Hegel’s treatment of ‘Moralität’ in both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right provides important clues as to how he conceives the recognitive dynamics of modern moral life. As ‘spirit that is certain of itself’, morality as comprehended in the Phenomenology is the final form of spirit [Geist], which, in Hegel’s exposition, follows ‘reason’ which itself had followed ‘consciousness’ and ‘self-consciousness’. Spirit had first been considered in its objective form as an ‘in itself’. This was the ‘true spirit’ (...) of the ethical world of antiquity. As something ‘for itself’, spirit had then been considered in its self-alienated form as ‘culture’ which had culminated in an analysis of modern politics—specifically the political project of ‘absolute freedom’, the French Revolution, and the terroristic consequences that had been so acutely linked to the modern rationalist political project by Schiller. But, as many have pointed out, if Rousseau was the theorist of the modern political struggle for autonomy, Kant had an equally revolutionary conception of moral autonomy, which, like Rousseau, put the idea of a self-legislating will at the centre of thought. Such an internalization of the self-legislating will, however, now reveals the proper object for judgment in terms of the evaluative polarity of good and bad—the will itself. This evaluation becomes the task of conscience. In this paper I examine Hegel’s treatment of the role of conscience in moral judgment in the light of his relationship to Fichte, and interpret it in terms of a broadly conceived pragmatics of reason-giving in moral life implicit in his concept of intersubjective recognition [Anerkennung]. (shrink)

This study offers a detailed systematic comparison of Fichte's and Hegel's philosophies with regard to their conceptions of freedom. It explains and compares the place of practical freedom within the two thinkers' overarching systems of ethical, legal, and political philosophy. In the process, it shows not only Hegel's debt to Fichte but also the essential difference between understanding freedom as origin as opposed to result.

This book provides a detailed account of the role of property in German Idealism. It puts the concept of property in the center of the philosophical systems of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel and shows how property remains tied to their conceptions of freedom, right, and recognition. The book begins with a critical genealogy of the concept of property in modern legal philosophy, followed by a reconstruction of the theory of property in Kant's Doctrine of Right, Fichte's Foundations of (...) Natural Right, and Hegel's Jena Realphilosophie. By turning to the tradition of German Rechtsphilosophie, as opposed to the more standard libertarian and utilitarian frameworks of property, it explores the metaphysical, normative, political, and material questions that make property intelligible as a social relation. The book formulates a normative theory of property rooted in practical reason, mutual recognition, and social freedom. This relational theory of property, inspired by German Idealism, brings a fresh angle to contemporary property theory. Additionally, it provides crucial philosophical background to 19th century debates on private property, inequality, labor, socialism, capitalism, and the state. The Concept of Property in Kant, Fichte, and Hegel will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in 19th Century German philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, political theory, and political economy. (shrink)

In what follows, I attempt to reconstruct Fichte’s and Hegel’s reasons for developing at almost the same time two very different conceptions of a rational economic order. Whereas Hegel, on the basis of his objective notion of reason, would recommend that a rational state, founded on the notion of right, should include a strictly confined, socially embedded market economy, Fichte, on the basis of his subjective notion of reason, thought instead that the very same state must adopt an economic order (...) that might well be described as a ‘planned economy’. Throughout the article I discuss whether it is the stark differences in their methodological premisses or their very different ideas about the individual freedom to be institutionalized in the economic sphere that helps us understand their respective notions of a rational economy. (shrink)

Fichte's Foundations of Natural Right was one of the most influential books in nineteenth-century philosophy. It was read carefully by Schelling, Hegel, and Marx, and initiated a tradition in German philosophy that considers human subjectivity to be relational and intersubjective, thus requiring relations of recognition between subjects. The essays in this volume highlight this little-understood book's most important ideas and innovations. They offer discussions of Fichte's conception of freedom, self-consciousness, coercion, the summons, the body, and human rights, together with new (...) analyses of his deduction of right, his views on the social contract, and his arguments for the separation of right from morality. The essays expand and deepen ongoing debates in the scholarship and chart new avenues of thought about Fichte's most enduring work of political philosophy. They will be essential reading for students and scholars of German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa elucidar o fundamento lógico da passagem do arbítrio para a vontade livre “em si e para si” na Introdução à Filosofia do Direito de Hegel. Defende-se as seguintes teses: 1. A idéia de tal passagem, concebida como reflexivização da vontade, já está presente na ética de Fichte. No entanto, diferentemente de Fichte Hegel concebe-a num fundamento lógico-conceitual. 2. O fundamento lógico da passagem em Hegel é a passagem da Lógica da Essência para a Lógica do Conceito. (...) 3. A explicitação da vontade livre em si e para si pela Lógica do Conceito não envolve ainda o caráter ético-social da realização da tal liberdade, que só se revela no desdobramento da Filosofia do Direito. (shrink)

