HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY: A LINK BETWEEN THE CRITICAL METHOD AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY Jacinto Páez
Abstract: In recent years, the Neo-Kantian movement has received wide acknowledgment as the hidden origin of several contemporary philo- sophical discussions. This paper focuses on one specific Neo-Kantian topic; namely, the idea of history put forward by Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915). Even though this topic could be seen as one of the better- known Neo-Kantianism themes, there are certain unnoticed elements in Windelband’s treatment of history that merit further discussion. While the texts in which Windelband deals with the logical problems of the historical sciences have been studied at length, other texts, those in which history is studied in connection with the problem of the philosophical method, have not. This paper argues that, for Windelband, history is not merely an object of epistemological reflection but rather a key component of transcendental philosophy.
Introduction This paper analyzes one aspect of Wilhelm Windelband’s idea of history; namely, the claim that history serves as the proper organon for the system of philosophical knowledge. In addressing this topic I have two goals in mind. On the one hand, I aim to clarify Windelband’s conception of the relationship between philosophical research and historical thinking. On the other hand, I intend to explain how Windelband came to ascribe such a preponderant role to history. By doing so, I will develop a critique of the way in which this Neo-Kantian author is commonly interpreted, and, more importantly, I will set the grounds to assess Windelband’s original contribution to the understanding of the transcendental method. It is generally assumed that the interest in history manifested by the representatives of the Southwestern School of Neo-Kantianism1 is strictly concerned with the task of philosophically grounding the historical sciences.2 According to this view, philosophers of this school deal with the new problems originated in the nineteenth-century concept of historical consciousness using the tools provided by modern epistemology.3 Thus, it is commonly held that in the philosophical theory of Windelband, the forerunner of the Southwestern
© Idealistic Studies. Volume 50, Issue 2 (Summer 2020). ISSN 0046-8541. pp. 121–142 DOI: 10.5840/idstudies2020914120 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
School, the treatment of history is strictly limited to the logic of the historical sciences, that is, to a field of the theory of knowledge. Contrary to this view, I argue throughout this paper that the idea of history plays a constitutive part in Windelband’s Neo-Kantian program. Windelband’s recognition that history has to serve as the organon of critical philosophy is precisely an indication of this constitutive role and a proof of the inadequacy of the traditional inter- pretation of his thinking.4 The problem that motivates and justifies this idea of the organon of philosophy is not related to the methodological problems of the historical sciences but to the methodological problems of philosophy itself. Thus, the question concerning history tackled by this paper is not how this Neo-Kantian author attempted to ground the historical sciences but why his definition of critical philosophy points necessarily to history. Regarding the structure of this paper, the first section deals with a recent and deeper variant of the traditional interpretation, put forward by Alan Kim in the 2015 paper “Neo-Kantian ideas of history.”5 After this discussion, I tackle Windelband’s idea of the critical method and his identification of his- tory with the organon of critical philosophy. The centrality of history was, in Windelband’s case, the result of a long reflection on the nature of transcen- dental philosophy and the legacy of German Idealism, and not something given from the start. This development is attested in a generally overlooked amendment to the methodological essay “Critical or Genetic Method?,” whose original version from 1884 assigned the role of philosophy’s guiding principle not to history but psychology. Accordingly, two questions will be raised in connection with the content of this essay: Why does philosophy need an or- ganon? Why was this organon originally identified with psychology and later with history? With this shift from psychology to history, Windelband came close to asserting a problematic identity between history and philosophy. He sought a concrete possibility of harmonizing transcendental philosophy and historical consciousness; thus bridging, through his theory, the gulf between transcendental logic and the concrete historical realm. In the third section, I will attempt, in the light of my findings, to asses the general output of Wind- elband’s program. In this sense, I believe that the study of Windelband’s idea of history is useful for considering the possibility of historical philosophy.
1. Neo-Kantian Ideas of History This section presents a survey of Alan Kim’s paper on the Neo-Kantian ideas of history, since, as I have said, it is the most complex exponent of the prevailing view on Southwest Neo-Kantianism.6 Kim’s paper has the enormous value of recognizing the importance of the idea of history for Neo-Kantian philosophers in general.7 Prior to its pub- lication, there was a strong tendency in the literature to exclusively ascribe interest in the mathematical sciences and physics to the representatives of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, in contrast to the restricted focus
122 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY on history of the members of the Southwest School.8 Indeed, this was the opinion held by such an authoritative figure as Ernst Cassirer in the fourth volume of his The Problem of Knowledge.9 In contrast, Kim’s paper convinc- ingly argues that history plays an important role in the theories developed by the representatives of both schools, although in a completely different sense. Regarding the Southwest School, the paper states that the main philo- sophical interest of its representatives was to philosophically ground the historical sciences:: The Southwest School sees these unresolved questions regarding an impor- tant and undeniable real epistemic activity—historiography—as indicative of a theoretical crisis that the sciences themselves lack the resources or perspective to resolve. Only philosophical critique can hope to elucidate the so-called logic of the historical or cultural sciences, and this clearly defined both the respective subject matter and methodology of the Natur- und Geistwissenschaften.10 Windelband’s and Rickert’s philosophies of history, both of which are analyzed in Kim’s paper, could have could pass for a chapter missing from Kant’s Prolegomena concerning the question: “How is history possible as a science?”11 Therefore, the whole scope of these theories is reducible to the field of epistemology and, more particularly, to the philosophy of histori- ography. In the context of Kim’s paper, this interpretation stems from a conten- tious assessment of the Neo-Kantian idea of history. It is used to establish the philosophical primacy of the idea of history developed by the representatives of the Marburg School, whose philosophy, as mentioned, was generally