Heterology and the beginning of philosophy: a comparative analysis of Heinrich Rickert and Werner Flach

Jacinto Paez

doi:10.23925/2764-0892.2025.v4.n1.e67160

Heterology and the beginning of philosophy: a comparative analysis of Heinrich Rickert and Werner Flach

Authors

Jacinto Paez Universidade Diego Portales - Chile

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23925/2764-0892.2025.v4.n1.e67160

Keywords:

Rickert, Flach, Heterology, Dialectics, Beginning of Philosophy

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the doctrine concerning the beginning of philosophy as evidenced in the philosophies of Heinrich Rickert and Werner Flach. The initial section of the paper explores Rickert’s anti-Hegelian approach to the problem of philosophical beginning, while the subsequent section delves into Werner Flach’s adaptation of Rickert’s principles, infusing them with a renewed Hegelian perspective. The concluding segment offers an assessment of the limitations inherent in both doctrines pertaining to the beginning of philosophy.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

Allison, Henry: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. An Interpretation and Defense. Revised and Enlarged Edition. New Heaven; Yale University Press 2004.

Cohn, Jonas: Theorie der Dialektik. Formenlehre der Philosophie. Leipzig; Felix Meiner Verlag 1923

Flach, Werner: Negation und Andersheit: Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der Letzimplikation. München/Basel; Ernst Reinhardt Verlag 1959.

Flach, Werner: Zur Prinzipienlehre der Anschauung. Hamburg; Felix Meiner 1963.

Krijnen, Christian: Denken als Ursprung. In: Christian Krijnen und Anderzej Noras (Hg.): Marburg versus Südwestdeutschland. Würzburg; Königshausen und Neumann 2012, 63-95.

Krijnen, Christian: Verabsolutierte äußere Reflexion. In: Folko Zander und Klaus Vieweg (Hg.): Logik und Moderne: Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik als Paradigma moderner Subjektivität. Leiden; Brill 2019, 37-61.

Krijnen, Christian: The Beginning of Philosophy and the Immediate. In: Christian Krijnen und Chung-ying Cheng (Hg.): Philosophical Methodology and Classical Chinese and German Philosophy. Nordhausen; Traugott Bautz 2021, 41-68.

Krijnen, Christian: Heterologie oder Dialektik? Rickerts Lehre vom Ursprung der Philosophie. In: Hegel-Studien 56, (2022), 97-116.

Marck, Siegfried: Kant und Hegel. Eine Gegenübertstellung ihrer Grundbegriffe. Tübingen; Mohr 1917.

Marck, Siegfried: Die Dialektik in der Philosophie der Gegenwart. Tübingen; Mohr 1929.

Noras, Andrzej: Geschichte des Neukantianismus. Frankfurt; Peter Lang 2020.

Rickert, Heinrich: Vom Anfang der Philosophie. In: Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur, XIV (1925), 121-162.

Rickert, Heinrich: Unmittelbarkeit und Sinndeutung: Aufsätze zur Ausgestaltung des System der Philosophie. Tübingen; Mohr 1939.

Rickert, Heinrich: Das Eine, die Einheit und die Eins. In: Heinrich Rickert: Sämtliche Werke: Band 1. Berlin; De Gruyer 2020, 103-219.

Wagner, Hans: Hegels Lehre vom Anfang der Wissenschaft. In: Hans Wagner: Kritische Philosophie: Systematische und historische Abhandlungen. Würzburg; Königshausen und Neumann 1980, 355-361.

Downloads

Published

2025-04-30

How to Cite

Paez, J. (2025). Heterology and the beginning of philosophy: a comparative analysis of Heinrich Rickert and Werner Flach. Geltung - Journal of Studies on the Origins of Contemporary Philosophy, 4(1), e67160. https://doi.org/10.23925/2764-0892.2025.v4.n1.e67160

Download Citation

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2025): Continuous Flow

Section

Articles

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Call For Papers: Naturalism, Normativity and the Convergence of Human and Natural Sciences

August 13, 2025

Philosophical naturalism, in general, and the proposal to naturalize Morality, in particular, have been challenging and thought-provoking in contemporary philosophy, especially considering the tensions between scientific and normative explanations of human practices. Moral naturalism seeks to understand moral values and norms as phenomena emerging from the natural world. It offers a promising bridge to rethink the historical division between the human and natural sciences. The central question posed here is: To what extent can the naturalization of normativity ground a rapprochement between these areas of knowledge?

We invite submissions for a special issue exploring the relationships between naturalization in philosophy—and Morality, particularly—and the integration of human and natural sciences. Our goal is to foster a robust debate on the potential and limits of these connections. The issue will investigate how normativity, especially moral normativity, can be explained in naturalistic terms and to what extent this explanation can support a reconfiguration of the role of human sciences in dialogue with methods and insights from the natural sciences.

Our premise is that normativity can and must be explained in naturalistic terms to build a more integrated and empirically grounded conceptual framework. However, such an explanation is not without its philosophical and methodological challenges. In philosophy, opponents of naturalism point out that there is the risk that significant philosophical issues are eliminated or reduced in the face of scientific methods. Concerning Morality, those opponents see the danger of a simplistic reduction of Morality to natural facts, which could obliterate the alleged normative specificities of human practices. However, naturalization promises a richer, more nuanced, veridical analysis of Morality that incorporates cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and social psychology advances.

Among the questions we hope to see addressed in the contributions are:

1. To what extent can the human sciences engage with and benefit from methods and findings in the natural sciences?

2. What philosophical and methodological boundaries emerge when attempting to naturalize normative phenomena in Philosophy and Morality?

3. How might naturalistic accounts of Morality reshape or enhance our understanding of social normativity and its practical implications?

4. Can moral naturalism offer a compatible basis for robustly explaining normativity in human practices, including science?

5. How can advances in the natural sciences, primarily cognitive and biological sciences, contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of relevant philosophical problems and moral normativity?

We invite articles addressing these and other related questions, seeking theoretical interventions and empirical contributions that shed light on this approach's complexities and promises. We aim to gather original and unpublished works that challenge disciplinary boundaries and offer new perspectives on the dialogue between human and natural sciences.

Articles should be submitted by March 1^st 2026, and the special issue will be published on the second semester of 2026 edition of Geltung – Journal of Studies on the Origins of Contemporary Philosophy. Please consult our website - https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/geltung/about/submissions - for more information on submissions and guidelines.

Submission Deadline (CFP): March 1st, 2026

Guest Editor: Prof. Adriano Naves de Brito

Heterology and the beginning of philosophy: a comparative analysis of Heinrich Rickert and Werner Flach

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

Downloads

Metrics

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Language

Information

Developed By

Make a Submission

Announcements

Call For Papers: Naturalism, Normativity and the Convergence of Human and Natural Sciences

Call for Papers - Geltung: Categories - Post Kantian and Phenomenological Perspectives - 2025/2 - Extended deadline