## 1. Common Features of Neo-Kantians



The Neo-Kantians did not always think of themselves as members of a
common movement. Though the members of the Marburg school very clearly
identified with one another, and the members of the Southwest school
identified themselves with one another, the two schools
 initially[4]
 made little effort to present themselves as part of a common
movement. Their doctrines were different in some fundamental ways, and
they often criticized one another's positions. Nevertheless,
there were some common features of Neo-Kantians of both
schools--common features that made it natural for their
contemporaries and for historians today to talk about them together.
This section presents seven common features of the Neo-Kantians.
These seven common features make it possible to distinguish, in a
principled philosophical way, between the ("classical") Neo-Kantians
of the Marburg and Southwest schools and the various "back to
Kant" philosophers of the mid nineteenth century and the
assorted philosophers contemporary with the Neo-Kantians who were
"neo-Kantian" in some broader sense. For example,
Helmholtz and Lange did not share the Neo-Kantians'
anti-psychologism or commitment to the transcendental method (features
2 and 3 below), while Alois Riehl did not share their idealistic
theory of objective validity (feature 6).



**1.** Most obviously, the Neo-Kantians thought of
themselves as reviving, defending, and extending Kant's
philosophy. They self-consciously adopted Kant's vocabulary, and
some of his key ideas and arguments. They wrote commentaries on
Kant's major writings, and would often present their own
positive views in the form of commentaries or interpretations of Kant.
Nevertheless, they never considered themselves to be orthodox
Kantians, nor did they see the value in defending Kant's views
on all topics. As Windelband famously said in the preface to the 1883
first edition of Windelband
 1915,[5]
 "to understand Kant means to go beyond him". And, as
Natorp explained, 



> 
> 
> it was never anyone's wish nor intent to cling to Kant's
> doctrines in an absolute way. Talk of an orthodox Kantianism within
> the Marburg School was never justified. (Natorp 1912a: 180) 
> 
> 
> 



In fact, there were some core Kantian ideas that the Neo-Kantians
self-consciously rejected. They rejected the doctrine of the
thing-in-itself as incoherent and unnecessary (Windelband 1910: 323),
or radically reinterpreted talk of things-in-themselves as talk of a
postulated final and complete theory of the world (Cohen 1885:
503ff.). Their rejection of Kant's dualism of appearances and
things-in-themselves was closely related to their rethinking of
Kant's distinction between two "stems" of cognition:
sensibility and understanding. The Marburg philosophers came to
fundamentally reject this distinction, while the Southwest
Neo-Kantians (while maintaining the irreducibility of intuitions to
concepts) still rejected the idea that intuitions are the result of a
mind-independent thing-in-itself affecting sensibility. Though the
Neo-Kantians took as fundamental to their philosophies the existence
of substantive a priori concepts and principles that make knowledge
possible, they did not accept that the categories and principles
identified in the *Critique of Pure Reason* were complete or
fixed for all time. In particular, Marburg Neo-Kantians believed that
some of the categories and principles that Kant identified were
relative to the scientific theories of Kant's day, and that the
categories and principles could change as scientists develop new
empirical theories. Southwest Neo-Kantians, on the other hand, were
keen to argue that history is just as much a science as mathematical
physics, and they thought that Kant's critical project had to be
extended in order to identify the a priori elements in history. Last,
the classical Neo-Kantians held that transcendental philosophy is
distinct and independent of empirical psychology, even though (they
argued) Kant himself was not always innocent of psychologism, despite
the fact that Kant's philosophy when rightly interpreted is the
basis for a sound anti-psychologism (Cohen 1883: SS8).



**2.** The Neo-Kantians put forward a suite of arguments
to show that philosophy is independent of psychology. Logic, or the
theory of knowledge, concerns what is objective, not what is
subjective, as psychology does (Cohen 1883: SS6). It does not
concern itself with the mental processes of subjects, with their
cognitive apparatus, or with empirical results about human sense
organs or nervous system. As Windelband 1883 put it, psychologistic
philosophers employ the "genetic method" trying to find
the justification of some part of our knowledge by tracing empirically
its causal antecedents. The correct method, however, is the
"critical method", which distinguishes what he calls
"factual" from "teleological" or normative
validity. The critical method is the only correct method, because the
fact that we do believe something, or even that all humans by some
biological necessity have to believe it, does not yet solve the
critical question: what we ought to
 believe.[6]
 For these reasons, the Neo-Kantians sharply distinguished a priority
from innateness--a distinction they claimed was obscured by
philosophers such as Helmholtz and Lange.



A return to an anti-psychologistic Kant was the Neo-Kantians'
solution to what the historian Herbert Schnadelbach (1984: 5)
called the "identity crisis" that faced philosophy in the
middle of the nineteenth century. Given the collapse of the conception
of philosophy shared by post-Kantian speculative idealists, and the
concurrent spectacular advances made in the sciences, philosophers
were left questioning what (if anything) was left as the distinctive
subject matter and method of philosophy (Beiser 2014a: Ch.1). In
particular, in opposing psychologism, the Neo-Kantians were staking
out a conception of philosophy that avoids the naturalism defended by
many German philosophers in the decades after Hegel's death
(Cassirer 1912). According to naturalistic conceptions of philosophy,
the method of philosophy is in fact not distinguishable from that of
natural science, and the theory of knowledge just becomes applied
empirical psychology. Nevertheless, the Neo-Kantians shared with these
naturalistic philosophers a deep distrust of speculative metaphysics:
they denied that philosophy could deliver knowledge of the
supersensible, could deduce facts of the special sciences from a
priori principles knowable in some special philosophical way, or that
philosophy could even be done in ignorance of the results of the
sciences.



**3.** This *via media*, this third way of doing
philosophy, they found in *the transcendental method*. The two
schools conceived of the transcendental method differently. For Cohen
and his school, philosophy begins with a fact--paradigmatically,
the fact of science--and investigates the conditions that make
that fact possible. For Windelband and his school, the transcendental
question is understood teleologically: given certain fundamental
goals, such as knowing the truth, or doing good, or experiencing what
is beautiful, what is necessary for achieving these values? Still,
though, there was a common core to both schools' conceptions of
the transcendental method: they wanted to identify those objective
elements within some part of human culture (say, physics, history, or
ethics) that made possible objective validity (say, the objective
validity of physical theories, historical narratives, or ethical
claims). Adherence to the transcendental method led the Neo-Kantians
to reject skepticism. Philosophical reflection begins with the fact
that scientists have developed successful theories of the physical
world; or with the universal validity of the value of truth. So no
room is left for the skeptical worry that scientific theories do not
in fact deliver empirical knowledge, or that truth is in fact
unattainable (Windelband 1883: 280).



**4.** The object of the transcendental method, for the
Neo-Kantians, is *culture*. Often, they approached human
culture using Kant's three-fold distinction between knowledge,
ethics, aesthetics. Because they saw the achievements of science as
one of the most significant aspects of modern culture, a good portion
of their writings concern the *philosophy of science*. As Kant
applied the transcendental method to Newtonian science, they sought to
apply the method to the best science of their day. Typically (not
exclusively), the Marburg philosophers were concerned with the physics
and mathematics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
which (they emphasized) differed fundamentally from that of
Kant's own day. The Southwest Neo-Kantians, on the other hand,
were more concerned with the so-called
"*Geisteswissenschaften*" (the "human
sciences"), which had come into their own in the nineteenth
century and now deserved (they argued) to be recognized as autonomous
and fully scientific (despite the fact that Kant himself had sharply
distinguished history from science (Kant 1786: Ak 4:468)).



**5.** Neo-Kantian philosophy of science is distinctive
in its focus on the *methodology of science*. Thus, Neo-Kantian
philosophy of physics is not so much concerned directly with what
matter is, but with how mathematical physics comes to know about
matter. Neo-Kantian philosophy of history is not concerned with grand
theories concerning what drives history, but with what makes the
methodology of a historian different from that of a physicist or
empirical psychologist. Philosophy of science, for them, is the
*logic* of the sciences--in the extended sense of
"logic" that includes theory of knowledge and scientific
methodology. And, true to their anti-psychologistic conception of
logic, Neo-Kantian accounts of scientific methodology are not intended
to be empirical descriptions of what scientists do, but accounts that
identify objective norms, or the fundamental principles and concepts
of a particular
 science.[7]
 Philosophy of science thus becomes a second order discipline,
different in kind from the natural sciences (thus avoiding
naturalism). But because Neo-Kantian philosophy of science adheres to
the transcendental method, it avoids the errors of speculative
metaphysics. It does not, for instance, try to derive the concept of
matter or life a priori, but is content to demonstrate that these
concepts are necessary conditions for physics and biology. Since
philosophy of science for the Neo-Kantians is a second order
discipline, they were in general committed to a non-revisionist
attitude. According to Rickert, philosophy 



> 
> 
> does not claim to direct science onto the paths it should take. On the
> contrary, it proposes only to follow science with a view to
> understanding it. (1902: 340) 
> 
> 
> 



For Cassirer, "critical philosophy ... does not seek to
direct the sciences but to understand them" (1907b: 31).



