Heinrich Rickert

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Heinrich John Rickert (25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936) was a German philosopher, one of the leading Neo-Kantians. He was born in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and died in Heidelberg.

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 or Simmel called "vital values" were not true values.

Rickert's philosophy was an important influence on the work of sociologist Max Weber. Weber is said to have borrowed much of his methodology, including the concept of the ideal type, from Rickert's work.

Charles R. Bambach writes (Heidegger, Dilthey and the Crisis of Historicism (1995), p. 30)

In his work Rickert, like Dilthey, 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, led the so-called Baden School of Neo-Kantians.

[edit] Works

• The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science (1986) abridged English translation by Guy Oakes