as- sumed to be strictly oriented toward mathematics and the natural sciences. The philosophers from the Marburg School held a sophisticated vision of the relation between history and philosophy because they did not consider history merely a scientific endeavor but a dimension of philosophical think- ing. Thus, Kim correctly states: History enters the Marburg’s work not as a faktum of intellectual or academic reality, but rather as an intrinsic part of analyzing and bringing to reflective clarity the act of thinking, for this activity unfolds over time.12 Simply put, for Windelband and Rickert, history is thus an object of reflec- tion, the index of a restricted ground-laying task, whereas, for the Marburg Neo-Kantians, history is the field through which philosophers reflectively discern the creative laws of reason. This reference to the historical stems from the peculiarities of the philosophical method, which, as Paul Natorp explains, “cannot locate the law of objective formation anywhere else but in that objective formation itself, in the creation of human cultural life that is always at work and never concluded.”13 In contrast to the alleged Neo-Kantian
123 IDEALISTIC STUDIES reduction of history to the philosophy of historiography, this treatment of the idea of history evidently provides a wider and more fruitful scope of analysis. Although Kim does not explicitly endorse a criticism widely held against the Southwest Neo-Kantians, that is, that they have trivialized the philo- sophical problems raised by historical consciousness during the nineteenth century,14 this conclusion is difficult to avoid if one follows his reconstruc- tion. What Windelband and Rickert attempted, so the critique goes, was to pour new wine into old wineskins. They reduced the topic of historical thinking to a mere epistemological problem and thus focused exclusively on the methodology of history, while also disregarding the pressing concerns that historical consciousness raised for philosophical reflection. The position ascribed to the Marburg thinkers, on the contrary, implies the assumption of a temporal unfolding of reason. For these Neo-Kantians, the historical process is, so to speak, the testimony of the continuous efforts of reason to free itself from the obstacles and contradictions blocking its path toward its main goal: self-knowledge. This doctrine brings their theories closer to the recognition of the historicity of philosophical thinking and also to a positive reappraisal of Hegel’s metaphysical interpretation of history. In a nutshell, while one of the schools understood the philosophy of history in the limiting terms of a logic of the historical sciences, the other provided a more substantive ap- proach to the discipline, pointing at the still relevant metaphysical question of the relation between thinking and time. As it is not a part of my present objective, I will not discuss the philosophi- cal and historiographical works of Cohen, Natorp and Cassirer any further.15 What I am interested in is the other side of Kim’s comparison, that is, the hermeneutical thread offered to reconstruct Windelband’s idea of history.16 As I will argue, Windelband’s position can be described as moving towards an appropriation of the Hegelian conception of the historicity of philosophical thinking. But, before presenting my argument for this thesis, it is necessary to provide a basic outline of Windelband’s take on the critical method.
2. Windelband on the Method of Philosophy Wilhelm Windelband’s philosophical program, presented in the first edition of his Philosophical Preludes (1884),17 aims at offering a solution to what Frederick Beiser, among others, has called “the identity crisis of philosophy.”18 Briefly explained, the conjunction of the decline of the idealist systems of philosophy after Hegel’s death and the progressive consolidation of empiri- cal sciences prompted both the abandonment of the dialectical method and a reallocation of the different fields of objects among the research areas of the particular sciences. As a result of this process, philosophy saw itself deprived of its autonomous method and its peculiar object of inquiry.19 Philosophers were forced to reflect on the proper meaning and tasks of philosophy in a “post-idealistic” time.20
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Given the causes that led to this ‘crisis,’ the idealist system’s methodologi- cal proposal was forcibly rejected. But the other existing alternative available was the method of the empirical sciences, whose adoption would undermine philosophy’s pretence of being autonomous. Such a naturalistic approach to philosophical methodology would imply the reduction of philosophy, using the Kantian terminology, from quid juris to quid facti type of questions. In opposition to rational idealism, which implies a pure constructivist approach of philosophical knowledge, and against naturalism, which renders philoso- phy superfluous in the face of the empirical sciences, Windelband, as the Neo-Kantians in general did, equated philosophy with a critique of sciences. Windelband argues that given the general situation of philosophy in the mid- nineteenth century, the only path available to the discipline is to develop a new interpretation of the critical method, insufficiently clarified by Kant. This reformulation of the critical method means, in the context of the first edition ofPhilosophical Preludes, that philosophy has to reject any theory dependent on metaphysical claims or a subjective worldview in order to develop into a critical analysis of scientific knowledge—this would be the task of logic—, or, in broader terms, an analysis of all cultural production. As Windelband says: In its three parts [theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and aesthet- ics] philosophy considers its object . . . not in the way that sciences consider their particular objects, but critically, this is, examining the factual material of thinking, willing and feeling from the standpoint of its general and neces- sary validity, and eliminating or rejecting everything that cannot withstand this examination.21 The aim of this critique is thus to establish the grounds of validity of a cer- tain subset of cognitive products. The task of philosophy is to systematically identify the set of principles that are involved in our scientific, ethical, and aesthetic judgments; principles that, in their higher generality, correspond to the values of truth, goodness, and beauty. The foregrounding of these values does not, however, reflect a concern with the particular sciences, since it is not directly linked to the explanation of reality but to our comprehension of cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic enterprises. Even though it is possible to study values from the perspective of psychology, sociology or cultural history, it is only through a priori philosophical reasoning that their general validity can be grasped. In this manner, philosophy acquires a proper object and a distinctive method. All this sounds like the work of a faithful Kantian. It is useful, then, to compare both conceptions of the critical method in order to see how Kant’s notion of the task of grounding validity differs from Windelband’s. The dif- ference between the two authors lies in their divergent conceptions of the determination of the conditions of experience.
