Frederick C. Beiser tells the story of the emergence of neo-Kantianism from the late 1790s until the 1880s. He focuses on neo-Kantianism before official or familiar neo-Kantianism, i.e., before the formation of the various schools of neo-Kantianism in the 1880s and 1890s (which included the Marburg school, the Southwestern school, and the Göttingen school). Beiser argues that the source of neo-Kantianism lies in three crucial but neglected figures: Jakob Friedrich Fries,

"The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism represents another important contribution from Beiser, whose numerous lengthy tomes have done much to illuminate our understanding of German philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries. This illumination is particularly welcome in the case of NeoKantianism, which represents a largely untrodden area of inquiry in the English-speaking world" - Evan Clarke, Philosophy in Review