Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism:
Selected Secondary Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain


Adair-Toteff, Christopher. “Neo-Kantianism: The German Idealism Movement,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945, edited by Thomas Baldwin (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Cambridge Histories Online.

Arato, Andrew. “The Neo-Idealist Defense of Subjectivity,” Telos, no. 21, Fall 1974, pp. 108-161.

Arato, Andrew. “The Second International: A Reexamination,” Telos, no. 18, Winter 1973-74, pp. 2-52.

Banham, Gary. Kant’s Transcendental Imagination. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Banks, Erik C. “Kant, Herbart and Riemann,” Kant-Studien, vol. 96, no. 2 (2005), pp. 208-34.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Hermeneutics and Social Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Beiser, Frederick. “Emil Lask and Kantianism,” The Philosophical Forum, Volume 39, Issue 2, Summer 2008, pp. 283-295.

Beiser, Frederick C. The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796-1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Beiser, Frederick C. Johann Friedrich Herbart: The Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Reviewed by David Sullivan, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2023.01.11.

Crowell, Steven Galt. "Neo-Kantianism," in A Companion to Continental Philosophy, edited by Simon Critchley and William R. Schroeder (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998). Blackwell Reference Online.

Enteen, George. “History and the Social Sciences: Emerging Patterns,” History of European Ideas. 1: 345-366, 1981.

Friedman, Michael. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court, 2000.

Gabriel, Gottfried. “Introduction: Carnap Brought Home,” in Carnap Brought Home: The View from Jena, edited by Steve Awodey & Carsten Klein (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), pp. 3-23.

Goldmann, Lucien. Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy, translated by William Q. Boelhower. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

Green, Michael Steven. Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. (International Nietzsche Studies)

Holzhey, Helmut; Mudroch, Vilem. Historical Dictionary of Kant and Kantianism. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005. (Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements; no. 60)

Houkes, Wybo. Review: Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 4, October 2002: 554-555.

Hughes, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890-1930. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1958. Latest edition, with a new introduction by Stanley Hoffman: New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002. My edition: New York: Vintage Books, 1961.

Ilyenkov, Evald. “Lenin and the Hegelian Conception of Thinking,” in Marxist Dialectics Today, 2nd ed., edited by P. V. Fedoseev et al (Moscow: “Social Sciences Todayˮ Editorial Board, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1979), pp. 155-173. (Problems of the Contemporary World; 30.) (1st ed., 1974.)

Jacobitti, Edmund E. “Labriola, Croce, and Italian Marxism (1895-1910),” Journal of the History of Ideas. 36: 297-318, 1975.

Keck, Timothy. “The Marburg School and Ethical Socialism; Another Look,” Social Science Journal, Oct 1977, pp. 105-120.

Kim, Alan. “Johann Friedrich Herbart,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition). See also:

Johann Friedrich Herbart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Köhnke, Klaus Christian. The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism; translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. (Ideas in Context)

Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution. Volume 2. The Golden Age; translated from the Polish by P. S. Falla. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Contents of vols. 1-3. See esp. Chapter XII: “Austro-Marxists, Kantians in the Marxist Movement, Ethical Socialism”; other sections are also relevant.

Kusch, Martin. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. Four Appendices to Psychologism (1995). See also psychologism @ Studies in a Dying Culture.

Hanna, Robert. Review of Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge by Martin Kusch (London: Routledge, 1995), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57, no.4 (December 1997): 961-964.

Review: Martin Kusch, Psychologism by R. Dumain

Lange, Friedrich Albert. The History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Importance [1877-1881], translated by Ernest Chester Thomas, 3rd edition, with an introduction by Bertrand Russell. New York: The Humanities Press, 1950. At Scribd.

Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. “Friedrich Albert Lange,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 31, 2005.

Lukács, Georg. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923), in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, translated by Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), pp. 83-222. See esp. section II: Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought.

Lukács, Georg; Neth, Michael (trans.) “The Subject-Object Relation in Aesthetics,” Critical Texts: A Review of Theory and Criticism. 4: 1-23, 1986.

