Heinrich Rickert 1863 – 1936
Heinrich Rickert was a German neo-Kantian philosopher of the Baden school and, with Wilhelm Windelband, the principal theorist of the distinction between the natural sciences and the cultural or historical sciences. He held chairs at Freiburg and Heidelberg and shaped a generation of German thought through his teaching and through students including Heidegger and Max Weber. His Limits of Concept Formation in the Natural Sciences argued that the natural sciences proceed by generalizing concepts while the cultural sciences proceed by individualizing them in relation to values, while The System of Philosophy developed a comprehensive value-theoretic philosophy.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Heinrich Rickert:
“Natural science generalizes; cultural science individualizes.”
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Attributed to Heinrich Rickert:
“Values are the form in which the cultural world becomes intelligible.”
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Attributed to Heinrich Rickert:
“Philosophy is the science of the whole.”
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Attributed to Heinrich Rickert:
“Concept formation is the work in which the human mind grasps the world.”
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Attributed to Heinrich Rickert:
“Without reference to value, history would be a heap of dates.”