**6.** Since the goal of transcendental philosophy, for
the Neo-Kantians, is to identify those elements within some part of
human culture that are necessary for its *objective validity*,
they were also led to investigate the nature of objective validity
itself (Natorp 1887, Rickert
 1915).[8]
 The two schools construed the question of objective validity
differently. The Marburg philosophers emphasized objectivity, and gave
an account of *objectivity* in terms of constant laws (see
 section 2.2).
 The Southwest Neo-Kantians emphasized the question of
*validity*--specifically the validity of values
 (section 3.2).
 For both schools, a central issue in the investigation of objective
validity is the question of *transcendence*: what does it mean
that the object is independent of our knowledge and provides the
standard for its truth?



There are four key ideas that are common to the Southwest and Marburg
theories of objective validity. First, both schools emphasized the
centrality of judgments (as opposed to concepts or intuitions), as the
kind of representation that first makes objective validity possible
(Rickert 1915: Ch.3; Cohen 1902: SS10-11). Second, the
Neo-Kantians were emphatic that the objective validity of knowledge
does not consist in its being a copy (*Abbild*) or mirror of
the object (Windelband 1910; Rickert 1934; Cassirer 1910: Ch.1;
Rickert 1915: Ch.2). This "copy theory" of knowledge is
inconsistent with a third key idea, that the objective validity of
every area of culture is made possible by substantive a priori
principles. The a priori principles that make possible some part of
human culture are again not interpreted psychologistically: they are
not features of the minds of individual subjects, they are not
discovered empirically, and their necessity is not grounded in the
empirical fact that they are universally accepted. These a priori
principles are parts of culture--they are its fundamental norms
or laws. Fourth, the Neo-Kantians described themselves as
"idealists". Idealism meant different things to different
Neo-Kantians (see
 section 2.2
 and
 3.2).
 But all Neo-Kantians shared the view that knowledge requires a priori
elements that are not present in what is given in immediate intuition.
Knowledge, then, requires a "reshaping" or
"transformation" of what is given. The copy theory that
they reject would in this sense be a kind of "realism". Of
course, Neo-Kantian idealism must be rigorously distinguished from
other kinds of idealisms. As noted earlier, they reject Kant's
doctrine of the thing-in-itself, and they emphatically do not believe
that objects are in any way subjective or dependent on the
representations of individual psychological subjects.



**7.** There is one final common feature of Neo-Kantian
philosophers that should not be overlooked: the Neo-Kantians were
great historians of philosophy. It's not surprising that the
Neo-Kantians wrote extensively on Kant, producing commentaries (e.g.,
Cohen 1885; Cassirer 1918) and critical editions of his writing. But
the Neo-Kantians also wrote extensively on other philosophers, ancient
and modern, and on the history of science and mathematics (e.g.,
Windelband 1891; Cassirer 1906, 1907a). These historical works were
not thought of as side projects, but as essential aspects of their
philosophy. Neo-Kantians did not sharply distinguish history of
philosophy from philosophy (see Introduction to Windelband 1891;
SSI of the 1902 version of Cohen 1898).


## 2. The Marburg School



The intellectual beginnings of the Marburg School can be traced to
1871, when Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) published the first edition
of his *Kants Theorie der Erfahrung* (*Kant's Theory
of Experience*), which interpreted Kant in an anti-psychologistic
way and found in Kant's first *Critique* the expression
of a novel way of doing philosophy: the transcendental method. In 1873
Cohen did his Habilitation in Marburg under Friedrich Lange, who had
moved there in 1872. He was promoted as Professor Extraordinarius in
1875, and then took over Lange's chair in 1876 after his death.
When Paul Natorp (1854-1924) moved to Marburg in 1880 (writing
his Habilitation--Natorp 1881--under Cohen and being
promoted to Professor in 1893), the "Marburg" school as an
institutional force was born.



Cohen's work culminated in a three part system of philosophy,
modeled after Kant's own tripartite division of critical
philosophy: *The Logic of Pure Knowledge* (Cohen 1902), *The
Ethics of Pure Will* (Cohen 1904), *and the Aesthetics of Pure
Feeling* (Cohen 1912). His most influential works, though, were
his interpretation of Kant, principally in *Kant's Theory of
Experience*, which was significantly revised and expanded in a
second edition (Cohen 1885), and his works in the philosophy of
science and mathematics: *The Principle of the Infinitesimal
Method* (Cohen 1883), and his introduction to the sixth edition of
Lange's *History of Materialism* (Cohen
 1898).[9]



Natorp's most influential writings are in the interpretation of
Plato, the philosophy of science, and in the philosophy of psychology.
Starting with his habilitation ("Descartes's Theory of
Knowledge: A Study in the Pre-history of Criticism") in 1881,
Natorp extended the reach of the Marburg school as historians of
philosophy beyond Kant to other philosophers who in various ways
anticipated the Kantian themes important to the Marburgers.
Natorp's most significant work in this vein was his book
*Plato's Theory of Ideas* (1903), which gave a serious
scholarly argument for the dating of Plato's dialogues, in
addition to a novel "critical" reading of Platonic ideas.
In the philosophy of science, his systematic work *The Logical
Foundations of the Exact Sciences* (1910) gives a systematic
philosophy of logic, arithmetic, geometry, and physics that engages
with contemporary science and mathematics in a more comprehensive and
detailed way than any of Cohen's works. Last, in a series of
works in the philosophy of psychology (culminating in *General
Psychology According to the Critical Method* (1912b)), Natorp
defended a novel conception of psychology as the science of the
subjective.



Among the many students of Cohen and Natorp's who identified
themselves with the Marburg school, the most accomplished and
influential was undoubtedly Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945). After
writing his dissertation under Cohen in 1899 on Descartes's
philosophy of mathematics and science, Cassirer moved to Berlin, where
he worked as a Privatdozent (though not a Professor, which was ruled
out by institutional
 anti-Semitism[10]).
 His most important works before 1914 are in the history of philosophy
(especially the massive, two volume *Problem of Knowledge*
(Cassirer 1906, 1907a), which follows the development of the
philosophy of science from the late Renaissance to Kant), and the
philosophy of the exact sciences (*Substance and Function*,
1910; *Einstein's Theory of Relativity*, 1921). Starting
in 1921, Cassirer's philosophy broadened into a
"philosophy of symbolic forms", which differs in some
fundamental ways from the classic works of his teachers.


### 2.1 Conception of Philosophy: The Transcendental Method



The core commitment of the Marburg school was to a philosophical
method: "the transcendental method" (Natorp 1912a; Cohen
1883: SS7-9; Cohen 1885: SS12; Richardson 2006). The
method, as Natorp describes it, comes in two steps. In the first step,
the philosopher identifies some "fact" of culture.
Theoretical philosophy begins with the "fact of science";
practical philosophy with the fact of "social order";
aesthetics with the fact of "artistic creation". These
facts are concrete, detailed, and "historically
verifiable". For instance, a theoretical philosopher begins by
investigating the best scientific theories of her contemporaries. In
this first step, the philosopher is like a fact collector,
investigating the methods, important concepts and laws of that aspect
of culture, including the historical development of that area of
culture up to the present day. In the second step, however, the
philosopher goes beyond fact-collecting to identifying those aspects
of that area of culture that make its objective validity possible. As
they put it, this involves identifying the "laws" or
"form" of that area of culture. Their model here is Kant
in the *Prolegomena*. As they read Kant, he began by
identifying within the best scientific theory of his
time--Newton's--the fundamental laws, concepts, and
methods (which are contained in Kant's *Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science*). The second step is showing how
these laws, concepts, and methods are made possible by even more
fundamental concepts and laws, which are contained in the
*Critique* itself--laws which make objective validity
possible.



