This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of the relevance of naturalism and theories of nature in Classical German Philosophy. It presents new readings from internationally renowned scholars on Kant, Jacobi, Goethe, the Romantic tradition, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Marx that highlight the significance of conceptions of nature and naturalism in Classical German Philosophy for contemporary concerns. The collection presents an inclusive view: it goes beyond the usual restricted focus on single thinkers to encompass the tradition (...) as a whole, prompting dialogue among scholars interested in different authors and areas. It thus illuminates the post-Kantian tradition in a new, wider sense. The chapters also mobilize a productive perspective at the intersection of philosophy and history by combining careful textual and historical analysis with argument-based philosophizing. Overall, the book challenges the stereotypical view that Classical German Philosophy offers at best only an idealistic, one-sided, anachronistic, and theological view of nature. It invites readers to put traditional views in dialogue with current discussions of nature and naturalism. Nature and Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Classical German Philosophy, 19th-Century Philosophy, and contemporary perspectives on naturalism. (shrink)

Preface by the Editors to the special thematic volume dedicated to the memory of Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz.

A comprehensive analysis of the theories of property developed by four key figures in classical German philosophy that explores such central questions as the nature of property, what specific forms of property are justifiable and whether property rights ought to be respected or limited in the name of freedom.

The volume brings together contributions in the spirit embodied by Marek J. Siemek and Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz, two Warsaw philosophers truly devoted to Classical German Philosophy. They were simultaneously in a relationship between thinker and adept, and thinker and thinker. They both taught philosophy, with a strong emphasis on classic German philosophy, at Warsaw University. Under the theme “Ethical Theory in Classic German Philosophy Then and Now,” students and companions continue their discussions (...) with both of them. (shrink)

Over the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the transcendental dialectic of Critique of Pure Reason in Germany. Authors, however, often do not pay enough attention to the fact that Kant’s theory of reason (in the narrow sense) and the concept of ideas derived from it is not limited to this text. The purpose of this article is to compare and analyze the functionality of mind as a subjective ability developed by Kant and Fichte with the (...) Hegelian expansion of the mind to the idea of universal rationality. The relevance of such a comparison is connected with the need to demonstrate how the Hegelian paradigm of absolute rationality causes either the subsequent rejection of reason as a philosophical principle in the 19th and´20th centuries counter-discourse, or reduction of reason to the concept of pragmatic rationality. In the first part of this paper, the author intends to differentiate between at least 7 different types of ideas and their functions in Kant’s works. In the second part, he demonstrates how Fichte tries to systematize them beginning with reason, which at first creates an idea of itself. Special attention is paid to the way that Fichte categorizes them with the help of 5 spheres of action or 5 worldviews. The third and final part of the article discusses how Hegel goes beyond the frame of the transcendental philosophy of consciousness using different demands linked to the concepts of “reason” and “ideas”. Although these requirements are not found in Kant and Fichte, they entail a set of difficulties, which the author considers in conclusion. The author’s interpretation of the theory of ideas and their functions in Kant, Fichte and Hegel demonstrates the dynamic character of the theories of reason in classical German philosophy, as well as the relevance of the 7 types of ideas that retain their significance for philosophy of the 21st century. Keywords: Kant and German idealism, types of ideas, functions of reason, worldviews, the problem of different demands. В Германии на протяжении последних двух десятилетий возрос интерес к трансцендентальной диалектике «Критики чистого разума». Однако авторы часто не обращают внимания на то, что кантовская теория разума (в узком смысле), в которой разворачивается работа с идеями, не ограничивается этим текстом. Целью данной статьи является сравнительный анализ разработанной Кантом и Фихте функциональности разума как субъективной способности с гегелевским расширением разума до идеи всеобщей разумности. Актуальность такого сравнения связана с необходимостью продемонстрировать то, каким образом гегелевская парадигма абсолютной разумности вызывает либо последующий отказ от разума как философского принципа в контрдискурсе XIX–XX вв., либо редукцию разума к понятию прагматической рациональности. В первой части данной статьи вводится различение по меньшей мере семи различных видов идей и связанных с ними функций в философии Канта. Во второй части демонстрируется попытка Фихте их систематизировать исходя из утверждения том, что разум должен сначала создать идею о самом себе. Проанализировано также предложенное Фихте распределение идей на пять сфер действенности или типов мировоззрения. В третьей, итоговой части статьи рассмотрен выход гегелевской мысли за рамки трансцендентальной философии сознания. Автор статьи связывает этот процесс с выдвижением не осуществимых в контексте философии Канта и Фихте требований к понятиям «разум» и «идея» и анализирует ряд сложностей, вызванных этими требованиями. Таким образом, интерпретация учения об идеях и их функциях у Канта, Фихте и Гегеля демонстрирует динамический характер теорий разума в классической немецкой философии и актуальность семи видов идей, которые сохраняют свое значение для философии XXI в. Ключевые слова: Кант и немецкий идеализм, виды идей, функции разума, мировоззрение, проблема различных требований. (shrink)

