-Kantianism in general (Krijnen 2001, 84). Philosophy for the
Neo-Kantians is concerned with the systematic elucidation of the a
priori *principles* that allow for valid thinking in various
spheres of knowledge. In keeping with Kant's first
*Critique*, valid thinking is not merely logically consistent
thinking. Valid thinking requires, over and above the adherence to the
laws of formal logic, thinking in accordance with the a priori
principles governing the intelligibility of a given area of reality.
These will be, for instance, the principles of causality,
substantiality etc. in the sphere of physical nature and principles
such as good and evil, responsibility, freedom, etc. in the sphere of
ethics. It is the task of philosophy to identify these a priori
principles in all the different spheres of culture, including politics,
biology, art, history, etc. Helmuth Plessner captures metaphorically
the spirit of Neo-Kantianism when he characterizes the Neo-Kantians as
"botanists in the garden of the a priori" (Plessner 1974,
185).




In their attempt to clarify the way in which we should think of such
principles, both the Southwestern and the Marburg Neo-Kantians reject
any kind of psychological reading, which dominated among early
19th Century interpretations of Kant. The a priori
principles of valid thinking are not mere facts about human psychology;
they do not describe merely how our mind happens to function. Their
validity is *objective*, that is, it is part of the formal
structure of the objects of investigation and not merely an extrinsic
mental scheme that exemplars of the species *homo sapiens*
contingently apply to them.




Moreover, both schools were rather unenthusiastic about the label
'Neo-Kantianism'. Their goal was not to go "back to
Kant", as Otto Liebmann (1840-1912) famously urged philosophers
to do in his *Kant und die Epigonen* (Liebmann 1865), but,
rather, to move forward beyond Kant building on his original views.
Windelband, Rickert's mentor and the forefather of Southwestern
Neo-Kantianism, pronounced: "To understand Kant means to move
beyond him" (Windelband 1915, IV). Likewise, the Marburg school
leader Cohen pointed out: "From the very beginning I was
concerned with developing Kant's system further" (Cohen
1902, VII).




The two schools, however, diverge significantly in their
interpretation of Kant. While the Marburg school was predominantly
interested in the *Critique of Pure Reason* (Cohen 1885) and
considered it to be an essay in the philosophical foundation of
Newtonian science (a reading that is still prominent among contemporary
Kant scholars, such as Friedmann 1992), Rickert and the Southwesterners
emphasized the importance of reading Kant as a whole and considered the
centerpiece of his philosophical program to be the system of the
faculties outlined in the introduction to the *Critique of
Judgment* (Rickert 1924b, 167). For Rickert, in particular, already
in Kant's first *Critique* "the focal point
[...] is not in the transcendental aesthetic and analytic but
rather in the *dialectic*, and this means that the main problem
of this work is not a theory of the experiential sciences
(*Erfahrungswissenschaften*). Rather, it revolves around the
old, ever-recurring *problems* of metaphysics. The work on these
problems becomes the foundation for an encompassing theory of worldview
culminating in the treatment of issues in the philosophy of religion.
The theory of mathematics and physics is merely *preparatory*
for the treatment of these issues" (Rickert 1924b, 153).
Rickert's Kant is primarily a philosopher of human culture at
large, interested in questions about the meaning and value of our life
in the world, whereas Cohen's Kant is primarily (albeit not
exclusively) a philosopher of the natural sciences. Incidentally, the
largely ignored influence of Rickert's Kant-interpretation is
still vivid in Heidegger's acclaimed book *Kant and the
Problem of Metaphysics* (Heidegger 1997).




From these diverging interpretations of Kant flows another
fundamental theoretical difference between the two schools. This
difference has been effectively phrased by Rickert's student,
Emil Lask in terms of "pan-logism", attributed to the
Marburg Neo-Kantians, versus the "pan-archy of
*logos*", attributed to the Southwestern Neo-Kantians
(Lask 1923, 133; Crowell 2010). If we take the distinction between
intuition (*Anschauung*) and concept (*Begriff*) to be
the fundamental paradigm of Kantian transcendentalism, then in
Lask's eyes the Marburg Neo-Kantians are committed to a kind of
'pan-logism' to the extent that they tend to minimize the
role of intuition. As is particularly evident, for instance, in Natorp
(1911, 26-67), for the Marburg Neo-Kantians whatever we might be
tempted to consider a pure given or a raw datum of experience can be
analyzed into an underlying thought-process, whereby the given is
actually constructed according to a conceptually articulable (i.e.,
logical) pattern. Every alleged pure given (*Gegebenes*) is
actually a task (*Aufgegebenes*) for conceptual thinking and can
be resolved into an underlying thought process governed by logical a
priori principles.




By contrast, Rickert and the Southwestern Neo-Kantians emphasize
the ultimate irreducibility of what is given in intuition to conceptual
forms. While everything can be grasped by concepts, and therefore no
domain of reality and cultural life eludes in principle conceptual
mastery (*pan-archy*), nothing can be grasped
*exhaustively* by concepts, and therefore our rationality has to
constantly take into account an irrational *residue* intrinsic
to every conceptual construction. To conceptualize, for Rickert, is to
*recast* the materials delivered immediately by the senses into
a conceptual form. In so doing, we necessarily have to be
*selective*, that is, we have to leave out of consideration an
overwhelming amount of elements and take up in our conceptuality only
those elements that match the criteria originally established for the
purpose of solving our theoretical task. To give a simple example, in
order to conceptualize, say, linear motion we have to isolate from the
overwhelming amount of data stemming from the senses only those
features that pertain to the movement of bodies (spatial location,
speed, reciprocal position, etc.) and leave out of consideration
everything else. This general characterization can serve as a prelude
to Rickert's theory of knowledge, which is the theme of the next
section.


## 2. Theory of Knowledge



> 
> *For us, epistemology has become a matter of good conscience, and
> we will not be prepared to listen to anyone who fails to justify his
> ideas on this basis.*
> (Rickert 1986, 21)




For Rickert epistemology or *Erkenntnistheorie*
('theory of knowledge') has to be the point of departure
and the systematic foundation of philosophy as a whole. He often uses
interchangeably the words "logic" (*Logik*),
"theory of knowledge" (*Erkenntnistheorie*),
"methodology" (*Methodologie*), "theory of
truth" (*Wahrheitslehre*) and "theory of
science" (*Wissenschaftslehre*). (See for instance Rickert
1986, 19; Rickert 1909, 170.) This is because ultimately all these
phrases refer to one and the same problem, i.e., the problem of the
validity of thought and the principles on which valid thought rests.
*Erkenntnistheorie*, therefore, is his preferred phrase because
it makes this fundamental problem most explicit.




Rickert's theory of knowledge is designed to answer the
following question: "what is the subject-independent yardstick of
knowledge? In other words, through what does knowledge receive its
objectivity?" (Rickert 1921a, 1) Or, following the title of his
major work in the theory of knowledge, what is the object of knowledge?
In asking this question Rickert is explicitly setting up a
transcendental argument that can be summarized as follow: given that
(1) *there is knowledge* and that (2) *knowledge as true
thought can be contrasted to mere thought* in that it grasps some
thought-independent object, how are we to think this
thought-independent object? (Rickert 1909, 170) Therefore Rickert
rejects the idea that the theory of knowledge should somehow respond to
skepticism (Rickert 1921a, 7; Rickert 1909, 174). To the extent that
skepticism negates the very possibility of knowledge it cannot be
meaningfully addressed in a theory that sets out to determine precisely
what knowledge is. Nonetheless Rickert believes that a modified version
of skeptical doubt, which he compares to Husserl's
*epoche* (Rickert 1921a, 12), is beneficial to the theory
of knowledge. The theory of knowledge cannot begin without some
presuppositions, in particular, that there are true thoughts in which a
subject successfully grasps an object. "However, the theory of
knowledge ought to be 'presuppositionless' in the sense
that it ought to limit as much as possible the presuppositions upon
which the objectivity of knowledge rests" (Rickert 1921a, 12).
It is through the exercise of doubt that we get to raise the key
question as to whether we necessarily have to posit a transcendent
*reality* existing independently of consciousness as the source
of validation for knowledge. The pursuit of the object of knowledge,
then, leads straight to the problem of *transcendence* and its
relation to the knowing subject. Note that Rickert is not questioning
one of the inescapable assumptions of any theory of knowledge, namely,
that there has to be some subject-independent yardstick or criterion
that validates knowledge. He is questioning whether this
subject-independent criterion has to be understood as a transcendent
*reality*, for instance, a world of mind-independent and
presumably physical things in themselves. His conclusion will be
precisely that this transcendent criterion cannot be meaningfully
conceived of as a reality and that only *values* can be
considered genuinely transcendent.




Rickert argues that we can tackle the problem of the theory of
knowledge in two ways: "One can begin first with an analysis of
the real act of knowledge as a psychic process and then, from there,
move progressively to determine the transcendent object. Secondly, one
can attempt to reach as quickly as possible the sphere of the
transcendent object and deal with it in a purely 'logical'
fashion without considering the psychic act of knowing" (Rickert
1909, 174). He labels these two approaches the
"transcendental-psychological" (or subjective) and the
"transcendental-logical" (or objective) ways (Rickert 1909, 
174). While in the first editions of *The Object of Knowledge*
Rickert privileged the transcendental-psychological way, in the early
1900s he introduced the transcendental-logical way and incorporated it
into later editions of the book, arguing that the two ways should be
considered complementary.




