Absolute Idealism

When Timothy Sprigge's The Vindication of Absolute Idealism appeared in 1983 it ran very much against the grain of the dominant linguistic and analytic traditions of philosophy in Britain. The very title of this work was a challenge to those who believed that Absolute Idealism fell with the critiques of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at the beginning of the 20th century. Sprigge, however, saw himself as providing an underrepresented position in the philosophical spectrum rather than as advocating an abandoned view. For him, idealism did not fall at any determinate point in the history of philosophy. The truth of any philosophical thesis cannot depend on what happens to be currently fashionable, but rather must stand on the soundness of philosophical argument. To this end, The Vindication of Absolute Idealism is a bold statement of his conclusions, a synthesis of panpsychism and absolute idealism, which he contends is the most satisfactory solution to the question of the nature of consciousness and the mind-body problem. Sprigge's view of consciousness remains a challenge to mainstream physicalism and a viable option that addresses pressing contemporary concerns not only in metaphysics and philosophy of mind but also in environmental ethics and animal rights.

Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

This book bridges the gap between the sacramental praxis of Christian religion, seemingly dependent upon naïve acceptance of phenomena in their immediacy, and the mediation of spiritual reality via philosophy of mind, and self-consciousness generally. Thus, it is a philosophy of incarnation as, inter alia, discrete essence of the Hegelian dialectic as the absorbing and thereby cancelling of finitude in the Absolute as its own Idea and, consequently, the total converse of pantheism. The Aristotelico-Hegelian concept of substance as mediated by visible “accidents”, the phenomena, is essential here. Thus Nature, but not the substance, which is Nature’s idea, is a self-conflicting phenomenon only, generating natural misconceptions in us, its offspring. Hence self-consciousness, the “I”, is to be perfected in its self-confident development towards the Absolute Idea, with which each finite idea is identical in absorption and difference, while religion becomes absolutised in, or as, sophia, chief intellectual virtue according to Aquinas. Here, a new theology, product of faith, resumes the old. It is time to put it to work.

Exposes the core of tragic absolutes in German Romantic and Idealist philosophy.