Consideration of the German philosophy and political history of the past century might well give the impression, and often does give foreign observers the impression, that liberalism, including in particular commitment to the ideal of free thought and expression, is only skin-deep in Germany. Were not Heidegger's disgust at Gerede (which of course really meant the free speech of the Weimar Republic) and Gadamer's defense of "prejudice" and "tradition" more reflective of the true instincts of German (...) class='Hi'>philosophy than, say, the Frankfurt School's heavily Anglophone-influenced championing of free thought and expression? Were not the Kaiser and Nazism more telling of Germany's real political nature than the liberalism of the Weimar Republic (a desperate, ephemeral experiment undertaken in reaction to Germany's disastrous defeat in World War I) or the liberalism of (West) Germany since 1945 (in effect forced on the country by the victorious Allies after World War II)? (shrink)

The importance of Lukács’ interpretation of classical German philosophy and Marx is almost self-evident. Although Marxists are frequently content to dismiss with contempt a philosophical tradition with which they display scant acquaintance, Lukács’ knowledge of philosophy is obviously extensive. His writings contain what is perhaps the most detailed discussion of the history of philosophy from a Marxist perspective. Further, his influence on the interpretation of Marx has been unequaled over the course of more than fifty years, (...) ever since the appearance of his epoch-making book, History and Class Consciousness. A case in point is provided by Sartre’s and Habermas’ respective attempts to reconstruct Marx’s position. Although the proposed reconstructions are vastly different, they are alike in their dependence on Lukács’ interpretation of Marx. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to questions about the nature and method of metaphysics in Classical German Philosophy. Its chapters offer original investigations into the metaphysical projects of many of the major figures in German philosophy between Wolff and Hegel. The period of Classical German Philosophy was an extraordinarily rich one in the history of philosophy, especially for metaphysics. It includes some of the highest achievements of early modern rationalism, Kant's critical revolution, and the (...) various significant works of German Idealism that followed in Kant's wake. The contributions to this volume critically examine certain common themes among metaphysical projects across this period, for example, the demand that metaphysics amount to a science, that it be presented in the form of a system, or that it should proceed by means of demonstration from certain key first principles. This volume also includes material on influential criticisms of metaphysical projects of this kind. Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy is a useful resource for contemporary metaphysicians and historians of philosophy interested in engaging with the history of the methodology and epistemology of metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to study the different combinations between temporality and the idea of totality in the beginning of Classical German Philosophy. In order to do that I will analyze the image of liberation in the philosophical and practical articulation of a new mythology in the manuscript “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism”, and the outlines of a theory of the Spirit in the documents written by Hegel in the first part of his Jena (...) stage, more specifically, in the fragments of the period 1803/04. For this purpose I will take as specific objects the figures of an “eternal unity” [die ewige Einheit] to come and of an “absolute becoming” [das absolute Werden] of Spirit. The hypothesis I intend to develop holds that the confrontation of these two images can lead to duplicated consequences: on the one hand, this comparison would make it possible to relativize the binary readings that oppose as terms of a simple contradiction both conceptual lineages, Idealism and Romanticism. On the other hand it would express an insurmountable tension between two ways of thinking about the relationship between time and totality. (shrink)

