The Neo-Kantians and the Polemic on the History of Philosophy

Abstract

The nineteenth century has been regarded as the “classical epoch” of the history of philosophy. However, the Neo-Kantian discussion on the nature of this discipline and its relationship with systematical thinking has been poorly addressed in the literature concerning this topic. For this reason, this paper offers a brief outline of this discussion. It establishes three different moments in the Neo-Kantian discussion of the history of philosophy and shows how the understanding of the relation between system and history evolved from the mere formulation of the problem around the mid of the nineteenth century towards a complete articulated answer in the late works of Heinrich Rickert. Following this evolution, the paper attempts at explaining how the famous conception of a history of philosophical problems became a history of philosophical systems.