RICKERT, HEINRICH. - Philosopher, b. in Danzig on 25 May 1863 and d. on 28 July 1936 in Heidelberg, where he had been a professor (after Freiburg). Together with Windelband (v.), from whom he derives his fundamental philosophical themes, he is the most original and acute representative of the so-called "philosophy of values" (v.).
The principal writings that develop and deepen his doctrine are: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis (Freiburg 1892); Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaft. Begriffsbildung (ibid. 1896-1902); System der Philos. (I, Tübingen 1921); Grundprobleme der Philos. (ibid. 1934).
To know is to judge, that is, to recognize a value; and the recognized value must hold for all in all times. Therefore, in the act of judging, a universally and eternally valid value is presupposed, even if the judgment (v.) is given about particular and transient representations. The judgment has an "obligatoriness," a necessity (different from causal necessity), it is imperative: in this its "ought to be" (which transcends every individual empirical consciousness and belongs to a universal and impersonal consciousness) consists the truth of the judgment. Philosophy must distinguish the world of reality ("judgments of reality," descriptive and classificatory of phenomena, proper to science) and the realm of values, whose judgments are precisely proper to philosophy. The reciprocal relation of the two worlds is given by the "act of evaluating" which expresses the sense of value and constitutes a third realm, that of "meaning."
R., defender, at times even polemical (Die Philos. des Lebens, Tübingen 1920) of the eternity of values, against the philosophies of life and the various forms of historicism (v.), rightly claims their superhistoricity: value is presupposed to history, which does not create it. Therefore the historian recognizes "the value of events and human spiritual activity does not "posit," but "discovers" values.
Bibliography3 works
Michele Federico Sciacca