There are a few aspects of this method that need to be emphasized.
First, the second step in the method involves much more than just
identifying a class of basic laws and concepts. If a philosopher were
to axiomatize a physical theory, even a fundamental one, for the
Marburgers that would be only the first step. A philosopher also needs
a story of how just these laws and just these concepts make it
possible for the theory to make true claims about objects--a
story that will require a very general account of objective validity
itself. Second, the transcendental method requires demonstrating the
unity of culture. A philosophy of arithmetic should show how the laws
of arithmetic fit in with the laws of geometry and analysis to form
the unity of mathematics; how the laws of mathematics are
preconditions of all natural science to form the unity of science; and
all the way up to the unity of culture. Third, these two steps are
interrelated. The notion of objective validity itself is analyzed in
step two on the basis of reflection on the details of concrete culture
from step one; the philosopher in step one collects the relevant facts
about an area of culture because she has in mind the step two goal of
explaining its objective validity, in a unified account of the
validity of all culture. Fourth, the method is non-skeptical,
non-revisionary, and unconcerned with certainty. Since it takes an
area of culture as a fact, it rules out radical skepticism about the
validity of an area of culture, and it has no room to advocate a
radical revision in that area of culture. Though the goal of the
transcendental method is to provide foundations for culture, these
foundations are not meant to be certain. Transcendental logic, one
might say, is a semantic, not a Cartesian project. Fifth, though the
transcendental method is rooted in the concrete facts of contemporary
culture, it is nevertheless possible and even necessary for a
philosopher to take sides on contested questions within culture. A
philosopher is not a bystander in culture. So, for instance, Cohen
argues for infinitesimal over limit methods in the calculus, for
Herz's mechanics over its rivals, for liberal democracy over
monarchy. After all, the transcendental philosopher, having studied
the method of an area of culture and its long historical development,
can show that one party in a dispute has departed in some fundamental
way from that method. And the philosopher also has her eye on the
question of the foundations of the objective validity of an area of
culture (and its integration into a synthetic account of the objective
validity of all culture), and so can intervene to show that one
approach in a controversy is better suited to make objective validity
possible.



Since the transcendental method begins with the fact of culture,
Marburg Neo-Kantians reject the possibility of speculative
metaphysics. Transcendental philosophy as they understand it is also
distinct from and independent of psychology. Though the goal of the
theory of knowledge is to understand what makes
"experience" possible, they understand experience in a
radically non-psychological way. As Cohen puts in (1898: x, my
translation):



> 
> 
> The transcendental method does not research the principles of human
> reason but rather the foundation of science that conditions scientific
> validity. Our organization is, insofar as it comes into question in
> general, a question of psychology; and there is at least no
> methodological means for procuring secure, scientific, and exact
> information from the ultimate and simplest parts of our mental
> essence. But the sciences lie before us in books. What makes them into
> sciences, wherein their character of generality and necessity rests,
> from which concepts their epistemological validity within their region
> can be derived, what tools and ways of knowing explain in its validity
> those historical facts of knowledge--the sciences--this is a
> methodological question, this is the question, which the sciences
> themselves pose, whenever they feel the impulse to think about their
> own principles--this and nothing else is the transcendental
> question.
> 
> 
> 



The fact of science does not occur in the minds of individual
scientists; it lies before us in books. "Experience" is
not a representation in the mind of a knower; it is the objective
content. "Experience" is virtually equated with
mathematical natural science, and a paradigm "experience"
is Newton's law of universal gravitation. What makes experience
(in this non-psychological sense) possible is "a priori",
now interpreted in a radically non-psychological sense as elements of
the content of some aspect of culture that makes the objective
validity of that culture possible. This new conception of the a
priori, radically distinct from innateness and independent of any
facts about human minds discoverable by empirical psychology, is
articulated in Cohen's *Kant's Theory of
Experience*. It is here that Cohen's Neo-Kantianism breaks
decisively with the Kantianism of Lange and Helmholtz. In his book,
Cohen distinguishes between the "metaphysical a priori"
and the "transcendental a priori" (1885: 109; cf. 1902:
44). The metaphysical a priori are the basic structures of our
thinking that we can discover by introspection or empirical study;
these are irrelevant to the transcendental philosopher (unless she is
doing philosophy of psychology). The transcendental a priori, on the
other hand, are those aspects of the content of science that make
objective validity possible. Thus, the relationship between the a
priori and experience is not like the relationship between a mental
apparatus and its acts. It is a logical relationship, more like the
relation between an axiom and a theorem (Cassirer 1918: 151,
153)--though with the important qualification that the a priori
laws are not just axioms, but axioms that have the special semantic
function of making objective validity possible.



The fact of culture is not static, but dynamic. As Natorp memorably
put it (1912a: 184; 1910: Ch.1, SS4; 1903: 366ff), the fact is not
a "*factum*" (a thing done) but
"*fieri*" (becoming). Culture changes; one
scientific theory replaces another. In keeping with the transcendental
method, only a Newtonian could have written what Kant wrote; but the
transcendental method just as emphatically requires that later
transcendental philosophers rethink the doctrines of the first
*Critique* in light of the advances in mathematics and natural
science since Newton. This appreciation for the historically evolving
character of culture has two consequences. First, the transcendental a
priori is not absolute, but relative to the current best physical
theories. Second, Marburg Neo-Kantians have an additional
transcendental task that Kant himself did not fully recognize: to
understand how it is possible that the *changes* in an area of
culture can themselves be objectively valid. They want to understand
the objective law or method that determines how an area of culture
 changes.[11]
 This emphasis on the objectivity and lawlikeness of cultural change thus
introduces a check on the potential relativistic or historicist
consequences of their relativizing the a priori. (Cassirer in
particular develops a sophisticated theory of the a priori with both
relative and absolute elements; see
 section 2.3.)
 This emphasis on the progressive character of culture leads the
Marburg Neo-Kantians to adopt a distinctive, historical method of
writing and arguing, in which systematic philosophy is not separated
from the history of philosophy and the history of
 culture.[12]


### 2.2 Theory of Knowledge



The core of the Marburg Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge is a
conception of "objective validity" (Natorp 1887; Cohen
1902: SS11). By the "objective validity" of knowledge,
they mean its *objectivity* (that is, its independence from
individual subjects), its *truth*, and its relation to
*objects*. A theory of objective validity is then also a theory
of the "transcendence" of the object--in what sense
the object is an independent standard of correctness for knowledge. A
good way to approach the Marburg theory is by considering an
alternative they reject. Consider the view that "objects in
themselves are there, outside and independent of all subjectivity,
without any original relation to it". That is, begin your theory
of objective validity with the notion of an independent object, taken
as a theoretical given. This notion of an object is then used to
explain aboutness, truth, and objectivity. A representation is about
an object, say, if it is caused by an object or, perhaps, it resembles
it. A representation is true if it then mirrors or copies the object
as it is independently of us. And then knowledge is objective if it is
about an independent object, not about the subject and its states. For
Marburg Neo-Kantians, this theory of objective validity (which they
call "naive realism") simply presupposes the very thing it
is supposed to explain:



> 
> 
> Perhaps this actually means something correct, but at least as it is
> presented, it is not really an answer to the question [What is
> objective validity?]. The being-in-itself of the object is itself an
> enigma and thus cannot serve as a solution to our present enigma. If
> we understood what it meant to say the object in itself is there
> independent of all subjectivity and then is appropriated in our
> subjectivity by knowledge there would be no problem in the knowing of
> objects or in the objectivity of knowledge. (Natorp 1887: SS4)
> 
> 
> 



The Marburg theory of objective validity, on the other hand, turns
this order of explanation on its head: instead of beginning with the
notion of an object as its explanatory primitive, it sees the notion
of an object as dependent on many other prior notions. In particular,
it begins its account of objective validity with a distinctive
account of objectivity.