The most important move at the beginning of the subjective way is to
determine the notions of subject and object that the theory of
knowledge can legitimately operate with, and, in particular to
characterize "the epistemological subject" (*das
erkenntnistheoretische Subjekt*) (Rickert 1921a, 41). Rickert
examines three different subject/object dichotomies. (1) We can define
the object in spatial terms as what is out there in the world. This is
what the expression 'external world' seems to refer to.
Correspondingly, the subject, too, will be defined in spatial terms as
the animated body, for which there are spatial surroundings populated
by objects. The first dichotomy construes subject and object as
"two bodies" (Rickert 1921a, 14) facing each other in
physical space. (2) We can construe a second dichotomy, in which we
take our body, too, to be an object like other objects and consider
'subject' to refer exclusively to consciousness. "In
this second case my consciousness and its content are the subject, and
therefore the object is everything that is not my content of
consciousness or my consciousness itself" (Rickert 1921a, 15).
This second dichotomy captures the traditional distinction between
immanence and transcendence. (3) A third dichotomy ensues from a
further distinction that we can carry out within the sphere of
immanence, that is, the distinction between the *ego* and its
representations, or between any content of consciousness and
consciousness itself. In this third case representations, perceptions,
feelings, emotions etc. would be the object and the subject would be
the ego standing over against them.




Based on these dichotomies, it seems that the problem of
transcendence and its possible denial only pertains to (2). It would
not make sense to question the transcendence of the object if by object
we mean what occupies the spatial surroundings of a psychophysical
human subject and, similarly, it would not make sense to deny the
transcendence of our representations, perceptions, emotions etc. from
the point of view of the pure ego-subject undergoing such
representations, perceptions, emotions, etc. Following the subjective
way, we should then set out to determine whether we necessarily have to
posit the existence of transcendent objects independent from the
contents of our consciousness. We should, it seems, assume what the
positivists have called "the standpoint of immanence"
(Rickert 1921a, 21) and see if there is some rationally justifiable way
to infer our way out of it.




This conception however, is misleading and if we took it as our
point of departure it would put the whole enterprise of the theory of
knowledge in jeopardy. Who or what is the subject, for which the
problem of transcendence can be meaningfully posed? Rickert indicates
that the three concepts of subject considered above ought to be seen in
their mutual relations. If we begin with the psychophysical subject in
(1), we can obtain the notion of subject in (2) by way of a progressive
'objectification' of the body (Rickert 1921a, 35). I can
progressively consider each part of my body as itself an
'object' or content of my consciousness and once the whole
body has been 'purged out' the result will be a purely
psychic subject, which Rickert defines as "the limit concept
(*Grenzbegriff*) of the series, in which the physical component
in the subject becomes progressively smaller" (Rickert 1921a,
36). In a similar way, we can continue the process of
'de-objectification' of the subject and consider each and
every mental state as itself an object for an absolutely non-objective
and non-objectifiable *ego*. In this way we reach the authentic
*epistemological subject*, the identical
"subject-factor" (Rickert 1921a, 42) that provides the form
'subjectivity' to every possible content of consciousness.
Following Kant's terminology Rickert designates the
epistemological subject "consciousness in general", that is,
a "nameless, generic, impersonal consciousness" (Rickert
1921a, 42). This consciousness in general has to be distinguished
sharply not only from the individual psychophysical human subject but
also from the individual psychic subject with its empirical mental
states.




Rickert insists: "The question regarding immanence or
transcendence only makes epistemological sense with respect to the
epistemological subject or consciousness in general" (Rickert
1921a, 43). From this perspective, "to be immanent means nothing
but to carry the form of being-conscious (*Bewusstheit*)
and to be transcendent means to really exist without such form"
(Rickert 1921a, 48). Given these definitions, Rickert contends that
while there are many good reasons to reject psychological idealism, if
one holds fast to consciousness in general there is no good reason to
posit the existence of a transcendent *reality* beyond the
sphere encompassed by the epistemological subject. His theory of
knowledge is therefore committed to transcendental idealism. In order
to defend this point Rickert examines three types of arguments that
have been traditionally played out against transcendental idealism as
defenses of the necessity to posit a transcendent reality: (1)
transcendence as the unexperienced cause of conscious experiences
(Rickert 1921a, 62-73); (2) transcendence as necessary in order to fill
the gaps in our conscious experiences (Rickert 1921a, 74-84); (3)
transcendence as the objective counterpart of our will, that is, as the
correlate of the experience of a resistance and constraint to our
willful actions (Rickert 1921a, 84-93). All these arguments, however,
only show that we cannot reduce reality to psychic existence. In other
words, they are good arguments only against a psychological idealism
*a la* Berkeley according to which reality would
coincide with our empirical mental states. From the point of view of
the epistemological subject, however, both psychic and physical
occurrences are objects whose reality is encompassed by the form
'consciousness in general'. A *transcendental*
idealist, then, emphatically agrees that there is an extra-mental
physical reality causing the occurrence of mental states in empirical
subjects. To the extent that they are experienced or experienceable,
however, both extra-mental (physical things) and intra-mental realities
(mental states) have to be seen as *content of consciousness*,
namely, of transcendental consciousness in general. It is important to
remember that by 'consciousness in general' Rickert means
no individual psychic subject but the general form of subjective
accessibility. In other words, to say that all reality is a content of
consciousness does not mean that all reality is psychic. It means that
all reality (both psychic and physical) is encompassed by a general
form of subjectivity, which makes it available for theoretical
determination. Commenting on his own brand of transcendental idealism,
Rickert states: "our standpoint is the true realism"
(Rickert 1921a, 104), in that it refuses to counterpose an immanent
psychic reality to an inaccessible transcendent reality to be posited
via inferential reasoning. Rickert insists that transcendental idealism
considers real precisely the reality that we encounter in everyday life
through sensory experience, consisting of immediately aware psychic and
physical occurrences. What it rejects is that this reality can be
meaningfully construed as *transcendent* vis-a-vis
consciousness in general.




The reason why one might be prone to reject transcendental idealism
is a wrong conception of what knowledge really is all about. Rickert
labels this conception the copy-theory or pictorial theory
(*Abbildtheorie*) of knowledge. According to this conception,
"the act of knowing has to depict (*abbilden*) a reality
independent from its activity of representing
(*vorstellen*)" (Rickert 1921a, 119). The rejection of a
pictorial theory of cognition and the ensuing intuitionism (according
to which to know is merely to intuit some mind-independent real or
noetic object), remains a constant in Rickert's philosophy (see
Rickert 1934a; Staiti 2013a). It also connects Rickert with other
Neo-Kantians, including Natorp and Cassirer in Marburg, who likewise
reject the notion that knowledge is a merely picturing representation
of the object (see Holzey 2010; Kubalica 2013).




In order to expose the untenable notions in the pictorial theory of
knowledge Rickert introduces a distinction between the *form*
and the *content* of cognition. While nothing is wrong with the
idea that in order to have knowledge we have to take up in some
representations some content, what distinguishes knowledge from other
kinds of representation must be sought in its *form*. If I say
of a piece of paper that it is white, then certainly "my
representation reproduces what is real with respect to the white, and
this is why the statement is true" (Rickert 1921a, 125). However,
this is not all. "In the statement at issue (this piece of paper
is white), in fact, not only is the *being*-white asserted
alongside the being-*white*, but rather, the white as
'property' is also attributed to a 'thing',
and, in so being, the being-white is determined more specifically.
Thing and property, however, are, as much as being and reality,
concepts that do not belong in the content of knowledge. One has to
know beforehand what it means epistemologically that a
'thing' has a 'property' and what the
objectivity of this piece of knowledge rests upon in order to be able
to say: 'the thought: this piece of paper is white grasps what is
real through pictorial representations" (Rickert 1921a, 125-126;
Rickert 1909, 177). The theorist of knowledge cannot overlook the gulf
that exists between the pre-discursive perceptual experience of seeing
a white piece of paper and the articulation of the true judgment
'this piece of paper is white'. The judgment does not
merely mirror or depict perceptual reality. Rather, the judgment
transforms and reshapes the perceptual material delivered by the senses
by way casting it into a new form, whose legitimacy does not rest in
the faithful depiction of the perceptual scene but in the logical
validity of such forms. The problem of the pictorial theory of
cognition is that it "ignores the form" (Rickert 1909,
178).




