In the context of a general revaluation of the Neo-Kantian movement that is taken place in contemporary philosophy, the present investigation aims at reconstructing and working out the consequences of the philosophical project of the founding father of the Neo-Kantian Baden School: Wilhem Windelband.
Windelband’s philosophical program aimed at synthesizing two opposing forces operating in nineteenth-century philosophical thinking, namely, trascendental Philsophy and historical consciousness. Due to Wildelband’s peculiar aim, I believe that his philosophy has a twofold relevance. On the one hand, Windelband’s effectively deals, within a Kantian framework, with a set of problems that cannot find an adequate answer in the core Kantian texts. The fact is that those problems, which arose as a consequence of the consolidation of history as a scientific discipline, were not a component of Kant’s own philosophical and cultural landscape. On the other hand, the absence of a definitive solution to the tension mentioned above, far from being a failure presents us with the opportunity to consider the problem of relating trascendental, or systematical, approaches and historical approaches in one of its most dramatic forms.