Objectivity, according to the Marburg view, depends on laws. For
example, a particular physical thing (say a table in a room) appears
in a certain way from my own subjective point of view in the room. To
achieve an objective representation of the table, I would need to
understand how all of the various appearances at various points of
view in the room are related to one another in a law-like way. When I
know the law, I've moved from appearance to reality, from
subjectivity to objectivity. If there is no such law, then there is
only appearance, and I cannot speak about an independent object and
its properties. This simple point generalizes at higher levels. It
merely appears from our subjective point of view that the earth is
stationary and the sun moves. But it is objectively the case that the
earth moves around the sun because the heliocentric model follows from
Newton's *laws* of motion. Even more fundamentally,
scientific theories (such as Newton's) are developed, adopted,
and abandoned as science progresses; this whole progression is itself
objective because there are "laws" (that is, a common
scientific method) that prescribe these changes. These laws secure the
"unity" of knowledge: the various appearances of the same
particular are united as of the same particular object by a law; a law
of nature unites various observed phenomena under it; the scientific
method unites science in its development, prescribing a uniquely
correct path to follow. This unity can also be described as
"permanence": the appearances change, even as the object
stays the same; the planets move, but the law remains; theories come
and go, but the method stays constant. This notion of objectivity as
lawfulness is then used to give an account of truth and objecthood.
Knowledge is true if it can be unified with other knowledge within an
objective system of knowledge. Last, an object is then what is known
by fully objective knowledge: 



> 
> 
> the object signifies the law; it signifies the lasting unity in which
> the changing manifold of appearance is unified and determined in
> thought. (Natorp 1887: SS4)
> 
> 
> 



This theory of objective validity has some notable consequences.
First, the possibility of objective validity requires that we
postulate, as a regulative ideal, a final science. The unity of
knowledge through laws that the Marburgers point to as the foundation
of objective validity has clearly not yet been achieved: there are
still phenomena that have not yet been explained, and our current
theories are certainly not going to be the final word. But it is
clearly the case that even now we can know objects, even if our
knowledge is partial. If unity through laws makes objectivity validity
possible and that unity has not yet been achieved, how then can we
know any objects at all? We have to postulate that our current, only
partially unified knowledge can progress in a law-like way into a
unique, final theory. Such a final theory can never actually be
achieved, because the task of knowledge is infinite--there is
always more to understand, deeper explanations to give. The postulated
final theory is like the asymptote that a curve never quite reaches.
This viewpoint--that speaking of an object contains the demand
for unity of knowledge, that this task is infinite, that we must
therefore postulate the possibility of its completion--Natorp
calls the "genetic view of knowledge" (1910: Ch.1,
SS4-5). The genetic view delivers a unique way of cashing
out the "transcendence" of the object. The fact that the
object is independent of knowledge, in the sense that it always
transcends our knowledge of it, is expressed by the infinity of the
task of knowledge. And the fact that the object is the standard for
knowledge is expressed by the postulate that the course of knowledge
is moving asymptotically towards a unique (though infinite) endpoint
as its goal. Second, the emphasis on lawfulness gives the Marburgers a
satisfying explanation of the application of mathematics to the
objects of natural science: the laws of natural science are
mathematical, and there would be no objects if there were no laws of
natural science. Third, since objectivity is explained in terms of
laws, and laws are a special kind of universal judgment, the Marburg
theory of objective validity emphasizes the priority of judgments over
concepts (Cohen 1902: SS10). As Cohen memorably put it, modifying
Galileo's phrase: the book of nature is written in
*sentences* (with mathematics as its letters, and the a priori
principles of pure knowledge as its syntax) (1902: 204, 484).



In addition to their theory of objective validity, another core
commitment in the mature writings of the Marburg school is a rejection
of the "given". In this, they are explicitly departing
from Kant. Kant had argued that our cognitive faculty has two stems: a
receptive faculty (sensibility), and a spontaneous faculty
(understanding). Through sensibility, objects are given to us, and
through the understanding, objects are thought. The representations of
sensibility are intuitions, which relate to objects immediately; the
representations of the understanding are concepts, which relate to
objects mediately. The Marburgers' skepticism of these
distinctions culminated in Cohen's *Logic of Pure
Knowledge* (1902: SS7), where these dualisms are definitively
rejected. As Natorp put the point: 



> 
> 
> In the end, "intuition" no longer remains a cognitive
> factor which stands across from or is opposed to thinking. It is
> thinking, just not thinking in terms of laws, but thinking in terms of
> full objects. In its implementation, in its exercise, intuition is to
> conceptual thought as function is to the law of function. (1912a: 186)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Intuition is itself a "function", because even intuitions
are active or spontaneous, and not merely given. Similarly, they were
often uncomfortable with Kant's word "synthesis"
because it suggests that the function of thinking is only to combine a
content that is already given. Instead, Cohen prefers the term
"generate" in order to indicate the "creative
sovereignty of thinking" (1902: 25). In another favorite slogan,
an object is not given [*geben*] to knowledge, but given as a
task [*aufgegeben*], echoing the genetic view of knowledge
described in the previous paragraph (Natorp 1912a: 183-4; Natorp
1910: Ch.1, SS5). In *Substance and Function* (1910: Ch.1),
Cassirer attacks the given by attacking a related doctrine: the
traditional view that all concepts are formed by abstraction. On this
view of concept formation, concepts would have to be abstracted from
given material that is completely independent of thought and its
concepts--thus presupposing the doctrine of the given.



It is hard to interpret the Marburg rejection of the given. It seems
to deny the obvious fact that there is some passive element in
perception, and to leave no room for experiment within natural science
(as Natorp recognized: 1912a: 186). In interpreting the doctrine, it
is helpful to remember that the Marburg theory of knowledge concerns
relations among the content of knowledge--how one part of the
content of knowledge justifies another. It is not concerned with
causal relations between acts of the mind in perception. Plausibly,
the only content that could justify a thought must itself be something
thinkable, since "knowledge is only grounded through other
knowledge" (Natorp 1887: 168). (In this sense, the denial of the
given is a denial of content that is not conceptual or dependent on
what is conceptual.) In Cassirer's polemic against the given, he
attacks the "epistemological atomism" implicit in it: the
view that there are some contents that can be efficacious for
knowledge without requiring that a knower possess any concepts or know
any facts. (In this sense, the denial of the given is a defense of
semantic holism.) For this reason, he argues against the given by
arguing that even the most basic
experiments--measurements--depend on the experimenter
possessing concepts and knowing certain theoretical facts (see
 section 2.3
 below).



The Marburg philosophers characterize their philosophy as a kind of
"idealism". This idealism should be sharply distinguished
from "subjectivism", since they do not believe that
objects of knowledge are representations--they do not believe
that the objects of knowledge depend for their existence on the
existence of minds to think them (Cassirer 1910: 298). This idealism
is also opposed to the view that our knowledge is really illusory;
they do not hold that there are unknowable objects, or that the real
nature of objects of knowledge is in principle unknowable (Cohen 1902:
507ff). Rather, their position is idealist in four senses. First, they
defend an "idealist" conception of philosophy, as
following the transcendental method. In this sense, idealism is
opposed to "naturalism", the view that the method of
philosophy does not differ in kind from that of the natural sciences.
Second, they hold that there are substantive a priori principles that
make experience possible. In this sense, their idealism is opposed to
empiricism. Third, according to their theory of objective validity,
our conception of an object depends on our conception of objectivity,
which is grounded in the idea of the unity of knowledge according to
laws. In this sense of idealism, idealism is opposed to
"realism", which takes the concept of an object as a
philosophical primitive. Fourth, according to their philosophy of
science (see below
 section 2.3),
 our empirical theories make essential use of fundamental concepts
(such as mathematical concepts, or "theoretical concepts",
such as the concept <force> or <energy>) that are
radically unlike the features that the world appears to have to
untutored, everyday experience. These "ideal" concepts are
not reducible to "sensible" concepts such as color,
texture, or shape. In this sense, idealism is opposed to
"sensualism".



The Marburg conception of philosophy, as guided by the transcendental
method, along with their rejection of the given, leads them to a
unique conception of logic. For further discussion, see the
Supplement,
 Philosophy of Logic in the Marburg School.



The Marburg rejection of the given, along with their view that
objectivity is conferred by laws, has significant consequences for
their philosophy of psychology. For further information, see the
Supplement,
 Philosophy of Psychology in the Marburg School.