Fichte’s hostility towards Napoleon, as expressed in his lectures of 1813 on the theory of the state, has its origin at the level of principles, and his always very strong admiration for the figure of Napoleon is at the same time so negatively loaded, that Napoleon becomes for Fichte something like an arch-enemy, the enemy par excellence. Napoleon has turned the old European political world upside down in favor of a re-structuration of this order according to the principles of the (...) French Revolution. This is, at least, how Napoleon was seen by the traditional powers that he had caused to fall or that he had shaken them with lasting political and historical consequences. Goethe, Hegel and Fichte have seen him in this perspective with very different attitudes. In this context, Fichte’s hostility towards Napoleon can be considered, at least partially, as a hostility towards the principles of the Revolution. But if these principles represent something like the normative self-understanding of political modernity at all, then the political philosophy of Fichte can be understood as strongly critical to these principles, if not simply as reactionary. It is worthwhile to consider why such a critical and even reactionary position can be derived in a completely consistent way from this philosophy, which has as its center a radicalized concept of freedom, and which at the beginning had even welcomed the outbreak of the Revolution. Die Feindschaft Fichtes gegen Napoleon, so wie sie später in seinen Vorlesungen von 1813 über die Staatslehre Ausdruck findet ist eine Feindschaft, die ihren Ursprung auf der Ebene von Grundsätzen hat, und die die immer sehr starke Bewunderung Fichtes für die Figur von Napoleon so negativ belastet, dass dieser am Ende zwar zu einem tief bewunderten, aber auch zu einem prinzipiellen Erzfeind wird. Nun hat Napoleon die alte europäische politische Welt auf den Kopf gestellt zugunsten einer Umstrukturierung dieser Ordnung nach den Prinzipien der französischen Revolution. So wenigstens ist Napoleon von den traditionellen Mächten, mit denen er sich auseinandergesetzt und die er zum Sturz oder ins Schwanken gebracht hat, empfunden worden. Und so haben Hegel, Goethe und auch Fichte ihn gesehen. Die Feindschaft Fichtes gegen Napoleon muss sich also zumindest teilweise als eine Feindschaft gegen die Prinzipien der Revolution verstehen lassen. Wenn aber diese Prinzipien so etwas wie die normative Selbstauffassung der politischen Moderne überhaupt bestimmen, dann ist die politische Philosophie Fichtes sehr kritisch zu dieser Selbstauffassung oder einfach reaktionär. Und es lohnt sich zu prüfen, warum gerade aus dieser Philosophie, in deren Mittelpunkt ein radikalisierter Begriff von Freiheit steht und die am Anfang den Aufbruch der Revolution sogar begrüßt hat, eine so kritische oder gar reaktionäre Einstellung, und zwar auf eine sehr konsequente Weise sich ergibt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 302-303 [Access article in PDF] Sedgwick, Sally, ed. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 338. Cloth, $59.95. This collection consists almost entirely of papers from a 1995 conference at Dartmouth on "The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." Four categories of (...) papers address: (1) the relation between Kant's three Critiques and the Opus Postumum; (2) Fichte's reception of the Critical Philosophy; (3) Schelling's Naturphilosophie as a reaction to Kant and Fichte; and (4) Hegel's indebtedness to and famous departure from Kantianism.In "The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy," Paul Guyer argues that, appearances aside, Kant's thought from the first Critique to the Opus Postumum forms a continuous and self-consistent project. Indeed, Guyer claims that Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy remained essentially unchanged throughout this period (this despite frequent—and often flattering—remarks in the Opus Postumum concerning Spinoza). In contrast, Jeffrey Edwards' "Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism" points to a conceptual tension present in Kant's late attempt to find common ground between Spinoza and transcendental idealism. Edwards argues that Kant's notion in the Opus Postumum of a dynamical form of matter leads him to embrace a realist (quasi-Spinozistic) conception of space. Finally, in "Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?" Henry Allison challenges the view (common from Hegel to Guyer) that a profound change in Kant's project occurs in the Critique of Judgment, viz., that something profoundly un-transcendental emerges with Kant's notions of the intuitive intellect and purposiveness of nature.Günter Zöller, in "From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism," offers an interpretation of the development of notions of "system" and "transcendental idealism" from Kant to Fichte. This is an indispensable paper for anyone concerned with the fine points of this development and, [End Page 302] indeed, Zöller's treatment is throughout a model of clarity. In "The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre," Daniel Breazeale offers an outstanding survey of the defining features of Fichte's early Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The breadth and depth of Breazeale's paper is a signal achievement, one that puts before the reader's eyes the lay of the often convoluted and confusing land that is the Wissenschaftslehre. Furthermore, Breazeale's discussion of the subdivisions of the Wissenschaftslehre (i.e., the particular sciences grounded by the "science of science") is of particular benefit for understanding the totality of Fichte's conception of philosophy."The 'I' as Principle of Philosophy" by Allen Wood, and "The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After" by Karl Ameriks offer differing evaluations of the kind of "primacy of the practical" that each author locates in Fichte. Ameriks rejects Wood's sympathetic reading of the fundamentally practical character of the Fichtean "I." What is at stake for the authors is the success or failure of Fichte's attempt to account for the unity of theoretical and practical reason. It is important to note however that, unlike Kant, Fichte does not subscribe to the "primacy of the practical" thesis; indeed, Fichte holds the two aspects of reason to be "equiprimordial." As such, some of Wood's and Ameriks' claims are either misleading or simply wrong. This point aside, a common criticism of Fichte is that he reduces the world to the bare posit of the "I," a view of which Robert Pippin's "Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism" quickly disposes. Instead, Pippin presents a "normative non-psychologistic" interpretation of Fichtean idealism.Regarding Schelling's Kant-reception, Manfred Baum's "The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature" locates the origins of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in his youthful interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Baum's analyses, which abound with rich historical and philological information, are complemented by Dieter Sturma's... (shrink)