This essay examines the presence of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The perspective adopted here is methodological. Central to this is the choice of “transcendental phenomenology,” understood as a rehabilitation of the idealism and subjectivism proper to the transcendentalism of Kant and Fichte—the choice by which Merleau-Ponty refuses to abandon transcendental philosophy, like Hegel on the contrary did with his dialectical-speculative philosophy, and follows instead the phenomenological perspective suggested for the first time by Schelling.

This paper offers a critical discussion of Jonathan Israel’s thesis that the political and moral ideas and values which define liberal democratic modernity should be regarded as the legacy of the Radical Enlightenment and thus as deriving from Spinoza. What I take issue with is not Israel’s map of the actual historical lines of intellectual descent of ideas and account of their social and political impact, but the accompanying conceptual claim, that Spinozism as filtrated by the naturalistic wing of eighteenth-century (...) French thought, is conceptually sufficient for the ideology of modernity. The post-Kantian idealist development, I argue, qualifies as radical, and hinges on Spinoza, but its construal of Spinoza does not fit Israel’s thesis, and reflects an appreciation of the limitations, for the purpose of creating a rational modernity, of the naturalistic standpoint represented by thinkers such as d’Holbach. (shrink)

The present work carries us back to a period which, although chronologically no more than a generation or so behind us, has become as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were already a full hundred years old. Yet it was the period of Germany's preparation for the Revolution of 1848; and all that has happened in our country since then has been merely a continuation of 1848, merely the execution of the last will and testament of (...) the revolution. Just as in France in the eighteenth century, so in Germany in the nineteenth, a philosophical revolution ushered in the political collapse. But with what a difference! The French were in open combat with all official science, with the church and often also the state; their writings were printed beyond the frontier, in Holland or England, while they themselves were often on the point of landing in the Bastille. But the Germans were professors, state-appointed instructors of youth; their writings were recognized textbooks, and the system rounding off the whole development---the Hegelian system---was even raised, in some degree, to the rank of a royal Prussian philosophy of state! Was it possible that a revolution could hide behind these professors, behind their pedantically obscure phrases, their ponderous, wearisome sentences? Were not the liberals, the very people who then passed as the representatives of the revolution, the bitterest opponents of this brain-befuddling philosophy? But what neither governments nor liberals saw was seen by at least one man as early as 1833, and indeed by a man called Heinrich Heine. (shrink)

The Free Development of Each collects twelve essays on the history of German philosophy by Allen W. Wood, one of the leading scholars in the field. They explore moral philosophy, politics, society, and history in the works of Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, and share the basic theme of freedom, as it appears in morality and in politics.

On the philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach, and the essence and tasks of philosophy.

Provides a systematic overview of the topic of self in classical German philosophy, focusing on the period around 1800 and covering Kant, Fichte, Holderlin, Novalis, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Hegel.

Provides a thorough background study of the postmodern assault on the standpoint of the subject as a foundation for philosophy, and assesses what remains today of the philosophy of subjectivity.

This volume collects thirteen original essays that address the concept of will in Classical German Philosophy from Kant to Schopenhauer. During this short, but prolific period, the concept of will underwent various transformations. While Kant identifies the will with pure practical reason, Fichte introduces, in the wake of Reinhold, an originally biological concept of drive into his ethical theory, thereby expanding on the Kantian notion of the will. Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer take a step further and conceive the (...) will either as a primal being, as a socio-ontological entity, or as a blindly striving, non-rational force. Thus, the history of the will is marked by a complex set of tensions between rational and non-rational aspects of practical volition. The book outlines these transformations from a historical and systematic point of view. It offers an overview of the most important theories of the will by the major figures of Classical German Philosophy, but also includes interpretations of conceptions developed by lesser-studied philosophers such as Maimon, Jacobi, Reinhold, and Bouterwek. (shrink)

