Kant and Herbart

the initiation of conceptual psychology

pp. 59-104

in: Katherine Arens, Structures of knowing, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

The "Copernican Revolution" which Kant identified as an equivalent to his work in The Critique of Pure Reason is commonly used as the starting point for modern philosophy. This text delineated a watershed between the study of philosophy as affiliated with theology or moral philosophy and a philosophy whose standards were to be likened to those of the emerging physical sciences. Before Kant's work, a majority of philosophical treatises addressed not only problems of knowledge and cognition, but also ontology, eschatology, and theism, without differentiating greatly between what today seem to be very different disciplines. Kant's Critiques changed the course of philosophy: he belied the existence of a general philosophy accommodating such different realms of investigation. Instead, he advocated a general set of philosophical procedures which could be applied to various objects, as he himself did in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment. ¹ Kant initiated a renewal in methodology for the human sciences that was to effect the entire nineteenth century.