In this thesis I investigate the notion of experience in German Idealist Philosophy. I focus on the exploration of an alternative to the transcendental model notion of experience through Schelling's insight into the notion of logogrif. The structural division of this project into two sections reflects the two theoretical standpoints of this project, namely the logic and the logogrif of experience. The first section - the logic of experience - explores the notion of experience provided in Kant's Critique of Pure (...) Reason, Critique of Judgement and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. I argue that Kant's fundamental question about the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements succeeds in thematising the aporia of cognitive experience but results in a subject-oriented, representational model which radically confines the notion of experience to the constitutive laws of the understanding or to the normative precepts of Reason. Experience is founded upon a sharp division between faith and knowledge, will and logic, desire and reflection, absolute and finitude. Fichte's endeavour to articulate a non-representational account of experience, does not succeed in extricating itself from the representational model, so long as experience is reduced to the ever-producing deeds of the self-positing ego. Despite the serious differences between Kant's and Fichte's notions of experience, both accounts, so long as they unfold from a transcendental standpoint, attempt to resolve experience into conceptual laws or determinations of the ego's absolute will. Experience is transformed into an object of the subject's cognitive or volitional faculties. The paradoxes of man's interaction with the world are intended to be accommodated either by the law-giving spontaneity of the understanding and the Architectonic of Pure Reason or by the overpowerful primordial act of the self-positing ego. This implies the conceptualisation of the self in terms of constant identity-through-time, or sheer self-determination. However, this conceptualisation remains at the normative or prescriptive level, which in turn is projected upon the world. The latter, though appears as the subject's property, essentially remains alien and opaque, confirming the radical limitations of the ego rather than its order-giving authority. Moreover, this notion of experience is ultimately founded upon a radical expulsion of the divine from the world, the de-spiritualisation of the sensual and the de-sensualisation of the spiritual, the sharp juxtaposition between absolute and finitude. This results in a self-defeating subjectivity, whose firm identity and rule-giving authority does not rescue it from its perennial unattainability to 'organise the conditioned' or 'conquer the unconditioned'. In Kant's and Fichte's thought, however, I detect elements that potentially transgress their transcendental account of experience. These are found in Kant's concept of spontaneity and free play between understanding and imagination, and Fichte's concept of productivity. I argue that these elements lose their potential dynamism, so long as they are absorbed by the transcendental demands for the solution of the aporias of logic. However, these elements point to the need for a radical re-conceptualisation of the notion of experience. This is provided by means of Schelling's logogriflic approach, which constitutes the theme of the second section. The second section - the logogrif of experience - attempts to articulate a different approach towards the notion of experience, through an exploration of Schelling's versatile and provocative thought. This section focuses on Schelling's original insight into the notion and act of logogrif, which opens the dialogue between logos and mythos, cosmic becoming and human soul, cosmic imagination and human reflection, faith and knowledge. This section attempts to illuminate Schelling's fascinating philosophical investigations and discoveries that have been rather overlooked, possibly, due to Hegel's overwhelming critique. This section, after a brief critical examination of the Identity Philosophy, attempts to elucidate Schelling's notion of experience through his middle works, Of Human Freedom, Ages of the World, The Deities of Samothrace, which are treated as a self-developing trilogy. Schelling re-addresses the aporias of logic not as part of Reason's self-interrogation but as part of the cosmic paradoxes and living experiences. In this way, Schelling resets the scene of the debate on the conditions of possibility for cognitive experience by putting on the stage the enigmas of the cosmos and life rather than the Tribunal of Reason. Logic itself is conceived as a potency in the cosmic becoming, and consequently can no longer attempt to establish the transcendental conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience. Cosmic becoming, in which man is an active part, is conceived as the process of the movement, the interaction, the transformations and transmutations of multiple potencies. These, far beyond any mechanical conceptualisation, appear as self-moving and yet interdependent, unknown yet familiar, inscrutable and yet manifest powers, describing the mystery of life itself. The latter is depicted as an ever-recurrent act of longing for self-expression as active unity. Experience is conceived as the lived process of a network of living potencies, which may not only resist rational powers but may also puzzle and seize them. In this context, reflection acquires a plastic dimension, as opposed to its rigidity in the representational model of experience. Reflection depicts cosmic longing's self-formation, whose man is part. This self-bending formation partially illuminates the nature of longing, and from this standpoint is the logic of the longing. However, this formation is movable, transmutable and mostly ineffable, and from this standpoint is the logic of a riddle: a logogrif. Logogrif is the transitive term that attempts to describe the transition of experience from its enacted phase to its allusive conceptual utterance, and in this sense the term itself participates in both phases, as both form of thought and form of life. The logogrific approach to experience in turn transposes us as from the realm of pure concepts to the realm of the mystery of life, from pure thought to acts of longing, from the Architectonic of Pure Reason to Cosmic Theurgy. The latter term attempts to grasp the paradox and dynamism of cosmic and non-cosmic becoming by means of multiple, vanishing and ever-recurring, transmutable potencies, or in Schelling's terms 'the magic of insoluble life'. Schelling's logogrific account consists in a powerful voice for the re-enchantment of the world, the introduction into the notion of experience of the imminence of the divine. This is not suggested in terms of the adoption of old religious doctrines but by means of the discovery and re-discovery of the theurgy of life, through the intensification of our artistic mood, the creative expansion of our deeds. This notion of experience allows for the reconsideration of the notion of the self, in terms of a dynamic, conflictual process between conscious and unconscious powers and the critical revaluation of the accounts of subjectivity which reduce it to the sphere of self-consciousness. The thesis concludes with the need for an investigation into the relation between logos and mythos, which only tangentially has been introduced by the present project. In this context it will be possible to re-appraise the potential that the logogrific approach opens for an alternative to both logical and traditional mythological patterns of thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic by Karen NgMarina F. BykovaKaren Ng. Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. iii + 319. Hardback, $85.00.In her insightful book, Karen Ng defends the fundamental significance of Hegel's concept of life, which she considers "constitutive" not merely of his dynamic account of reason but also of his "idealist program" itself (3–4), (...) the very core structure that grounds his idealism (151, 291). Integrating this concept into his philosophy allows Hegel to resolve three systematic problems indicated in the subtitle of the book: self-consciousness, freedom or self-determination, and logical form.The book offers a systematic account of the logical concept of life by defending three interconnected claims, helpfully summarized in chapter 1. The first, rather general claim clarifies Ng's interpretive point of departure. She maintains that the "core tenets" of Hegel's philosophy can be understood through the "purposiveness theme" inherited from Kant's a priori principle of purposiveness in his Critique of Judgment (5, 43). Ng advances this claim in chapter 2, where she argues that it is working through Kant's concept of inner purposiveness of natural ends from the teleological power of judgment that leads Hegel to develop his own account of Concept, which is foundational for his entire philosophical system (61–64).Chapter 3 continues the examination of Hegel's immediate predecessors in relation to the interpretation of his "speculative identity thesis" (8), which constitutes the second claim. According to Ng, Hegel first introduces this thesis—which remains central to all his works—in the Differenzschift. In this work, Hegel, siding with Schelling, criticizes Fichte's subjective version of idealism, more specifically for his explanation of the relation between subject and object as constructed and facilitated by subjective consciousness itself, thus rendering "nature lifeless and dead" (88). Opposing this approach, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel interprets the identity of object and subject as facilitated by the relation and opposition between self-consciousness and life. Thus, the speculative identity thesis assumes a fundamental significance of life for self-consciousness. Unfolding this thesis is at the core of Hegel's absolute method in the Science of Logic as well. On Ng's reading, Hegel's speculative thesis along with his account of self-consciousness also have their roots in the purposiveness theme inherited from Kant. What is at work here is Kant's claim that the principle of purposiveness is a necessary condition for judgment, which Hegel develops into a claim about the concept of life as being constitutive for self-consciousness.In the rest of the book (chapters 4–8), devoted to a close analysis of Hegel's Science of Logic, Ng advances her third and perhaps most original claim: understanding Hegel's [End Page 527] Subjective Logic "as his own version of a 'critique of judgment'" (18). She demonstrates that this part of the Logic offers a positive account of the concept of life that Hegel develops in his critical interaction with Kant. The most illustrative in this respect is the "Subjectivity" section of the Logic, in which the form of life is presented as the ground and presupposition of Hegel's theory of concepts and judgments. According to Ng, such a reading makes evident that "life opens up the space of reasons" (234, 281).Chapter 4 takes up Hegel's immanent deduction of the Concept argument, revealing that the key to understanding it is the concept of reciprocity (Wechselwirkung) (127), most fully recognizable as an internal purposiveness of the Concept itself.Ng traces the purposiveness theme through the entirety of the Subjective Logic, establishing its significance for understanding the deduction of the Concept and for the transition to the Idea. In her analysis, she closely follows Hegel's division of the Subjective Logic and addresses Subjectivity, Objectivity, and the Idea in chapters 5–8, respectively. With chapter 5, Ng moves to a discussion of how Hegel finds judgment to arise from the "original judgement of life," the initial unity and division of subject and object within life (172). Chapter 6 extends this discussion by elucidating the tension Hegel... (shrink)

the article explores the putatively non-metaphysical – non-voluntarist, and even non-causal – concept of freedom outlined in Hegel’s work and discusses its influential interpretation by robert Pippin as an ‘essentially practical’ concept. I argue that Hegel’s affirmation of freedom must be distinguished from that of Kant and Fichte, since it does not rely on a prior understanding of self-consciousness as an originally teleological relation and it has not the nature of a claim ‘from a practical point of view’.