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics--Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis--as the founders of absolute idealism. Traditionally, German idealism is understood as a radical form of subjectivism that expands the powers of the self to encompass the entire world. But Beiser reveals a different--in fact, opposite--impulse: an attempt to limit the powers of the subject. Between Kant and Hegel he finds a movement away from cosmic subjectivity and toward greater realism and naturalism, with one form of idealism succeeding another as each proved an inadequate basis for explaining the reality of the external world and the place of the self in nature. Thus German idealism emerges here not as a radical development of the Cartesian tradition of philosophy, but as the first important break with that tradition. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Realism in German Idealism 2. Exorcising the Spirit 3. The Critique of Foundationalism 4. The Troublesome Hegelian Legacy 5. The Taxonomy of German Idealism I. KANT'S CRITIQUE OF IDEALISM Introduction: Kant and the Problem of Subjectivism 1. The Clash of Interpretations 2. Method and Results 3. Contemporary Kant Scholarship 1. Idealism in the Precritical Years 1. The Idealist Challenge 2. The First Refutation of Idealism 3. Idealist Dreams and Visions 4. The Critique of Idealism in the Inaugural Dissertation 5. Skeptical Ambivalence 6. David Hume, Transcendental Realist 2. Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Realism 1. The Case for Subjectivism 2. The First Edition Definitions of Transcendental Idealism 3. Transcendental versus Empirical Idealism 4. Empirical Realism in the Aesthetic 5. Empirical Realism and Empirical Dualism 3. The First Edition Refutation of Skeptical Idealism 1. The Priority of Skeptical Idealism 2. The Critique of the Fourth Paralogism 3. The Proof of the External World 4. A Cartesian Reply 5. Appearances and Spatiality 6. The Ambiguity of Transcendental Idealism 7. The Coherence of Transcendental Idealism 4. The First Edition Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism 1. The Missing Refutation 2. Kant's Interpretation of Leibniz 3. The Dispute in the Aesthetic 4. Dogmatic Idealism in the Antinomies 5. Kant and Berkeley 1. The Göttingen Review 2. Kant's Reaction 3. Berkeleyianism in the First Edition of the Kritik 4. The Argument of the Prolegomena 5. Kant's Interpretation of Berkeley 6. The Small but Real Differences? 6. The Second Edition Refutation of Problematic Idealism 1. The Problem of Interpretation 2. Kant's Motives 3. The Question of Kant's Realism 4. Realism in the Refutation 5. The New Strategy 6. The Argument of the Refutation 7. Outer vis-à -vis Inner Sense 8. Kant's Refutations in the Reflexionen, 1788-93 7. Kant and the Way of Ideas 1. The Theory of Ideas 2. Loyalty and Apostasy 3. The Transcendental versus the Subjective 4. The Question of Consistency 5. The Doctrine of Inner Sense 6. Kantian Self-Knowledge and the Cartesian Tradition 8. The Transcendental Subject 1. Persistent Subjectivism 2. Eliminating the Transcendental Subject 3. The Criteria of Subjectivity 4. The Subjectivity of the Transcendental 5. Restoring the Transcendental Subject 9. The Status of the Transcendental 1. The Problematic Status of the Categories 2. The Metaphysial Interpretation 3. The Psychological Interpretation 4. The Logical Interpretation 5. The Ineliminable Psychological Dimension 6. Problems of Transcendental Psychology 7. Transcendental Psychology and Transcendental Idealism 10. Kant's Idealism in the Opus postumum 1. Kant's Peruke 2. The Gap in the Critical System 3. The Transition Program and Its Implications 4. The Transition and Refutation 5. The Selbstsetzungslehre 6. Appearance of Appearance: Continuity with Critical Doctrines 7. Appearance of Appearance: Its Novelty 8. The Thing-in-Itself II. FICHTE'S CRITIQUE OF SUBJECTIVISM Introduction: The Interpretation of Fichte's Idealism 1. Fichte and the Subjectivist Tradition 1. The Challenge of Subjectivism 2. Early Critique of Reinhold 3. The Discovery of Desire 4. The Primacy of Practical Reason 5. Fichte's Foundationalism? 2. The Battle against Skepticism 1. First Doubts 2. The Aenesidemus Review 3. Maimon's Skepticism 4. The Official Response 5. The Final Line of Defense 3. Criticism versus Dogmatism 1. The Transformation of the Kantian Problematic 2. The Two Systems 3. The Refutation of Dogmatism 4. Fichte and the Thing-in-Itself 4. Freedom and Subjectivity 1. The Meaning of Freedom 2. The Theory of Subjectivity 3. Woes of the Absolute Ego 4. The Two Egos 5. Knowledge of Freedom 1. The Break with Kant 2. A Philosophy of Striving 3. The Origins of Intellectual Intuition 4. The Meaning of Intellectual Intuition 5. Fichte versus Kant on Intellectual Intuition 6. Self-Knowledge and Freedom 7. Faith in Freedom 6. Critical Idealism 1. Problems of Idealism 2. The Role of Striving 3. The Synthesis of Idealism and Realism 4. Reintroducing and Reinterpreting the Thing-in-Itself 7. The Refutation of Idealism 1. Later Arguments against Idealism 2. The Fichtean versus Kantian Refutation 3. Problems of Exposition 4. The Deduction of the External World 8. The Structure of Intersubjectivity 1. Kant versus Fichte on the Problem of Other Minds 2. First Reflections 3. The Argument for Intersubjectivity 4. The Normative Structure of Intersubjectivity III. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 1. Absolute Idealism: General Introduction 1. The Dramatis Personae 2. The Meaning of Absolute Idealism 3. Absolute versus Critical Idealism 4. The Break with Critical Idealism 5. Intellectual Sources 6. The Rehabilitation of Metaphysics 7. The Aesthetics of Absolute Idealism 2. Hölderlin and Absolute Idealism 1. Philosophy versus Poetry 2. Sources of Absolute Idealism 3. The Critique of Fichte 4. Aesthetic Sense 5. The Concept of Nature 6. Philosophy in Literature 3. Novalis' Magical Idealism 1. Novalis and the Idealist Tradition 2. Fichte Studies 3. Fichte in Novalis' Idealism 4. The Elements of Magical Idealism 5. Syncriticism 6. Models of Knowledge 4. Friedrich Schlegel's Absolute Idealism 1. Philosophy, History, and Poetry 2. The Break with Fichte 3. An Antifoundationalist Epistemology 4. Romanticism and Absolute Idealism 5. The Mystical 6. Lectures on Transcendental Idealism IV. SCHELLING AND ABSOLUTE IDEALISM Introduction: The Troublesome Schellingian Legacy 1. The Path toward Absolute Idealism 1. The Fichte-Schelling Alliance 2. Early Fault Lines 3. An Independent Standpoint 4. The First Quarrel 2. The Development of Naturphilosophie 1. The Claims of Naturphilosophie 2. The Early Fichtean Phase 3. The First Decisive Step 4. The Priority of Naturphilosophie 3. Schelling's Break with Fichte 1. Background 2. The Dispute Begins 3. Schelling States His Case 4. A Botched Reconciliation 5. Persistent Hopes 6. The Irresolvable Differences 4. Problems, Methods, and Concepts of Naturphilosophie 1. Absolute Idealism and Naturphilosophie 2. The Problematic of Naturphilosophie 3. Rethinking Matter 4. Nature as Organism 5. Regulative or Constitutive? 6. The Methodology of Naturphilosophie 5. Theory of Life and Matter 1. The Spinozism of Physics 2. The Dynamic Construction of Matter 3. The Theory of Life 4. Irritability, Sensibility, and World Soul 5. The Mental and Physical as Potencies 6. Schelling's Absolute Idealism 1. The Blinding Light of 1801 2. Objective Idealism 3. The Kantian-Fichtean Interpretation 4. The Interpretation of Subject-Object Identity 7. The Dark Night of the Absolute 1. The Dark Parmenidian Vision 2. The Dilemma of Absolute Knowledge 3. Rethinking the Absolute 4. The Fall 8. Absolute Knowledge 1. In Defense of Speculation 2. The Strategy for the Defense 3. Intellectual Intuition 4. Fichte versus Schelling on Intellectual Intuition 5. Art versus Philosophy 6. The Method of Construction 7. Head over Heels into the Absolute? 8. The Paradox of Absolute Knowledge Notes Bibliography Index Reviews of this book: [A] magnificent new book...That Beiser manages to keep the reader afloat as he steers through such deep and turbulent waters deserves the highest praise. Expository writing of unfailing lucidity is supported by reference to an unrivalled range of sources...I learned something from this book on almost every page...For anyone at all seriously interested in the topic this is now the place to start. --Michael Rosen, Times Literary Supplement

Idealism is the view that reality is fundamentally mental. Idealism has been influential historically, but it has been neglected in contemporary metaphysical debate. This volume of 17 essays by leading philosophers rectifies the situation.

The influence of materialist ontology largely dominates philosophical and scientific discussions. However, there is a resurgent interest in alternative ontologies from panpsychism (the view that at the base of reality exists potential minds, minds, or mind-lets) to idealism and dualism (the view that all of reality is material and mental). The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Historically grounded and constructively motivated, it covers the key topics in philosophy, science, and theology, providing students and scholars with a comprehensive introduction to idealism and immaterialism. Also addressed are post-materialism developments, with explicit attention to variations of idealism and immaterialism (the view that reality depends on a mind or a set of minds). Comprising 44 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organised into five clear parts: Idealism and the history of philosophy Important figures in idealism Systematic assessment of idealism Idealism and science Idealism, physicalism, panpsychism, and substance dualism Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind, The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism will also be of interest to those in related discplines where idealist and immaterialist ontology impinge on history, science, and theology.