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In the case of Kant, this problem was solved by means of a ‘presupposed’ or ‘given’ concept of reason that justifies the completeness and eternal valid- ity of the elements of the critical system. This presupposition offers us the guarantee that the task of a critique of pure reason has its own end. As Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason: For it [the critique of pure reason] is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought to light by reason itself as soon as reason’s common principle has been discovered. The perfect unity of this kind of cognition, and the fact that it arises solely out of pure concepts without any influence that would extend.22 If we were to follow the exact wording of this Kantian quotation, Windel- band’s methodological question would be to determine how the bringing to light of the principles of reason can be realized. But the problem of the “bringing to light” (or, as Windelband often says, “bringing to conscious- ness”) of reason to itself is the problem of the organon of philosophy; for this Neo-Kantian author acknowledged that the critical method requires that the self-reflection of reason be mediated. In this sense, Windelband criticizes a formalism inherent to the Kantian doctrine.23 For him, the relationship between philosophy and the empirical sciences is closer than for Kant, thus transforming logic into a reflection on the forms of knowledge manifested by the sciences. Windelband develops this line of criticism and the problem of the medi- ating factor between philosophy and experience in his main methodological essay “Critical or Genetic Method?,” originally published in 1884, a text to which I now turn. As the title suggests, “Critical or Genetic Method?” problematizes from the start the task of relating experience and philosophy. What has to be stressed regarding this contraposition is the fact that the separation between critic and genetic method does not mean that philosophy is alien to experi- ence, as if both methods implied a distinction between experience and pure thought. The contraposition between methods is grounded in different points of view regarding experience. While one method seeks the rational grounds of experience, the other method seeks to explain that same experience. The irreconcilability comes from the fact that the two methods do different things and also that one of these methods goes beyond experience while the other remains always inside the field of experience.24 Even thought it is possible to study values from the perspective of psychology, sociology or cultural his- tory, it is only through the a priori reasoning of philosophy that their general validity can be grasped. In Windelband’s case, his critical method undergoes a scission since, at variance with Kant, the task to bring rational principles into consciousness 126 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY involves two phases. The first phase is concerned with analyzing the sciences in order to isolate their principles. In the second phase, these principles are justified in order to show that they do not merely belong to experience, but are its conditions.25 The closer connection between philosophy and the sciences makes the second task more pressing and difficult since there is always the latent danger of mistaking a mere factual aspect of science for truly rational content. Windelband starts his argument by claiming that the logical procedures applied in sciences presuppose a certain set of a priori principles. Wind- elband gives the most general universal principles of reasoning different names: norms, axioms, postulates. For this purpose, he analyzes what he considers to be the two types of logical proof; namely, deduction and induc- tion. Both types of inferences, according to Windelband, pursue the task of relating individual sensations with universal propositions. But these types of reasoning always presuppose certain elements in order to acquire certainty. For example, a hidden premise found in every inductive inference made by the natural scientists is the coherence or lawfulness of nature. Without this supposition, we could not assume that individual instances are related to a universal principle. For Windelband, these principles can only be the object of a special type of reasoning, one that shows that these axioms have a normative nature; that is, they must be recognized as valid because they are presupposed as conditions of the achievement of a cognitive end. In this sense, Windelband introduces the discourse about their teleological necessity. The necessity of rational principles cannot be proven by deductive reasoning or through causal explanation, but the philosopher can show their necessity because they are presupposed if certain necessary ends are to be accomplished.26 The idea behind this teleological procedure is the following: rational principles cannot be acquired by induction or merely refer to empirical data and they cannot be derived from metaphysical propositions since these propositions cannot be critically legitimated. But the fundamental questions of theoretical philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics presuppose for their solution the recognition of the general and undetermined validity of certain norms: “The validity of axioms is everywhere conditioned by an end that must be presupposed as an ideal for our thought, willing, and feeling.”27 Hence, the validity of values is here defined through their recognition as the presupposed ends or ideals of our thinking, willing, and feeling.28 The aim of the critical method is to rationalize the empirically given and Windelband proceeds under the assumption that rational principles, which are the conditions of experience, cannot be grasped independently from the conditioned. It is for this reason that the philosopher introduces the idea of a mediating factor for the critical method that serves as a reflection on the conditioned, from which we search the conditions. In the first phase, the
127 IDEALISTIC STUDIES mediating factor is identified, for several reasons that must be explicated in the following pages, with psychology. Windelband never altered his view that philosophy required the guidance of a complementary discipline, a discipline that provides the materials for critical reflection; however, later in his career, he changed his position regarding the role of psychology. The place of psychology was thus superseded by history. But the motives behind this supersession remain difficult to reconstruct. The reader of the last edition of Philosophical Preludes will find this final statement regarding the topic of the organon: Still, the help that the critical method can expect from psychology is re- stricted essentially to this determination of the formal order: in substance it is very limited . . . . Therefore, history is much more the organon of critical philosophy than is psychology, critical philosophy having to make the forma- tion in which the norms are given historically as factually valid principles of cultural life into the object of its teleological investigation, and this the empirical occasion for its critical reflection.29 However, this last paragraph is absent from the 1884 edition, in which no reference to the role of history nor any limitation to the role of psychology is given. On the contrary, regarding this matter the following is stated: . . . in other words, because we know normal consciousness not in itself, but only in its relation to empirical consciousness, philosophy needs the guiding clue of empirical psychology in order to consider the individual axioms and norms in an orderly fashion.30 The differentiation gets obscurer when one notices that Windelband left the overall text of “Critical or Genetic Method?” untouched, save for the addition of a final page on history, included as an appendix at the end of the text. But this limitation of psychology to the formal ordering of principles is at odds with the assignment of a Leitfaden task. Moreover, while the original idea of the psychological Leitfaden gets a full-fledged explanation in the first edition of the essay, the argument that raises history to this honorable height does not. Thus, Frederick Beiser, who wrote one of the few texts that analyzes directly this idea of the organon of philosophy, cannot be blamed for concluding that the reasons for Windelband’s preference of history over psychology are “rather obscure.”31 Finally, the change of doctrine and also tone in the text is manifested in its conclusion. The whole argument of “Critical or Genetic Method?,” in the 1884 edition, concludes with a rhetorical statement which was the watchword of all Neo-Kantians in the 1880s: “Philosophy must return from the dialectic to the critical method.”32 This passage was erased in the revised edition and replaced by a eulogy of Hegelian philosophy.33 To explain these changes, I will continue by treating Windelband’s early conception of psychology in isolation, using mainly Windelband’s texts from the 1870s. After this, I will explain the deficiencies of psychology and
128 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY the virtues of history, searching for arguments that are scattered throughout several essays from the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. With the topic of the organon of philosophy, Windelband tried to engage with a strictly Neo-Kantian thesis. Philosophy cannot proceed as if it exists in a vacuum; it has to preserve its relationship with experience. But the shift from psychology to history reveals how the inner tendency of the Neo-Kantian movement aligned itself with the philosophy of Hegel.
