Revolution Idealism And Human Freedom Schelling H Lderlin And Hegel And The Crisis Of Early German Idealism

In this study I will present the intellectual development of Schelling, Holderlin and Hegel during their formative years. Because of their similar social origins, the early thought of these young Swabians, during the 1790's, should be treated as a unit. Their experience as roommates at the Stift in Tiibingen and their close intellectual fellowship throughout the nineties made each extremely responsive to the others ideas. As mem bers of the political elite in Wiirttemberg, their intellectual assumptions were profoundly affected by the crisis of Wiirttemberg and German political society and by the events of the French Revolution in a way ex plicable only in the light of their Swabian heritage. So, for example, seen in the context of HOlderlin's and Schelling's thinking, the genesis of Hegel's earliest mature philosophical assumptions appears to be not so much an event in the history of philosophy as a specific solution to the problems raised by the crisis of his society. The crucial role of Holderlin in the history of German Idealism should also become apparent as a result of this study. For reasons developed in the following, Holderlin's thinking bridged the gap not only between Kantianism and the new philosophy, which was to come to fruition in Hegel's mature thought, but also between the republican and the natio nalist phase in the history of German political thought.

Schelling’s masterpiece investigating evil and freedom.

Marx's book throws considerable new light on German idealism.

This unique work analyzes the crisis in modern society, building on the ideas of the Frankfurt School thinkers. Emphasizing social evolution and learning processes, it argues that crisis is mediated by social class conflicts and collective learning, the results of which are embodied in constitutional and public law. First, the work outlines a new categorical framework of critical theory in which it is conceived as a theory of crisis. It shows that the Marxist focus on economy and on class struggle is too narrow to deal with the range of social conflicts within modern society, and posits that a crisis of legitimization is at the core of all crises. It then discusses the dialectic of revolutionary and evolutionary developmental processes of modern society and its legal system. This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society by a leading scholar in the field provides a new approach to critical theory that will appeal to anyone studying political sociology, political theory, and law.

For most of the eighteenth century the best minds in Europe took up the task of providing a foundation for human life and human society in which individual fulfillment was to be achieved within a rational public order. When it became apparent that this task was based on an illusion—the separation of self and world—and was thus doomed to failure, however, that insight and the consequent crisis were forgotten and repressed. After 1815 all parties, reactionary and liberal, chose to proceed as if we had achieved what we knew, somewhere, we could not carry off. To secure that false confidence the challenges of the late Enlightenment had to be silenced and its doubts swept under the carpet. This book concerns a founding act of bad faith and of willed blindness, the self-forgetting of the rootlessness and the falsity of the basic presuppositions of the modern world, that have haunted that world from its birth. Enlightenment Interrupted takes the metaphysical arguments of the idealists seriously. Its methodological foundation is the belief that in every era there are deep structures of thought and experience that define the range of theoretical and political possibilities available. The great achievement of the post-Kantian generation was to critique and ultimately to move beyond the self-world dichotomy at the heart of Western thought. This can be seen as a continuation of the Enlightenment project of subjecting everything to the test of reason, but it was also part of a larger cultural movement that found expression in Romanticism, in an openness to Indian and other non-Western thought, and in the political and social experimentation of the French Revolution. What followed in the post-Revolutionary years was not a development of those tendencies to openness and egalitarian, common process but a retreat to the opposition of self and world and a drastic reduction in intellectual and social possibilities. This is one source of the collective impotence that sees the twenty-first century in a lockstep march to disaster.

In The Idealism of Freedom, Klaus Vieweg argues for a Hegelian turn in philosophy. Hegel's idealism of freedom contains a number of epoch-making ideas that articulate a new understanding of freedom, which still shape contemporary philosophy. Hegel establishes a modern logic, as well as the idea of a social state. With his distinction between civil society and the state he makes an innovative contribution to political philosophy. Hegel defends the idea of freedom for all in a modern society and is a sharp critic of every nationalism and racism. Vieweg's study introduces these ideas into perspectives on freedom in contemporary philosophy.