The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism 1796–1880 by Frederick C.
Beiser (review)
Andrea Staiti
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 54, Number 1, January 2016,
pp. 177-178 (Review)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2016.0011
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/605977
Accessed 19 Jun 2017 05:16 GMT
book reviews
177
Frederick C. Beiser. The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism 1796–1880. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 610. Cloth, $99.00.
Frederick Beiser’s book is a valuable contribution to the revival of neo-Kantian studies
characterizing the past few years: a trend that is blowing the dust off this important, yet
hitherto neglected chapter of the history of philosophy. The quality of Beiser’s writing is
excellent throughout, showing mastery of an impressive range of sources and treating with
equal competence a variety of topics in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy
of religion.
In part 1, Beiser advances his most original historical claim about neo-Kantianism. He
argues that the movement has its origin in what he calls the “lost tradition” (11), that is,
the empirical-psychological approach to Kant’s transcendental philosophy developed by
Jakob Friedrich Fries, Johann Friedrich Herbart, and Friedrich Eduard Beneke in the early
nineteenth century. In spite of doctrinal differences, these thinkers share both a rejection
of speculative idealism, and the belief that transcendental philosophy ought to look at
the empirical sciences (in particular: psychology) to articulate its standpoint consistently.
The importance attributed to the lost tradition leads Beiser to significantly backdate the
beginning of the neo-Kantian movement and argue that the “first statement of the neoKantian programme” (17) and one of its “foundational works” (29) is Fries’s Reinhold, Fichte
und Schelling, published in 1803, when Kant was still alive. This is an intriguing proposal;
however, it remains unclear whether Beiser wants to defend the strong claim that the lost
tradition is as such already part of the neo-Kantian movement or the weaker claim that neoKantianism proper is a later “transfiguration” (177) of the lost tradition. This would have
been important to clarify because, if according to Beiser neo-Kantianism stretches back to the
years when Kant was alive and active, the prefix ‘neo’ should probably be dropped, and we
should either simply talk about ‘Kantianism’ (thereby inevitably raising the question of what
tradition deserves that exclusive label) or come up with an entirely new historical category.
After an informative chapter about “The Interim Years,” where Beiser introduces the
key themes of materialism and the identity crisis of philosophy in the wake of the rise of
empirical science in mid-nineteenth century, in part 2, we learn about the work of Kuno
Fischer, Eduard Zeller, Otto Liebmann, Jürgen Bona Meyer, and Friedrich Albert Lange.
Beiser’s treatment of these thinkers (more traditionally recognized as neo-Kantians) reveals
the growing complexity of the movement. Both Fischer and Zeller, for example, have a
complicated relationship to Hegel that cannot be reduced to outright rejection; Liebmann
jettisons Kant’s thing-in-itself and rehabilitates metaphysics to avoid materialism; and Meyer
and Lange endeavor to rekindle the original spirit of critical philosophy by showing how
materialism as a form of metaphysics is as indefensible as idealism. In Beiser’s narrative,
this first wave of neo-Kantianism is characterized by the dominance of a psychological
reading of Kant and the idea that philosophy should have the same methodological outlook
as the empirical sciences (245–46, 276, 336–41). With the exception of Liebmann, who
begins to question the widespread claim that psychology could provide the foundation for
epistemology (312), the purely normative reading of Kant was yet to be developed.
In part 2, Beiser turns to consider the rise of the normative reading of Kant in the work
of the young Hermann Cohen, Wilhelm Windelband, and Alois Riehl. All three thinkers
are characterized by a psychological beginning and a progressive turn to a conception
of transcendental philosophy as a science of norms (as Windelband puts it, 502–6),
concerned with the a priori, formal conditions of scientific thinking (as Cohen establishes
in his acclaimed Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 482–89) and not with facts about the human
cognitive apparatus.
The distinction between a psychological phase and an epistemological phase in the
reading of Kant among the neo-Kantians is certainly correct, as it is correct to point out the
originality of Cohen’s and Windelband’s normative approach; however, consideration of
other important early neo-Kantians (neglected by Beiser) would lead to further qualification
of both claims. For instance, August Stadler developed a sophisticated epistemological
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reading of Kant with an emphasis on the meaning of teleological argumentation
independently of Cohen and Windelband and influenced both. Benno Erdmann wrote
influential studies of Kant’s theoretical philosophy (1878, 1904), in which the psychological
reading still holds sway, so it is an overstatement to claim that Meyer’s Kants Psychologie was
“the last great hurrah of the psychological interpretation of Kant” (336).
Finally, Beiser contends that “the study of neo-Kantianism is still in its infancy” (vii).
While this is true for the Anglophone world, there are philosophical communities, for
example in France and Italy, where the study of neo-Kantianism has reached full maturity.
It is lamentable that Beiser chose to completely ignore the pivotal work on neo-Kantianism
of French and Italian scholars that would have added further nuance and complexity to
his own otherwise excellent narrative.
Andrea Staiti
Boston College