3. Psychology as the Organon of Philosophy As the critical method requires, the philosopher needs some given material to start the search for absolute values. Therefore, access to these values, and hence to the level of transcendental—or normal—consciousness is always mediated by experience. The philosopher can only recognize the general consciousness through its relation to empirical consciousness, a motive that led Windelband to seek this connection through the study of psychology. This was a general feature of Windelband’s early years, ranging from his first writings in the 1870s to the first edition ofPhilosophical Preludes.34 The key essay in this line of thought is Windelband’s inaugural lecture as Professor of “Inductive Philosophy” at the University of Zürich: “Regarding the Contemporary Situation of Psychological Research.”35 And I will use it to explain why Windelband defined psychology as the organon of philosophy in the 1884 edition of “Critical and Genetic Method?” Considering the occasion of the lecture, it is not surprising that its axis is the relationship between philosophy and empirical research: the term ‘in- ductive philosophy’ seems to suggest something about the possibility of a productive coming together and collaboration of philosophy and experience. However, Windelband’s idea does not involve a mere juxtaposition of both disciplinary fields; on the contrary, the search for that productive relationship presupposes a critical delimitation of empirical research and philosophy.36 I think that the aforementioned methodological role, i.e., the organization or configuration of philosophical activities through psychology, is how such a productive collaboration could be carried out. The point of contention between these fields stems precisely from their divergent definitions of psychology.37 The consolidation of psychology as a scientific discipline is directly linked to the abandonment of the burdensome concept of the soul,38 but, for Windelband, this does not necessarily imply that psychological concepts do not require a methodological grounding through philosophy.39 An unregulated exchange is unfavorable for the development of both disciplines. For instance, while metaphysical presuppositions explain what lies behind the array of subjective experiences, they hide the inner is- sues linked to using this type of hypothesis and also block further empirical research. Windelband, on the contrary, proposes an inversion of the typical ground-laying, constructive procedure, often attributed to philosophy:
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Indeed, the interest of psychology was never the same as that held by metaphysics: rather, it only brought about the fact that metaphysics, and the epistemology connected with it, had to be based essentially on the results of psychology, with the very understandable consequence that the philosophers seized this science, with great energy, and tried to exploit it for their own interest.40 Philosophy does not pursue the development of the whole psychological enterprise since its interests are limited to specific aspects of psychological research. Windelband mentions in this context the study of representations or the study of decision making. This fragmentary interest is the reason that Windelband holds for letting psychology work in independence from meta- physics—or at least in primacy over it. Philosophy has to leave psychology alone. But psychology, as the quotation shows, is still relevant for philosophy. Contrary to a psychologistic grounding of philosophy, what Windelband ad- dresses in his lecture is the possibility of determining the tasks of philosophy by reaching the limits of psychological knowledge. The example provided by Windelband has to do with the explanatory limits of brain physiology. Experimental psychology, which for Windelband comprises psycho-physical research, can attempt to explain the correlation between impressions and physical stimuli in the nervous system, but it cannot go beyond the elemen- tary processes. The strictly empirical investigation cannot account for the unity between the different components of the psychical process in internal consciousness since the unificatory role of consciousness is not explained, according to Windelband, through the study of the nervous system.41 At this point, psychology has to move beyond physiology, in order to develop a strictly psychological investigation about the characters of consciousness. Philosophy judges the limitation of the application and scope of the diverse scientific principles and methods of research. Consequently, Windelband sums up the results of his judgment on the current situation of psychology: What psychology, like all other sciences, can and must always demand from philosophy, is not only the justification of the methods of scientific research but also the justification of its basic forms of understanding and explanation.42What remains unanswered in Windelband’s exposition is how psychological research can aid philosophy in the context of the discussion of the critical method. What beneficial labor does psychology provide for philosophy? In the first place, psychology offers a preparatory aid. The fundamental phenomena of the theory of knowledge are first grasped as psychical pro- cesses. Even though philosophy has its own method and scope, it starts from the settled psychological meaning of basic terms, such as representation or knowing. Philosophy makes use of the terminology established and refined
130 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY through psychological research.43 Psychology thus provides, according to Windelband’s early texts, a terminological aid. Later, in “Critical or Genetic Method?,” Windelband brings another piece of psychological material to bear on philosophy. For Windelband, the internal organization of philosophy—the conventional tripartite division of the philosophical disciplines into logic, ethics, and aesthetics—is grounded on the distinction between thinking, willing and feeling as psychic acts. The division is not originated, for Windelband, in philosophy itself (in an eternal structure of reason) but in the current state of psychological research. It is, therefore, a heuristic distinction. Although the content of the philosophical disciplines has to be grounded in rational arguments, the arrangement of these contents follows a division external to the contents themselves. Since philosophy cannot proceed by means of a pure constructive method, but it is rather a critique that requires something given, philosophy ‘mimics’ the manner in which psychology organizes the basic functions of empirical consciousness. The theory of the basic functions of the mind clarifies the systematic organization of philosophical studies. It is assumed that psychol- ogy is also relevant not just for the recognition of these three main fields of philosophical investigation and the three higher-order values (truth, goodness, and beauty) but also for the discovery of subsidiary principles. Critical reflec- tion starts from experience, but once discovered and submitted to critique, these principles or values are recognized as absolute and necessary and are no longer dependent on any psychological statement whatsoever. At a later point in his philosophical career, Windelband talked about this period as corresponding to an early development or stage of Neo-Kantianism, identifiable by its psychologistic tendencies and its biased interpretation of the Kantian corpus.44 This is reflected in the final version of “Critical or Genetic Method?,” where Windelband drastically limits the extent of psychology’s usefulness, reducing it to a mere formal aid. Windelband’s position in its final form is that psychology is not only insufficient when it comes to recognizing the validity of norms but that psychological guidelines are not even enough for the discovery of norms. To understand this refusal and Windelband’s evolved theory, we must advance to the treatment of history as the organon of phi- losophy. Thus, I must now explain what role the philosophy of history plays in the method of critical philosophy, and, therefore, in transcendental logic.