### 2.3 Philosophy of Natural Science



The Marburg philosophers wrote several works that engaged in a
detailed way with the natural science, especially physics, of their
day. In his Forward and Introduction to the sixth edition of
Lange's *History of Materialism*, first published in
1898, Cohen gives a philosophical interpretation of work on
electromagnetism since Faraday, and defends Hertz's
*Principles of Mechanics* (Hertz 1894). In two works both
published in 1910 (Natorp 1910: Ch.7; Cassirer 1910: Ch.4) Natorp and
Cassirer discuss foundational issues in physics: the principles of
mechanics and thermodynamics; the nature of mass, energy, space, and
time; atomism and its critics. (Cassirer also addresses foundational
issues in chemistry: 1910: Ch.4, section 8). The culmination of this
work is Cassirer's *Einstein's Theory of
Relativity*, published in 1921.



There are three themes that run through Marburg work in the philosophy
of natural science: they argue that contemporary natural science
supports philosophical idealism; they highlight radical conceptual
changes in physics; and they philosophically interpret physics in the
light of their conception of objective validity. Each of
these themes is discussed in the rest of the section.


#### Idealism in Natural Science



One of Cohen's chief goals in Cohen 1898 is to show that recent
work in electromagnetism undermines "sensualism" or
"materialism", and supports "idealism", by
transforming our conception of physical reality away from the
"sensible" and "material" to the
"ideal". The physical world, according to the
"sensible" conception of reality--the way the world
appears to us to be through our senses--is composed of matter,
conceived on the model of the roughly medium sized dry goods that our
senses reveal to us. Physicists working in
electromagnetism--Cohen points to Faraday
especially--demonstrated the physical reality of electromagnetic
fields. Following Faraday, Cohen applauds efforts to treat
electromagnetic fields and forces as independent entities in their own
right, not dependent on a "material" ether. Pure field
theories thus vindicate idealism, by showing that our conception of
the objects of physics should not be constrained by the picture of the
world supplied by our senses; our conception of the world can only be
supplied by thought, and not by the senses.



Given Cohen's opposition to ether theories, it is not surprising
that he feels vindicated by Einstein's special theory of
relativity (Cohen 1898: 134; the passage appears in 1914-5
edition). In fact, Cassirer claims (1921: Ch.4) that Einstein's
general theory, which departs further from the "sensible"
conception of matter by not separating matter from space and time, is
a natural continuation of the idealism Cohen first articulated. 


#### Radical Conceptual Change in Natural Science



According to the Marburg transcendental method
 (section 2.1),
 the "fact" of science is not static, but dynamic. In
advocating this method, the Marburg Neo-Kantians are thus claiming
that the principles that are a priori for science will evolve as
theories change, and the concepts that function as categories will be
radically reconceived as science progresses. There is then a new task,
to identify the principles that are a priori in a given physical
theory, and to investigate how the categories--space, time,
substance, magnitude--are being reconceived in our current best
physical theories. The Marburgers are thus committed to a view of
scientific progress that emphasizes conceptual shifts in science.
Scientists don't just discover new facts: they also develop new
concepts, and radically revise their fundamental concepts.



Furthermore, according to the Marburg conception of objectivity and
objecthood, objecthood--what it is to be an object--is
conceptually dependent on objectivity, which is explained in terms of
laws. The upshot of this is that our notion of a physical object is
determined by the most fundamental laws of our science. Marburg
Neo-Kantianism therefore highlights the fact that scientific progress
requires fundamental shifts in science's ontology--its
conception of what there is.



These themes are apparent already in Cohen's introduction to
Lange (Cohen 1898). Following Hertz, Cohen surveys three different
proposals for the principles of mechanics: Newton's view (which
takes as fundamental space, time, mass, and force); an alternative
that replaces the notion of force with energy; and Hertz's own
radical view, which uses only the notions of space, time, and mass.
Cohen argues for Hertz's view, emphasizing how it fundamentally
reconceptualizes the traditional notion of "mass" (Cohen
1898: 128ff.). This same tendency is even more apparent in
Cassirer's writings on Einstein. He argues that Einstein
introduces new a priori principles: the constancy of the speed of
light (in the special theory), and the principles of general
covariance and the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass (in
the general theory) (1921: 415, 428). And he emphasizes the
transformations in the notions of substance, space, and time that the
general theory requires (1921: Chs.
 3-5).[13]


#### Objective Validity of Natural Science



For Marburg Neo-Kantianism, objectivity and objecthood are explained
in terms of the unity of knowledge. Explaining the unity of scientific
knowledge over time becomes especially pressing for them given their
emphasis on radical conceptual change in natural science. If even the
categories are shifting over time, in what sense is there unity to our
knowledge?



This problem is made more pressing in conjunction with the Marburg
attack on the given. (After all, if there were something given in
experience, then the given in experience would determine which
conceptual changes are necessary in science, and the objectivity of
our scientific knowledge could be explained.) In the philosophy of
science, the attack on the given amounts to an attack on the
possibility of crucial experiments--experiments that would, in a
theory neutral way, establish the truth of a scientific theory.
Marburg philosophers emphasized that even the most primitive
experimental results--measurements--presuppose a good amount
of "theoretical" machinery: not only mathematics, but even
physical laws. Cassirer cited Duhem in support (1910: Ch.4). Duhemian
underdetermination of scientific theory by experience showed, Cassirer
believed, that there is no given: no autonomous layer of
self-authenticating experiences.



Marburg philosophy of science thus includes the claim that there could
be rival scientific theories, each of which is empirically
 adequate.[14]
 Given this, in what sense is science objective? How is there unity in
science, when there are no theory-neutral experiments that would
prevent different scientists from adopting different theories?
Cassirer (1910) in particular proposed an intricate answer to this
question (Heis 2014). He argued that there is a common set of demands
on theories that will constrain the choice of theory. These demands
are a priori, in a regulative sense, and partially constitute what he
calls the "form" of a scientific theory. These demands
include that a theory be simple and of wide
 scope.[15]
 He also argues that even in the face of radical conceptual changes
and shifts in ontology, some features of scientific theories are
maintained--for instance the approximate mathematical structure
of the theory.



For further discussion of the philosophy of mathematics, see the
Supplement,
 Philosophy of Mathematics in the Marburg School.


## 3. The Southwest School



The beginning of the Southwest School of Neo-Kantianism can arguably
be located in Wilhelm Windelband's 1883 essay, "Critical
or Genetic Method?", which for the first time both gives a clear
exposition of the philosophical point of view that would characterize
the Southwest school and argues explicitly for a return to Kant.
However, many of the core ideas in that essay were already articulated
by Windelband's teacher, Hermann Lotze (1817-1881),
principally in his *Logic* (1874). Lotze argued for a clean
distinction between philosophy and psychology. Logic depends on the
distinction between "truth and untruth", and gives the
laws that thought *ought* to obey, while psychology identifies
the laws that mental processes *do* obey. Logic gives laws
governing the *content* of thoughts, while psychology concerns
*acts* of thinking (Lotze 1874: SSx; SS332; on the
act/content distinction see also Lotze 1856-64: vol.2, 630;
Lotze 1874: SS337). The contents of thoughts are objective,
inasmuch as they are not only shareable but have a reality independent
of being thought. Though these contents are real, they do not occur
(as events do), do not exist or have being (as things do), but are
*valid* (1874: SSSS314-318). Though Lotze did not
explicitly call for a return to Kant, he did articulate many of the
themes that the SW Neo-Kantians located in Kant. Lotze argued that
knowing cannot be considered a *copying* [*Abbilden*] of
its object (SS327); he held that knowledge requires a priori
elements, and that apriority is not the same as innateness
(SS324); and more generally he positioned his philosophy as a
middle ground between speculative idealism and materialism.



After completing his dissertation, on the doctrine of chance, under
Lotze in 1870, Windelband (1848-1915), moved to Strassburg in
1882, and then to Heidelberg in 1902. A master essayist, he is best
known for the essays and addresses collected in his
*Praludien* (1915), which was first published in 1883. In
"Critical or Genetic Method?"--the important essay
just mentioned--Windelband self-consciously looks to Kant and the
critical philosophy as the key to clearly distinguishing philosophy
from psychology. Picking up Lotze's key notion of validity, he
argues that Kant's project is best understood as a study of
validity: the topic of philosophy is value, or the "validity of
axioms" or norms. This study of validity should be broadened to
all areas of culture. This broadening of the critical project was
carried further in his essay, "History and Natural
Science" (1894), which argued (against the positivist theory of
history), that history provides a distinct way of knowing (which he
calls, "idiographic"), distinct from the natural
scientific ("nomothetic") way of knowing. Windelband was
also a prolific and original historian of philosophy, culminating in
1891 with his history of philosophy from ancient to modern times
(Windelband 1891). He articulated and defended a conception of doing
history of philosophy (*Problemgeschichte*, history of
philosophical problems) that became standard for the Neo-Kantians of
both schools.



