In dieser philosophiehistorischen Arbeit verteidige ich die These, dass sich am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts im Marburger Neukantianismus eine dem Kapitalismus gegenüber kritisch eingestellte philosophische Strömung entwickelte, die ich ‚Linkskantianismus‘ nenne. In Anlehnung und Abgrenzung an den Linkshegelianismus zeichne ich historisch und systematisch die argumentativen Grundlinien bei Friedrich Albert Lange, Hermann Cohen und am Rande auch von Paul Natorp und Rudolf Stammler nach, um die Anfänge und einzelne Entwicklungen ein Stück weit nachzuverfolgen.

This book aims to show that, next to left-Hegelian Marxism, the long nineteenth century saw a current consisting of scholars who criticized capitalism on Kantian grounds. I subsume these theories under the operative umbrella term “Left-Kantianism.” This book focuses on a small part of this current: the Marburg School. Marburg Left-Kantianism is characterized by (i) a teleological perspective on rationality; (ii) their advocacy of socialism as a historical political movement; and (iii) a Kant-inspired methodology for formulating normative demands, grounded in the potential to foster societal progress. This book introduces their political philosophies with the aim of emphasizing the distinctness of their respective approaches with the hope of attracting and enhancing scholarly interest in this forgotten era.

Hermann Cohen, the founding father of Marburg neo-Kantianism, is known for criticizing capitalism from a Kantian ethical perspective. Thus far, the role of the notion of humanity has been viewed as grounding the-what I shall call-‘purposive-labour reading’. This interpretation suggests that Cohen aimed at a reorganization of work so that our humanity, which requires us to be treated as ends, remains intact. With the aim to better understand his usage of humanity, I contextualize the discussion of socialism and capitalism within Cohens’ overall framework and situate his ideas in the context of his contemporary interlocutors. Revisiting Cohen’s remarks on socialism and capitalism against the backdrop of his neo-Kantian account of ethical cognition reveals that his discussion of labour serves as an exemplar, showcasing how ethical rationality manifests in the liberal socialists’ demands. I argue that his primary aim was not to prepare the ground for a prescriptive labour theory — though this is likely to follow — but to argue for an alternative framework to historical materialism, allowing us to perceive and interpret social practices in an ethical light.

Cassirer’s view on ethical objectivity is puzzling. In his scarce comments on Kantian ethics, the “pure will” is defined as a “function of consciousness,” which he takes to be a necessary condition of the possibility of objective ethical normativity embedded in empirical reality. In the current literature, we find two distinct interpretations of Cassirer’s account of ethical objectivity. The ‘meta-philosophical’ interpretation takes objectivity as a telos that humanity gradually approaches, thereby emphasizing the historically relative truth standards to which the teleologically-evolving symbolic forms respond. The ‘Kantian’ interpretation takes objectivity as a concept inherent to the conduct of the moral law, highlighting the evaluative and prescriptive aspects of Cassirer’s philosophical method. By interpreting Cassirer’s ethics in light of Hermann Cohen’s mature ethical theory, I argue that ethical deliberation in Cassirer entails a notion of universality that is a priori and reliant on a substantiated concept that is subject to change. The proposed ‘contingent conception of universality’ thesis accounts for both: the evaluative and teleological features of Cassirer’s ethical theory, grounding an a priori account of ethical objectivity conceptualized relative to contingent truth standards that gradually improve.

This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the twentieth century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ regarding their conception of law, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg School’s view on socialism was a coherent school of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time.

This paper argues for a ‘contextualist’ approach to teaching antisemitism in philosophy class. The traditional ‘systematic’ approach emphasizes recognizing and dismantling antisemitic aspects in canonical philosophical texts. The introduced contextualist approach broadens the perspective, treating philosophy as a continuous debate embedded in cultural realities. It focuses on historical controversies rather than isolated arguments, includes the voice and the perspectives of the oppressed, and so has the potential to broaden traditional philosophical canons. In the second half of the paper, we provide a case study of the contextualist approach, applying it to the ‘Berlin antisemitism controversy’ of 1879/80. We argue that the contextualist approach is particularly valuable when dealing with antisemitism as it teaches students to analyze arguments within the socio-political landscape and to identify antisemitic elements. The students thereby acquire the skills to discern antisemitic argumentation in other contexts as well. We suggest that this approach could be used to teach other debates in the history of philosophy, especially those tackling race, sex, and gender issues.

In recent literature, it has been suggested that Lange’s social and political philosophy is separate from his neo-Kantian program. Prima facie, this interpretation makes sense given that Lange argues for an account of social norms that builds on Darwin and Smith rather than on Kant. Still, this paper argues that elements of psychophysiological transcendentalism can be found in Lange’s social and political philosophy. A detailed examination of the second edition of the History of Materialism, Schiller’s Poems, and the second edition of The Worker’s Question reveals that Lange sought to develop a systematic foundation of psychophysiological transcendentalism that is presupposed in his social and political philosophy. This allows for a more detailed understanding of Lange’s practical philosophy and assures him a position in the tradition of neo-Kantian socialism.

This paper challenges the hitherto common distinction between Hermann Cohen’s early phase of Völkerpsychologie and his later phase as a critical idealist. Recently, it has been claimed that Cohen’s turn was not a rapid conversion but a development that was already inherent to his early view. This paper argues that even in Cohen’s mature critical idealism, a thin basis of Völkerpsychologie continues to exist. Cohen’s critical programme is presented as having a twofold aim: On the one hand, it strives to give an account of pure, formal, and logical laws that regulate critical thinking; on the other hand, it offers a reading of Kant’s dualism between matter and form that allows critical thinking to be seen as inevitably embedded in causal laws of psychology, history, and physiology. Concerning the latter, the paper argues that Cohen remained in the tradition of Völkerpsychologie in his mature ethical thought.

