Neo-Kantianism

School of subjective idealist philosophy that arose in Germany in the 1850–1860s and advocated the revival of Kant's philosophy. In 1865, the German philosopher Liebmann advocated the complete abandonment of all the philosophy of imitation after Kant in his book Kant und die Epigonen, A Critique of the Followers of Kant Urging A Return to Their Master (Kant and His Inferior Successors) and put forth the slogan “Back to Kant”, marking the birth of the neo-Kantian philosophy. In addition to Liebmann, the early representatives of neo-Kantianism included Lange, Fisher and Zeller.

The period from the 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century was the most influential period of neo-Kantianism. Numerous schools have formed, the main ones being the Marburg School, centered on the University of Marburg and the Freiburg School, centered on the University of Freiburg (also known as the “Southwest School” or the “Baden School”). The representative figures of the Marburg School were Cohen, Natorp, and Cassirer among others. The representatives of the Freiburg School were Windelband, Rickert, and Minsterberg among others. The main schools of neo-Kantianism have both criticized Kant from the right and have further developed Kant’s subjective idealism and agnosticism. The basic philosophical tendency of the two schools was quite consistent, but the emphasis was different. The neo-Kantians of the Marburg School placed particular emphasis on treating subjective idealism and agnosticism with natural sciences. They were mostly experts in the areas of logic, mathematics and physics. The neo-Kantians of the Freiburg School were mostly familiar with history and culture and placed particular emphasis on treating social and historical questions. The important theories of Neo-Kantianism used to counter Marxism were Lange's “social Darwinism” and “ethical socialism”, i.e., the “struggle for existence” (“Kampf ums Dasein”) to explain socio-historical phenomena, and Kant's “the purely moral” as the basis of socialism. Neo-Kantianism has done great harm to the workers’ movement. The Second International even attacked and revised Marxism and adopted neo-Kantianism as its own official doctrine. For this reason, Engels, Mehring, Liebknecht, Lafargue, Plekhanov, and Lenin among others have criticized neo-Kantianism. In the first half of the 20th century, Neo-Kantianism was no longer dominant among the of various bourgeois philosophical schools, and a number of neo-Kantians even turned to other schools, such as Windelband, the founder of the Freiburg School, who turned to neo-Hegelianism.