Post-Neo-Kantianism and the Problem of Revival of Systematic Transcendental Philosophy

Abstract

With a view to the question of a possible revival of systematic transcendental philosophy, the article follows the problem developments from outgoing neo-Kantianism to post-neo-Kantianism to the present day. Neo-Kantianism decisively determined this development, since, following the ‘analytical method’ of the prolegomena, it based its principletheoretical claim on the ‘factum of science’ and other facta of culture. Since the fact of science and culture at the beginning of the 20th century has changed. However, this ‘validity objectivism’ rapidly lost credibility. Although he was also criticized within neo-Kantianism (Emil Lask, Paul Natorp), these isolated approaches and calls for a renewal and deepening of the reflection of principles remained ineffective, since one sought salvation rather in the forced orientation to individual sciences or in new Orthodoxies and academic ‘research’. For a continuity of transcendental philosophical questions, but by no means for a revival of the systematic transcendental philosophy, the works of vom Verf. under the title Kritische Dialektik und Transcendentalontologie , post-neo-Kantian approaches of the interwar and post-war period by Richard Hönigswald and Wolfgang Cramer, Bruno Bauch and Hans Wagner, as well as Robert Reininger and Erich Heintel, documented a systematically oriented succession in the works of Werner Flach and Harald Holz to the present day, and - under conditions of philosophy of consciousness - in the works of Dieter Henrich and Karl-Otto Apel, an at least there was a thematic continuation. However, a “revival of systematic transcendental philosophy” would require more radical approaches than have been delivered in the last 100 years: it would simply require a return to the ‘synthetic method' of critique of reason , which “bases nothing as a given, except reason itself”.

Keywords

• synthetic method
• alytic method
• neo-kantianism
• realistic criticism
• neo-ontology
• neo-hegelianism
• category theory
• principle theory