These considerations lead to one of the key theses in
Rickert's theory of knowledge: "The fundamental problem of
the theory of knowledge is the question regarding the yardstick or the
object of *judging* (Rickert 1921a, 131-132). The
epistemological subject is not merely a representational subject, but
rather a judging subject. Judgment is for Rickert the place where the
standpoint of immanence is necessarily broken and the genuine meaning
of transcendence becomes manifest. In his analysis of judgment Rickert
draws a sharp distinction between the psychological act of judging and
the content (*Gehalt*) of a judgment, which parallels
Husserl's treatment of the same issue in *Logical
Investigations* (Husserl 1973). While the act of judging, say, that
2 + 2 = 4 is a psychic occurrence unfolding in time and differing for
each empirical subject making this judgment, the objective content
grasped by this act, the true relation 2 + 2 = 4 is *timelessly
valid* and it is one over and against the many psychic acts
directed towards it. Moreover, if by real we mean either a psychic or a
physical entity, then the content of the judgment 2 + 2 = 4 has to be
deemed "unreal" (Rickert 1921a, 145). Taking notice of the
objective content of an act and reflecting back on the psychological
act of judging that intends such content we also have to highlight a
*third* component of a judgment, which Rickert labels
"immanent sense" of the act (Rickert 1921a, 145), i.e. that
which orients the act towards the judged content. As one commentator
puts it: "the immanent sense of the judgment stands in an
intermediate position between the real psychic act and the unreal
logical content" (Oliva 2006, 97). It is the function
(*Leistung*) performed by the psychic act seen purely and
exclusively in its functionality of connecting psychological
subjectivity and logical objectivity. Determining what kind of immanent
function characterizes judgments and how this function sets them apart
from other kinds of psychic occurrences is Rickert's next
step.




In order to grasp the epistemological essence of judgment and its
relation to the fundamental epistemological problem of transcendence we
have to describe its difference from a mere representation or string of
representations. The best way to characterize the specific essence of
judgment is by "considering the judgment the answer to a
question" (Rickert 1921a, 153). Rickert thus identifies the
essence of judgment is thus in the function of "affirmation or
negation" (Rickert 1921a, 154), thereby following a trend in
logic that dates back to Brentano (see Brentano 1995, 194-234). If we
consider exclusively the representational content, the judgment,
"this paper is white", and the question, "is this
paper white?" do not differ in the slightest. The same
representational elements are there in a meaningful connection. The
genuine performance of judgment, for Rickert, is all contained in the
'yes' or 'no' that we could answer to the
question, thereby taking a stance with regards to the represented
content. In fact, what distinguishes judgment from all sorts of
representations is the moment of 'stance-taking'
(*Stellungnehmen*) expressed by the words 'yes' or
'no'. Judging should then be considered a "practical
comportment (*Verhalten*)" (Rickert 1921a, 165), in which
something is *acknowledged* as true or *rejected* as
false. In this regard, judging has to be considered an "act of
valuing" (Rickert 1921a, 165). *What is it*, however,
that elicits from the epistemological subject an act of stance-taking?
Rickert explains: "With our act of affirming we can only orient
ourselves toward requirements (*Forderungen*), only
vis-a-vis a requirement can we comport ourselves in an endorsing
fashion. In this way we have obtained the broadest concept for the
object of knowledge. What is known, that is, what is affirmed or
acknowledged in the act of judgment must be located in the sphere of
the 'ought' (*Sollen*)" (Rickert 1909, 184).
This is the kind of transcendence that Rickert set out to determine at
the beginning. The object of knowledge has to be conceived as
*transcendent*, however, not as a transcendent reality mirrored
by a psychological act of representation but as a "transcendent
*ought*" (Rickert 1909, 187). This prompts the
theoretically oriented subject to affirm the *transcendent
theoretical value of truth* in the necessary connection existing
between the form and the content expressed in a true judgment.




Examining retrospectively the results of this first subjective path
of the theory of knowledge Rickert points out a number of shortcomings.
It seems that if we begin with an analysis of the act of judging, we
can only reach the transcendent object of knowledge by way of a
"*petitio principii*" (Rickert 1909, 190). If we
take our cues from the psychologically perceived "feeling of a
requirement" (*Forderungsgefuhl*) and from the
evidence of the judged content as the "immanent indicator of the
transcendent" (Rickert 1909, 189), we have no sufficient reason
to posit a transcendent object of knowledge unless we somehow already
presupposed it in the very analysis of this feeling and its
psychological connotations. It seems that the only conclusion we could
legitimately draw without falling into circular reasoning is that when
a certain compelling feeling of evidence occurs, we feel the urge to
affirm the truth of a certain connection between a form and a content.
But this does not really amount to proving that the internally felt
sense of ought is connected to a transcendent ought. Rickert considers
*petitio principii* inherent in the subjective path to be
problematic but nonetheless a useful starting point, in that it allows
us to analyze the meaning of certain fundamental concepts of the theory
of knowledge such as transcendence, ought, stance-taking and
recognition. However, in order to have a complete theory of knowledge,
an objective or transcendental-logical path has to be taken.




Acts of judgments are not the only kinds of realities to which truth
or falsehood attach. Propositions can also be true or false and their
meanings can be taken as a new point of departure for the sake of
determining the transcendent object of knowledge avoiding a *petitio
principii* (Rickert 1909, 197). The meaning of a proposition can be
taken objectively and independently of empirical acts of thought. In
this case, we can say of the proposition itself that is either true or
false, without thereby referring to the feeling of evidence or
necessity perceived by the subject of judgment. In propositional logic
we are accustomed to assign a truth-*value* to a given
proposition and in so doing we think of the truth-value as pertaining
to the proposition itself and not to the immanent psychological act
that affirms the proposition's truth. This is the advantage of
the objective path over the subjective path: "The subjective path
led us to the object as a requirement (*Forderung*) and this
requirement was then interpreted as a transcendent ought. The objective
path leads us directly to a transcendent value, and this concept yields
the form of the object in its purity for the first time. Value and
ought do not coincide. The ought is not the pure value. It represents
the unreal as a command and relates it to a subject from which it
demands obedience, recognition and submission. This is a secondary and
even misleading addition. Only the value which rests upon itself and
holds valid as value [...] is the transcendent object"
(Rickert 1921a, 242).




Rickert considers the concept of transcendent value (as pure
validity independent of subjective acts of valuing) the culmination of
his theory of knowledge. It is ultimately the theoretical value of
truth, the *unreal transcendent object, that* is
'known' or grasped in every act of true judgment. However,
this does not imply a complete rejection or neglect of the valuing
subjectivity. Rickert maintains that once the theory of knowledge has
established the absolute transcendence of values and their independence
from empirical acts of valuing, it is then possible to relate values
*back* to subjectivity. As we know, the immanent sense of acts
(*Aktsinn*) is the unreal component of acts that mediates
between the empirical sphere of psyche and the unreal sphere of values.
Subjectivity is then interpreted as the 'middle' factor
capable of mediating between reality and value, and thereby it receives
its philosophical 'dignification'. It is fair to say that
Rickert's work in all other fields of philosophy and in
particular in the theory of the empirical sciences is an attempt to
reconstruct the meaning of various spheres of reality and knowledge
from his fundamental insight into the transcendence of values.
See also the



Supplement on Rickert's Philosophy of Mathematics



## 3. Theory of Science



> 
> *Empirical reality becomes nature when we conceive it with
> reference to the general. It becomes history when we conceive it with
> reference to the distinctive and the individual.*
> (Rickert 1986, 54)




Rickert's theory of science is primarily geared towards a
philosophical elucidation of the natural and the historical sciences.
This is intended to provide a defense of the *sui generis*
scientificity of the historical sciences against the threat of
positivism and naturalism. Rickert's work on this issue builds
upon Windelband's influential paper *History and Natural
Science* (Windelband 1980, 169-185). While Rickert criticizes some
terminological and argumentative limits of his teacher's essay,
the bulk of his lengthy volume, *The Limits of Concept Formation in
Natural Science: An Introduction to the Historical Sciences*
(Rickert 1986), is consistent with the tenets of Windelband's
position.




Windelband pointed out that the customary distinction of the
empirical sciences into natural sciences and
*Geisteswissenschaften* (that is, literally spiritual or mental
sciences and used in German to indicate the humanities and the social
sciences) is deeply misleading (Windelband 1980, 173). This is because
it seems to suggest that these two groups of sciences differ primarily
with respect to their subject matter, that is, in the first case
'nature' and in the second case 'mind'.
However, there are at least two problems with this classification: (1)
a significant number of disciplines commonly considered
*Geisteswissenschaften* have little or nothing to do with the
study of the human mind. Take, for instance, art history, political
economics or archeology. None of these disciplines seems to have mental
processes and states as their subject matter. (2) According to this
classification psychology should be considered a
*Geisteswissenschaft* and presumably even the most fundamental
of all *Geisteswissenschaften* in that it studies the human mind
in the most direct and rigorous fashion. Indeed, in late nineteenth
century Germany there was a widely spread expectation that progress in
psychology should have led to significant reforms in all other
humanistic fields of research. This expectation, however, clashes with
the fact that psychology's method is much more similar to that of
physics, chemistry, and biology than with that of literary studies or
musicology. Psychology, too, seeks to determine its subject matter in
terms of *general laws* and works with the aid of mathematical
models and experiments. Considering these anomalies Windelband's
proposal is to drop content-related distinctions altogether and rely
exclusively on a methodological distinction between
"nomothetic" and "idiographic" sciences
(Windelband 1980, 175). One group of sciences works by way of positing
general laws and understanding its objects as examples of such general
laws (nomo-thetic). Another group of sciences aims at producing
illuminating descriptions of irreducibly individual and unrepeatable
occurrences (idiographic). Most importantly, "the same subjects
can be the object of both a nomothetic and an idiographic
investigation" (Windelband 1980, 175). From this purely
methodological point of view, sciences like psychology, physics,
chemistry, and biology all belong in the same group as nomothetic,
whereas sciences like history, art history, and musicology are to be
considered idiographic. This distinction is meant to reorganize the
universe of knowledge and to avoid unhelpful encroachments of empirical
psychology on the work of humanistic disciplines, whose theoretical
aims are fundamentally alien to nomothetic inquiry.




