Abstract

Cecilia Muratori’s book is a major contribution to scholarship on the Romantic Age and idealistic philosophy. Jakob Böhme is a thinker of great importance within the German tradition, but is so dense and difficult that he is very hard to study without proper and expert guidance. Muratori has exceeded expectations in her lucid, imaginative, and brilliant exposition of Böhme’s thought in relation to Hegel and, indeed, the modern age. Hegel not only regarded Böhme as a writer of philosophical genius, but also as the beginning of German philosophy. This book explains why. The priority here is no temporal accident. The designation is also a tribute to the proleptic power of the Silesian cobbler. Hegel’s attribution is...