Neo-Kantianism: Back to the Critical Method
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Neo-Kantian movement developed the theoretically most precise critique of Hegel’s speculative logic. Its representatives saw themselves as defenders of scientific methodology against speculative arbitrariness. The call “Back to Kant!” was explicitly directed against Hegel.
Its emergence as a reaction was doubly motivated. Against the vulgar materialism of the nineteenth century, critical philosophy was to explicate the conditions of the possibility of cognition. Against speculative idealism, the restriction to appearances was to be renewed—no metaphysics of the in-itself, but epistemology.[1]
The shared image of Hegel was devastating. Hegel counted as the epitome of the “metaphysics” that Kant was supposed to have overcome. The logic was either misunderstood as ontology or criticized as an abandonment of the critical ground of epistemology. The dialectical method appeared as an arbitrary, a priori construction without empirical control.
The general characteristics of the Neo-Kantian reception of Hegel can be summarized in three points: first, the prioritization of epistemology over Hegel’s ontologically understood logic; second, the methodological critique of dialectical arbitrariness; third, anti-metaphysics as the basic stance against all speculative philosophy.
The Marburg School developed the most consistent form of this critique. Hermann Cohen renewed the transcendental method in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung [Kant’s Theory of Experience] (1871/1885) and formulated an explicit counter-proposal to Hegel in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis [Logic of Pure Cognition] (1902).[2]
Cohen’s critique concerned the beginning of the logic. Hegel’s “being” was, he argued, an obscure starting point—neither intuitively nor conceptually clear. Against this, Cohen set the “thinking of the origin,” which generates objects. The model was the infinitesimal calculus—not a finished being that is thought, but a thinking that constitutes objects. Hegel’s dialectic was, for Cohen, a conflation of logic and being. Cohen’s idealism, by contrast, remained methodological, not metaphysical.[3]
The legitimate intuition lies in the question of the legitimation of the beginning. How can the logic begin with “pure being” if it also wants to be without presuppositions? Cohen’s logic of generation grasps the productive dimension of thought—cognition is not passive copying, but active constituting.
The systematic limit, however, appears in the reduction of logic to philosophy of science. Cohen understands the method of mathematical natural science as the ideal of cognition. All other forms of rationality—practical reason, aesthetic experience, historical understanding—are subordinated to this ideal or excluded as “irrational.” This is a methodological narrowing that does not do justice to the plurality of forms of reason.[4]
Paul Natorp developed further the systematic grounding of Marburg epistemology. His critique of Hegel concerned speculative metaphysics versus scientific methodology. Philosophy of history seemed to him metaphysically outdated. Against the closed systematic totality, Natorp set the “infinite task”—cognition as a never-completed process.[5]
The legitimate insight lies in the emphasis on the processual character. Truth is not static possession, but living exercise. This insight could offer points of connection to the processual conception of truth developed here. But Natorp’s rejection of Hegel’s “metaphysics” targets a flattened image of Hegel. Hegel himself did not understand logic as a metaphysical theory of substance, but as the methodology of comprehension.
Ernst Cassirer developed the most differentiated Neo-Kantian appropriation of Hegel. In Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (Volume 3, 1920), he honored Hegel’s systematic power and showed an intimate knowledge of the system. The Philosophie der symbolischen Formen [Philosophy of Symbolic Forms] (1923-29) was then his own systematic project, which sought to renew Hegel’s claim in a new way.[6]
Cassirer’s basic principle was symbolic mediation. All cognition is symbolically mediated—there is no immediate cognition. Different symbolic systems—language, myth, art, science—constitute different worlds. Instead of Hegel’s “panlogism,” Cassirer developed a plurality of symbolic forms as independent ways of disclosing the world.[7]
Functional idealism replaced Hegel’s substantial reason with functions of the constitution of meaning. Not what reason is, but how it functions, is the question. “Form” precedes “content”—but form is understood as productive achievement, not as static schema.
The critique of Hegel’s monolinear dialectic was fundamental. Hegel’s single reason is replaced by a plurality of forms of reason. Myth, art, religion are not preliminary stages of philosophy, but independent world-forms with their own legitimacy. The systematic hierarchy is dissolved into a plurality of equally entitled perspectives.
The legitimate innovation lies in the principle of symbolic mediation. “Man is an animal symbolicum”—this thesis explicates a dimension that is only implicit in Hegel. The systematic significance of the philosophy of culture shows: culture is “second nature,” a self-created symbolic world of the human being.[8]
The systematic limit shows itself in the absolutization of plurality. If each symbolic form constitutes its own world, how then are these worlds to be mediated? Cassirer overlooks Hegel’s “concrete universality”—Hegel’s reason is not abstractly unitary, but a self-differentiating totality. What is already contained in the processual reconstruction of Hegel developed here integrates Cassirer’s legitimate insight: the “different perspectives” (the elephant principle) and the open structure of truth preserve plurality without sacrificing systematic unity.[8:1]
The Southwest German School developed another variant of the critique of Hegel. Wilhelm Windelband, in his famous rectorial address “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft” [History and Natural Science] (1894), distinguished between nomothetic (law-seeking) and idiographic (describing the singular) method. Natural sciences seek general laws, the humanities understand individual configurations. Hegel’s attempt to unite both in a single logic, Windelband argued, must fail—the methods are incommensurable.[9]
The legitimate intuition grasps the difference between kinds of cognition. A crystal and a historical personality demand different approaches. The absolutization of this difference, however, overlooks the common structures of rational thought. The reconstruction of Hegel developed here shows that the four basic operations are at work in all forms of cognition—not as a mechanical schema, but as a flexible structure that concretizes itself depending on the domain of objects.[10]
Heinrich Rickert radicalized Windelband’s dualism into a philosophy of value. Cognition is not a copying of reality, but value-guided constitution of meaning. Different spheres of value—truth, beauty, morality, holiness—are independent and cannot be derived from a single unified source. Hegel’s systematic monism, Rickert argued, fails to grasp the plurality of values.[11]
Fragmentation becomes a program here. What was grasped in Hegel as moments of totality becomes independent spheres without systematic connection. This absolutization of difference leads to a relativistic pluralism that no longer recognizes mediation. The reconstruction of Hegel developed here, by contrast, shows: plurality and unity do not exclude one another. The nine ethical criteria that we derive from the logic offer a mediation that neither levels monistically nor atomizes pluralistically.[12]
Otto Liebmann: Kant und die Epigonen, Stuttgart 1865; Friedrich Albert Lange: Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart, Iserlohn 1866. ↩︎
Hermann Cohen: Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Berlin 1871, 3rd ed. Berlin 1918; idem: Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Berlin 1902. ↩︎
Cohen (1902), pp. 13-42. ↩︎
This critique is deepened in: Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 22.6, The Self-Critical Turn: Through Skepticism and Postmodernism. ↩︎
Paul Natorp: Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, Leipzig 1910. ↩︎
Ernst Cassirer: Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, Vol. 3, Berlin 1920; idem: Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 volumes, Berlin 1923-1929. ↩︎
Cassirer (1923-29), Vol. 1, Introduction. ↩︎
Wilhelm Windelband: Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, Strasbourg 1894 (rectorial address). ↩︎
Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 23.3, The Four Basic Operations of the Method. ↩︎
Heinrich Rickert: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, Freiburg 1892; idem: Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, Freiburg 1899. ↩︎
Hegel’s Science of Logic (in preparation), Ch. 22, The Nine Ethical Criteria. Important: these criteria are not explicitly developed in Hegel, but can be grounded in his logic. ↩︎