4. History as the Organon of Philosophy The reconstruction of Windelband’s thesis involves a selection of materials since the references to the organon of philosophy are scattered throughout different texts, with their different points of views and aims. The fact that the equation of history and the history of philosophy with the organon of philosophy appears on several occasions does not render it clearer, but shows the importance that it bears for the author.
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The first dimension comprises a reflection on the history of philosophy. In his maturity, Windelband considers that the philosophical progression from Kant to Hegel represents a necessary path. Accepting the necessity to revise Kant’s path toward the identification of a priori principles, Windelband compares Fries and Hegel’s alternatives. It is precisely as a result of the comparison of the two philosophers’ systems that Windelband opts to oppose psychology to history as possible guiding disciplines for philosophy. Windelband describes their philosophical stance in the following terms: Following one trend, this research takes place from the experience of the individual soul’s life with all its branches, and, following the other, it starts from the experience of human generic reason in all its historical forms. According to one, the organon of philosophy is psychology, according to the other, it’s history. In principle, both philosophers [Fries and Hegel] are equally far away from confusing the actual validity of those rational values that they find, psychologically one and historically the other, with their philosophical validity, which can only be justified by criticism based on the matters of fact: both thus proceed with the intention of using what has been empirically established only as the material for critical laboring.45 According to this passage, the necessary overcoming of Kantian philosophy is represented only by these two alternatives. I have already discussed the view represented by Fries, although without mentioning his name; it is the path followed by the young Windelband. In the case of the psychologically oriented interpretation of the critical method, the basis for philosophical critique is humankind, taken exclusively as a naturally given essence. Windelband considers here that psychological laws rule only the formal relations between the content of consciousness, leaving aside any consideration of the meaning of this content, i.e., any relation to the sphere of normativity. For this reason, he concludes that as a natural science, psychology is unable to ground a critique of the rational value of the content of consciousness. Windelband’s rejection of psychology is therefore based on two different, although related, premises: psychology only deals with natural laws and the critical method requires the grounding of critique in concrete rather than formal aspects of reason. Rational contents are indeed presented in the stream of psychic life, but the conceptual tools of psychology are are incapable of isolating them. Therefore, it seems more promising to appeal to a different kind of scientific material. On the positive side, on the contrary, Windelband is forced to explain the benefits of history. In the search for the strongest possible argument in relation to this problematic context, he tries to show that the identification of certain contents in consciousness is dependent on the historical dimension of human life. Windelband claims that the content of human reason cannot be grasped through the mediums of psychology or anthropology. It is true that these sciences deal with the conditions of development of reason but only in a
132 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY formal sense, for example, in the sense that having a brain is a condition for thinking. But they cannot determine, through their scientific methods and principles—generally based on natural necessity—which are the conditions required to distinguish and articulate different aspects of the development of reason. In other words, these sciences arrange their explanations as a structure of causes and events, while the expressions of reason in human life appear as tasks, objectives, and difficulties. The recognition of reason’s contents thus involves a structure of finality which is better suited to the type of narratives presented in historical explanations. However, we should not interpret this stance as a commitment to a metaphysical explanation of history. On the contrary, it means that rationality does not appear in human life as something given and finished but as an ideal toward which we aspire. The psychologist acknowledges rational values only insofar as these values belong to history, intellectual tradition or culture. The equation of his- tory with the organon of philosophy is dependent on the claim that cultural values do not find their origin in natural laws, but in a progressive temporal unfolding which is not ruled by necessity. Following his reappraisal of Hegel, Windelband adds: The real focus for our knowledge of cultural values is the history in which they have become, through the progressive fusion of peoples into a single humanity, . . . the forms of science, morality, law, as well as art and religion. Man as a rational being is not psychologically given but historically real- ized. We make our contribution to world reason only as historical beings, as an evolving species. This is why history is the true organon of philosophy: to speak in Hegelian terms, the objective spirit is the dwelling place of the absolute spirit.46 Windelband adds a further argument related to the definition of philoso- phy. In an idealist fashion, Windelband defines philosophy as the process of self-knowledge of humankind. But this self-knowledge is presented through history, as a process of both self-formation and self-understanding. Windelband presents this movement as labor and departure from our natural condition.47 While the starting point of this process is an undetermined and unfinished condition, the evolution of humankind represents the comple- tion and enrichment of the contents of consciousness. The presentation of humanity in history is thus more complex and complete, providing a more suitable basis for philosophical reflection. But rationality does not manifest itself only in philosophical matters, but also in the sciences, religion, arts, and politics. Therefore, the self-knowledge of humankind is not attained merely by an explanation of our capacity to think and its evolutive history, but through the reconstruction of the development of the principles and con- tents operating in our cultural formations. These are the working materials of the critical philosopher.48 The interpretation of transcendental idealism in terms of a philosophy of culture, a characteristic feature of Windelband’s 133 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
Neo-Kantianism, is grounded precisely in this interpretation of history’s relevance for philosophy. Windelband’s arguments still allow an additional determination. Windel- band ascribes to the history of philosophy a special status among the historical disciplines. If, as Hegel claims, philosophy is the epoch grasped in thought, then the history of philosophy is precisely the most useful discipline for the critical philosopher, since it is there where we find the synthetic expression of the different attempts at self-knowledge of humanity. In this sense, for both Hegel and Windelband, the history of philosophy is a part of the system of philosophy; but, while for the former, the history of philosophy is the conclusive moment of the system, for Windelband, the history of philosophy represents the starting point. Thus, the meaning of a philosophical history of philosophy changes. During the debates about on the history of philosophy at the end of the eighteenth century, the formulation of a philosophical history of philosophy was achieved only under the presupposition of a determinate system of philosophy, the Kantian, the Hegelian, and so on. In Windelband’s case, the philosophical status of the history of philosophy is determined by exactly the opposite reason; namely, the absence of a presupposed systematic philosophy, which paradoxically allows a historical endeavor to be trans- formed into a philosophical one. Without the constructive presupposition, the history of philosophy becomes a field in which the logical necessity of problems, the historical context and the idiosyncratic factors introduced by every philosopher appear intricately interwoven.49 The labor of the historian is rather more subtle, since the historian’s purpose is not restricted to classifying past philosophies according to pre-given schemata, but to conceptualizing them as possible guiding threads for our systematic endeavors. The elements are given to consider that the true organon of philosophy is not merely his- tory, but the history of philosophy. Therefore, the weight that Windelband ascribed to the historiography of philosophy can be explained as a result of his elaboration of the methodological role of history for philosophical research. Summing up, although Windelband does not deal with the idea of the organon of philosophy exhaustively in one single text, the reference to this methodological role of history is constantly present in different texts and in different problematic contexts: his interpretation of the method of philoso- phy, the discussion of the legacy of German philosophy, and his reflections on the meaning of the history of philosophy. When all these texts are placed together a single profile that can be characterized with the label ‘historical philosophy’ emerges.