This paper argues that Hegel's depiction of knowledge, as presented in the Encyclopaedia philosophy of subjective Spirit, is founded on what he deems to be the practical interests of self-consciousness. More specifically, it highlights the significance of the will in Hegel's understanding of the cognitive process. I begin with a survey of the relation between category-formation and the notion of self-determining freedom in the Logic , and therewith draw attention to the unity of thinking and willing in the Concept. (...) I then indicate how Hegel's philosophy of subjective Spirit should be read as the applied logic of the Concept, according to which the socially constituted self-conscious I seeks to realise its claims to freedom through its theoretical cognitions of objects. As part of what could be called Hegel's integrative theory of the faculties, I finally argue that the will underscores both the determinate character of our theoretical cognitions and the reflexivity of knowledge in general. On this score, I maintain that Hegel, whose relation to Kant and Fichte I also consider, is of the view that it is with reference to willing that we can account for the self-referential nature of reason in toto as the actualised unity of theoretical-practical subjectivity. (shrink)

Lectures from the late period of Fichte’s career, never before available in English. Translated here for the first time into English, this text furnishes a new window into the final phase of Fichte’s career. Delivered in the summer of 1812 at the newly founded University of Berlin, Fichte’s lectures on ethics explore some of the key concepts and issues in his evolving system of radical idealism. Addressing moral theory, the theory of education, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of (...) religion, Fichte engages both directly and indirectly with some of his most important contemporaries and philosophical rivals, including Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. Benjamin D. Crowe’s translation includes extensive annotations and a German-English glossary. His introduction situates the text systematically, historically, and institutionally within an era of cultural ferment and intellectual experimentation, and includes a bibliography of recent scholarship on Fichte’s moral theory and on the final period of his career. (shrink)

O artigo tenciona explicar o conceito da subjetividade na Ciência da Lógica (CdL) a partir de sua forma inicial, diferentemente da maioria dos vários estudos sobre a temática, que discute as formas já mais desenvolvidas, que ocorrem dentro da Lógica do Conceito. Porém, como essa última, desde início, é “Lógica Subjetiva”, a subjetividade precisa ser constituída antes ou no ponto do começo dela. Essa subjetividade inicial e mínima explica-se por primeiro pela identificação de subjetividade e liberdade, por segundo, pela compreensão (...) da liberdade como autodeterminação. Essa autodeterminação ocorre, na CdL, pela primeira vez na “necessidade absoluta” e torna-se verdadeiramente autônoma na “relação absoluta” da “ação recíproca”. Essa, quando levada a suas últimas conseqüências, é autodeterminação conceitual ou conceito autodeterminante – e aí inicia-se o reino da liberdade. Mas isso quer dizer que liberdade, inicialmente, não é outra coisa que necessidade internalizada na determinação conceitual, isto é, autodeterminação necessária do conceito. Obviamente, o conhecer, destarte, não faz parte da forma inicial da liberdade e da subjetividade: subjetividade não é, originariamente, auto-consciente. Seu saber-de-si, a subjetividade adquire apenas, através de um desenvolvimento longo e complexo, na “Idéia”, mais especificamente na “Idéia do conhecer”, para plenificar-se na “Idéia absoluta”. O artigo conclui com uma crítica dessa transição à consciência no desenvolvimento imanente da subjetividade, mantendo que a consciência seja algo originário, não reduzível a estruturas conceituais. Palavras chaves: Hegel, Subjetividade, Liberdade, Consciência, Ciência da Lógica. (shrink)

Freedom after Kant situates Kant's concept of freedom in relation to leading philosophers of the period to trace a detailed history of philosophical thinking on freedom from the 18th to the 20th century. Beginning with German Idealism, the volume presents Kant's writings on freedom and their reception by contemporaries, successors, followers and critics. From exchanges of philosophical ideas on freedom between Kant and his contemporaries, Reinhold and Fichte, through to Kant's ideas on rational self-determination in Hegel and Schelling, we (...) see Kant's original arguments transformed through concepts of autonomy, freedom and absolutes. The political aspect of Kant's freedom finds further articulation in chapters on Marx and Mill who developed their own notions of political freedom after Kant. Revealing how Kant's concept of freedom shaped the history of philosophy in the broadest sense, contributors chart the development of an ethics of freedom in the 20th century which brings Kant into conversation with Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Levinas and Murdoch. This line of thinking on freedom signals a new departure for Kantian studies which brings his ideas into the present day and traverses major schools of thought including Idealism, Marxism, existentialism and moral philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, we present for the first time Schelling’s early critique of absolute idealism within his middle metaphysics (1804–1820), which has great relevance and influence on the subsequent course of German philosophy, and, more broadly considered, on later systematic thinking about the categories of unity and duality. We aim to show how Schelling defends a form of metaphysical duality, from 1804 onwards, without relapsing into a stronger Kantian dualism. In this sense, our author rejects both the dualism between nature (...) and spirit, necessity and freedom, as well as the monist-immanent metaphysical stance later associated with Hegelian panlogism. Against Hegel, Schelling increasingly vindicates the reality of the finite and degrades the infinite to mere ideality in a movement that resembles later existentialism. Furthermore, we defend Schelling against the accusation of irrationalism that sections of Hegelianism formulated against him and present the concept of infinity without the notion of totality, which he thinks of, much like Fichte, in the light of the concept of an ‘infinite task’. Schelling’s later criticisms of Hegel are shown to be influenced by his early idealist critique of the period at hand. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel on Love: The Early Theological Writings Recognition and Spirit: Hegel's Appropriation and Critique of Fichte Hegel's Philosophical Theology: Love, Reconciliation, True Infinity.