This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, (...) Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resource for scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally. (shrink)

This volume gathers a collection of fourteen original articles discussing the concept of drive in classical German philosophy. Its aim is to offer a comprehensive historical overview of the concept of drive at the turn of the 19th century and to discuss it both historically and systematically. From the 18th century onward, the concept of drive started to play an important role in emerging disciplines such as biology, anthropology, and psychology. In these fields, the concept of drive was (...) used to describe the inner forces of organic nature, or, more particularly, human urges and desires. But it was in the period of classical German philosophy that this concept developed into an important philosophical concept crucial to Kant’s and post-Kantian idealistic systems. Reflecting the complexity of this concept, the volume first discusses historical sources of drive theories in Leibniz, Reimarus, and Blumenbach. Afterwards, the volume presents the philosophical accounts of drives in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and also gives a systematic overview of other important drive theories that were formed around 1800 by Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Novalis, Reinhold, Schiller, and Schopenhauer. (shrink)

This chapter deals with German philosophy from Leibniz to Fichte, which formed an important part of Kierkegaard's intellectual background. In this period German philosophy came to dominate Danish philosophy. However, Kierkegaard's attitude toward his German predecessors is generally ambivalent, involving both critique and admiration. Although Kierkegaard was fluent in German and very familiar with classic German philosophy, his use of this philosophy is somewhat eclectic and assimilated to his own (...) ends. Kierkegaard uses his German predecessors to develop a distinction between the spheres of existence and thought and to reinforce what he took to be genuine Christian faith. (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought. In this outstanding and engaging introduction, a companion volume to his German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger, Julian Young examines and assesses the way in which some of the major German thinkers of the period reacted, often in starkly contrasting ways, to the challenges posed by the nature of modernity, (...) the failure of liberalism and the concept of decline. Divided into two parts exploring major intellectual figures of the left and right respectively, Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Georg Lukács: the critique of capitalism: alienation, reification, and false consciousness Ernst Bloch: the Marxist utopia Walter Benjamin: the confluence of phenomenology and left-wing thought: the Arcades Project, aura, and the technological reproduction of the artwork Oswald Spengler: the pessimistic right and the concept of Western decline Max Scheler: Catholic conservatism and the 'objective hierarchy of values' Carl Schmitt: the failure of liberalism, dictatorship, 'friends' versus 'enemies' Leo Strauss: the rejection of moral relativism and the return to classical philosophy. Highly relevant when the viability of liberal democracy is again called into question, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Lukacs to Strauss is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to provide a philosophical and historical background to current discussions about the changing relationships between the university and the state through revisiting the classical “Humboldtian” model of the university as discussed in classical German philosophy. This historical detour is intended to highlight the cultural rootedness of the modern idea of the university, and its close links to the idea of the modern national state. The paper discusses the idea of the university as (...) it emerges from the philosophy of Wilhelm von Humbold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher, as well as - in the 20th century - Karl Jaspers and Jürgen Habermas. More detailed questions discussed include the historical pact between the modern university and the modern nation-state, the main principles of the Humboldtian university, the process of the nationalization of European universities, the national aspect of the German idea of culture (Bildung), and the tension between the pursuit of truth and public responsibilities of the modern university. In discussing current and future missions and roles of the institution of the university today, it can be useful to revisit its foundational (modern) German idea. In thinking about its future, it can be constructive to reflect on the evident current tensions between traditional modern expectations of the university and the new expectations intensified by the emergence of knowledge-based societies and market-driven economies. From the perspective of the tensions between old and new tasks of the university, it is useful to look back at the turning point in its history. (shrink)

The remarks which follow are intended to address a certain apparent asymmetry as between German and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. Put most simply, it is clear to every philosopher moving backwards and forwards between the two languages that the translation of an Anglo-Saxophone philosophical text into German is in general a much easier task than is the translation of a German philosophical text into English. The hypothesis suggests itself immediately that this is so because English philosophical writings are (...) in the main clear and intelligible, and therefore easy to translate. The texts of German philosophy, on the other hand, both classical and contemporary, seem in many cases to be marked by stylistic obscurities or idiosyncracies of a sort which make them not translatable in the strict sense at all. (shrink)