MacIver, R. M. Review: Review: Karl Vorlander, Kant und Marx. Ein Beitrag zur Philosophie des Sozialismus; Johann Plenge, Marx und Hegel; The Philosophical Review, vol. 21 (1912-09-01), pp. 592-598. Also at Google Books.

Makkreel, Rudolf A.; Luft, Sebastian; eds. Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

Mehring, Franz. “Philosophy and Philosophizing” (1909), translated by Rubin Gotesky, Marxist Quarterly, April-June 1937, pp. 293-297. Originally published: Die Neue Zeit, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, 1909.

Munk, Reinier, ed. Hermann Cohen’s Critical Idealism. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Table of contents only.

The Philosophical Forum, Volume 39, Issue 2, Summer 2008. Special issue on Neo-Kantianism.

The Philosophical Forum, Volume 41, Issue 1-2, Spring/Summer 2010. Special issue on Neo-Kantianism.

Plekhanov, Georgi. “Bernstein and Materialism” (July 1898), in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 325-339.

______________. “Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein’s Will and Testament” (August 1901), in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 352-378.

______________. “Materialism or Kantianism,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 398-414.

______________. “Materialism Yet Again,” in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 415-420.

______________. “On Mr. H. Rickert’s Book” [review of:  H. Rickert, Sciences of Nature and Sciences of Culture] (1911), in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 481-486.

______________. “On W. Windelband’s Book” [review of Wilhelm Windelband, Philosophy in the Spiritual Life of Nineteenth-Century Germany] (1910), in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 419-423.

Poma, Andrea. The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen; translated by John Denton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. (SUNY Series in Jewish Philosophy)

___________. Yearning for Form and Other Essays on Hermann Cohen’s Thought. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.

Radest, Howard B. “Work And Worth: Felix Adler,” Journal of the History of Philosophy. 16: 71-81, 1978.

Rasmussen, David M. “Between Autonomy and Sociality,” Cultural Hermeneutics. 1: 3-45, 1973.

Rauh, Hans-Christoph. “Neo-Kantianism and Epistemology: On the Formation of a Philosophical Discipline in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in World Views and Scientific Discipline Formation: Science Studies in the German Democratic Republic: Papers from a German-American Summer Institute, 1988; edited by William R. Woodward & Robert S. Cohen (Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), pp. 223-234. (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science; Volume 134)

Richter, Friedrich; Wrona, V. “Neukantianismus und Sozialreformismus,” Deutsche Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie. 22: 269-288, 1974.

Roberts, Richard H.  Hope and its Hieroglyph: A Critical Decipherment of Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. (Studies in Religion; No. 57)

Rockmore, Tom. "On the Structure of Twentieth-Century Philosophy." Metaphilosophy. 35 (4): 466-478, 2004.

Rose, Gillian. Dialectic of Nihilism: Post-Structuralism and Law. Oxford, UK; New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984.

___________. Hegel contra Sociology. London; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone, 1995 (orig. 1981).

Rowley, David G. “Bogdanov and Lenin: Epistemology and Revolution,” Studies in East European Thought, 48 (1): 1-19, 1996.

Saltzman, Judy Deane. Paul Natorp’s Philosophy of Religion within the Marburg Neo-Kantian Tradition; with a preface by Walter H. Capps. Hildesheim; New York: Olms, 1981. (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie. Kleine Reihe; Bd. 7)

Schuhmann, Karl; Smith, Barry. “Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology: The Case of Emil Lask and Johannes Daubert,” Kant-Studien, 82 Jahrgang, Heft 3, 1991, pp. 303-318.

Selmiczi, Jozsef. “On the Debate between Bogdanov and Varjas in 1924” (In Hungarian),  Magyar Filozofiai Szemle, 1976: 736-757.

Skidelsky, Edward. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. See also review:

Clingan, Nicolaas P. Barr. Review of Bevc, Tobias, Kulturgenese als Dialektik von Mythos und Vernunft: Ernst Cassirer und die Kritische Theorie and Skidelsky, Edward, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. H-German, H-Net Reviews. March, 2010.