O presente artigo pretende discutir a transformação, proposta por Hegel, da noção kantiana de liberdade como autonomia no paradigma do reconhecimento recíproco. Na primeira seção, vou retomar alguns pontos da Fundamentação que vêm sendo interpretados como conduzindo a paradoxos na concepção de autonomia (1). Em seguida, pretendo recordar esquematicamente a interpretação proposta por Loparic acerca do ‘fato da razão’, procurando especificar aí uma solução semântica para o problema da normatividade embasada na autonomia (2). Na terceira seção, a intenção é fazer (...) uma comparação entre a interpretação semântica do sentimento de respeito com as heterodoxas propostas, desenvolvidas recentemente por Honneth e Brandom, de uma interpretação intersubjetivista dessa noção, tentando avaliar a partir disso que tipo de dificuldade uma concepção pragmática de normatividade teria de resolver (3). Em seguida, o objetivo é expor, de maneira bastante esquemática, o modo como Fichte articula a transformação do conceito de respeito em termos da noção, formulada por ele, de reconhecimento recíproco (4). Finalmente, nas partes conclusivas, pretendo reconstruir a interpretação, proposta por Brandom, para a transformação do modelo de normatividade baseado na autonomia naquele baseado no reconhecimento, ponderando aí motivos tanto epistêmicos quanto práticos de radicalização pragmática da semântica kantiana (5). Palavras-chave: G.W.F Hegel; I. Kant; J. G. Fichte; Reconhecimento; Autonomia. From Semantics to Pragmatics: Kant, Hegel and the Debate surrounding Normativity Abstract: This article aims to discuss the transformation, proposed by Hegel, of the Kantian notion of freedom as autonomy into the paradigm of reciprocal recognition. In the first section, I will return to some points of the Groundwork that have been interpreted as leading to paradoxes in the conception of autonomy (1). Next, I intend to schematically recall the interpretation proposed by Loparic about the 'fact of reason', seeking to specify the semantic solution to the problem of normativity based on autonomy (2). In the third section, the intention is to make a comparison between the semantic interpretation of the feeling of respect with the heterodox proposals, recently developed by Honneth and Brandom, of an intersubjectivist interpretation of this notion, trying to evaluate from this what type of difficulty a pragmatic conception of normativity would have to resolve (3). In the following section, the aim is to present, in a rather schematic manner, the way in which Fichte articulates the transformation of the concept of respect in terms of the notion, formulated by him, of reciprocal recognition (4). Finally, in the concluding parts, I intend to reconstruct the interpretation, proposed by Brandom, for the transformation of the model of normativity based on autonomy into that articulated in terms of recognition, considering both epistemic and practical reasons for the pragmatic radicalization of Kantian semantics (5). Keywords: G.W.F Hegel; I. Kant; J. G. Fichte; Recognition; Autonomy. De la semántica a la pragmática: Kant, Hegel y el debate sobre la normatividade Resumen: Este artículo pretende discutir la transformación, propuesta por Hegel, de la noción kantiana de libertad como autonomía en el paradigma del reconocimiento recíproco. En la primera sección, revisaré algunos puntos de la Fundación que se han interpretado como conducentes a paradojas en la concepción de autonomía (1). A continuación, pretendo recordar esquemáticamente la interpretación propuesta por Loparic sobre el “hecho de la razón”, buscando especificar allí una solución semántica al problema de la normatividad basada en la autonomía (2). En el tercer apartado, se pretende hacer una comparación entre la interpretación semántica del sentimiento de respeto con las propuestas heterodoxas, recientemente desarrolladas por Honneth y Brandom, de una interpretación intersubjetivista de esta noción, tratando de evaluar a partir de ésta qué tipo de dificultad una concepción pragmática de la normatividad tendría que resolver (3). En la siguiente parte, el objetivo es exponer, de manera muy esquemática, la manera en que Fichte articula la transformación del concepto de respeto en términos de la noción, formulada por él, de reconocimiento recíproco (4). Finalmente, en las partes finales, pretendo reconstruir la interpretación propuesta por Brandom para la transformación del modelo de normatividad basado en la autonomía en uno basado en el reconocimiento, considerando razones tanto epistémicas como prácticas para la radicalización pragmática de la semántica kantiana (5). Palabras clave: G.W.F Hegel; I. Kant; JG Fichte; Reconocimiento; Autonomía. Data de registro: 19/08/2024 Data de aceite: 25/09/2024. (shrink)

Why are Kant and Hegel so notoriously hard to understand? It has hitherto gone unnoticed that Kant and Hegel account for philosophy's necessary obscurity by recasting what they think is an ancient tradition of philosophical esotericism. Reconstructing these accounts generates new interpretations of Kant's deduction of freedom and Hegel's deduction of the concept of science . Both deductions aim to make philosophy universally accessible. Each raises, but fails to settle, the question of philosophy's exclusions. ;Following a procedure of Cavell's, (...) I offer a thematics of esotericism, permitting a wide variety of esotericisms. Recent discussion knows only one: elitist obfuscation. I trace several eighteenth century controversies, showing that elitist obfuscation was rejected by Kant and others, but that other esotericisms remained available. I argue against the interpretation of Kant as a secret obfuscatory elitist. ;I then characterize the shift in Kant's thinking leading to his deduction of freedom and his account of esotericism. Building upon work by Allison and Henrich, I interpret the fact of reason as a practical deduction, consisting in an actualization of the capacity for freedom. The first-personal character of the deduction underlies Kant's explicit recasting of esotericism in his response to Schlosser's Seventh Letter esotericism . Kant's metaphysics of morals is esoteric because it is accessible only through the fact of reason: the first-personal actualization of the capacity for freedom shared by all human beings. Kant locates philosophy's "true secret", which Plato grasped only obscurely, in this esoteric, yet universally accessible, practical metaphysics. ;Finally, I interpret Hegel's Phenomenology as a practical deduction whose first-personal character is expressed by the Hegelian "we". This avoids the circularity problem facing interpretations based upon Kant's theoretical deduction of the categories, and enables the reconstruction of Hegel's account of the esotericism of determinate negation. I argue that Fichte's and Schelling's accounts of esotericism endanger Kant's commitment to universal accessibility and that Hegel seeks to preserve Kant's commitment without abandoning their insights. However, neither Kant nor Hegel accounts sufficiently for the resistance their work encounters. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative anti-liberal thinkers were broadcast by the BBC in 1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years later. They comprise one of Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and on the history of ideas--views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty," and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. Working with BBC (...) transcripts and Berlin's annotated drafts, Henry Hardy has recreated these lectures, which consolidated the forty-three-year-old Berlin's growing reputation as a man who could speak about intellectual matters in an accessible and involving way. In his lucid examination of sometimes complex ideas, Berlin demonstrates that a balanced understanding and a resilient defense of human liberty depend on learning both from the errors of freedom's alleged defenders and from the dark insights of its avowed antagonists. This book throws light on the early development of Berlin's most influential ideas and supplements his already published writings with fuller treatments of Helve;tius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, and Saint-Simon, with the ultra-conservative Maistre bringing up the rear. These thinkers gave to freedom a new dimension of power--power that, Berlin argues, has historically brought about less, not more, individual liberty. These lectures show Berlin at his liveliest and most torrentially spontaneous, testifying to his talents as a teacher of rare brilliance and impact. Listeners tuned in expectantly each week to the hour-long broadcasts and found themselves mesmerized by Berlin's astonishingly fluent extempore style. One listener, a leading historian of ideas who was then a schoolboy, was to recount that the lectures "excited me so much that I sat, for every talk, on the floor beside the wireless, taking notes." This excitement is at last recreated here for all to share. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin's celebrated radio lectures on six formative anti-liberal thinkers were broadcast by the BBC in 1952. They are published here for the first time, fifty years later. They comprise one of Berlin's earliest and most convincing expositions of his views on human freedom and on the history of ideas--views that later found expression in such famous works as "Two Concepts of Liberty," and were at the heart of his lifelong work on the Enlightenment and its critics. Working with BBC (...) transcripts and Berlin's annotated drafts, Henry Hardy has recreated these lectures, which consolidated the forty-three-year-old Berlin's growing reputation as a man who could speak about intellectual matters in an accessible and involving way.In his lucid examination of sometimes complex ideas, Berlin demonstrates that a balanced understanding and a resilient defense of human liberty depend on learning both from the errors of freedom's alleged defenders and from the dark insights of its avowed antagonists. This book throws light on the early development of Berlin's most influential ideas and supplements his already published writings with fuller treatments of Helvétius, Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, and Saint-Simon, with the ultra-conservative Maistre bringing up the rear. These thinkers gave to freedom a new dimension of power--power that, Berlin argues, has historically brought about less, not more, individual liberty.These lectures show Berlin at his liveliest and most torrentially spontaneous, testifying to his talents as a teacher of rare brilliance and impact. Listeners tuned in expectantly each week to the hour-long broadcasts and found themselves mesmerized by Berlin's astonishingly fluent extempore style. One listener, a leading historian of ideas who was then a schoolboy, was to recount that the lectures "excited me so much that I sat, for every talk, on the floor beside the wireless, taking notes." This excitement is at last recreated here for all to share. (shrink)

