The 19th century was celebrated at its end as the "century of natural sciences." For philosophy, this seemed to pose a danger, even a "catastrophe." In their newly gained cultural significance, the individual sciences repeatedly claimed to replace philosophy in its traditional authority over questions of general life determination. Philosophy, in turn, was compelled to respond to these developments. Regarding the self-assessment of philosophers and individual scientists around 1900, this development appears less as a mere confrontation and more as a nuanced landscape of attempts to establish a constructive relationship between philosophy and the sciences. The task was to reconcile the achievements of the individual sciences with the traditional accomplishments and claims of philosophy.