Encyclopedia entry on the life and work of Karl Leonhard Reinhold.

The aim is to examine Alois Riehl’s contribution to the “culture war” (Kulturkampf) in the second half of the nineteenth century. We show that he used Kant’s autonomy principle to argue against the idea that religious dogmatism is a fundament of morality. We prove this thesis by focusing on the forgotten historical background, which is important for an understanding of Morals und Dogma. Originally this essay was an expert opinion for the court case of the socialist H. Tauschinski who was (...) accused of blasphemy. Tauschinski wrote an article in which he doubted the immortality of the soul and the existence of a personal God. These two dogmas of the Catholic Church were considered bу the Austrian authorities to be the foundations of public order. Riehl questioned not only the charge but also the validity of religious dogmas for morality. Based on Kant’s ethics, he argued for a moral indifferentism of religious dogmas. His career was significantly influenced by this essay, because of its anti-clerical content. During the culture war, Riehl repeatedly had problems with the authorities, especially in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The “Neurath-Haller Thesis” argues that in Austria the appointment of professorships was controlled and monitored by the state, with the goal of installing a philosophy which was beneficial to the interests of the state, and a strong anti-Kantianism in Austrian Philosophy as a consequence. We can agree with this thesis insofar as Riehl in the period of the “Catholic Renaissance” in Austria was not allowed to succeed Ernst Mach. The analysis of Riehl’s arguments allows us furthermore to understand Riehl as a neo-Kantian as early as 1871/1872, which has been questioned by many authors who think the early Riehl was no Kantian. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I consider the significant but generally overlooked role that the French Revolution played in the development of German Idealism. Specifically, I argue that Reinhold and Fichte's engagement in revolutionary political debates directly shaped their interpretation of Kant's philosophy, leading them (a) to overlook his reliance upon common sense, (b) to misconstrue his conception of the relationship between philosophical theory and received cognitive practice, (c) to fail to appreciate the fundamentally regressive nature of his transcendental argumentative strategy, (...) and, ultimately, (d) to seek to deduce his philosophy from a single first-principle, one grounded in the immediate awareness of the subject's mental life. (shrink)

This article attempts to expose an unwarranted narrowness in the study of idealism in nineteenth century philosophy, and to show that the field of idealism is much wider than usually assumed. This narrowness stems from the influence of Hegel’s history of philosophy, which saw the idealist tradition as beginning in Kant, passing through Fichte and Schelling, and then culminating in his own system. This conception of history has been disseminated by Hegel’s followers and still prevails today. I argue that this (...) conception is too narrow for several reasons. First, it ignores the romantic idealists (Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel); second, it excludes the opposing tradition of idealism of Herbart, Fries and Beneke, which affirmed (against Schelling and Hegel) transcendental idealism, an empiricist epistemology, the existence of the thing-in-itself and the value of the Kantian dualisms; and, third, it neglects the history of idealism after Hegel later in the nineteenth century, more specifically, the idealism of Trendelenburg, Lotze and Hartmann. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a rehabilitation of early German Romanticism in philosophy, including a renewed interest in Romantic ethics. Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) is acknowledged as a key figure in this movement. While significant work has been done on some aspects of his thought, his views on ethics have been surprisingly overlooked. This essay aims to redress this shortcoming in the literature by examining the core themes of Schlegel’s ethics during the early phase of his career (1793–1801). I argue that Schlegel’s (...) position stands out against both the dominant Kantianism of his era, as well as against some of fellow Romantics. I show how Schlegel anticipates contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Harry Frankfurt, John McDowell, and Stanley Cavell in both his criticisms of traditional moral theory and in his attempts to develop a positive position. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermacher is among the philosophers who influenced Karoline von Günderrode's thought. Although this influence is relevant, it has received little attention. Both authors agree on distinguishing “spirit” and “body” or “the inner and the outer” in similar terms. However, there was a significant difference between them. In Schleiermacher's works that Günderrode considered (On Religion and Soliloquies), he conceives of the relationship as one in which the world or outer depends on the spirit or inner. For Günderrode, this relationship is (...) polar, as “spirit” and “world” form part of an original totality. This difference from the philosopher influences the issue that both raised of access to the “primordial ground.” For Schleiermacher, the world depends on spirit; the issue of access to that foundation is circumscribed to access to the spiritual dimension. In contrast, for Günderrode, “spirit” and “body” are poles of a previous original totality. Hence, access to the primordial ground does not coincide with the spirit's access to itself. Instead, access to unity is both spiritual and corporeal. Günderrode's differences from Schleiermacher are based on an argument we attempt to elucidate and evaluate in this article. (shrink)

