Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part H (2025)

This paper examines Wilhelm Windelband’s On the Certainty of Knowledge as a response to the epistemological crisis of philosophy in the age of scientism. Windelband argues that philosophy’s task is not to produce knowledge but to justify its certainty. Rejecting both psychological and ethical forms of conviction, he grounds objective certainty in the transcendental normativity of logic. Logical law, as “a norm given to thought” (eine dem Denken gegebene Norm), prescribes how we ought to think and thereby provides the universal standard of truth. To reconcile logical form and empirical content, Windelband introduces the principles of causality (Kausalgesetz) and givenness (Gegebenheit), defining knowledge as a unity of subject and object under these norms. Ultimately, he maintains that we know not because we possess reality but because we are bound to represent it in a necessary form. By returning to Kant, Windelband restores philosophy’s critical and normative authority against the dominance of scientism.