These programmatic ideas in the theory of knowledge and the philosophy
of history were expanded systematically by Windelband's student
Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936). After writing his dissertation
("The Theory of Definition") under Windelband in
Strassburg in 1888, Rickert moved to Freiburg in 1889. The
philosophical school became known as the Southwest or Baden school,
because Freiburg and Heidelberg are both in Baden in southwest
Germany. In 1892, he published *The Object of Knowledge*
(Rickert 1915), which he expanded and modified in subsequent editions
over the next thirty years. His most influential book, *The Limits
of Concept Formation in Natural Science* (1st ed: 1902) greatly
expands and systematically develops the core idea in
Windelband's essay "History and Natural Science".
His book *Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins* (*Oneness,
Unity, and the Number One*, 1911), was one of the few SW works in
the philosophy of mathematics.



Among the students of Rickert and Windelband who aligned themselves
with their philosophical point of view, the most influential and
philosophically sophisticated was Emil Lask
 (1875-1915).[16]
 After studying under Windelband in Heidelberg and Rickert in
Frieburg, Lask wrote his dissertation under Rickert in 1902
("Fichte's Idealism and History"). He later habilitated at
Heidelberg, where Windelband was located, and eventually became a
professor there. While there, he wrote two dense works, *The Logic
of Philosophy and the Doctrine of the Categories* (1911), and
*The Doctrine of Judgment* (1912). Tragically, he died in 1915
in the Great War.


### 3.1 Conception of Philosophy: Philosophy as Theory of Value



"Kant posed a new conception of philosophy's task and mode
of knowledge against the psychologism of his contemporaries",
Windelband writes in his programmatic essay, "Critical or
Genetic Method?" (Windelband 1883: 271). On this Kantian view,
Windelband asserts, philosophy's subject matter is the
"validity" [*Geltung*] of "axioms".
Philosophy must identify these axioms, put them into a system, and
explain how these axioms govern the activities of knowing, acting, and
judging. This latter task requires giving a general account of
validity, in addition to identifying how the various sciences and
areas of culture are governed by specific axioms. Logic (or
theoretical philosophy, or "theory of knowledge") is the
science of the axioms for knowing; ethics is the science of the norms
for acting; aesthetics is
the science of the rules of the "effects of the emotions"
(1883: 274-5). 



This conception of philosophy furnishes the SW School with an antidote
to psychologism, which differs fundamentally from the kind of
anti-psychologism proferred by the Marburg school (see
 section 2.1).
 For Windelband, axioms are understood "teleologically":
they are the rules that must be followed if certain ends are to be
realized. For instance, logic gives those norms that must be followed
if one wants to believe what is true. Axioms are *norms*, and
their necessity is *normative necessity*. Essentially,
philosophy is distinct from psychology because norms are distinct from
facts. The norms that, as a matter of fact, people do recognize have
only "factual validity", and not "teleological
 validity".[17]
 What Windelband calls the "genetic method" recognizes
only factual validity or generality. It seeks to demonstrate the
validity of axioms by showing that these axioms are built into our
psychology, or are universal to all cultures. The genetic method
therefore makes philosophy dependent on psychology and cultural
history. But the genetic method is hopeless: one cannot prove the
axioms that govern all sciences by using psychology or anthropology,
since these sciences themselves presuppose these axioms. Indeed, the
genetic method threatens relativism, since we cannot say what humans
will believe at all times and places, but only what they believe now,
or what is believed in this or that culture. Indeed, on the genetic
method, truth and goodness are reduced to social power or majority
opinion.



The critical method, on the other hand, begins with the assumption
that there are universal, absolute values which all subjects ought to
recognize and conform to. It postulates a "normal consciousness
whose principles must be recognized, insofar as anything at all is to
have universal validity" (Windelband 1883: 280). This normal
 consciousness,[18]
 inasmuch as it embodies a norm, is not an empirically real subject
and cannot be investigated using the genetic method. The
"axioms", which form the subject matter of philosophy, are
the principles that must have normative force if there is to be a
normal consciousness at all. These axioms are "means to the end
of universal validity" (1883: 281)--they are the norms that
must be recognized if there are to be any universally valid norms at
all. For example, there could be a normal consciousness in a world
where ripe tomatoes are blue and not red. Thus the norm "Believe
that ripe tomatoes are red", though it is true and thus
universally valid in our world, is not an axiom--not a norm whose
recognition is a precondition of universal validity. The law of
contradiction, on the other hand, is a precondition of universal
validity. No matter what color ripe tomatoes are in our world, there
would be no point in adopting the norm "Believe that ripe
tomatoes are red" as a norm of *truth*, unless we also
recognize the demand to avoid contradictions. The proof that these
axioms are the indispensable preconditions of universal validity
cannot be empirical, as the genetic method would require.



The defining claim of SW Neo-Kantianism is that there are universally
valid norms, and *every universally valid norm has an a priori
 ground*.[19]
 The concept of the a priori is therefore not a psychological or
biological notion (the a priori is not the innate), nor is it an
anthropological notion (the a priori is not what is universally
assented to). The a priori are norms, the recognition of which is
indispensable for normative activities. In theoretical philosophy, the
a priori are norms the recognition of which are necessary for making
universally valid judgments--judgments that make a claim to
truth, truth for every other cognizer. These a priori theoretical
norms include the laws of logic. For natural science, the law of
causality is an a priori norm; for history (see
 section 3.3),
 it is a priori that there are universal values that make certain
individuals historically significant (Rickert 1902: 334). Similarly,
there are universally binding norms in ethics and aesthetics, which
make it possible that certain actions and emotions are universally
valid.



Lask agrees with his teachers in characterizing philosophy as the
science of validity (Lask 1911: 401). He recognizes, however, that the
SW Neo-Kantian insistence on the objectivity of what is valid, along
with their distinction between the factual and the normative,
threatens to devolve into a "two world" metaphysics that
is potentially incompatible with Kantianism. In fact, Lotze (Lask
argues) opted precisely for such a two world theory, where what *is
valid* is set over against what *is*, or *has
being*. This dualism is unpalatable, since it would leave it
unexplained how senses (i.e., the contents of our sentences) come to
be true of what is, thus reigniting the question (famously posed by
Kant in his 1772 letter to Herz) about how representations can relate
to objects at all. Lask thus argued that Neo-Kantianism had to be
completed by taking a Kantian "Copernican
 Turn"[20]
 (Lask 1911: First Part, SS1). Just as Kant argued that the object
must conform to our cognition of it, Lask holds that both the senses
of our sentences and the objects that have being share a *form*
(SS2). The form of a sense is theoretical validity
[*Gultigkeit*], and the form of an object is objectivity
[*Gegenstandlichkeit*]. The Copernican view, then, is that
theoretical validity just is objectivity. The two world theory thus
becomes a two element theory (SS3). There is one realm (the realm
of theoretical sense or being), within which we can distinguish a
formal element and a material element. The formal element is validity,
which is the subject matter of philosophy, while the material element
is sensible. Validity, however, is not supersensible (such as the
objects of dogmatic theology or cosmology would be), but rather
"non-sensible", since it is an element in the sensible
objects of our experience.



Last, it should be emphasized that for Windelband and the rest of the
SW Neo-Kantians, the goal of the critical philosophy is to be an
"all-encompassing philosophy of culture" (Windelband
1910). In particular, they wanted to expand Kant's critical
project to those areas of culture that Kant's original draft of
critical philosophy had neglected: the so-called
"*Geisteswissenschaften*", principally history.


### 3.2 Theory of Knowledge



There are four fundamental features of the SW Neo-Kantians'
theory of knowledge: a normative theory of objectivity and objecthood;
the act/content/object distinction; the rejection of the copy theory
of knowledge; and a theory of what is given in perceptual experience.
This section addresses each of these features in turn.


