The German Idealism Reader

The German Idealism Reader is a comprehensive account of the key ideas and arguments central to German idealists and their immediate critics. Expanding the scope beyond the four best-known representatives - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel - and including those thinkers often considered as secondary, but who are also crucial for understanding of this period, the Reader presents an influential era in all its philosophical complexity. Through its broad coverage of philosophers and their texts, it offers a complete dynamic picture of the intellectual period and features: - Selections from key texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel - Readings from Reinhold, Schiller, Maimon, Schulze, Jacobi, Hölderlin, and Novalis - Responses to and critiques of German idealist thought by late nineteenth century thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche - Selections extending beyond the typical focus on epistemology and metaphysics to include ethics, religion, society, and art - A general introduction and timeline, together with a chronology and bibliography to each thinker and introductory overviews to both thinkers and text With readings carefully selected to illustrate thinkers in dialogue with each other, The German Idealism Reader provides a better appreciation of the philosophical discussions central to the period. This is essential reading for all students of German idealism and the nineteenth-century German and Continental philosophies, as well as to those studying the important movements and periods of European intellectual history.

This book brings together and introduces selections from the main philosophical writings of the German Idealists: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. As well as being the most comprehensive anthology of this period of the history of philosophy it also provides scholarly guides to all of the selected material. Each of the selected texts comes with an editorial introduction to help the reader through the specific problems dealt with in the text as well as explaining its historical context. In addition there is an introductory essay which sets out the many challenges faced in any interpretation of the German Idealist period of philosophy. The material is arranged thematically into the following sections, Self and Knowledge, Freedom and Morality, Law and State, Art and Beauty, History and Reason, Nature and Science, God and Religion. This arrangement enables the reader to appreciate the differing positions of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel on the central questions of philosophy. This book is indispensable for those who want to understand the unique character, problems, and questions of German Idealism, and will also be useful to those who want to explore new areas of this influential and original epoch of philosophy.Features*Essential texts combined with a thorough guide to German Idealism *Concentrates on the four major figures of German Idealism - Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel *Thematic sections maximise the book's use for teaching purposes *Makes available material which is difficult to find

Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Žižek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom. Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, Gabriel, and Žižek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy. MARKUS GABRIEL is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, NY. He has published a number of books and journal articles in German, including Der Mensch im Mythos (De Gruyter, 2006), and Das Absolute und die Welt in Schellings Freiheitsschrift (Bonn University Press, 2006).

Immanuel Kant's "critical philosophy" is rightly renowned for its criticism of the metaphysical pretensions of reason unaided by experience. It therefore seems ironic that, within a single generation, some of Kant's most important followers argued that th

"Understanding German Idealism" provides an accessible introduction to the philosophical movement that emerged in 1781, with the publication of Kant's monumental "Critique of Pure Reason", and ended fifty years later, with Hegel's death. The thinkers of this period, and the themes they developed revolutionized almost every area of philosophy and had an impact that continues to be felt across the humanities and social sciences today. Notoriously complex, the central texts of German Idealism have confounded the most capable and patient interpreters for more than 200 years. "Understanding German Idealism" aims to convey the significance of this philosophical movement while avoiding its obscurity. Readers are given a clear understanding of the problems that motivated Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and the solutions that they proposed. Dudley outlines the main ideas of transcendental idealism and explores how the later German Idealists attempted to carry out the Kantian project more rigorously than Kant himself, striving to develop a fully self-critical and rational philosophy, in order to determine the meaning and sustain the possibility of a free and rational modern life. The book examines some of the most important early criticisms of German Idealism and the philosophical alternatives to which they led, including romanticism, Marxism, existentialism, and naturalism.

Publisher Description

The quest for systematic knowledge in the decades around 1800 gave rise to--among other schools of thought--German Idealist philosophy. In this masterful introduction to the subject, Rudiger Bubner brings together key texts and lesser known extracts from the works of four powerful intellects--Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and Georg Hegel.

Premised on the assumption that the mind is fundamentally active and self-determining, the German Idealist project gave rise to new ways of thinking about our dependence upon culturally transmitted models of thought, feeling, and creativity. Receptive Spirit elucidates the ways in which Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, and Hegel envisioned and enacted the conjunction of receptivity and spontaneous activity in the transmission of human-made models of mindedness. Their innovations have defined the very terms in which we think about the historical character of aesthetic experience, the development of philosophical thinking, the dynamics of textual communication, and the task of literary criticism. Combining a reconstructive approach to this key juncture of modern thought with close attention paid to subsequent developments, Marton Dornbach argues that we must continue to think within the framework established by the Idealists if we are to keep our bearings in the contemporary intellectual landscape.