5. Conclusions: What to Do with History? According to a classical description, the nineteenth century was, in the face of the predominant philosophical orientation of the eighteenth century, the century of history. This comparison belongs to the philosopher Friedrich
134 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY
Paulsen,50 who was not describing merely the importance of the emergence of scientific history but claiming that history represents a specific way of thinking of its own.51 As a way of thinking, history directly impacts on phi- losophy. As a novel science, history offered new materials for reflection, and, consequently, philosophers began to ask questions about the grounding of historical objectivity and the clarification of the historiographical methods. But, as a new way of thinking, history put the basic rationalist beliefs under close scrutiny. This was precisely the meaning of Paulsen’s opposition, and also the rationale behind Windelband’s thesis on the organon of philosophy, as I attempted to show. From another perspective, the increasing demands of historical think- ing also generated a specific conundrum between the pursue of systematical thinking and the practice of the history of philosophy. In the end, Windelband found the organon of philosophy not exclusively in history but in the history of philosophy. Therefore, it seems that the increasing role of the history of philosophy goes hand in hand with the decline of philosophy’s creative force. What originated as an answer to the crisis of philosophy has apparently created a new dialectical movement, a new sense of philosophical weakness. This remark was even made by Windelband’s former student, Heinrich Rickert, for whom the opposition between history and system could not be bridged. On the contrary, the philosopher should make a choice between the study of the past and the work for the philosophical future.52 In this sense, the usefulness of history would have been put into question again. For Windelband the prerequisite of this usefulness is linked to the pos- sibility of disentangling the multiple dimensions of historical reality in order to achieve philosophical validity from historical materials. In synthesis, the circle of incumbency of history is depicted as more concrete, more complex, and more suited for the methodological purposes of philosophy, thus making it a better candidate for the role of organon of philosophy. There are, I think, two historiographical conclusions to be drawn from my exposition. The first conclusion from the reconstruction of Windelband’s thesis is that the traditional interpretation of his philosophy, specifically the claim that history does not play a role in philosophical methodology, is unfair to the texts. Secondly, I have shown that Windelband’s identification of his- tory with the organon of philosophy is a more complex and articulated idea than has been thought. Windelband presents this idea on several occasions but never in a systematically ordered way. For this reason, this idea had to be thoroughly reconstructed. Moreover, the main obscurities in Windelband’s exposition were explained as a result of the development of his thinking; more concretely, following the change from an emphasis on psychology to an emphasis on history.53 But Windelband’s treatment of history raises philosophical issues. Windelband clearly acknowledged the novelty of scientific history and the
135 IDEALISTIC STUDIES consequent relevance of the philosophy of history. But should philosophy be measured by the standards of history? Or, to use a term that has become popular, should philosophy be historicized? When the answer is yes, then, the danger of historical relativism becomes evident.54 It is plain that Windelband sought to clarify the role of the historical dimension of thinking without abandoning the claim for the universal validity of rational principles. The incorporation of the historical dimension of thinking has important conse- quences for the interpretation of transcendental idealism. Gerald Hartung says, regarding the relationship between Kant and Windelband, that the Kantian a priori is historicized but not relativized. There is no going back behind the level of developed forms of thinking and acting. The questio facti (what has become) and the quaestio juris (what is valid) coincide.55 Far from claiming that rational values have to be grounded on history, the equation of history with the organon of philosophy amounts to an anti- rationalistic thesis. Rather than dealing with the merely possible, the critical philosopher has to set out the link between concepts and experience. Win- delband grounded this link in a peculiar philosophy of history. Although he did not develop in his writings a full-fledged theory of historical time, he presented a theoretical argument to establish the mediating role of history for transcendental philosophy. Moreover, Windelband pursued historiographical works in order to display the process in which the meaning of philosophical concepts is articulated through time. Thus, while the validity of philosophical concepts should not be confused with mere historical validity, philosophi- cal concepts do require a reference to history. History works not only as the source of our knowledge, but also as the medium through which the valid- ity of philosophical concepts is not grounded but exhibited. Through this methodological mediation reflexion is not only directed in the process of elaborating more complex philosophical concepts but this concepts abandon the sphere of formality to acquire a concrete meaning. Finally, it is possible to conclude that Windelband’s reply to philosophy’s identity crisis went deeper than the clarification of the proper object and method of philosophy. The union between the method of philosophy and the understanding of the history of philosophy was sought as an overcom- ing of the decision between looking at the past and working for the future. The consequence of Windelband’s thesis on the organon of philosophy was to solve the identity crisis by grounding philosophical work, in his case, transcendental philosophy, in the appropriation of the whole of Western philosophical tradition. Rather than a break with the legacy of German philosophy, his new interpretation of the critical method was design to build up a new historical continuity. This is, in the end, the profound and stronger
136 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY link that Windelband’s philosophical method builds between transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of history.
