The Persecution of Absolutes: On the Kantian and Neo-Kantian Theories of Science

Abstract

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason intends, in part, to be a theory of science; to what extent is a matter of interpretation. Of the German philosophical systems inspired by him, some sought to abolish, conserve and transform his premises all at once — in the famous triple sense that Hegel ascribed to ’sublation’ (Aufhebung). Others regarded their own philosophy as a creative interpretation of Kant’s system. The former group, the speculative idealists like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, lost any specific interest in the foundations of the exact sciences — in the same way as scientists rarely sought contact with them: they rather tended to stress the gap between speculation and Wissenschaft. A scientific orientation was retained or revived among those philosophers who viewed themselves as authentic interpreters of Kant — from Solomon Maimon to the School of Marburg. Neo-Kantianism, like phenomenology a generation later, began with a protest against vulgar positivism (or psychologism). Yet Husserl — particularly in the Logische Untersuchungen — took some of his leading models from pure mathematics and tried to develop an empirical idealism of sorts, i.e. a taxonomy of concrete a priori entities; while the Neo-Kantians of Marburg (as opposed to those in Baden) were guided by models derived from mathematical physics.