The Concept as a Function: A Neo-Kantian Innovation and its Idealist Limits

The author defends the thesis that with the neo-Kantian concept of the concept determinacy is conceived of as mediation but not also as self-mediation. In terms of Hegel, neo-Kantianism conceives of the concept as an essence, not as a concept. Consequently, neo-Kantianism does insufficient justice to its own claim of transcendental idealism to be the self-knowledge of reason. This thesis is substantiated by scrutinizing, first, the functional account of the concept as developed by the Marburg neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer and the Southwest neo-Kantian Bruno Bauch. Subsequently, the transcendental idealist conception of the concept as a function-concept is problematized by taking Hegel’s speculative-idealist doctrine of concepts into account. It becomes clear that concept progresses from itself as a concept of substance to the function-concept, and finally to the concept.