Heinrich John Rickert was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 philosopher, one of the leading Neo-Kantians.

Life

He was born in Danzig, Prussia

Kingdom of Prussia

The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...

 (now Gdańsk

Gdansk

Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

) and died in Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

, Germany.

Thought

He is known for his discussion of a qualitative distinction held to be made between historical and scientific facts. Contrary to philosophers like Nietzsche and Bergson, Rickert emphasized that values demand a distance from life, and that what Bergson, Dilthey

Dilthey

Dilthey is a surname:*Karl Dilthey, German classical scholar and archaeologist.*Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl's older brother and German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher....

 or Simmel

Simmel

Simmel can refer to:* Erich Simmel , German jurist and politician * Ernst Simmel , German physician and psychoanalyst * Georg Simmel , German sociologist...

 called "vital values" were not true values.

Rickert's philosophy was an important influence on the work of sociologist Max Weber

Max Weber

Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...

. Weber is said to have borrowed much of his methodology, including the concept of the ideal type

Ideal type

Ideal type , also known as pure type, is a typological term most closely associated with antipositivist sociologist Max Weber . For Weber, the conduct of social science depends upon the construction of hypothetical concepts in the abstract...

, from Rickert's work.

Charles R. Bambach writes:

In his work Rickert, like Dilthey

Dilthey

Dilthey is a surname:*Karl Dilthey, German classical scholar and archaeologist.*Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl's older brother and German historian, psychologist, sociologist, student of hermeneutics, and philosopher....

, intended to offer a unifying theory of knowledge which, although accepting a division between science and history or Natur and Geist, overcame this division in a new philosophical method. For Dilthey the method was wedded to hermeneutics; for Rickert it was the transcendental method of Kant.

Rickert, with Wilhelm Windelband

Wilhelm Windelband

Wilhelm Windelband was a German philosopher of the Baden School.Windelband is now mainly remembered for the terms nomothetic and idiographic, which he introduced. These have currency in psychology and other areas, though not necessarily in line with his original meanings...

, led the so-called Baden School of Neo-Kantians.

Works

• Zur Lehre von der Definition (1888). Center for Research libraries, crl.edu 2nd. ed., 1915. 3rd ed., 1929.
• Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis: ein Beitrag zum Problem der philosophischen Transcendenz (1892). Google (UCal)
  • 2nd ed., 1904: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis: Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie. Google (UMich)
• Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (1896-1902). 2 volumes. Google (NYPL) 2nd ed., 1913.
  • The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science (1986). (Tr. Guy Oakes) ISBN 0521251397
• Fichtes Atheismusstreit und die kantische Philosophie (1899). Google (UCal) IA (UToronto)
• Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (1899). 3rd ed., 1915.
  • Science and history: A critique of positivist epistemology (1962). (Tr. George Reisman)
• "Geschichtsphilosophie" in Die Philosophie im Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (1905). 2 volumes. Vol. 2, pp. 51-135
  • 3rd ed., 1924. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie: eine Einführung.
• Wilhelm Windelband (1915).
• Die Philosophie des Lebens: Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströmungen unserer Zeit (1920). IA (UToronto) 2nd ed., 1922.
• Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie (1921). [System der Philosophie vol. 1]
• Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur (1924).
• Über die Welt der Erfahrung (1927).
• Die Logik des Prädikats und das Problem der Ontologie (1930).
• Die Heidelberger Tradition in der Deutschen Philosophie (1931).
• Goethes Faust (1932).
• Grundprobleme der Philosophie: Methodologie, Ontologie, Anthropologie (1934). ISBN 3865509851
• Unmittelbarkeit und Sinndeutung (1939).

Influence on Japanese Philosophy

• Mayeda, Graham. 2008. "Is there a Method to Chance? Contrasting Kuki Shūzō’s Phenomenological Methodology in The Problem of Contingency with that of his Contemporaries Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert." In Victor S. Hori and Melissa Anne-Marie Curley (eds.), Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy II: Neglected Themes and Hidden Variations (Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture).

Further reading

• Christian Krijnen. Nachmetaphysischer Sinn. Eine problemgeschichtliche und systematische Studie zu den Prinzipien der Wertphilosophie Heinrich Rickerts. Würzburg 2001. ISBN 3-8260-2020-0
• Anton C. Zijderveld. Rickert's Relevance. The Ontological Nature and Epistemological Functions of Values. Leiden, Brill 2006. ISBN 978-9004-15173-4