Neo-Kantian in the context of "18th-century philosophy"

Georg Simmel (/ˈzɪməl/; German: [ˈzɪml̩]; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. A founding figure of sociology, his neo-Kantian approach helped establish sociological antipositivism, asking "What is society?" in analogy to Kant's "What is nature?". He pioneered analyses of individuality and social fragmentation.

Simmel discussed social and cultural phenomena in terms of "forms" and "contents" with a transient relationship, wherein form becomes content, and vice versa dependent on context. In this sense, Simmel was a forerunner to structuralist styles of reasoning in the social sciences.

Animal symbolicum ("symbol-making" or "symbolizing animal") is a definition for humans proposed by the German neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer.

The tradition since Aristotle has defined a human being as animal rationale (a rational animal). However, Cassirer claimed that man's outstanding characteristic is not in his metaphysical or physical nature, but rather in his work. Humanity cannot be known directly, but has to be known through the analysis of the symbolic universe that man has created historically. Thus man should be defined as animal symbolicum (a symbol-making or symbolizing animal). On this basis, Cassirer sought to understand human nature by exploring symbolic forms in all aspects of a human being's experience. His work is represented in his three-volume Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen (1923–9, translated as The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) and is summarized in his An Essay on Man. W. J. T. Mitchell used this term in his essay on "representation" to say that

'Basic norm' (German: Grundnorm) is a concept in the Pure Theory of Law created by Hans Kelsen, a jurist and legal philosopher. Kelsen used this word to denote the basic norm, order, or rule that forms an underlying basis for a legal system. The theory is based on a need to find a point of origin for all law, on which basic law and the constitution can gain their legitimacy (akin to the concept of first principles). This basic norm, however, is often described as hypothetical.

Reaction to the term has fallen into three broad areas including (i) Kelsen's original introduction of the term, (ii) the Neo-Kantian reception of the term by Kelsen's critics and followers, and (iii) the hypothetical and symbolic use of the term through the history of its application.

Nomothetic and idiographic are terms used by neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband to describe two distinct approaches to knowledge, each one corresponding to a different intellectual tendency, and each one corresponding to a different branch of academia. To say that Windelband supported that last dichotomy is a consequent misunderstanding of his own thought. For him, any branch of science and any discipline can be handled by both methods as they offer two integrating points of view.

• Nomothetic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to generalize. It is typical for the natural sciences. It describes the effort to derive laws that explain types or categories of objective phenomena, in general.
• Idiographic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to specify. It is typical for the humanities. It describes the effort to understand the meaning of contingent, unique, and often cultural or subjective phenomena.

Ernst Alfred Cassirer (/kɑːˈsɪərər, kəˈ-/ kah-SEER-ər, kə-; German: [ˈɛʁnst kaˈsiːʁɐ]; July 28, 1874 – April 13, 1945) was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy. Trained within the Neo-Kantian Marburg School, he initially followed his mentor Hermann Cohen in attempting to supply an idealistic philosophy of science.

After Cohen's death in 1918, Cassirer developed a theory of symbolism and used it to expand the "logic and psychology of thought" into a more general "logic of the cultural sciences". Cassirer was one of the leading 20th-century advocates of philosophical idealism. His most famous work is the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1929).