Rickert enhances and corrects Windelband's perspective in two
ways: (1) He revises his terminology and rejects the phrase
'idiographic', which seems to suggest a purely pictorial or
reproductive procedure. This would not qualify as knowledge by
Rickert's epistemological standards (see Zijderveld 2006,
246-255; Ferrari 1998). (2) He insists on the necessity of
*beginning* a reflection on the classification of the sciences with
a purely methodological criterion, but only to articulate subsequently a
more adequate content-related distinction to replace the customary
*Naturwissenschaft/Geisteswissenschaft* pair (Rickert 1962,
11).




Rickert defines the task of a logical/methodological investigation
of the sciences in the following terms: "The logical
distinctiveness of an empirical science is to be understood in terms of
the relationship the content of its concepts bears to empirical reality
in its unique and distinctive form" (Rickert 1986, 114). In
other words, the task of a theory of science is to determine how the
science under scrutiny *forms its concepts* and in so doing
overcomes the unsurveyable, "immeasurable manifold"
(Rickert 1962, 32) of empirical reality as it is given in intuition.
Concept formation for Rickert indicates "the conclusion of an
investigation" (Rickert 1986, 27), that is the fulfillment of the
scientific task posed at the beginning of that investigation. In
keeping with his general rejection of a pictorial theory of knowledge
(see above), Rickert rejects the view that the empirical sciences would
simply have to depict (*abbilden*) reality as it is in itself.
Rather, the task of the empirical sciences is to *re-mold*
(*umbilden*) immediately given reality and form
*concepts*, in which only a small fraction of the original given
is taken up. The criteria for such selections and re-molding activities
culminating in the formation of a scientific *concept* are the
specific preoccupation of the philosophy of science.




As for the natural sciences, Rickert contends that Kant already
provided a satisfactory definition of their logical structure. In the
*Prolegomena* Kant stated: "*Nature* is the
*existence* of things, insofar as [*sofern*] that
existence is determined according to universal laws" (Kant 2002,
89; Rickert 1962, 5). Following Kant, Rickert defines the natural
sciences as *generalizing* (Rickert 1986, 34; Rickert 1962, 46),
that is, they form their concepts by way of moving *away from*
the individual, unrepeatable occurrences encountered in experience. As
Windelband already saw, the natural sciences view individual
occurrences as mere *examples* of general laws. In this way,
*individuality* "fixes the limits of natural scientific
concept formation" (Rickert 1986, 40) and calls forth its logical
complement: "*individualizing concept-formation*"
(Rickert 1986, 62) as the method defining the historical sciences. The
logical distinction between the sciences, then, has to be between the
generalizing natural sciences and the individualizing historical
sciences. In other words, while the natural sciences build their
concepts by way of disregarding what is individual, the historical
sciences build their concepts in order to grasp precisely what is
individual.




How are we to understand, then, historical individuality?
Rickert's definition unfolds in three stages (Rickert 1986, 98).
(1) In the broadest sense, the individual is every single empirical
reality in its uniqueness and distinctiveness. This, however, is not
yet historically *relevant* individuality. (2) In a more
specific and etymological sense, a historical individual is what
"should not be divided" (Rickert 1986, 85), that is, it is
an individual whose "uniqueness is related to a value"
(Rickert 1986, 84). Rickert suggests to compare a lump of coal and the
famous Koh-i-noor diamond. While the lump of coal can be split at any
time without any significant loss, the Koh-i-noor *ought not* be
spilt because it is a *good*, that is, a bit of reality related
to a value and valued by any subject capable of carrying out
valuations. (3) The historical individual as the object of the
historical sciences has to be a good related to *generally
acknowledged values* as opposed to merely personal values. In other
words, while a certain item can be valuable to me as an individual (for
instance, because a beloved person gave it to me), this is not enough
to make it an object of historical interest. The Koh-i-noor, on the
contrary, has a more than merely individual historical relevance
because it is inextricably related to the historical vicissitudes of
India and British colonialism.




The notions of *value* and *value-relatedness* are
crucial to determine Rickert's *material* or
content-related (*inhaltlich*) criterion for the demarcation of
the sciences. In this respect we have to distinguish between the
value-free sphere of *nature* and the value-related sphere of
*culture* (Rickert 1962, 21). Accordingly, the material
distinction that has to replace the customary distinction between
natural sciences and *Geisteswissenschaften* is the distinction
between the sciences of nature (value-free objects) and the sciences of
culture (value-related objects). It is the reference to objectively
acknowledged cultural values that 'preserves' the
individuality of empirical objects and makes them *relevant to*
historical inquiry.




In the context of this distinction Rickert insists on the important
distinction between *Wertung*, or valuation, and
*Wertbeziehung*, or the act of relating something to a value.
The two notions stand in sharp opposition. While human subjects in
their practical lives constantly engage in valuations resulting in
positive or negative value-judgments, the historical scientist must
*abstain* from every act of valuation and limit herself to the
ascertainment of objective value-relations in the cultural materials
under scrutiny. "Accordingly, if it is to express the character
of history as a theoretical science, the procedure that we speak of as
*oriented to values* is to be most sharply separated from one
that *posits* values. This means that history treats values only
in so far as they are *actually* accepted by subjects so that
certain objects are *actually* denoted as goods. Thus, even if
history deals with values, it is not a science that posits
values" (Rickert 1962, 89). Rickert gives the following example
to illustrate this distinction: "We can regard the personality of
Luther as either a good thing or a bad thing. In other words, we can
believe that it was a stroke of luck for the cultural development of
Germany or that it brought misfortune. On this point, the opinions of
historians will probably always be in disagreement. But no one who
knows the facts will doubt that Luther had some sort of
*significance* with reference to generally acknowledged values,
and it can never occur to a historian to claim that Luther's
personality is historically *unimportant*" (Rickert 1986,
93; for a critical response to this view see Oakes 1988, 111-144).




By contrasting the generalizing method of the natural sciences dealing
with value-free objects and the individualizing (i.e., historical)
method of the cultural sciences dealing with value-related objects,
Rickert does not mean to say that values play no role in the natural
sciences or that generalizing procedures and general objects are
completely absent form the cultural sciences. On the contrary, he
emphasizes that "natural science is not free of
valuations" (Rickert 1986, 93). In a way that anticipates much
late twentieth century philosophy of science (see for instance Laudan
1985; Lacey 1999; Allchin 1999) Rickert insists that natural science
and, for that matter, science in general obeys "logical values
to which the investigator is committed, and which are implicitly
presupposed in all scientific concept formation" (Rickert 1986,
94). What remains 'value-free' is the material that the
natural sciences investigate. To stay with the above example, for a
mineralogist studying diamonds the Koh-i-noor will be merely an
instance of some general law of crystallization as much as any other
diamond. It is not considered in its relation to culturally
acknowledged values. On the other hand, the historical sciences do not
completely dispense with elements of generality. Rickert identifies
four senses in which 'the general' is at play in
historical research. "First, the elements of all scientific
concepts are general" (Rickert 1986, 115). This means that, for
example, in order to form the concept 'French Revolution'
we have to use general concepts such as 'French' and
'revolution'. However, these two general concepts are
compounded in order to capture a unique historical event. In a second
sense, as we saw, history has to take into account the relation of
events and objects to *general* values. However, the fact that
a certain object has a reference to a general value (e.g. the French
Revolution bears a reference to the general value 'political
freedom') does not make the concept of that object general.
"Third, historical science never regards individuals in
isolation, as the generalizing sciences do, but in a *general
nexus*" (Rickert 1986, 115). We cannot understand the
individual Robespierre unless we view his actions in the meaningful
general context of the French Revolution. Such 'nexus',
however, is not itself a general concept but is itself an
'individual', that is, a unique and unrepeatable
constellation of events. Fourth, in some cases the historical
scientist will deliberately study *groups* of individuals, say,
late-medieval serfs in Holland. In this case single individuals
(either people or objects) will be seen as mere examples of dynamics
and characteristics pertaining to their group in a way that seems to
resemble the generalizing procedure of natural science. However, even
in this case the historian is not interested in the 'general
nature' of human groups but in the individuality of the group at
issue.




