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dominating Wilhelmian Germany. Willey's case begins with his
characterization of the origins of the movement in the wake of the
celebrated debate over materialism at Gottingen in
1854.
Rather than
emerging from an irrationalist or intuitionist critique of science as it
has often been claimed, neo-Kantianism began as an attempt to save
science from the crude scientism of such vulgar materialists as Buchner
and Vogt.
In
the Marburg School of the subsequent generation, this
same impulse, grounded in Kant's first
Critique,
would be particularly
strong. Neo-Kantianism's other major stimulus, according to Willey,
was the relativistic implications of historicism and what was left of
Hegelianism in the years after
1848.
Here the Baden School of Rickert
and Windelband with their search for values amidst the flux of history,
a search which so enriched the logic of the cultural sciences, was the
primary heir. "Back to Kant" was thus paradoxically both a return
from speculation to critical thinking and a quest for a new foundation
for absolute values; not surprisingly, its history would be marked by
severe and increasingly irreconcilable tensions.
Willey also ties neo,Kantianism to the short-lived liberal "New
Era" of
1858-1861,
although he argues that the failures of liberalism
soon led several neo-Kantians, most notably Lange and then later the
leader of the Marburg School, H ermann Cohen, towards a non-Marxist
socialism. Their respect for free will meant an antipathy towards
determinism ·or monism in any form, whether crude materialist,
Hegelian, or Second International Marxist. And because of this volun–
tarist emphasis, they were able to provide useful ammunition for those
Marxists, ranging from revisionists like Eduard Bernstein to radicals
like Kurt Eisner, who were impatient with the fatalistic orthodoxy of
the German Social Democratic party. Willey's heart clearly belongs to
the moderates, but he is also willing to defend Eisner and the more
extreme neo-Kantian "activists" of the early Weimar era against the
criticism of those, like George Mosse, who have charged them with
impractical ethical absolutism.
Willey's portrayal of the intentions of the neo-Kantians seems
essentially just; despite exceptions such as Paul Natorp, who became a
rabid chauvinist during the war, they seem like legitimate models of
that "other Germany" so often neglected in hasty summaries of
German culture and its failings. And yet, when one looks more closely
at the substance of their position (or more correctly put, the common
denominator of their several positions) and the record of their political
interventions, the picture becomes considerably murkier. A good place
to begin is Willey's assertion that they represent an honest attempt to