According to Friedrich Schlegel: “The Romantic imperative demands [that] all nature and science should become art [and] art should become nature and science”; “[P]oetry and philosophy should be made unified”, and “life and society [should be made] poetic”. The aim of this paper is to explain why Schlegel believes that this is an imperative that constrains philosophy and ordinary life. I argue that the answer to this question requires that we regard the Romantic imperative as a response to the skeptical (...) worry that was introduced by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi as nihilism. The aspect of nihilism that I discuss concerns the worry that we are incapable of experiencing individuals qua individuals. According to Schlegel, this skeptical threat requires a reorientation in thought and philosophical method, one that must be modeled on the aesthetic orientation towards the world. More precisely, the experience of individuals qua individuals, which is called into question by the nihilist, depends on the special normative structure of the creative and critical attitude towards art and beauty that Schlegel called Romantic Poesie. Kant failed to address nihilism because he failed to recognize that the normative structure that he himself ascribed to the judgment of taste is required also for experiencing individuals as individuals, and for being properly responsive to persons. (shrink)

Was the philosophy of Early German Romanticism, as we understand it today, nothing but a milder variety of Early German Idealism? Not at all! One has only to note the radical differences between the two. Friedrich von Hardenberg and Friedrich Schlegel, the two most significant thinkers of the Early Romantic movement, decisively broke with what Reinhold’s critical disciples had called a “philosophy from the highest principle [Grundsatzphilosophie].” Instead of adopting Reinhold’s and Fichte’s idea of subjectivity as the principle of a (...) deductively unfolding system of knowledge, they replaced it with the idea of “philosophy as an unending longing for the Infinite.” Who only aspires to the Absolute cannot pretend to “possess” or capture it in an absolute knowledge as Fichte and Hegel did, but Schelling did not. Underlying Hegel’s and Fichte’s denial that the Absolute transcends knowability is the temptation to make existence itself dependent upon the grasp of thoughts or concepts, a temptation firmly rejected by the Early Romantics. This is why Early Romanticism should not be considered as a species of one or the other kind of Idealism, as most German and American researchers would like it to be. (shrink)

En este artículo se analizan los conceptos hegelianos de infinito malo e infinito verdadero al hilo de una revisión de la noción de infinitud en la tradición filosófica alemana con la que discute. Puntualmente, abordaremos las formulaciones sobre la relación finitud-infinitud en la obra de Kant, Fichte y Schlegel antes de exponer la interpretación que hace Hegel de la manera en la que la filosofía trascendental y el romanticismo alemán se aproximaron a este asunto. Finalmente, presentamos la verdadera forma en (...) la que, según Hegel, hay que entender lo infinito. (shrink)

The following essay aims not only to answer whether Friedrich Schelling’s philosophy lived on in Catholic Tübingen, but also to clarify what aspects of Schelling’s corpus were received and which were set aside. Below it is my claim that Tübingen theologians incorporated insights from Schelling’s early, Idealist philosophy, as well as his late, post-Idealist philosophy. The two theologians most extensively involved in this project were Johann Sebastian Drey and Johannes Kuhn. Most important for Tübingen was the possibility that Schelling could (...) bridge historical truths into scientific ideals. Tübingen incorporated these ideas, taken directly from Schelling, without ingesting his entire system, early or late, especially his ideas about the nature of God and the relationship between God and the world. Their reception of Schelling was careful and deliberate, and by being so, they provided a model for theological engagement with modern ideas. (shrink)