Rickert engaged in a lifelong controversy with another prominent
theorist of the human sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey (on the controversy see
Makkreel/Luft 2010 and Makkreel 2010). Dilthey advocated the necessity
to maintain a primarily content-related distinction to demarcate
different ambits of science and he defended the legitimacy of the
phrase *Geisteswissenschaft*. Dilthey rejected the argument that
psychology could not be foundational for the human sciences because of
its methodological similarity to the natural sciences. He considered
the empirical (or, in his language, explanative) psychology of his time
to be deeply flawed in that it imitated the methods of the natural
sciences without paying attention to the specificity of the mental
domain (Dilthey 2010, 119). Psychology, for Dilthey, should be
conducted in a descriptive-analytical spirit, starting off from the
overall meaningfulness and intelligibility of mental phenomena and
working to describe the intricate connections or nexuses of
significance characterizing human life (Dilthey 2010, 182). "Such
a psychology will become the foundation of the human sciences, just as
mathematics grounds the natural sciences" (Dilthey 2010, 165).
This is because, for Dilthey, all the products of culture studied by
the human sciences are nothing but "psychic life that has become
objective, [...] the products of active forces of a psychic nature
and stable configurations formed from psychic elements and their
laws" (Dilthey 2010, 171). For this reason, Dilthey contends that
in the human sciences we can only *understand*, as opposed to
*explain*, (Dilthey 2010, 119) cultural products (poems,
artworks, juridical systems, etc.) to the extent that we
*reactivate* the psychic life at their origin and
*relive* (*nacherleben*) the life-experience that brought
them about. If we had theoretical tools provided by a descriptive
psychology to orient ourselves in the complexity of psychic
objectifications, we would make significant advancements in the human
sciences, too.




Rickert is willing to grant the "paramount significance of
mental beings within the historical material" (Rickert 1986, 123)
and the importance of "historical personalities that
valuate" (Rickert 1986, 122) for the cultural sciences. He is
also open to the use of *Geist*, provided that this term is
considered synonymous with culture. However, he insists that
Dilthey's emphasis on psychic life and reliving is both
systematically and methodologically misleading. First, not *all*
of psychic life is relevant in the cultural sciences. Most psychic
manifestations, both those occurring in individuals and those
objectified in cultural objects, are completely devoid of historical
significance, in that they lack the reference to a general value.
Second, even if we had the capacity to relive past experiences in their
total intensity and vividness, this would not amount to
*understanding* those experiences and their cultural
objectifications. In the historical sciences, too, to know does not
mean merely to mirror or depict a real object. Only if the notion of
*value* and the *objective value-relatedness of historical
individuals* (be they physical or psychic) are taken as the
systematic point of departure can the subjectivity involved in history
be adequately understood. "The fact that history is a science of
mental entities does not determine its logical structure, for mental
processes can also be represented in a natural scientific or
generalizing fashion. Rather, the converse is true: On the basis of the
logical structure of historical science [...] it can be understood
why history primarily takes a certain kind of mental life as the object
of its investigation" (Rickert 1986, 127).




Rickert's theory of generalizing and individualizing concept
formation as the systematically fundamental criterion for the
demarcation of science elicited other waves of criticism. Husserl, for
example, considered it an oversimplification of the Kantian problem of
the transcendental deduction in that Rickert simply takes for granted
that the infinite, unsurveyable manifold of immediate experience is
amenable to conceptualization (Husserl 2001, 91). However, given his
premises it is hard to see why a completely chaotic and heterogeneous
immediate experience would nonetheless lend itself to conceptual
rationalization. The problem, according to Husserl, is that for Rickert
"world-experience (*Welterfahrung*) remains an empty
word" (Husserl 2001, 100). Moreover, and similarly to Dilthey,
Husserl laments the fact that Rickert downplays historically active
subjectivity as the source of culture. Like Rickert, Husserl
distinguishes between nature and culture in terms of "the world
considered without significance" as opposed to "the world
full of significance" (Husserl 2002, 139), however, he
immediately relates back such significance to the operations of
"meaning-bestowing subjectivity, which endows things with
spiritual meaning [*vergeistigen*] through operations of
significance [*Bedeutungsleistungen*]" (Husserl 2002,
140). For this reason, Husserl considers the whole dispute about
whether the correct pair of concepts to demarcate the ambits of science
should be nature/*Geist* (Dilthey) or nature/culture (Rickert)
"a mere verbal dispute" (Husserl 2002, 140). Another line
of criticism of Rickert's distinction comes from his student,
Emil Lask. In his personal notes Lask forcefully asserts that "a
purely logical meaning of nature must be absolutely denied" (Lask
1924, 272). Lask argues that in Rickert's reconstruction
natural-scientific generalization and historical individualization are
treated as equally legitimate and complementary ways of conceptualizing
empirical reality. Against this view Lask contends that the
generalizations carried out by the natural sciences presuppose a
preliminary 'devitalization' (*Ertotung*) and
'quantification' of reality, in which the dimension of
significance and value is put out of play (Lask 1924, 244). In a way
that anticipates Husserl's later treatment of this issue in
*The Crisis of the European Sciences* (Husserl 1970). Lask points
out that our original experience of the world is pervaded with value
and significance and it is only by way of an abstractive impoverishment
of this original experience that the natural sciences create their
value-free (and to that extent artificial) field of research. As a
matter of fact, however, there is evidence that Rickert was well aware
of the quantifying tendency of natural science (see for instance
Rickert 1900, 76), although he did not assign to it a central role.


## 4. The philosophy of values and the philosophy of history



> 
> *Fundamental progress in the cultural sciences with respect to
> their objectivity, their universality, and their arrangement in a
> coherent system, is dependent on progress in the development of an
> objective and systematically articulated concept of culture, i.e., on
> the approach to a knowledge of value based on a system of valid
> values.*
> (Rickert 1962, 139-140)
> 




While Rickert does not believe that significant progress in the
historical sciences of culture can be expected from the development of
psychology, he believes that a *philosophy of history* grounded
in an unconditionally valid system of values (Rickert 1924a, 118) would
be of paramount importance. If philosophy were able to identify and
justify a formal set of values common to all cultures and historical
constellations, then the historical sciences could employ such a formal
set of values to orient their inquiries. In order to do this, however,
philosophy cannot simply rely on empirical generalizations. Given the
multiplicity of cultures and the complexity of human history, it would
be impossible to adopt a generalizing procedure in order to identify a
robust set of values common to all. "Rather, it would be
appropriate to reflect (completely independently of the multiplicity of
the historical material) on that which holds valid by necessity, that
is, the formal presupposition of each value-judgment claiming more than
individual validity. Only when such timelessly valid formal values are
found will it be possible to relate them to the plenitude of
empirically detectable values actually developed in history"
(Rickert 1924a, 118). Rickert underscores in various places that such
system, however, should be understood as completely "open"
(Rickert 1913, 297; Rickert 1921b, 348-355; see Bohlken 2002, 124).
This means that it is intended to provide merely the "most
encompassing framework in which all meaningful cultural life plays
itself out" (Rickert 1934b, 225). The areas of values identified
in the system can be filled with the most diverse concrete historical
values.




Rickert's first attempt to articulate a timelessly valid
system of values can be found in his paper *On the System of
Values* (Rickert 1913). The position developed here was eventually
recast and schematized visually in the first (and only) volume of his
*System of Philosophy* (Rickert 1921b). Rickert begins his
inquiry by describing different kinds of *goods*, that is,
concrete objects related to values. His intent is to read off the
objectively valid values from concrete classes of goods. The human
creation of goods related to values follows a general impulse towards
"completion" (*Vollendung*), which can be best
described as the attainment of a certain goal. Moreover, each
realization of values in a good can be understood as the work on a
certain 'content', which receives a value-related form.
Such content can be interpreted as a *whole* consisting of
*parts*. Starting from these abstract distinctions, Rickert
identifies three domains of goods, that of the "uncompletable
(*unendlich*) totality", that of "fully completed
(*voll-endlich*) particularity" and that which synthesizes
the two in a "fully completed totality" (Rickert 1913,
302). To each of these domains of goods Rickert assigns a temporal
dimension, such that the goods of un-ending totality are goods of the
future, those of fully completed particularity are goods of the present
and those of fully completed totality are goods of eternity. A further
overarching distinction, however, cuts across these three domains of
goods, thus giving as a result *six domains*: the distinction
between *contemplation and activity*, whose parallel categories
of objects are "thing" and "person". After
fleshing out this general scheme Rickert fills in the six domains with
actual values and the corresponding cultural activities according to
the following schema (Rickert 1921b, annex):





> 
> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |  |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | *Goods*: asocial matters (*Sachen*)
> *Subjective Comportment*: monistic contemplation
> *Form*: encompassing
>  | Stages of completeness | *Goods*: social persons
> *Subjective Comportment*: pluralistic activity
> *Form*: pervading
>  |
> | Domain of Logic (1)
> *Value*: truth
> *Good*: science
> *Subjective Comportment*: judgment
> *Worldview*: intellectualism
>  | 
> FIRST STAGE
> Un-completable totality
> Goods of the future
>  | Domain of Ethics (4)
> *Value*: morality (*Sittlichkeit*)
> *Good*: community of free people
> *Subjective Comportment*: autonomous action
> *Worldview*: moralism (*Moralismus*)
>  |
> | Domain of Aesthetics (2)
> *Value*: beauty
> *Good*: art
> *Subjective Comportment*: intuition (*anschauen*)
> *Worldview*: aestheticism
>  | 
> SECOND STAGE
> Fully completed particularity
> Goods of the present
>  | Domain of Erotics (5)
> *Value*: happiness (*Gluck*)
> *Good*: loving community
> *Subjective Comportment*: inclination--devotion (*Hingabe*)
> *Worldview*: eudaemonism
>  |
> | System of Philosophy (8)
> Comprehensive theory of worldviews
>  | 
> INTERMEDIATE STAGE
> Immanent syntheses
>  | Love between man and woman (7)
> *Worldview*: eroticism
>  |
> | Domain of Mystics (3)
> *Value*: impersonal sanctity
> *Good*: the All-One (world-mystery)
> *Subjective Comportment*: solitude (*Abgeschiedenheit*) (divinization)
> *Worldview*: Mysticism
>  | 
> THIRD STAGE
> Fully completed totality
> Goods of eternity
> (Transcendent syntheses)
>  | Domain of the Philosophy of Religion (6)
> *Value*: personal sanctity
> *Good*: the world of god (*Gotterwelt*)
> *Subjective comportment*: piety
> *Worldview*: Theism--Polytheism
>  |
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 





The following points are distinctive of Rickert's approach to
values as presented in the above table:




(1) Note that Rickert distinguishes the way in which values
relate to their materials in the spheres of contemplation and in the
sphere of practice. In his language, the value of truth
'encompasses' scientific theories and likewise the value of
beauty encompasses works of art. This means that the value is
experienced as something essentially 'beyond' the
particular theory or artwork at issue. On the contrary, in the sphere
of practice values 'pervade' their materials, that is to
say they structure them 'from within', as it were.


