Following Neokantism and Its Predecessors. Herman von Helmholtz and “The Facts in Cognition”

Abstract

The contemporary philosophy of science is often considered to be incompatible with the tradition of the mostly continental philosophy. There was, however, one philosophical direction in continental Europe that both grew from the tradition of Kantian philosophy and succeeded in keeping contact with modern science and mathematics. Unfortunately after the Second World War this philosophy of neokantianism together with the philosophy of Ernst Cassirers in Europe for a long time was considered to be obsolete. However, there has been growing interest in this philosophy, especially in the last ten years. An increasing number of books about neokantianism and especially Cassirer have been published. His book The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms still remains the focus of many of his interpreters. There are, however, some other important works that deserve at least the same amount of attention, notably Substance and Function, Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the following discussion with Moritz schlick about the implications of this scientific theory for philosophy. This article attempts to present the development of this philosophy already from Helmholtz onwards and to describe some of its basic problems.