Heinrich Rickert


Heinrich John Rickert was a German philosopher, one of the leading neo-Kantians.

Life

Rickert was born in Danzig, Prussia to the journalist and later politician Heinrich Edwin Rickert and Annette née Stoddart. He was professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg and Heidelberg.
He died in Heidelberg, Germany.

Philosophy

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. Also, Martin Heidegger started out his academic career as Rickert's assistant, graduated with him and then wrote his habilitation thesis under Rickert.
Charles R. Bambach writes:
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.

Works