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Neo-Kantianism

Kant's philosophy was extremely influential on European enlightenment thinkers (and counter-enlightenment ones as well), and his ideas were widely discussed and debated. Transcendental idealism was also defended by later Kantian philosophers who adopted his method, such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Jakob Sigismund Beck.

The mid-19th century saw a revival of Kantian philosophy, which became known as Neo-Kantianism, with its call of "Back to Kant". This movement was especially influential on 19th century German academic philosophy (and also continental philosophy as a whole). Some important figures include: Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1914), Ernst Cassirer, Hermann von Helmholtz, Eduard Zeller, Leonard Nelson, Heinrich Rickert, and Friedrich Albert Lange. A key concern of the Neo-Kantians was to update Kantian epistemology, particularly in order to provide an epistemic basis for the modern sciences (all while avoiding ontology altogether, whether idealist or materialist). Neo-Kantianism rejected metaphysical idealism while also accepting the basic Kantian premise that "our experience of reality is always structured by the distinctive features of human mentality." Hence, Cassirer defended an epistemic worldview that held that one cannot reduce reality to any independent or substantial object (physical or mental), instead, there are only different ways of describing and organizing experience.

Neo-Kantianism influenced the work of the Vienna circle and its ambassadors to the Anglophone world, Rudolf Carnap 1891–1970) and Hans Reichenbach. Charles Bernard Renouvier was the first philosopher in France to formulate a system based on Kant's critical idealism, which he termed Neo-criticism (néo-criticisme). It is a transformation rather than a continuation of Kantianism.