Abstract

This article offers a critical review of Vittorio Hosle’s Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie: Ruckblick auf den deutschen Geist. The first section of this review delineates the main themes Vittorio Hosle sees as representative of what he calls German spirit in philosophy. Hosle’s criteria for inclusion in his survey of German philosophers are that they write in German and that they have sufficient importance for the progress of philosophy in the German-speaking world. In part two, this review then surveys a few problems not sufficiently solved or not even considered in Hosle’s book. Hosle’s method is to lay out how each of the central figures considered approached philosophy, along with a commentary on their main works. The correlations between these main figures and their intellectual surroundings creates a tight network of information. In part three, this review summarizes the central issues at play by setting out the questions surrounding both the rightful rise and lamented crash of this approach to philosophy, e.g. between Leibniz and Kant on the one side and Marx and Nietzsche on the other. Hosle’s book is well-written, readable, and something rarely seen explains its topic in a truly gripping manner.