Novalis, the Early German Romantic poet and philosopher, had at the core of his work a mysterious depiction of the ‘absolute’. The absolute is Novalis’ name for a substance that defies precise knowledge yet calls for a tentative and sensitive speculation. How one asserts a truth, represents an object, and sets about encountering things in the world, is in the first instance the domain of the absolute, which diffuses through all things in the world. In this article, I begin by (...) describing the absolute in general and I outline its importance in Novalis’ works. I then speculate on its natural tendency to render an object mysterious and fundamentally unknowable. Although the absolute also allows us an insight into an object, my attention in this article is drawn to its concealment in mystery because, as Novalis was at pains to indicate, the Enlightenment has been more than generous to the clear perception of an object. I turn to consider the poet—a most important political character in Novalis’ works—and their Bildung of themselves and their communities. They bring their communities to continual maturation through their role in romanticising the ordinary world and through their need to consistently reflect on, and be aware of, the absolute. They also develop themselves in their ongoing state of mystery as they carry out their political and poetic responsibility. (shrink)

Goethe and Friedrich Schiller stand together immortalised in Ernst Rietschel's statue at the centre of Weimar. In their lifetime, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-speaking lands, not only through their poetry, plays, and novels, but also in their role as editors of journals that helped to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller's journalDie Horen and Goethe'sPropyläen, although short-lived, were important literary vehicles of the period and provided a forum that brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into (...) conversation with one another. The late 1700s and early 1800s were years of intense intellectual development in Germanspeaking lands; the arts flourished and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy.During the ‘Age of Goethe and Schiller’, philosophy was dominated by Kant's philosophy and its post-Kantian variations. A problem with traditional philosophical histories of this period is the overwhelmingly Hegelian reading of it, a reading that subsumes all of the so-called minor figures under the shadows of the great system builder, Hegel. Richard Kroner's influentialVon Kant bis Hegelof 1921 set the tone for this reading. Silenced by such narratives are the voices of the early German Romantics, a group of thinkers whose impudence created problems for them, and whose work posed hermeneutical challenges that continue to plague a proper understanding of the movement and the worth of its contributions. As we shall see, Hegel himself began to prepare the ground for a history of philosophy that would dismiss the contributions of the early German Romantics, a dismissal that is unfair and unfortunate: unfair because it is based on false characterisations of the movement, and unfortunate because such misreadings lead us to overlook the wealth of insights offered by the early German Romantics. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the ontological and systematic basis of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. I argue that the structures of the will, discussed in paragraphs five through seven of the Philosophy of Right, present the key for understanding the goal and the argumentative structure of that work. Hegel characterizes the will in terms of the oppositions between the universal and the particular, the infinite and the finite, and the indeterminate and the determinate. Ultimately, he argues that we must (...) grasp the will as the unity of these oppositional moments. The Philosophy of Right presents an extended attempt to grasp this unity. -/- In order to central problem presented by the structure of the will, I argue that we must first recognize the will as the highest instantiation of the more general structures that constitute the notion. On my interpretation, the term ‘notion’ designates Hegel’s doctrine of substance. More specifically, this term presents his conception of substance in terms of categories normally associated with human subjectivity, in terms of representation and purposive action. -/- The will presents the highest or truest instantiation of the notion. Various notions can be ranked along a spectrum in accordance with their degree of success at resolving the basic problem facing all objects – namely the problem of integrating or essentially relating identity and difference through self-constituting activity. The unification of identity and difference presents the central problem or paradox of Hegel’s philosophy. It is a paradox that takes many forms. In this dissertation, I show how change, the structure of judgment, and the nature of the object all exhibit this paradox. I also show how Hegel’s doctrine of the notion develops as a direct response to this paradox. Additionally, I argue that Hegel’s account of the structure of the will – as the unity of the universal and the particular, the unity of the infinite and the finite, and the unity of the indeterminate and the determinate – presents the highest manifestation of the paradox that arises when we seek to explain the unity of identity and difference. (shrink)

