Guillaume Plas

The purpose of this analysis is to shed light on the hitherto underresearched influence – particularly during Rothacker’s time as a scholar and teacher in Bonn in the early 1950s – of Erich Rothacker on those of his students who later came to academic fame in their own right. Using the historicist strain of Rothacker’s thought as a starting point this article scrutinizes the gradual development of Karl-Otto Apel’s ›linguistic turn‹ as well as Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory of science and Hermann Schmitz’s systematic subjectivisation of cognisance. A comparative reading of these thinkers allows the establishing of terminological and conceptual echoes among these texts and Rothacker’s major works, offering ample evidence for Rothacker’s influence on his former students. Nevertheless, it is hard to speak of a »Rothacker School« in modern German philosophical thought: despite the visible impact of Rothacker’s work on his students, the transformative mode in which Rothacker was received, and the lack of social ties between the teacher and his students, limit Rothacker’s sphere of influence to an initial academic education that was later neutralized, albeit in a dialectical manner.