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Notes
1 The terms “Southwestern School” or “Baden School” of Neo-Kantianism are used in the literature to refer to a branch of Neo-Kantianism initiated by Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and represented by him and his direct disciples, most notably Heinrich Rick- ert (1863–1936), Emil Lask (1875–1915), and Bruno Bauch (1877–1942). Even though their philosophical standpoints can be characterized by certain common features, such as their axiological interpretation of Kant, emphasis on the theory of values, or equation of transcendental idealism with a philosophy of culture, nonetheless these philosophers are most commonly defined by their geographical place of origin. The three university centers in which these philosophers developed their careers—Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Strasbourg—were located, at the time, in Germany’s southwestern region. 2 Although there has been a considerable increase in the study of Neo-Kantian philosophy, the philosophical doctrines of the representatives of the Southwestern School is mostly connected with the methodology of history. See, for example, Ch. Adair-Toteff, “Neo-Kantianism: the German idealism movement,” The Cambridge History of Philoso- phy 1870–1945, ed. Thomas Baldwin, The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 27–42; Ch. Bambach “Neo-Kan- tianism,” A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography, ed. Aviezer Tucker (Chichester: Willey, 2009), pp. 477–487 and Heis, Jeremy, “Neo-Kantianism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
137 IDEALISTIC STUDIES pp. 147–160; T. Chang, Wert und Kultur. Wilhelm Windelbands Kulturphilosophie (Würz- burg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2012); and P. König, “Teleologie und Geschichte bei Wilhelm Windelband,” Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), eds. Peter König and Oliver Schlaudt (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2018), pp. 113–128. 5 A. Kim, “Neo-Kantian ideas of history,” New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism, eds. Nicolas de Warren and Andrea Staiti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 39–58. 6 Concerning the “Southwestern School,” the paper discusses the philosophy of history of Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert. Regarding Windelband, Kim takes as his main reference the 1894’s essay “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft,” translated to english as W. Windelband, “History and Natural Sciences,” History and Theory 19 (1980), pp. 165–185. 7 Besides Alan Kim’s article, which as far as I know is the only essay in English that deals with both schools in tandem, there is also an important book on the Neo-Kantian philosophy of history: Ch. Krijnen and M. de Launay (Eds.), Der Begriff der Geschichte im Marburger und Südwestdeutschen Neukantianismus (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2013). 8 E. Dufour, Les néokantiens: valeur et vérité (Paris: Vrin, 2003), p. 13. 9 E. Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge. Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), p. 11. 10 Kim, “Neo-Kantian ideas of history” p. 39. 11 This comparison can be traced back to Bruno Bauch necrological note on Win- delband: “Wilhelm Windelband” Kant-Studien 20 (1915), p. XII. 12 Ibid., p. 40. 13 P. Natorp, “Kant and the Marburg School,” The Neo-Kantian Reader, ed. Sebastian Luft (London: Routledge, 2015), p.182. 14 See, for example, Heidegger’s negative comparison of Dilthey’s critique of histori- cal reason and the Neo-Kantian logic of history. M. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) p.17. 15 See K. W. Zeidler, “Geschichte und System im Marburger Neukantianismus,” Der Begriff der Geschichte im Marburger und Südwestdeutschen Neukantianismus, eds. Ch. Krijnen and M. de Launay (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2013), pp. 145–158. 16 For a discussion of Rickert’s philosophy of history, see: Ch. Krijnen, “Geschich- tsphilosophie bei Kant, im Neukantianismus und im gegenwärtigen Kantianismus,” Der Begriff der Geschichte im Marburger und Südwestdeutschen Neukantianismus, eds. Ch. Krijnen and M. de Launay (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2013), pp. 29–58; and in the same volume W. Flach: Philosophie der Geschichte und Philosophie der Historie. Heinrich Rickerts differenzierte Kulturwissenschaftskonzeption,” pp. 59–68. 17 The first edition of the book dates from 1884: W. Windelband, Präludien. Auf- sätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, (Freiburg-Tübingen: Mohr, 1884). The relevant modifications to “Critical or Genetic Method?” were introduced in the third edition from 1907. The last edition in Windelband’s life was published in 1915, in two
138 HISTORY AS THE ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY volumes and with a slightly different title: W. Windelband, Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1915). 18 F. Beiser, After Hegel. German Philosophy 1840–1900 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), p.15. 19 Ibid., p. 17. 20 Regarding the philosophical context in which Neo-Kantianism emerged, see Ch. Krijnen, “Philosophieren im Schatten des Nihilismus. Eine Hinführung zum neu- kantianischen Beitrag,” Sinn, Geltung, Wert. Neukantische Motive in der modernen Kulturphilosophie, eds. Ch. Krijnen and E. W. Orth (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1998), pp. 11–34. 21 W. Windelband, Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Ge- schichte, vol. 1, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1915), p. 26. My translation. 22 AXX. From P. Guyer and A. Wood’s translation, I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 104. 23 See for example Windelband’s criticism to the Kantian elaboration of the table of categories in W. Windelband, “Beiträge zur Lehre vom negativen Urtheil,” Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie. Eduard Zeller zu seinem siebenzigsten Geburtstage (Freiburg i.B.; Mohr, 1884) p. 167. 24 Genetic explanation is mostly described as causal. The purpose of the genetic method is to find the cause for a given occurrence in experience, while the critical method seeks the grounds for our assessments of experience. 25 W. Windelband, “Über teleologischen kriticismus. Zur Abwehr,” Philosophische Monatshefte 20 (1884), p. 164. 26 W. Windelband, “Critical or Genetic method?,” The Neo-Kantian Reader, ed. Sebastian Luft (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 257. 27 Ibid., p. 276. 28 Windelband idealistically claims that these principles are grounded in themselves and we acknowledge them not because some feeling or thought but because of the role that they play in our rational life. Under the assumption of the validity of the ideal mean- ing of norms, the task of philosophy is to allow the whole community of human beings to experiment the evidence of this same assumption and therefore to allow every subject to freely recognize the force of that normative content just mentioned. 29 Ibid., p. 284. 30 Ibid., p. 283. For the German version of this text, W. Windelband, Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, (Freiburg-Tübingen: Mohr, 1884), p.278. 31 F. Beiser, “Historicism and Neo-Kantianism,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39 (2008), p. 562. 32 W. Windelband, Präludien (1884), p. 279. According to Windelband, the dialectic method ‘solves’ the problem of the progression of philosophical discourse by appealing to conceptual contradictions that allows to move from one conceptual determination to the following. Windelband’s criticism is a restatement of his conception of deduction. It