It is, by now, a well-established thesis that one major path that runs from Kant, through Fichte and Schelling, up to Hegel is defined by the conception of freedom as autonomy. It is less known and has been less frequently the object of study that from Kant to Hegel a new idea of life takes shape as well. Even less taken into account is the fact that these two paths from Kant to Hegel might be systematically intertwined. If the notion (...) of life in German Idealism is discussed at all, it has been discussed mostly in dealing with the philosophies of nature and biology of Kant and his successors. This framing is, of course, not wrong in itself; yet to my mind we can only fully account for the thought of what is living and the new interest that the idealist philosophies of nature actually deserve if we regard life as a practical notion. For the idealists, life is, as Fichte has it, an “analogue of freedom in nature,” and it describes the one form of object we can encounter in nature that possesses a kind of unity and organization that comes close to the unity and the organization of spirit. In various accounts of German Idealism, life is not only regarded as an analogue of a self-grounded order, but figures furthermore as a precondition of the actuality of freedom: It is in being alive that we might become free. How exactly this is so is of course not only a very complicated issue but also a contested one among Kant and his successors. In order to outline at least two basic approaches to relating ‘life’ and ‘autonomy,’ I would like to present a sketch of a reading of Kant, in whose works the analogy of life and autonomy first manifests itself, and of Hegel, who has to my mind most fully developed the potential of this constellation. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of J. G. Fichte's transcendental argument for the necessity of mutual recognition in Foundations of Natural Right. Fichte's argument purports to show that, as a condition of the possibility of self-consciousness, we must take ourselves to stand in relations of mutual recognition with other agents like ourselves. After reconstructing the steps of Fichte's argument, I present what I call the ‘modal dilemma’, which highlights a serious ambiguity in Fichte's deduction. According to the modal (...) dilemma, the conclusion to Fichte's transcendental argument—that as a condition of the possibility of our self-consciousness, we must recognize and be recognized by others—expresses either metaphysical or normative necessity. However, no normative conclusion follows from Fichte's premises, and the metaphysical claim that does follow from his argument appears to be implausibly strong. Thus the argument looks like a failure on either interpretation of the conclusion's modality. In the penultimate section of the paper, I propose a new interpretation of the argument that avoids the modal dilemma and provides a normative grounding of Fichte's concept of right. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an interpretation of Hegel’s account of ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) in the 1802-3 System of Ethical Life as a critique of Fichte’s account of recognition in the 1796-7 Foundations of Natural Right. In the first three sections of the paper I argue that Fichte’s account of recognition in the domain of right is not concerned with recognition as a moral attitude. I then turn, in section four, to a discussion of Hegel’s critique and transformation of Fichte’s conception (...) of recognition. Hegel’s transformation consists, I argue, in the claim that a comprehensive account of recognition in the domain of right must be concerned with recognition as a moral attitude. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe by John SkorupskiJ. P. MessinaJohn Skorupski. Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 560. Hardcover, $130.00.John Skorupski's Being and Freedom traces the development of modern ethics in France, Germany, and England, as set in motion by two great revolutions: the French Revolution and Kant's methodological revolution in the Critique of Pure (...) Reason. I begin this review by offering [End Page 714] a brief summary of the book (which consists of eight lengthy chapters, an introduction, and a brief conclusion). I then raise some interpretive worries and offer an overall assessment.In chapter 1, Skorupski reminds us that the French Revolution, a physical struggle between opposing factions, was also a battleground of ideas. In opposing the ancien régime, revolutionaries took aim at the "Catholic-feudal order" (27). Underlying this order was an ethical view, "holism," according to which a person lives well through excellent performance of community roles assigned by family, state, and church. When individual interests conflict with these social roles, the latter take precedence. Revolutionaries (partially inspired by Rousseau) railed against this. On their view, persons were born for freedom, not the chains of traditional life. To realize such freedom demanded a radical democratic state. Here, too, fidelity to the ethical whole (the Republic) sometimes required sacrifices on the part of individuals. But in a properly constituted republic, these sacrifices would be self-imposed requirements of the general will.As revolution turned to terror and blood became the regular currency of sacrifice, critics like Guizot saw the ancien régime's parochialism as a symptom of a larger problem with its underlying ethics, one it shared with the radicals aligned against it: its commitment to holism. Holism says that some social entities have a good not reducible to the good of their members. Additionally, these social wholes have their own rights that sometimes override individual rights (28, 59). These features make it easy for holist orders to justify sacrificing individuals for collective goods. If this is the disease, individualism of the sort associated with Kantian ethics can seem to be the cure.Chapter 2 argues that the new critical philosophy resulting from Kant's "Copernican" Revolution is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kant offers no good reason for positing a noumenal world and locating freedom there (77–79). On the other hand, there is lasting promise in the idea that morality follows from each person's individual autonomy. And yet, in the end, Kant's arguments fail here, too. For deriving morality from autonomy requires an explicit commitment to impartiality, which does not follow from autonomy (83–102). And, even when suitably modified, Kant's ethical principles risk emptiness if they fail to take content from our relationships and social roles (112, 148). Unfortunately, Kant suggests that doing so would perpetrate heteronomy, making such emptiness inevitable (102).By chapter 3, the tension between holist and individualist conceptions of ethics has become Skorupski's central leitmotif. On the one hand, individualists are well positioned to resist oppression and terror. On the other hand, individualism risks atomism and alienation from our attachments and feelings. Such alienation leads Schiller to reject Kant's views on freedom and virtue (161). For our author, this is as it should be.Skorupski next turns to Fichte. Although Fichte takes a step away from transcendental idealism by making intellectual intuition the hallmark of our subjectivity (173), he agrees with Kant that morality follows from autonomy. Indeed, for Fichte, autonomy commits us to striving for full self-sufficiency, which appears to court a similar atomism. Yet this impression is corrected when Fichte turns to politics. There, Fichte grounds rights (as permissible demands) in mutual recognition (182–83). This positions him to see the state and the family as ethical wholes (187–88), pointing away from Kantian individualism back toward holism.Hegel takes these steps away from Kant to their logical conclusion. As Skorupski explains in chapter 4, Hegel argues that the individualist systems grounded in autonomy and abstract right (Moralität) mark but stages on the way to moral... (shrink)