 

(2) Rickert prides himself on having 'discovered' and
defended the autonomy of the fifth domain of values, which he labels
'erotics' (Rickert 1913, 313-319). Erotics is the
sphere of practical life in which subjects cultivate specific values
attaching to their relationships to particular people or groups of
people. According to Rickert in the philosophical tradition this
autonomous domain has been unduly overshadowed by the domain of
ethics, which constantly tried to impose its distinctive values on
erotics (Rickert 1921b, 406). However, for Rickert our practical life
would be unbearable if it were dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of
ethical values and the utopian ideal of a community of free subjects
(that is, Kant's kingdom of ends). We need a particular sphere of
relationships in which the practical thrust of our social life finds
full realization in the present. The values characterizing these
spheres, such as family, homeland, religious community, etc. need to
be respected and studied as a class of values in its own right.




(3) Rickert assigns an important role to religion in the
totality of cultural life (see Crowe 2010). He points out an inevitable
tension between the pursuit of goods of totality in domains (1) and
(4), which are ultimately unattainable in our earthly life, and the
pursuit of goods of particularity in (2) and (5), which are fully
attainable but inevitably finite. Religion opens up the space for
'transcendent syntheses', in which this tension is overcome
through the pursuit of goods of eternity. These, in Rickert's
view, do justice to both our human desire for infinity and our human
need for actually experienced fulfillment. Mysticism thus offers a
transcendent synthesis between the sense of fulfillment characterizing
aesthetic contemplation and the unending process of scientific
*theorein* via conceptual knowledge. Similarly, the religious
devotion to a divinity experienced as 'dwelling among us'
(in both polytheistic and monotheistic religions) promises a
transcendent synthesis between the values of ethics and those of
erotics.




(4) For Rickert, however, the transcendent syntheses promised
by religion are prefigured, as it were, in two earthly kinds of
syntheses, that is, the love between man and woman in the sphere of
practice and the production of a philosophical system oriented towards
a comprehensive worldview-theory in the sphere of contemplation. As for
the love between man and woman, Rickert's view rests on the
dubious assumption that women are "essentially" more
oriented toward the realization of goods of the present, while men are
"essentially" more oriented toward the realization of goods
of the future (Rickert 1921b, 403). Since no meaningful existence can
be devoted *exclusively* to one type of goods (the goods of the
future being ultimately unattainable and the goods of the present being
ultimately too narrow), Rickert argues that the "personal
union" (Rickert 1921b, 402) between man and woman amounts to a
mutual completion and a synthesis of the two domains of values.
Needless to say, to a contemporary reader this view sounds extremely
antiquated and even sexist. However, it has to be interpreted in the
context of Rickert's time. In his eyes, insisting on the mutual
completion and irreducibility of the values traditionally associated
with masculinity and those traditionally associated with feminineness
(Rickert 1921b, 403) was a way to defend the equal value of men and
women in the whole of cultural life. Philosophy as a worldview-theory
based on the system of values, in turn, can provide a comprehensive
picture of the world in which all contemplative and practical activity
takes place. To the extent that it strives towards a comprehensive
system, however, philosophy tends to exceed the sphere of theoretical
goods (Rickert 1921b, 408). Instead of partaking in the indefinitely
open work of the specialized sciences philosophy attempts to survey the
totality of cultural life and to systematically determine its
underlying value-related structure. In each successfully articulated
philosophical system we then find a *completed* cultural good,
which differs from the characteristic open-endedness of theories in the
specialized sciences. The philosopher thus occupies the middle ground
between the scientist moving indefinitely forward in her specialized
investigations and the artist striving to produce a *complete*
artwork. Philosophy, then, can then be considered an immanent synthesis
between the unending totality characterizing the goods of science and
the particularity characterizing the goods of art.


## 5. Metaphilosophy



> 
> *Philosophy has to be characterized as the scientific activity,
> which, in the stream of restlessly forward-moving development,
> endeavors to make a stop and find a resting point. It stands still in
> order to bring to light the significance for the meaning of life of
> what has been hitherto achieved.*
> (Rickert 1921b, 410)
> 




Rickert's conception of philosophy is tightly connected to his
notion of worldview. Worldview (*Weltanschauung*) was a buzzword
in early twentieth century German culture. Life-philosophers and
anti-rationalists used the phrase '*Weltanschauung*'
to designate the inherently elusive and obscure source of all cultural
life and thinking (see Dilthey 1960, 80; Simmel 1996, 29; Mannheim
1952, 38). On this reading philosophy is nothing but the conceptual
articulation of pre-theoretical worldviews that are inextricably
related to the historical, psychological, and cultural conditions of
individual philosophers. Worldview philosophy was extremely critical of
all attempts to describe the discipline as a science, that is, as a
purely theoretical enterprise. Rooted in existentially grounded
worldviews, philosophy is an expression of the *whole human
being* and not merely an impersonal conceptual construction of the
one-sided 'theoretical man' (see Staiti 2013b, 795-799).




Rickert agrees that philosophy, unlike the specialized empirical
sciences, must be oriented toward the world *as a whole*
(*Weltganze*), and not merely toward this or that specific part
of the world (Rickert 1910, 1; Rickert 1934, 1). However, he firmly
rejects the view that, in order to grasp the world as a whole,
philosophers ought to shun the ideal of scientificity and work as
whole human beings merely *expressing* what their existential
intuition of the world-whole suggests. In this regard, for Rickert,
the phrase 'worldview' should designate the *goal*
of philosophical work and not philosophy's obscure existential
origin. Furthermore, the goal of a comprehensive *theory* of
worldview can only be achieved with the aid of concepts and logical
thinking, that is, adopting a scientific standpoint. *Contra*
Dilthey, Simmel, and the antirationalist life-philosophers Rickert
points out that "only the one-sided, theoretically oriented man
is able to reflect upon the world in its totality" (Rickert
1933, 50). On the contrary, "[t]he whole human being, precisely
as 'whole' or 'existing' human being, will
never transcend his 'small' world and this small world
inevitably takes on different shapes for different people. For the
pre-scientific man only that which stands in an essential connection
with his own life can become 'world'" (Rickert 1933,
49-50; see Staiti 2013b: 799-804). Rickert contends that the historical beginnings of
philosophy in ancient Greece coincide with the birth of a purely
'theoretical man', that is, of a subject who pursues
knowledge for knowledge's sake and in so doing discloses a dimension
of totality unknown to natural, practically oriented human subjects
(Rickert 1923b).