The present essay is devoted to analyzing Reinhold’s contribution to one of the most relevant questions in German idealism, namely, the possibility of an absolute principle of all philosophy, as a task left open by Kant’s critical enterprise. The main aim is to assess the extent to which Reinhold is the first to propose this philosophical problem as a question of language, and in doing so the possibility of an absolutely apodictic philosophical language, as it would be later resumed and (...) developed by Fichte and other authors. Keywords: Reinhold, language, philosophy, principle, consciousness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The question of human consciousness is a crucial part of Novalis’ aim of construing a self-critique of the I, or critique of human identity, as it is proposed in his “Fichte-Studien”. Namely, this question is an intermediary stage in said critique, serving as proof for Novalis’ theory of the opposites, the fundamental stage, and his position on philosophizing, the final stage of this endeavor, which will be at the basis of his whole philosophical system; and as such, it is (...) a topic of great importance, as it is not only a link in a chain of thought which aims at proving the organicity or living heterogeneity - and not Fichte’s machine-like homogeneity - of the human but is also a key topic towards the resolution of Novalis’problem of philosophy as an existential problem. Given this, the present article intends to situate the question of human consciousness in the framework of Novalis’greater scope of a critique of the I; and from then, to comment on Novalis’own position on the problem of human consciousness, as it is stated in the formula “Consciousness is the Being outside of Being, within Being”; a position which further separates the young poet from Fichte, as it renders him closer and closer to other young idealists, such as Hölderlin or Schelling. RESUMO A questão da consciência humana é uma parte crucial no intento novaliano de construir uma autocrítica do Eu, ou crítica da identidade humana, como ela é proposta nos seus “Fichte-Studien”. Designadamente, esta questão constitui um estado intermédio em tal crítica, servindo como prova da teoria dos contrários de Novalis, o estádio fundamental desta, e a posição de Novalis sobre o filosofar, o estádio final da sua empresa, a qual está na base de todo o seu sistema filosófico; e, como tal, é um tópico de grande importância, visto ser não só um elo em uma linha de pensamento que visa provar a organicidade ou heterogeneidade viva - e não a maquinal homogeneidade de Fichte - do humano, mas também um tópico-chave tendo em vista a resolução da questão novaliana da filosofia enquanto problema existencial. Assim sendo, o presente artigo propõe-se situar a questão da consciência humana no contexto maior da crítica da identidade de Novalis; e, a partir daí, comentar a posição de Novalis sobre o problema da consciência humana, como ele surge exposto na fórmula “A consciência é o Ser fora do Ser, no Ser”; uma posição que decisivamente separa o jovem poeta de Fichte, enquanto o aproxima de outros jovens idealistas, tais como Hölderlin ou Schelling. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn traditional Maori discourse, the division between metaphysical concepts and everyday life was non-existent. Because of that lack of delineation, the perception of objects was governed by certain beginning assumptions. Due to colonization, however, entities—and the conception of them—threaten to become unmoored from their primordiality. One example of this tendency lies in the current and common translation of the Maori term IRA as “gene.” This static casting of the erstwhile fluid nature of the phenomenon that IRA indicated has consequences not (...) only for how one perceives the world but, additionally, for both the self and the thing itself. In this article I propose a phenomenological approach to the term IRA, another definition for which is the interjectory “look!” I argue for an interpretation of IRA in light of a Maori metaphysics—one that governs the inherent fluidity of things and the concomitant tentative representation of those things. (shrink)