139 IDEALISTIC STUDIES is not possible to deduce particular determinations from the most general concept of pure or normative consciousness, acquiring through this process more particular determina- tions. Thus, starting from a pure consciousness and only provided with rules of logical inference is not possible to advance further conceptual determinations. In order to do this, the mediation of experience is required. 33 This does not mean that Windelband went on to embrace the dialectical method, but it is a sign of the inner tension in the text, a tension that can be dealt with only by explaining Windelband’s philosophical development. 34 It has become a trend in the secondary literature on Windelband to highlight the contrast between Windelband’s his early period as teacher of Inductive Philosophy (around 1870), a mixture between psychological and philosophical topics, and the mature, strictly Neo-Kantian, period (starting from 1884), characterized by an anti-psychologistic position. This interpretation was first advanced in K. Köhnke,Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus. Die deutsche Universitätsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986). 35 W. Windelband, Über den gegenwärtigen Stand der psychologischen Forschung. Rede zur Antritt der ordentlichen Professur der Philosophie an der Hochschule zu Zürich, (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1876). A reconstruction of the background of this text can be found in H. Gundlach, Wilhelm Windelband und die Psychologie (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2017), p. 55. 36 W. Windelband, Über den gegenwärtigen Stand der psychologischen Forschung, p. 4. 37 Besides more technical arguments regarding the notion of subjectivity, it must be reminded that psychology was still not an autonomous discipline of research at the time. While the psychology lectures were mostly given by philosophy teachers, there was an increasing emphasis on the experimental nature of psychology, an emphasis which was at odds with the general nature of the philosophical approach. For a detailed narrative on the institutional role of philosophy and psychology during the end of the nineteenth century and its relationship with Windelband’s philosophy, see H. Gundlach, Wilhelm Windelband und die Psychologie. Das Fach Philosophie und die Wissenschaft Psychologie im Deutschen Kaiserreich. (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2017). 38 See G. Hatfield, “Psychology: old and new,”The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945, ed. T. Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 93–106. 39 Philosophy clarifies psychology’s task, W. Windelband, Über den gegenwärtigen Stand der psychologischen Forschung, p. 11. 40 Ibid., p. 12. My translation. 41 Ibid., p. 17. 42 Ibid., p. 24. My translation. 43 Windelband repeats this interpretation of psychology in a later essay, Prinzipien der Logik, translated into English as W. Windelband, Theories in Logic (New York: The Citadel Press, 1961). See, for example, Theories in Logic, p. 6. 44 W. Windelband, Die Philosophie im deutschen Geistesleben des XIX. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr, 1909), p. 83–85.
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45 W. Windelband, “Die Erneuerung des Hegelianismus” [The Renewal of Hege- lianism], Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, vol. 1, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1915), p. 280. My translation. 46 Ibid., p. 283. My translation. 47 A complimentary essay on this topic entitled “History of Philosophy” was published as an homage to the German historian of philosophy, Kuno Fischer. See W. Windelband, “Die Geschichte der Philosophie,” in Die Philosophie im Beginn des zwanzig- sten Jahrhunderts. Festschrift fur Kuno Fischer. Band II., ed. W. Windelband (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1905), pp. 175–200. 48 On this topic, Windelband affirms: “This is the reason why history is the organon of philosophy, this is why the ‘the objective spirit,’ the entire state of affairs in the historical life of humanity, conforms the empirical materials from which develops the philosophical reflection on pure rational truths.” W. Windelband, “Die Geschichte der Philosophie,” p. 186. My translation. 49 These three factors articulate Windelband’s exposition in his Handbook of the History of Philosophy. See, W. Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie (ed. By Heinz Heimsoeth) (Tübingen: Mohr, 1935), p. 9. See also the discussion of this articulation in P. Ziche, “Indecisionism and Anti-Relativism: Wilhelm Windelband as a Philosophical Historiographer of Philosophy,” in From Hegel to Windelband. Historiogra- phy of Philosophy in the 19th Century eds. G. Hartung and V. Pluder (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), pp. 207–226. 50 Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908) was an important philosopher and educator who developed his work mainly in Berlin. Reference to a threefold distinction between a theological, philosophical, and historical century can be found in his monograph on Kant: F. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant: Sein Leben und seine Lehre. 2nd. Ed. (Stuttgart: Fromman, 1899), p. 399. 51 These three centuries are identified as three ways of thinking (Denkweisen). The theological century is characterized by a theologic-dogmatic way of thinking; the philosophical century by a rationalistic and dogmatic way of thinking; and the historical by a genetic or relativist way of thinking. See, F. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant: Sein Leben und seine Lehre, p. 400. 52 H. Rickert, “Geschichte und System der Philosophie,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 40 (1931) p. 448. 53 The complete history of the motives behind this change is difficult to reconstruct. By the end of the nineteenth century, the place occupied by philosophy of history in philo- sophical reflection raised significantly. It is possible to explain this situation exclusively on internal reasons, as I have attempted. Indeed, history provided better tools to bridge the gap between the empirical and the transcendental realm. In the context of the South- western this emphasis can be attested in the works of several students of Windelband. The paradigmatic case is Emil Lask’s doctoral dissertation: E. Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, (Tübingen: Mohr, 1902). 54 For a reconstruction of Windelband’s stance regarding relativism, see K. Kinzel, “Wilhelm Windelband and the problem of relativism,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2017), pp. 84–107.
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55 G. Hartung, “Ein Philosoph korrigiert sich selbst—Wilhelm Windelbands Abkehr vom Relativismus,” in Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), eds. P. König and O. Schlaudt (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2018), p. 57. My translation.
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