What does it mean to be a person? And in what way is this connected to our finitude, i.e. to the properly human aspect of our existence? By analyzing some of the core features of our form of life (personal identity, self-consciousness, freedom, autonomy, responsibility), Michael Quante answers these questions arguing that it is possible to be a person and lead an authentically human life only within social relationships of recognition: only in these relationships, it is possible to know oneself (...) and act autonomously and responsibly. Through a close examination of the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel, on the one hand, and of the most recent debates on analytical ethics, on the other, Quante thus lays the foundations for a pragmatistic anthropology, that is, for a conception focused on the active nature of human existence. The volume is a revised version of the Lectures given by Michael Quante in 2017 at the PhD Course in Philosophy at the University of Padova. (shrink)

Our understanding of Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, including his late attack on Hegel, is incomplete unless we trace it to the early “Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,” which initiate his engagement with the problem of systematicity—that judgment makes deriving a system of a priori conditions from a first principle necessary, while this capacity’s finitude makes this impossible. Schelling aims to demonstrate this problem’s intractability. My conceptual aim is to reconstruct this from the “Letters,” which reject Fichte’s claim (...) that the Wissenschaftslehre is an unrivalled system. I read Schelling as charging Fichte with misrepresenting a system’s livability or commensurability with our finitude. My historical aim is to provide a framework for understanding Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, which argues that a system’s liveability depends on its incompleteness or limitation by our finitude. On my reading, Schelling is early and continually committed to systematicity within the bounds of human finitude. (shrink)

Investigates the concept of recognition (anerkennen) under which term the German idealists discussed the Other, intersubjectivity, the interhuman.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 305-306 [Access article in PDF] Fichte, J. G. Foundations of Natural Right according to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre. Edited by Frederick Neuhouser. Translated by Michael Baur. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xxxv + 338. Cloth, $64.95; Paper, $22.95. Though best known for his immensely influential effort to "systematize" Kant's Critical philosophy (...) and to ground the same upon a transcendental analysis of the structure of self-consciousness, Fichte also made seminal contributions to social and political philosophy. Of these contributions, the most original is surely his effort to demonstrate that mutual recognition of free subjects is a condition for the possibility of individual self-consciousness. This transcendental deduction of the essentially social or intersubjective character of human beings provides the theoretical underpinnings for a pure theory of Naturrecht ("natural law" or "natural right"), in which the principles of political philosophy are established without any reference to the purely practical principles of morality. Unlike moral laws, the principles of right are only hypothetically or conditionally valid, inasmuch as they are dependent upon one's free decision to live in a community of free beings and to limit one's own freedom accordingly.Justice and law are thereby grounded upon a new, distinctly political conception of [End Page 305] human freedom, which is itself grounded in a new account of the intersubjective dimension of self-consciousness. Following his deduction of the pure concept of right, Fichte proceeds to deduce the conditions for applyingthe same, among the most significant of which is embodiment. Here again, Fichte was a pioneer in arguing for the necessary connection between self-consciousness and the human body. The next step is to demonstrate in detail how social relations between embodied free agents must be organized if such agents are to co-exist in a community. This hypothetical application of the pure concept of right establishes both the "right of coercion" and the basic outlines of the "right of the state," and hence the general form of any legitimate state constitution.Though it appears that Fichte is working with the social contract tradition, his deductive strategy requires a fundamental revision of the same and allows him to construct a theory of the just state that is both recognizably "liberal" and extraordinarily open to considerations of economic justice and social welfare. It is for this reason that some European philosophers (notably, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut) have in recent decades employed Fichte's political thought as a major resource in their effort to defend a rights-based political theory against attacks from both the right and the left.The primary source of Fichte's political philosophy is his 1796/97 Grundlage des Naturrecht, a work that exercised a decisive influence upon Hegel (whose Phenomenology of Spirit is often and incorrectly described as the first effort, within the context of post-Kantian Idealism, to demonstrate that intersubjectivity is a condition for the possibility of self-consciousness). Directly and indirectly (that is, through Hegel) Fichte's social and political philosophy exercised a strong influence upon Marx and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century socialists.For all of the above reasons, the appearance of a new and reliable English translation of Fichte's Grundlage des Naturrechts is a cause for celebration. Let it be said at once that Michael Baur's translation is simply marvelous. It is accurate and readable, as well as faithful to the style of this, one of Fichte's best-written works. Frederick Neuhouser's Introduction to this translation is equally fine. In it, Neuhouser not only outlines Fichte's main arguments and conclusions, but also offers a brief but trenchant critical appraisal of the historical significance of Fichte's achievement and of the potential relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates and discussions. The Introduction also includes a provocative and well-balanced discussion of some of the unresolved problems implicit in Fichte's arguments. Readers will also appreciate the useful "Guide to Further Reading," and index... (shrink)

Several commentators have argued that Hegel's account of ‘self-consciousness’ in Chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit can be read as an ‘immanent critique’ of Fichte's idealism. If this is correct, it raises the question of whether Hegel's account of ‘recognition’ in Chapter IV can be interpreted as a critique of Fichte's conception of recognition as expounded in the Foundations of Natural Right. A satisfactory answer to this question will have to provide a plausible interpretation of the ‘life and death (...) struggle’ as an immanent critique of Fichte's account of recognition. This paper aims to provide such an interpretation. The first part of the paper provides a discussion of Fichte's account of recognition that emphasizes its ‘epistemic’ concerns. The second part argues that Hegel's account of the ‘life and death struggle’ can be read plausibly as an immanent critique of Fichte's account of recognition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German IdealismDaniel BreazealeDieter Henrich. Between Kant and Hegel. Lectures on German Idealism. David S. Pacini, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. xliii + 341. Cloth, $62.00.As the author explains, the title of this work is intended to distinguish it from ordinary, Whiggish accounts of the development of German philosophy “from Kant to Hegel.” Instead, Heinrich treats the positions of Kant, (...) Fichte, and Hegel as potentially viable alternatives, none of which must be viewed as aufgehoben by those that followed, and all of which deserve reconsideration by contemporary philosophers.Dieter Henrich is known for two things: first, for championing a minutely-detailed, revisionist approach to the history of post-Kantian philosophy; and second, for his insistence that the central problem of German idealism is that of self-consciousness. Both elements are well represented in this book, which is a revised version of a series of lectures delivered (in English) at Harvard in 1973. The text thus antedates many of the more recent discoveries and claims of Henrich and his student collaborators in the “Jena project,” though some of the results are alluded to in the useful footnotes and apparatus provided by David S. Pacini, who attended the original lectures and has expert knowledge of Henrich’s more recent work.Part 1 commences with a masterful overview of some of the distinctive features of German philosophy in the decades following the publication of Kant’s Critiques, with one lecture devoted primarily to Fichte, another to Kant’s concept of self-consciousness, and a third to the systematic role of freedom in Kant’s system.Part 2 focuses on the earliest reception of Kant’s philosophy and its social, religious, and philosophical context. A lecture on how Kant was criticized by and responded to defenders of direct intuition is followed by two lectures on Jacobi’s criticisms of Kantianism, which contain a wealth of information concerning the influence upon the idealists of Platonism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Spinozism, Lessing, and the contemporary “theology of the spirit.” These lectures clearly show why the next generation of idealists saw themselves challenged to construct a “Spinozism of freedom.” Part 2 concludes with two perfunctory lectures on Reinhold’s “Elementary Philosophy,” followed by another on the skepticism of G. E. Schulze (“Anesidemus”), whose critique of Kant and Reinhold was instrumental in making questions of method of central philosophical concern.Part 3 is devoted to Fichte, whose importance for the development of philosophy after Kant can hardly, in Henrich’s view, be overemphasized and whose influence “derived from his uncanny ability to penetrate the intellectual life of an entire epoch, an accomplishment [End Page 330] that even Hegel did not rival” (184). The first of the eight lectures on Fichte provides a detailed analysis of Fichte’s Anesidemus review (1794), in which Henrich discerns evidence of the fateful transformation of transcendental philosophy into an explicit theory of mental activity based upon a method of internal self-awareness and description (“intellectual intuition”). The next two lectures are devoted to a close reading of Fichte’s unpublished manuscript from the same period, “Personal Mediations on Elementary Philosophy,” which, according to Henrich, is where the “dialectical method” first appears in post-Kantian philosophy. Henrich has little to say about the actual content and systematic structure of Fichte’s only full-scale published presentation of his system, in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, offering instead a rather free “reconstruction” of some of its more important doctrines, on time consciousness and the hovering of the imagination. But he does provide an insightful analysis of Fichte’s theory of consciousness as a self-referring and self-explaining activity and a spirited defense of Fichte’s employment of the term ‘setzen’ (“positing”) to describe this activity. The final lecture on Fichte discusses some of the difficulties implicit in Fichte’s “dynamic monism” and how he tried—unsuccessfully, in Henrich’s view—to resolve them in subsequent, unpublished versions of his system, where he moved from his early, more “descriptive” theory of the mind toward a more “explanatory” account, according to which the ground of self-consciousness lies outside the mind itself (in... (shrink)