In order to produce knowledge about the world as a whole, philosophy
cannot rely on empirical methods like the specialized sciences do, nor
can it simplistically project one concept or set of concepts describing
one of the world's parts onto the world-whole. For Rickert
philosophy has to rely on what he calls "the heterological
principle" (Rickert 1921b, 57; Rickert 1934b, 39). Scholars agree
that the notion of heterology is the most distinctive element of
Rickert's philosophy (Glockner 1937, 11; Flach 1958, 564; Orth
1998, 81) and even his "principle of all principles"
(Krijnen 2001, 256). Heterology is a relational mode of thinking, which
Rickert considers paramount to the theoretical determination of objects
in general (Rickert 1921b, 57) and utterly unavoidable for a conceptual
grasp of totalities. It consists in using a *pair* of mutually
exclusive concepts, that is, concepts that negate each other, and take
them together as complementary. To think heterologically means to posit
a given initial concept (*thesis*) and then proceed to posit a
second concept that can be seen as its 'other'
(*hetero-thesis*), so that the two concepts taken together cover
the entirety of the totality to be theoretically determined.
"Wherever we can construct concepts that, through their
determinations (i.e., their limitations), do not merely negate, but
they simultaneously determine positively the negated component that is
missing from the whole, we can think in terms of alternatives. In so
doing we are able to grasp conceptually, through a kind of detour, a
whole that cannot be grasped through concepts in a direct fashion. This
is because we can construct two concepts, under which every element
belonging to the whole necessarily falls" (Rickert 1934b, 34). We
already encountered heterological pairs of concepts in the previous
sections, for instance, the transcendental-psychological and the
transcendental-logical paths in the theory of knowledge and
generalizing and individualizing concept formation in the theory of
science (see above.) In both cases the two opposite concepts, if taken
together, circumscribe a totality: in the first case, the totality of
epistemology, and, in the second case, the totality of scientific
methods in empirical research. The 'test' for successful
heterological reasoning is that the negation of one of the two related
concepts results positively into the other concept, so that one can be
*a priori* certain that any item not falling under the first
concept *necessarily* falls under the second concept. As an
example Rickert illustrates how to determine heterologically the
totality of bodies (Rickert 1934b, 42). We can start with the thesis
'organic living bodies' and if we proceed to negate it we
see that the merely negative concept '~ organic living
bodies' immediately results in the positive concept 'dead
mechanical bodies'. Taken together the two concepts amount to a
successful theoretical grasp of the whole 'bodies'. We can
see with evidence that within the totality 'bodies',
whatever body does not fall under the category 'organic living
body' necessarily falls under the category 'dead mechanical
body'. Using heterology philosophy can reflect upon the world as
a whole in terms of "world-alternatives" (Rickert 1934b,
42) and set out to determine what pair of concepts is best suited to
encompass the totality of what is. As we know from previous sections,
Rickert contends that the pair of concepts nature/psyche does not
withstand the heterological test, in that what is not nature can be
*either* psyche *or* timelessly valid value. Ultimately
for Rickert the correct heterology in terms of which we can approach
philosophically the world as a whole is reality/value (Rickert 1913,
11). This is because whatever is *not* an empirical reality (be
it physical or psychic) lies necessarily in the sphere of value and
vice versa. Once this broad categorization of the world as whole is
established, philosophy can set out to determine more specifically the
subordinated wholes out of which the world as a whole is constituted
and to articulate meaningfully their mutual relations.


## 6. Ontology and Metaphysics



> 
> *Only an ontological pluralism does justice to the richness of
> the world.*
> (Rickert 1932, 100)
> 




From roughly the beginning of the 1920s Rickert's philosophy
is characterized by what has been referred to as an "ontological
turn" (Farges 2010, 26; Kuttig 1987). However, in Rickert's
eyes the introduction of ontology is not a departure from his earlier
epistemological focus or the leap into a completely new philosophical
dimension. As his definition of ontology as "the doctrine of what
is predicated as being" (Rickert 1934b, 54) already suggests,
ontological questions are deeply connected to questions about judgment
and predication. In other words, if we take our knowledge to consist of
judgments and if we take our judgments to consist of a formal and a
material component, then it is legitimate to ask what *is* the
material component cast into conceptual forms in judgments. As the
opening quote of this section indicates, for Rickert it is important to
uphold pluralism in ontology. In keeping with the pluralism of
meaningful predication (there is a plurality of things that we can
meaningfully articulate judgments about), we cannot dogmatically
presuppose that there is only *one* meaning of the
'being' addressed in our predicative activities. In this
regard, far from being detrimental to a genuine ontological
investigation, Rickert's insistence on the preeminence of
epistemology turns out to have a positive effect on ontology. If the
compass to orient ourselves in ontology is meaningful predication, then
we are from the beginning immune to dogmatic reductions of *what
is* to one monistically conceived dimension of reality (Rickert
1934b, 57).




Rickert's ontology contemplates four "kinds of being
(*Seinsarten*) of the world" (Rickert 1934b, 153): (1)
sensible (*sinnlich*) being; (2) non-sensible
(*unsinnlich*) being; (3) pro-physical *(pro-physisches*)
being; (4) supersensible (*ubersinnlich*) being.




(1) Sensible being is the ontological category under which
fall both physical and psychological being, that is, material things
and mental states. Both the sphere of the physical and the sphere of
the psychological are directly accessible to experience (Rickert 1934b,
63-64) and can be the object of meaningful predication. Therefore they
must be granted equal ontological worth. Psychophysical dualism,
however, causes the classical problems of mind-body causal interaction
versus mind-body parallelism. Rickert's sympathies are clearly
with the idea of psychophysical causality (both body to mind and mind
to body) versus the hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism and the
ensuing panpsychism (Rickert 1900). He considers psychophysical
parallelism a self-undermining hypothesis to the extent that it relies
on the atomization and quantification of psyche. Defenders of
psychophysical parallelism (such as Baruch Spinoza and Gustav Fechner)
introduced this hypothesis in order to preserve the autonomy of the
psyche as the domain of the qualitative, which they take to be
essentially different from merely quantitative physical being. However,
in order to articulate their model they have to rely on a
quantification of the psyche, which undercuts precisely the premise,
based on which psychophysical parallelism was considered a good
alternative to psychophysical causality to begin with (Rickert 1900,
76; Rickert 1934b, 66-73). The reason why the idea of a two-way causal
link between mental and physical being seems to pose an impossible
puzzle is that, *prima facie*, the order of the psychic and the
order of the physical strike us as belonging to two separate
ontological domains. However, for Rickert this is because we generally
overlook the *tertium comparationis*, which proves that they
actually belong in one an the same ontological dimension, namely, that
they are both domains of *sensible being*, i.e., being that is
directly accessible to perception. From this perspective causal
interaction between mind and body is nothing but causal interaction
between two ontologically homogeneous species of one and the same
ontological genus 'sensible being'. To be sure, the
physical and the psychic display vastly different characteristics
(extension vs. unextendedness; intentionality vs. lack of
intentionality; spatiotemporal individuation vs. temporal
individuation.) However, for Rickert this is not enough reason to
consider the two dimensions as ontologically heterogeneous. If they are
ontologically homogeneous, then it is the task of specialized empirical
research and not of philosophy to determine their causal relations.




(2) The ontological homogeneity of the physical and the
psychic becomes even more clear if we turn our attention to a
completely different ontological sphere, which taken together
heterologically with sensible being completes the concept of the world
of experience (*Erfahrungswelt*). The second kind of being in
Rickert's ontology is what he calls *non-sensible being*.
In order to introduce non-sensible being Rickert recommends that we
turn our attention to word-meanings (Rickert 1934b, 79). While having a
conversation, we do not only perceive the physical body of our
interlocutor and the psychic reality attached to it. We also
'receive' in the same direct, immediate way the meanings of
the words that he or she is uttering. These meanings are not psychic
realities. They do not coincide with the thoughts of the speaker or
with the acoustic stimuli of the listener. The very same meanings could
be conveyed by a completely different sensible 'support'
such as ink scribbles on paper. We can even recognize the same meaning
as being instantiated by different words in different languages, such
as the identical meaning of 'red', 'rot',
'rosso' and 'rouge'. While the meaning of words
must be *carried* by some sensible support, it is itself not
sensible. It is not sensed or perceived but rather *understood*.
This is why Rickert proposes to call the second ontological domain the
*non-sensible sphere of understandable meaning-configurations*
(*verstehbare Sinngebilde*) (Rickert 1934b, 81). Word-meanings,
however, are only a tiny fraction of the meaning-configurations that we
can experience. The arrangement of the musical notes in a symphony is
likewise understood as a meaning-configuration possibly carried by
different sensible supports--the same melody can be played in a
different key, with a different instrument, it can be sung, etc.
Looking at the works of a great artist we can understand one and the
same non-sensible meaning-configuration (say, the same
'style') realized sensibly in different media. The universe
of meaning-configurations constitutes for Rickert an authentic
*mundus intelligibilis* experienced in concomitance with but as
different from the *mundus sensibilis* of perceivable being.
However, he takes pains to remind us that we should not repeat the old
Platonic mistake of taking the world of non-sensible being to be a
metaphysically separate reality. Understandable meaning-configurations
are an ingredient of our everyday experience and so they have to be
counted among the ontological ingredients of the experiential world. In
exploring the world of meaning-configurations we must take into account
the principles that allow for meaning-configurations to be
intelligible. Not every string of words is intelligible and, most
importantly, not every intelligible string of words is true. The same
holds for every meaning-configuration. It is intelligible only if its
constitutive non-sensible elements are held together by the reference
to a specific *value*. True sentences, for instance, are unified
by their reference to the theoretical value of truth. In this way,
Rickert clarifies the ontological status of values as non-sensible
beings. The real dualism pertaining to the world of experience, then,
is not the one between body and mind but the one between the sensible
world of perceivable entities and the non-sensible world of
understandable meaning-configurations (Rickert 1934b, 92-97). This
insight defeats a view Rickert calls "hyletic sensualism"
(Rickert 1934b, 93) that he attributes to both Kant and Husserl.
Hyletic sensualists assume that the *content* of our experience
can only be sensible, and that whatever is non-sensible and
intelligible must be ascribed to the *form* of our experience
instead. However, based on the above analyses, Rickert emphasizes that
*the very content* of our experience is *both* sensible
(perceivable) *and* non-sensible (intelligible). Accordingly, in
order to generate knowledge of sensible entities and intelligible
meaning-configurations the conceptual forms of our cognition must apply
to both domains.




