The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism by Frederick C. Beiser The German Historicist Tradition by Frederick C. Beiser (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 265© Max Weber Studies 2016. Despite these flaws, I think this book is a valuable contribution, though even labours of love should practice safe(r) scholarship and proofing. I plan in future to read these texts in the original but with the book open at the footnotes. William Outhwaite Newcastle University Frederick C. Beiser, The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 624pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-0-19-872220-5. $99.00. Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 608pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-0-19-969155-5. $125.00. Cassirer: What does Heidegger understand by neo-Kantianism? Who is the opponent to whom Heidegger has addressed himself? I believe that there is hardly a single concept that has been paraphrased with so little clarity as that of neo-Kantianism. Heidegger: We can only understand what is common to neo-Kantianism on the basis of its origin [Ursprung]. Its genesis [Genesis] lies in the predicament of philosophy concerning the question of what properly remains of it in the whole of knowledge.2 Frederick Beiser is currently a professor of philosophy at Syracuse University. Beginning with early German Idealism in 1987, his publications have subsequently branched out to cover virtually the entire German-speaking nineteenth century. He has edited three volumes and published twelve monographs, eight in the last ten years alone. This review essay considers the claims of his most recent book, while also casting a brief look back at an earlier one, where Max Weber is discussed in some detail.3 After considering how these expositions of neo-Kantianism and historicism advance our understanding of prior thought, this review concludes by using Weber as a test case of the utility of Beiser’s interpretive categories. In Beiser’s most recent volume, devoted exclusively to the neoKantians , we are informed, somewhat gnomically, that the ‘origins 2. From the encounter at Davos. See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 171. 3. The sole connecting link between the two books rests in the figure of Wilhelm Windelband: see chapter 9 of The German Historicist Tradition and part III, chapter 13 of The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism. It is also worth noting that neither of the two books under review contains summations or conclusions of any sort. 266 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2016. of neo-Kantianism are shrouded in mystery’ (11). This is perhaps the basis for his strongly revisionist thesis that most post-Kantians, excepting the Idealists, should be henceforth re-classified as neoKantians : ‘It is a central thesis of the present work that the origins of neo-Kantianism go back to the 1790s.’ The received view—‘the commonplace of older scholarship’—‘that neo-Kantianism began in the 1860s’ is, by these lights, to be firmly rejected (3). To restrict the label ‘neo-Kantian’ to only ‘the fourth generation’ of thinkers after Kant must somehow then, on Beiser’s reading, be fundamentally distorting.4 Beiser’s outspoken revisionism is combined, however, with an overtly conservative—one might even say ‘archaic’—model of intellectual history, tailored almost exclusively to invoke only individual figures and their specific doctrines. He conspicuously admits as much: ‘My approach to this subject is old-fashioned: I focus on the main writings of major authors, attempting to understand their ideas in historical context … [yet] my main focus has been upon them [i.e., the major authors], and I have given philosophical content [i.e., their central doctrines] priority over social and political context’ (vii). This has, as one might suspect, multiple ramifications for how both philosophy and its history are treated. First, Beiser conceives of philosophy as a set of shifting, theoretical doctrines, where differences between individuals amount to nothing more than different moves and strategies in a theoretical game. He gives almost no consideration to why anyone would be interested in playing the game at all. ‘Why would someone ever believe that?’ is rarely investigated.5 Instead, he prefers to portray the discipline of philosophy as aiming simply to accumulate the largest amalgam of consistent and coherent doctrine, the set with maximal explanatory power. Ironically, this very...