Suppose we were to ask some students of philosophy to imagine a typical book of classical German philosophy and describe its general style and character, how might they reply? I suspect that they would answer somewhat as follows. The book would be long and heavy, it would be written in a complicated style which employed only very abstract terms, and it would be extremely difficult to understand. At all events a description of this kind does indeed fit (...) many famous works of German philosophy. Let us take for example Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. The 1977 English translation published by Oxford has 591 pages, and as for style here is a typical passage: Self-consciousness found the Thing to be like itself, and itself to be like a Thing; i.e., it is aware that it is in itself the objectively real world. It is no longer the immediate certainty of being all reality, but a certainty for which the immediate in general has the form of something superseded, so that the objectivity of the immediate still has only the value of something superficial, its inner being and essence being self-consciousness itself. The object, to which it is positively related, is therefore a self-consciousness. It is in the form of thinghood, i.e. it is independent ; but it is certain that this independent object is for it not something alien, and thus it knows that it is in principle recognized by the object. It is Spirit which, in the duplication of its self-consciousness and in the independence of both, has the certainty of its unity with itself. This certainty has now to be raised to the level of truth; what holds good for it in principle , and in its inner certainty, has to enter into its consciousness and become explicit fork. (shrink)

Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy is the first volume of essays dedicated to the whole question of self-knowledge and its role in Platonic philosophy. It brings together established and rising scholars from every interpretative school of Plato studies, and a variety of texts from across Plato's corpus - including the classic discussions of self-knowledge in the Charmides and Alcibiades I, and dialogues such as the Republic, Theaetetus, and Theages, which are not often enough mined (...) for insights about this crucial philosophical topic. The rich variety of readings and hermeneutical methods allows for an encompassing view of the relevant scholarly debates. The volume is intended to serve as a standard resource for further research on Plato's treatment of self-knowledge, and will highlight the relevance of Plato's thought to contemporary debates on selfhood, self-reflection and subjectivity. (shrink)

True to its title, this is a book with a plot. True to its subtitle, it is also a tightly focussed scholarly monograph, one which will undoubtedly serve as an authoritative reference work in its field for many years to come and which deserves to be read by anyone interested in the history of German philosophy “after Kant.” As readers of The Owl of Minerva are well aware, recent decades have witnessed an explosive revival of interest in classical (...) German philosophy. Kant and Hegel studies now constitute full-scale cottage industries, and even long-neglected figures like Fichte and Schelling have recently become objects of new interest. What has remained lacking is any general appreciation or even awareness of the quite specific philosophical milieu out of which the “giants” of post-Kantian philosophy arose. Beyond a familiarity with Kant’s Critiques, contemporary readers, especially English language readers, have remained almost entirely ignorant of the theoretical context within which the great systematic works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel first appeared. Nor has this ignorance been unexpected or inexcusable, since it concerns an unusually confused and confusing period in the history of philosophy and since the obscure texts involved have seldom been reprinted and almost never translated. (shrink)

The political legacy of classical German philosophy can contribute in a crucial way to the most recent developments of contemporary political thought, thereby also making sense of the contradictions underlying the social practices and institutional values of our societies. What justifies this perspective is, in the first place, the complexity of contemporaneity, which holds within itself a doubleness that can be understood in the light of the conceptual tools of classical German philosophy. On the one hand, (...) contemporary societies seem to be facing relentless crises in the modern idea of democracy, the political subject of the nation-state, and capitalist economic structures. On the other hand, there is an ever-increasing demand for rights and new forms of recognition, not to mention the emergence of grassroots movements that strive for greater political participation and generate new collective subjectivities. By radically questioning traditional philosophical categories, Kant, Fichte and Hegel provide a new and insightful understanding of the crucial challenges of modernity. They outline a conception of practical rationality and its multiple manifestations that is irreplaceable for philosophically understanding our contemporary world. (shrink)