Includes bibliographical references (pages 573-604) and index.

General introduction: defining and re-examining neo-Kantianism -- Part I. Introduction: the lost tradition -- Jakob Friedrich Fries and the birth of psychologism -- Johann Friedrich Herbart, neo-Kantian metaphysician -- Friedrich Eduard Beneke, neo-Kantian martyr -- The interim years, 1840-1860 -- Part II. Introduction: the coming of age -- Kuno Fischer, Hegelian neo-Kantian -- Eduard Zeller, neo-Kantian classicist -- Rehabilitating Otto Liebmann -- Jürgen Bona Meyer, neo-Kantian sceptic -- Friedrich Albert Lange, poet and materialist manqué -- The battle against pessimism -- Encounter with Darwinism -- Part III. Introduction: the new establishment -- The young Hermann Cohen -- Wilhelm Windelband and normativity -- The realism of Alois Riehl.

Frederick C. Beiser tells the story of the emergence of neo-Kantianism from the late 1790s until the 1880s. He focuses on neo-Kantianism before official or familiar neo-Kantianism, i.e., before the formation of the various schools of neo-Kantianism in the 1880s and 1890s (which included the Marburg school, the Southwestern school, and the Göttingen school). Beiser argues that the source of neo-Kantianism lies in three crucial but neglected figures: Jakob Friedrich Fries, Johann Friedrich Herbart, and Friedrich Eduard Beneke, who together form what he calls 'the lost tradition'. They are the first neo-Kantians because they defended Kant's limits on knowledge against the excesses of speculative idealism, because they upheld Kant's dualisms against their many critics, and because they adhered to Kant's transcendental idealism. Much of this book is devoted to an explanation for the rise of neo-Kantianism. Beiser contends that it became a greater force in the decades from 1840 to 1860 in response to three major developments in German culture: the collapse of speculative idealism; the materialism controversy; and the identity crisis of philosophy. As he goes on to argue, after the 1860s neo-Kantianism became a major philosophical force because of its response to two later cultural developments: the rise of pessimism and Darwinism.