Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2025 number 3

This article analyzes the paradoxical role of Kant’s philosophy in the emergence of the historical turn. The central issue is that while Kant rejected empirical history as a foundation for philosophy, his critical system provoked a rethinking of philosophical knowledge as historically conditioned. Five core ideas are explored: 1) Kant’s “Copernican turn” as a model for later philosophical turns; 2) the interpretive opacity of his system as the origin of the hermeneutic tradition; 3) the concept of rational progress as a basis for historical philosophy; 4) the distinction between the historical turn and historicism; 5) the roles of Neo-Kantianism and Hegelianism in consolidating the historical approach. The author argues that the historical turn grew out of Kant’s discussions with his contemporaries, the internal tensions of the Kantian system and the reaction to it, especially in the 19th-20th centuries. As a result, philosophy, which for a long time had rejected the historical method, in the 20th century acquired the features of a historically reflexive discipline.