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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

188273

Neo-Kantianism

Eugene Thomas Long

pp. 60-73

Abstract

While idealism was flourishing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the English speaking world, there emerged a "back to Kant" movement in Germany. The new Kantians de-emphasized the role of theoretical reason and synthesis in religious thought, and under the influence of Kant and Lotze sought to provide a new interpretation of religion in keeping with an emphasis upon the practical reason, the moral life and the emerging empirical age. Neo-Kantianism was the dominant philosophical force in Germany from approximately 1865 to 1920, and by the end of the century most of the chairs of philosophy in Germany were held by followers of Kant. Neo-Kantianism was born of an attitude which found in German Idealism justification for Kant's suspicions of knowledge in metaphysics and a desire to be scientific without falling into the arms of dogmatic materialism. It produced many important scholarly works on Kant and a diversity of viewpoints which shared the spirit if not always the letter of Kant. The two primary Neo-Kantian schools are generally known as the Marburg School, and the Baden or Southwest German School. The Marburg School was concerned for the most part with logical, epistemological and methodological themes, and the Southwest German School focused more on value questions.

Publication details

Published in:

Long Eugene Thomas (2000) Twentieth-century Western philosophy of religion 1900–2000. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 60-73

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4064-5_5

Full citation:

Long Eugene Thomas (2000) Neo-Kantianism, In: Twentieth-century Western philosophy of religion 1900–2000, Dordrecht, Springer, 60–73.