Ernst Cassirer on historical thought and the demarcation problem of epistemology

Cassirer’s neo-Kantian epistemology has become a classical reference in contemporary history and philosophy of science. However, the historical aspects of his thought are sometimes seen to be in some tension with his defence of a priori elements of knowledge. This paper reconsiders Cassirer’s strategy to address this tension by positing functional dependencies at the core of the notion of objectivity. This requires the epistemologist to account for the determination of the objects of knowledge within given scientific theories, but also for conceptual changes over time.