German philosophy
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to the revival of the type of philosophy explained by Immanuel Kant and of the interpretations of Kant provided by post-Kantian philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Jakob Friedrich Fries and Johann Friedrich Herbart. Major figures in the neo-Kantian movement, which began around the 1860s, include Friedrich Albert Lange and Hermann Cohen.
Kantian ethics
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has proposed a theory of discourse ethics that he claims is a descendant of Kantian ethics. He proposes that action should be based on communication between those involved, in which their interests and intentions are discussed so they can be understood by all. Rejecting any form of coercion or manipulation, Habermas believes that agreement between the parties is crucial for a moral decision to be reached. Like Kantian ethics, discourse ethics is a cognitive ethical theory, in that it supposes that truth and falsity can be attributed to ethical propositions. It also formulates a rule by which ethical actions can be determined and proposes that ethical actions should be universalisable, in a similar way to Kant's ethics.