#### Objectivity and Objecthood



The central question that Rickert poses in his *The Object of
Knowledge*, which is the most developed and thorough SW work in
the theory of knowledge, is "What is the object of knowledge,
which is independent of the subject, or in virtue of what does
cognizing achieve objectivity?" (Rickert 1915: 1). In
particular, Rickert is concerned with the "transcendence"
of the object: that the object is an independent standard for
knowledge, that it determines whether knowledge is true or objective.
Rickert's answer to these questions is that the object is a
"transcendent ought" [*Sollen*], and not
fundamentally a "transcendent being" [*Sein*] or
"reality" [*Wirklichkeit*]. This is a distinctive
view. It is, of course, a platitude that objects are normative in the
sense that our beliefs about an object ought to be true of it. But a
common view is that this normativity is derivative: our beliefs about
an object *ought to be* a certain way, because the object
itself *is* a certain way. On this common view, the
object's standing as a "transcendent ought" is
grounded in its "transcendent being". Rickert rejects this
view. He argues that the only norms that can be derived from what is
[*sein*], are conditional norms, to the effect that one ought
to do such and such if one happens to will a certain thing--norms
that are neither objective, nor independent of the subject. Such a
view either undermines the theory of knowledge as a normative
discipline (and truth as a value), or undermines objectivity (Rickert
1915: 281). Rickert therefore advocates upending the common view. He
takes norms of cognition as basic and irreducible, and argues that the
transcendent reality of objects is grounded in these irreducible
cognitive norms.



In Lask 1911 and Lask 1912, Lask follows his teacher in talking of the
object as "containing a value" or being the standard for
knowledge. Drawing on Rickert's ideas, he argues that the
objectivity (of an object) is just the same thing as validity (of
values), and that both objects and senses share this form.
Nevertheless, Lask departs from Rickert's view in two ways.
First, he argues that 



> 
> 
> as we must fight every version of truth that is characterized by
> mirroring and shadowing, so also conversely, we must fight any
> assertion of a dependence in the opposite direction, a priority of
> theoretical validity, of the "demand", of the
> "ought" before being. (Lask 1911: 410) 
> 
> 
> 



The transcendent being of an object is no more derivative from the
normativity of our claims about that object than the latter is on the
former (Lask 1908). Second, Lask argues that the object has a form and
a matter, and that the form alone is what is valid. Thus the object is
not itself a transcendent ought, but only its form
 is.[21]


#### Act, Content, and Object of Thinking



Lotze had distinguished psychology from the theory of knowledge (what
Lotze calls "logic") by distinguishing the acts of
thinking, which are events and constitute the subject matter of
psychology, from the contents of thinking, which are valid and
constitute the subject matter of logic (Lotze 1874: SSx;
SS332). This distinction was taken up and ramified by Rickert and
Lask. Starting in the 1915 third edition of *The Object of
Knowledge*, Rickert argued that the content [*Gehalt*] of a
judgment had to be split up into two parts: the unreal
[*unwirklich*], objective content [*Gehalt*], and the
subjective, "immanent sense" [*Urteilssinn*] of the
judgment. This immanent sense is distinct from the act of judging,
which is "real" and the subject matter of psychology.
Rickert calls the immanent sense "irreal"
[*irreal*]. The immanent sense is the orienting of the subject
toward the objective content (Rickert 1915: 164-167; Ch.3,
SS4). What Rickert means by this can be brought out by contrasting
it with the objective content, which Rickert takes to be a whole
composed of connected representations. For example, the three
sentences "Is snow white?", "Snow is white",
and "Snow is not white", for Rickert all have the same
objective content, since in all three the same representation
("white") is predicated categorically of the same
representation ("snow"). The difference is in the
"immanent sense" of the sentences: the first sentence
*questions* whether the content is true, the second
*affirms* that the content is true, and the third
*denies* that the content is true (Rickert 1915: 175; Ch.3,
SS6). Rickert's distinction between immanent sense and
objective content fits more naturally than does the simple act/content
distinction with the SW conception of philosophy as the theory of
values, and thus with their conception of the theory of knowledge as
concerned with the *norm* of truth. After all, if theory of
knowledge is concerned only with abstract, objective contents, then it
is not clear why it would be any more normative than natural science.
A science that isolates the laws of abstract things would seem just as
descriptive as a science that isolates the laws of concrete
things--as Husserl argued forcefully in *Logical
Investigations* (Husserl 1900). Norms seem more suited for acts,
not objective contents. But to swing in the opposite direction, and
take theory of knowledge to concern acts of cognition wouldn't
help either, since the laws that govern the acts are just descriptive
laws that predict what a psychophysical subject will think under
certain circumstances. The theory of knowledge, however, can be
normative if it concerns the element intermediate between acts and
objective contents: it gives the norms for immanent senses, stances
taken toward objective contents.



A different kind of refinement of the act/content/object distinction
appears in Lask's 1912 *Die Lehre vom Urteil* (*The
Doctrine of
 Judgment*).[22]
 Lask wants a theory of judgment that recognizes that the object is
the standard of truth; and that truth does not depend on the act of
judging--just as anti-psychologism demands. Lask believes that
the standard distinctions between act, content, and object do not
fully recognize this. In particular, he rejects Rickert's view
that, in judging, a subject takes a stance with respect to the
objective content. This is because Lask believes that the objective
content is created by the act of judging, and so Rickert's view
has the unpalatable consequence that our acts of judging are about
something that is created by our acts of judgment, thus violating the
idea that our judgments answer to something prior to the act of
judging. On the other hand, he cannot say that in judging, we judge
the object itself, since all judgments have a structure (one thing is
predicated of another), and the object, he argues, is an unstructured
whole whose articulation into parts is a work of the mind. Lask
therefore posits, in addition to the content of the judgment and the
object itself, a third thing, which he calls the "primary
object" (Lask 1912: Ch.1). The primary object is a structured
whole, which (as structured) is distinct from the object itself, but
(as structured in a way that differs from the logical structures
possessed by judgments) is distinct from the content of the judgment,
as well. Judging is then a decision about whether the predication in
the primary object is valid, and the content is the thought that the
primary object is valid. The judgment thus aims to successfully
"reproduce" or "rebuild" [*nachbilden*]
in a structured form the originally unstructured object (Lask 1912:
Ch.2, SS1), and truth, as the adequate rebuilding of the object,
becomes a kind of correspondence (Ch.2,
 SS2).[23]


#### Rejection of the Copy Theory of Knowledge



Another idea, present in Lotze, though ultimately derived from Kant,
is the rejection of the copy theory [*Abbildtheorie*] of
knowledge. "Since the Critique of Pure Reason", Windelband
writes, 



> 
> 
> the days are over once and for all when a mature philosophical
> consciousness might think of the world as "given" and
> mirrored in it, as it would seem to the naive consciousness. In
> everything we regard as given our reason is already at work: and the
> justification of our knowledge of things rests only on our first
> creating them for ourselves. (1910 [NKR: 318]) 
> 
> 
> 



No knowledge, not even perceptual knowledge, is merely receptive, or a
mirror, but is a product that results from the application of a priori
forms to what is given. The explicit attack on the copy theory becomes
more explicit in Windelband and Rickert's writings over time:
starting in the 1915 third edition of *The Object of
Knowledge*, Rickert devotes a section (Chapter 2, section VI)
explicitly to attacking the copy theory, and he devotes a late essay
(Rickert 1934) to what he sees as a revival of the errors of the copy
theory in Heidegger. In the latter essay, Rickert attacks
"theoretical intuitionism", the idea that cognition
[*Erkenntnis*] is no more than intuition [*Anschauung*],
a passive reception of the object that is given to us. Such a view
implies that cognition is simply a copy of the object, which resembles
it. However, he argues that intuition, the passive reception of what
is given, merely gives "*kennen*" (acquaintance
with), and not true "*erkennen*" (cognizing).
Cognition requires a "complete transformation of the given
intuition through non-intuitive factors" (1934 [NKR: 391]).


