Abstract

Karl Vorlaender made an excellent scholarly contribution to the detailed and accurate academic appreciation of Kant’s work. Over several decades from the early 1890s to the late 1920s he researched and presented Kant’s ideas in their German and European philosophical context in a manner which contributed to their accessibility and their reach into the culture and population at large. Vorlaender performed an important role in the transmission of Kant’s ideas and the ideas of the neo-Kantian school in general to a younger generation of scholars and the German public as a whole. Vorlaender is by far the most focussed upon social and political issues amongst the neo-Kantians. Others may have completed deeper individual investigations of the import of Kant’s work, particularly in epistemology and ethics, but none rise to Vorlaender’s level in their analysis and discussion of the political significance of Kant’s work. Much of this significance is attained by concentrating primarily upon Kant