Skidelsky, E. "From Epistemology to Cultural Criticism: Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer," History of European Ideas, volume 29, issue 3, September 2003, pp. 365-381.

Sluga, Hans. Review of Michael Friedman, “A Parting of the Ways,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 98, 2001.

Staiti, Andrea; de Warren, Nicolas; eds. New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Steger, Manfred. “Historical Materialism and Ethics: Eduard Bernstein's Revisionist Perspectives,” History of European Ideas, 14(5): 647-663, 1992.

Teo, Thomas. “Friedrich Albert Lange on Neo-Kantianism, Socialist Darwinism, and a Psychology Without a Soul,”Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 38, no. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 285-301.

Truitt, Willis H. “Mr Baxandall’s Revisionism: ‘Marxism and Aesthetics’ (A Reply),” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 28: 511-514, 1970.

Van Der Linden, Harry. Kantian Ethics and Socialism. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1988.

Waite, Geoffrey. “On Esotericism: Heidegger and/or Cassirer,” Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 5, (Oct., 1998), pp. 603-651.

Widmer, Elisabeth Theresia. Left-Kantianism in the Marburg School. Berlin; Boston: Berlin/Boston, 2024. (New Studies in the History and Historiography of Philosophy; v. 13) (Open access.)

Wiegelova, Maria. “Kritik Der Philosophischen Ausgangspunkte Des Sog Ethischen Sozialismus,” Philosophica (Czechoslovakia), 26: 277-300, 1986.

Wiley, Thomas. Back to Kant: The Revival of Kantianism in German Historical and Social Thought, 1860-1914. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.

Zeman, J. “The Development of the Cognition in Natural Sciences and Its Influence Upon the Development of Culture” (in Czech), Filosoficky Casopis, 31 (1983): 199-206.

Internet Reference Sources

Neo-Kantianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Society for Neo-Kantianism (blog).

A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 2nd. ed., T. B. Bottomore et al .
See “Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism”.

A Marx Bibliography (Andrew Chitty).
Covers Marx’s relation to Kant, others’ relations to Kant & (Neo-)Kantianism.


Note: Lange and Plekhanov do not fall under the category of secondary sources. As this history intersects the history of German Social Democracy and Austro-Marxism, additional bibliographies covering Second International Marxism are warranted. See my Second International Marxism, German Social Democracy, Austro-Marxism: Selected Secondary Bibliography. Also forthcoming is a selected bibliography of works by the primary Neo-Kantians and their precursors.


Immanuel Kant in England, 1793-1838: Henry James Richter
by René Wellek

Review: Michael Mack, German Idealism and the Jew
by R. Dumain

Marx on Kant

The Socialist Transformation of the Kantian Categorical Imperative
by Arthur Morrow Lewis

Herbert Marcuse on Descartes, Kant, Hegel: Soul, Mind-Body Duality, & Affirmative Culture

Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” by Theodor W. Adorno:
                                                                                Lecture 6 (9 June 1959), excerpt: T.W. Adorno on Kant, the Division of Labor & Restriction of Reason
                                                                                Lecture 7 (11 June 1959): Knowledge as Tautology
                                                                                Lecture 16 (14 July 1959): Society · ‘Block’

M. Szenczi on Imagination & Nature according to Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Bacon, & Kant

The architectonic of pure reason (excerpt)
by Immanuel Kant

Second International Marxism, German Social Democracy, Austro-Marxism:
Selected Secondary Bibliography

Ernst Cassirer: A Selected Secondary Bibliography

Anti-Nietzsche Bibliography

Wittgenstein, Marxism, Sociology: An Annotated Bibliography

Historical Surveys of Atheism, Freethought, Rationalism, Skepticism, and Materialism:
Selected Works

Vienna Circle, Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American Philosophy:
Selected Bibliography

Theodor W. Adorno & Critical Theory Study Guide

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide

Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Salvaging Soviet Philosophy (1)


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