#### The Given



Though the SW and Marburg school agree in their rejection of the copy
theory, they take very different attitudes toward the distinction
between intuitions and concepts, and toward the "given".
For the Marburg school, there is nothing given; the SW School argues
only that knowledge is not a copy of the given, but requires a
transformation of it. For the Marburg school, there is no distinction
between intuitions and concepts; for the SW School, intuitions are
irreducible to concepts. These two points are developed by Rickert. He
holds that the content of a sensory consciousness, what is given in
perception, is a "heterogeneous continuum" and an
"unsurveyable manifold" (1915: 406-7; Ch.5, SS5,
"*Konstitutive Wirklichkeitsformen und Methodologische
Erkenntnisformen*"). This multiplicity of content in
perception can only be felt [*Erlebnis, Gefuhl*], since it
would be an infinite (and so impossible) task to express this content
in conceptual form (1915: 139; Ch.3, section 1, "*Das
Erkennen als Vorstellen*"). So cognition cannot be a
reproduction, or mirror, of what is given; the concept cannot be a
reproduction of the intuition. Rather, concepts are always general,
and overcome the multiplicity of the content of sensory consciousness
by leaving out content that is present in intuition (Rickert 1902:
Ch.1, SS1). This idea is further developed by Lask (1911). He
argues that a theoretical sense (e.g., the sense of this or that
sentence) is composed of matter and form, that the form of the sense
is validity, while the matter is the "non-valid sensible",
or "alogical content". This material matter, though it can
be taken up into a concept as its matter, is not itself conceptual, or
reducible or transformable into what is conceptual. The sensible
content (i.e., the content of a sensory consciousness) is
"something irrational" or "foreign to
meaning", and can only be passively taken in, felt, and intuited
(Lask 1911: 415-417; First Part, SS3). The sense of a
sentence does not mirror or copy the sensory given: the sensory given
is its matter. Lask summarizes the difference between the Marburg view
and this conception as a distinction between "panlogicism"
(the view that all content is conceptual content--the kind of
content that is the subject matter of logic) and "panarchy of
logos" (his view that all content, even sensory content, can be
the matter for conceptual form, without being reduced to it) (Lask
1911: 426; Second Part, Ch.1, SS3). 


### 3.3 Philosophy of Historical Sciences



Windelband's most influential and widely-read work, and indeed,
the most influential and widely-read of all of the SW Neo-Kantian
writings, is his essay, "History and Natural Science".
This essay is a contribution to the philosophical debate sparked by
the 19th century explosion in what we might call the human
sciences--principally history, but also comparative linguistics,
anthropology, and comparative religion--that seemed rigorous and
so "scientific", but that seemed to differ fundamentally
from paradigm mathematical natural sciences such as
 physics.[24]
 Windelband's chief claim is that there is an irreducible
methodological difference (or, as he puts it, a "logical"
difference) between history and the natural sciences.



> 
> 
> [W]e have before us a purely methodological classification of the
> empirical sciences that is grounded upon sound logical concepts. The
> principle of classification is the formal property of the theoretical
> or cognitive objectives of the science in question. One kind of
> science is an inquiry into general laws. The other kind of science is
> an inquiry into specific historical facts. In the language of formal
> logic, the objective of the first kind of science is the general,
> apodictic judgment; the objective of the other kind of science is the
> singular, assertoric proposition. (Windelband 1894: 291)
> 
> 
> 



Those sciences, such as mathematical physics, whose goal is to produce
general laws are called "nomothetic"; those sciences, such
as history, whose goal is to know a unique, singular individual, are
called "idiographic". The individual that is the subject
of idiographic sciences need not be an individual human being, such as
Caesar. It could be a unique event or sequence of events (the fall of
the Roman empire); an individual nation, language, religion, or
culture (Florence during the Renaissance); or a unique artifact of
literature, art, or science (Homer's *Iliad*). The
important point is that an idiographic science has as its goal to
understand an individual in all its
 uniqueness.[25]
 Nomothetic sciences want to know laws; idiographic sciences want to
know unique processes. The nomothetic seeks the general, and what
happens invariably; the idiographic seeks the particular, and what
only happens once. Nomothetic sciences begin with what is given to
intuition [*Anschauung*], but ascend to what is abstract and no
longer intuitive; idiographic sciences proceed in the opposite
direction, attempting to resurrect and reproduce a unique individual
in all its vitality, detail, and intuitiveness
[*Anschaulichkeit*].



Windelband's chief target is the positivist philosophy of
history, defended by Comte, Mill, and others. On this view, the method
of history ought to be fundamentally the same as that of the natural
sciences, and its goal ought to be the discovery of general laws that
explain and predict historical
 events.[26]
 A secondary target of this essay is the view that history and the
natural sciences can be distinguished principally in terms of their
subject matter. This view is expressed by the terms
"*Naturwissenschaften*" (sciences of nature) and
"*Geisteswissenschaften*" (sciences of
"mind" or "spirit"), which Dilthey introduced
in his 1883 book *Introduction to the Geisteswissenschaften*.
Windelband objects that when the distinction among the sciences is
drawn in this way, psychology ends up as a
*Geisteswissenschaft* like history; indeed psychology, as the
empirical science of the mind, ought to be the fundamental
*Geisteswissenschaft* on which all other
*Geisteswissenschaften* depend. But, Windelband argues,
psychology is methodologically just as much a "nomothetic"
science as physics is: both try to discover mathematical laws of their
phenomena through controlled
 experimentation.[27]
 And the amount of psychology that a historian needs does not go
beyond what is supplied by reflective common sense; the new
discoveries of empirical psychologists have been, and are likely to
be, of no special significance for
 historians.[28]



The conception of history first sketched in Windelband's
"History and Natural Science" was thoroughly elaborated
and expanded in Rickert's *The Limits of Concept Formation in
Natural Science*. Rickert improves on Windelband's view in
two principal ways: he systematically develops Windelband's idea
that the distinction between history and natural science must be
grounded in *logic*, and he connects the distinction in kinds
of sciences to the characteristic SW distinction between *fact and
value*.



As Rickert's title emphasizes, he conceived of history as a
logical notion, as a certain way of forming concepts. The traditional
logic, he claims, considers only concepts formed by abstracting away
from individual particularities to form general representations. But
this method has its limit: it cannot explain how we form concepts of
*individuals*. History is a logical procedure for forming
concepts of individuals, as, for instance, a historical work on Caesar
would produce a concept of Caesar. In calling the products of
historical research "concepts", Rickert is combating the
view that a historian merely collects facts and reports them. Rather,
the historian sifts through the potentially infinite number of facts
about her subject and isolates, using some principle of selection, the
facts about her subject that are essential for
 history.[29]
 Though Rickert employs the traditional logical notion of an
individual to characterize the subject of historical concepts, he uses
the term in a distinctive way. Individuals are *unique* and
they are *indivisible* or *irreplaceable*. An adequate
historical concept of Julius Caesar needs to include those features
that make him unique, and unlike any other individual. Rickert uses
the example of the Koh-i-noor diamond to illustrate the indivisibility
or irreplaceability of an historical individual. Of course there are
distinctive facts about this diamond that distinguish it from all
other hunks of carbon; but the same could be said of any lump of coal.
However, from the point of view of history, it is indifferent whether
one lump of coal that was used to power a locomotive carrying Queen
Victoria would have been destroyed and replaced by some other lump of
coal. But, from the point of view of history, the massive diamond that
the Queen herself was wearing is hardly replaceable. Furthermore,
Rickert insisted that historical concepts, although they are of an
individual, are nonetheless *general* in the sense that the
principles of selection employed in forming these concepts are
universally valid for all
 historians.[30]



When Rickert insists that concepts of historical individuals are
formed through employing principles of selection that are universally
valid, he is bringing into the philosophy of history the
characteristic SW distinction between fact and value. The principles
of selection are given by values. The Koh-i-noor diamond is a
historical individual because it is widely held to be uniquely
beautiful, and it forms a central part of the crown jewels of the
British monarch; it is thus related, say, to the values of beauty,
social order, and national
 identity.[31]
 Rickert therefore concludes that "the claim that historical
concepts have an unconditionally general validity presupposes the
acknowledgment of unconditionally general values" (Rickert 1902:
360). The SW view of history thus attempts to thread the needle
between positivism and more radical forms of historicism: it makes
history an autonomous science, without falling into relativism.
(Clearly, in arguing that the concepts of history are objectively
valid, despite the fact that history does not include universal laws,
the SW Neo-Kantians are rejecting the Marburg view that objective
validity depends on laws. This is a paradigm case where their
differing conceptions of objective validity, as normative or
nomological, are brought to bear.) Indeed, Rickert claims that there
are certain a priori conditions of history, just as Kant had claimed
in the first *Critique* that there are certain a priori
conditions for natural science. It is a priori that every historical
individual is value-relevant. It is also a priori that there are
certain values, such as beauty or social order, that are universally
valid. Inasmuch as a *culture* is a collection of values, or
value-relevant individuals, the most apt way of characterizing the
subject matter of a science like history is as a *science of
culture*, as opposed to a science of mind
 (*Geisteswissenschaft*).[32]