(3) Upon closer scrutiny, the kind of *content* that we
encounter in the world of experience and conceptualize in the empirical
sciences shows itself to be a compound of *form* and
*content*. In fact, the entities that we encounter and theorize
about in the world of experience are always *objects*, in a
broad sense comprising physical, psychic and non-sensible entities
(meaning-configurations). In keeping with the Kantian tradition,
however, objects are the result of synthetic processes of
*objectification* guided by some categories (forms). It is
therefore possible to raise a question about a third domain of being:
how are we to think the *pure content* or *hyle* that is
immediately experienced prior to all objectification and
categorization? At first this universe of absolutely raw and
unsynthesized content has to be conceived of as prior to the
distinction between sensible and non-sensible being, and, within the
sphere of sensible being, prior to the distinction between physical and
psychic reality. This is why Rickert suggests to call this third domain
of being the "*pro-physical* world" (Rickert 1934b,
111; Rickert 1921b, 296), using improperly the term
'physical' in the phrase to indicate the whole domain of
the experiential world. In this sense, "the problem of prophysics
[is] at the same time the problem of the immediate" (Rickert
1934b, 112), that is of the pure, immediately lived content preceding
all synthesis and categorization. The regression to the prophysical
world, however, does not leave us with a completely undifferentiated
and inchoate mass of raw 'content'. If we think of objects
as the products of a subject's activity of categorial formation,
then suspending all categorial syntheses leads us back to a
*pre-objective subject* (Rickert 1934b, 115), whose synthetic
activity brings about objects out of the pure pro-physical material in
the first place. One might be inclined to think that the pro-physical
subject coincides with Kant's transcendental apperception, that
is, a mere empty 'form' of subjectivity or consciousness in
general. However, and in keeping with the analyses of subjectivity in
*The Object of Knowledge* (see above), in order to be
responsible for the processes of objectification and thus form
primordial materials into proper objects, the pro-physical subject must
be conceived of as *active* and capable of stance-takings toward
values (Rickert 1934b, 118). In other words, the pro-physical subject
that we necessarily have to think as prior to all psychic, physical and
meaning-related objectifications must be conceived of as *free*
(Rickert 1934b, 120). While empirical psychology operating in the
sphere of already objectified sensible being presents us with empirical
subjects who are causally determined in various ways, pro-physics
unearths a transcendental dimension of freedom that is presupposed by
all objectifications. Rickert suggests that this insight solves the
"mystery" (Rickert 1934b, 123) of freedom by way of
dissolving, as it were, the traditional antinomy between freedom and
determinism. These two notions, in Rickert's view, belong in two
distinct ontological spheres. While the objectified psychic subject is
indeed causally determined as much as any other bit of sensible being,
the pro-physical subject responsible for each objectification is
inherently free. In this sense, freedom and determinism are not
opposed. To the extent that determinism presupposed the process of
objectification, (psychophysical) determinism *presupposes*
(prophysical) freedom. After establishing the ontological features of
the prophysical subject, we can turn to the primordial materials or
contents that the prophysical subject forms. Rickert suggests to calls
the branch of prophysics dealing with pure materials
*Zustandslehre*, an expression hardly translatable into English
without losing its intended assonance with *Gegenstandslehre*
(Rickert 1934b, 127). *Gegen-stand* is the German term for
object, that is, literally, that which stands over and against a
subject. However, if *Gegend-stand* is the product of an
objectifying process, then Rickert suggests that we call that which is
thereby objectified and placed 'over and against'
*Zu-stand*, which can be roughly translated as
'state'. A doctrine of pure states (*reine
Zustande*) is meant to investigate the pre-objectified, pure
content independently of the categorial forms that pervade such content
in our sensible experiences of fully formed objects (Rickert 1934b,
129). The gist of Rickert's *Zustandslehre* is that even
in the pro-physical world we have no reason to think of content in a
monistic fashion. "In the *Zustandslehre* we can exhibit
the ultimate ground for the encompassing dualism of the world of
objects. Already the dimension of pure states (*das
Zustandliche*) pertaining to understandable objects, that is,
its bare material, is as non-sensible as the form which creates
non-sensible objects out of it. The understandable
meaning-configuration has both a non-sensible form and a non-sensible
content" (Rickert 1934b, 131). In other words, Rickert wants to
say that the understandable meaning-configurations considered in the
second domain of ontology are *non-sensible through and
through*. One might be tempted to think that a word-meaning is
composed of a non-sensible form (the ideal *Bedeutung*) and a
sensible content, say, the acoustic data forming the distinctive sound
of the word 'red' in English or those forming the
distinctive sound of the word 'rosso' in Italian. On
Rickert's account, however, this would be wrong. We have to
distinguish the acoustic carrier of the word-meaning from the
word-meaning as a whole, in *both* its form *and* its
content. The acoustic carrier is entirely sensible and the word-meaning
itself is entirely non-sensible. The conclusion of Rickert's
prophysics is that if we consider its domain as that of the
"universal minimum" of thinkability (Rickert 1934b, 133),
then we have to concede that such universal minimum already entails
*a plurality of factors*, namely, the minimal distinction
between I (the prophysical subject) and non-I (the domain of pure
states) and the further distinction within the sphere of non-I between
the pro-physical sensible and the pro-physical non-sensible, whose
objectifications carried out by the free pro-physical subject give rise
to the objects in the world of experience.




(4) The fourth and last ontological domain Rickert considers
is that of *supersensible* being, traditionally addressed by
metaphysics. Rickert's approach to metaphysics is guided by the
problem of the ultimate connection between reality and value. Both the
analysis of the world of experience and the analysis of the prophysical
world resulted in an inevitable dualism between the sensible and the
non-sensible, viz., the perceivable and the understandable. This poses
the problem of how to preserve the dualism and still be able to
conceive of the world as a whole in a unitary fashion. The first clue
to think about the unity of the world is provided by the doctrine of
the prophysical subject: "It produces a connection of what is
real and what is meaningful (*das Sinnhafte*) and at the same
time with the valid value" (Rickert 1934b, 135). With its free
stance-takings relating (sensible and non-sensible) materials to
(non-sensible) values the prophysical subject encompasses both terms of
the dualism and thus provides a criterion to conceive of them as
united. However, this seems to tie the unity of reality and value to
the particularity and contingency of actual stance-takings. This unity
seems to be extremely precarious and ultimately grounded in the
arbitrary acts of a pro-physical subject. The thought of a unity of
reality and value *beyond* the particular acts of valuing
subjectivity and thus beyond the scope of contents of consciousness
opens up the intellectual space of metaphysics. Rickert is adamant that
ultimately the transcendent unity of reality and value beyond
subjectivity is the object of "faith" (Rickert 1934b, 137)
and not scientific knowledge. However, he insists that we need such
faith in order to live both as practical and as theoretical human
beings. "If the world were not arranged in such a way that our
stance-taking toward the value of truth 'succeeds' beyond
the I's act, then science, which pushes forward to cognize the
world, is impossible. As scientific people, too, we need the assumption
that there is a more than particular, 'cosmic' connection
of value and reality" (Rickert 1934b, 138). The
"supersensible unity" of value and reality
(*Wirklichkeit*) or the domain of "value-reality"
(*Wertrealitat*) (Rickert 1934b, 139) is the object of
metaphysics. Describing the mode of access to the domain of
value-reality in metaphysics, Rickert holds fast to Kant's view
that metaphysics is not possible *as a science*. This, however,
entails neither that metaphysics is *altogether* impossible, nor
that some other kind of non-scientific knowledge may not be produced as
legitimate metaphysical knowledge. Rickert refers to metaphysical
knowledge in scare quotes as "allegoric",
"image-building" (*sinnbildlich*) or
"symbolic" (Rickert 1934b, 140). In other words,
metaphysics is bound to employ images, metaphors and oblique
expressions in order to produce indirect knowledge of the transcendent,
subject-independent unity of reality and value. Rickert here clearly
has in mind the most illustrious of all metaphysicians: Plato. When he
called the Forms 'real' he borrowed a phrase that has an
established meaning for this-worldly realities and applied it
metaphorically to the domain of otherworldly or supersensible being.
Moreover, as is well known, he made abundant use of allegories, similes
and mythological stories in order to illustrate the ultimately
inaccessible world of the supersensible. Finally, Rickert warns against
a conflation of metaphysics and religion (Rickert 1934, 201). While in
concrete cultural worlds and living individuals these two spheres of
culture often intersect and overlap, it is important to keep them
conceptually distinct. Metaphysics is a theoretical enterprise trying
to determine conceptually supersensible being with the aid of
metaphors, symbols, etc. It does involve faith but it is a purely
rational faith in *some kind* of transcendent unity of reality
and value. Religion, on the contrary, is characterized by faith in the
existence of a supersensible divine being, in which ultimately all
values and meanings are grounded. Both are valuable and important
component of culture. Empirically speaking, they often occur together
and have numerous mutual influences. However, they can never be reduced
*theoretically* to one another. In other words, the rational
faith of metaphysics does not automatically lead to religious faith in
a divine being and, conversely, religious faith does not necessitate
the believer to accept that the ultimate unity of reality and value is
accessible (through symbolic knowledge) to the rational discourse of
metaphysics.