Quentin Skinner criticizes Cassirer for an inaccurate depiction of the history of philosophy, as, on his account, Kant is portrayed as the pinnacle of the history of philosophy. Grounded in the epistemological and normative premise that philosophical ideas are properly understood only when studied within the context of their initial articulation, Skinner argues for the necessity to ‘contextualize’ philosophical ideas. In this article, I argue that, despite the weaknesses Skinner points out in Cassirer’s historiography, Cassirer nonetheless provides us with a Kantian-ethical framework of contextualism that is better equipped to address two hermeneutical problems arising in Skinner’s account. By highlighting the similarities and differences to Kant, I argue that Cassirer’s hermeneutics is developed based on an account of progress grounded in what I call the ‘deontological efficacy’ thesis, a will-based account of progress that abstracts the contingent aspects of history and evaluates the intended aim of a theory in its effort to overcome the oppressive structures of its time.

The Marburg neo-Kantian school is widely acknowledged as a precursor to analytic philosophy. Consisting of philosophers such as Friedrich Albert Lange (1828-1875), Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), Rudolf Stammler (1856-1938), and Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), their anti-metaphysical and purely “critical” interpretation of the Kantian principles provided important ideas for Rudolf Carnap (Damböck 2017). Their approaches also laid the groundwork for the so-called “continental-analytical divide”—a division that traces back to a debate that emerged between Ernst Cassirer, advocating for the analytical side, and Martin Heidegger, representing the continental side (Truwant 2022, Friedman 2000). Recently, however, scholars have paid increasing attention to their historicization of rationality (Edgar 2022, Kinzel 2021, Clarke 2021, Biagioli 2021, Pecere 2021, Renz 2021). This particular aspect piqued the curiosity of genealogical thinkers within the continental tradition, who otherwise tend to approach idealist and rationalist interpretations in the Kantian tradition with skepticism. The aim of this chapter is to introduce and delineate the fundamental characteristics of the Marburg school’s evolutionary perspectives on rationality. By doing so, it seeks to clarify how genealogists, despite their reservations towards Kantian rational idealism, were intrigued by the neo-Kantian tradition.

Unlike Johann Benjamin Erhard’s views on right, revolution, and structural misrecognition, his discussion of economic injustice, here understood as the lawful economic oppression of one’s end-setting human nature, has garnered little attention. To begin filling this gap, I focus on central passages from his 1795 book On the Right of the People to a Revolution wherein Erhard discusses two cases of economic injustice and advocates for moral obligations to resist such wrongs. By reconstructing these claims within the framework of his Kantian practical philosophy, I pursue two goals. First, I want to demonstrate that his fundamental ‘duty to oneself’ lays out a comprehensive framework for imperfect duties grounding moral obligations to resist practices that prioritize economic objectives over the ends of humanity. My second aim is to utilize this framework in order to explain how he defends a natural law position that views the legal system as both a remedy for and an ideological tool of economic oppression. While addressing economic injustices through the interpretative lens of imperfect duties might prima facie seem counterintuitive, I argue that it is actually a strength of his theory, fostering a liberal state model that is sensitive to the emergence of economic oppression.

There are many ways to conceptualize state legitimacy, with one approach being through the lens of human rights. While thinking of state legitimacy in terms of human rights gained prominence after the Second World War, Johann Benjamin Erhard had, in his 1795 moral justification of revolution, already compiled a list of human rights, positing that a state’s legitimacy in exercising coercion hinges on its ability to secure these rights. In this chapter, I shall argue that Erhard’s human rights account is novel in two significant respects. From a historical viewpoint, I shall argue that by placing humanity at the forefront of his philosophy, Erhard, alongside other revolutionary Kantians, presented a secular approach to state legitimacy that was notably unconventional before the 1790s. From a systematic point of view, I shall show that Erhard’s innovative use of the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties enabled him to use strict human rights in a critical manner in order to identify existing oppressive structures. 

In this paper, I argue that Max Adler’s justification of the socialist state as a critical idea provides a fruitful starting point for addressing socialist topics from an ethical perspective. Specifically, I defend two claims. First, I contend that Adler’s Kantian “functional” approach, which focuses on the role the state ought to play in society from a Kantian perspective, circumvents the problems associated with Gerry Cohen’s functional Marxism. Second, while Marxists may fear that Kantian formalism is susceptible to ideology, I argue that Adler’s approach is robustly anti-ideological. By demonstrating that his Kantianism is rooted in nineteenth-century neo-Kantianism—a tradition sensitive to the susceptibility of normative thinking to ideology—I show that his account seriously considers the situatedness of the social critic, highlighting the ideology-emancipating and politicizing effects when we recognize the structural injustices in which we are entangled.

Recently, there has been a discussion about whether objectionable ideas in the history of philosophical thought should be prefaced with trigger warnings. Despite their vast divergences, both proponents and critics of trigger warnings implicitly seem to rely on the hermeneutical premise that engaging with problematic ideas in texts means treating them on par with other philosophical ideas. In this article, I seek to challenge this premise. I argue for an alternative hermeneutical teaching model that takes the moral discomfort we experience when confronted with these ideas as a pedagogically valuable starting point for critically engaging with the history of political thought. By developing a ‘critical hermeneutical’ framework that fosters a nuanced understanding of theories as both enablers of emancipation and solidifications of domination, I aim to demonstrate how philosophy educators can design their courses in a socially responsible manner by transforming intuitive adverse reactions to immoral ideas into opportunities for a critical engagement with the text.