This paper aims to explore conceptual relationships between philosophical developments to support freedom of speech in John Milton´s Areopagitica and Johann Gottlieb Fichte´s Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought. I intend to enhance the philosophical heritance collected and recreated by Fichte. This paper hypothesizes that both theories state that freedom of speech is a condition for the development of morality. In both cases, moral deliberation has a public character, given that moral judgment needs the consideration of different viewpoints about the (...) question at stake. Finally, in both cases, it is defended a republican concept of power, characterized by opposition to moral paternalism, as a form of despotism. (shrink)

Essays address the major themes of Pareyson’s hermeneutic philosophy in the context of his existentialist approach to personhood. What if the inexhaustible were the only mode of self-revelation of truth? The question of the inexhaustibility of truth, and its relation to being and interpretation, is the challenge posed by the philosophy of the prominent Italian thinker Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). Art, the interpretation of truth, and the theory of being as the ontology of both inexhaustibility and freedom constitute the main themes (...) of Pareyson’s distinctive form of philosophical hermeneutics, which develops also on the basis of another fundamental concept, that of personhood understood in the radically existentialist sense of the human being. In Thinking the Inexhaustible, Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder bring together essays devoted to Pareyson’s hermeneutic philosophy by important international scholars, including well-known Italian thinkers Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, who were both students of Pareyson. Pareyson’s philosophy of inexhaustibility unfolds in conversation with major figures in Western intellectual history—from Croce to Valéry, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev; from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and German romanticism; and from Pascal to Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Heidegger. “This book introduces, in a way that has not been done before, the central ideas from Pareyson’s long philosophical career. It opens up pathways for further critical analysis and fills in a neglected history within the broader scope of continental philosophy.” — James Risser, editor of Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays on the Work of the 1930s. (shrink)

The contemporaries of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) openly acknowledged his towering importance. Both Fichte and Hegel praised him in the same breath with Kant as having launched the philosophical revolution they sought to complete. Yet for more than a century, misrepresentations of Jacobi's thought have stood in the way of a proper appreciation of his insights. In her study of this long-neglected German philosopher, internationally-renowned Jacobi expert Birgit Sandkaulen interprets his philosophical writings in their intellectual context. Originally published in German (...) and translated into English for the first time, this is a major contribution to reading the life, work, and legacy of Jacobi. The biographical chapter on Jacobi's life as a public intellectual was written specifically for this English edition. Offering new perspectives on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Sandkaulen focuses on Jacobi's specific conception of practical realism. This conception, the source of Jacobi's famous defense of faith and human freedom, matches his critique of the German Idealists: the post-Kantian systems of German Idealism were bound to fail. Sandkaulen shows us that long before 20th-century philosophers took up this line of thought, indeed at the very origin of the epoch-making developments of classical German philosophy, Jacobi articulated a practical, ethical, personal realism that is as philosophically appealing and relevant today as it was in its time"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

This book investigates various aspects of freedom as developed in the philosophical systems of Kant and Fichte. Freedom, both Kant and Fichte insist, does not mean that we can chose or think independently from all rules or necessity, but rather that we willingly accept a certain kind of submission under these rules. Therefore, the conditions of our knowledge affect and inform our self-understanding, our willing, and the ways we justify our practical choices. The essays in this volume explore both philosophers' (...) conceptions of human freedom as they relate to art, history, politics, and religion. They reveal how integrating freedom into a system of thought is crucial for our understanding of modern philosophy. System and Freedom in Kant and Fichte will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Kant, modern philosophy, and German Studies. (shrink)

In the Science of Logic, Hegel criticizes Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre for advancing from the beginning through external reflection and thus failing to understand both the nature of the beginning and the proper method to advance from it. This article shows that Fichte's advance from the beginning preempts Hegel's critique and shares Hegel's premises with respect to the method of advancing. The author first analyzes Hegel's critique of Fichte in the Science of Logic, which he follows by showing that Fichte levels a (...) similar critique against Schelling's conception of the beginning set out in his system of 1801. Turning to the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/5, the author then demonstrates that Fichte's method of advancing from the beginning addresses every point of Hegel's critique. He concludes by identifying the similarity and difference between Fichte's and Hegel's methods of advancing. (shrink)

The paper investigates Fichte’s and Hegel’s philosophy in perspective of their theories of transcendental history of human spirit. According to their programmes, explication of our usual experience and of its a priori structure is to be done through a systematic, i.e. principle led scale of basic actions of the human spirit. The paper discusses particular implementations of the project in Fichte’s Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Outline of the Distinctive Character of the Wissenschaftslehre and in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (...) and Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The paper shows that even though the two concepts of idealistic history of the human spirit share some common features, they differ both in the positions they assign to the idealistic history in the whole of the philosophy system and in the concept of the „mechanism“, through which the development of the human spirit happens. Der vorgelegte Aufsatz behandelt Fichtes und Hegels Philosophie in Hinblick auf ihr gemeinsames Theorie-Programm einer transzendentalen Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes. Diesem Programm gema. soll die Explikation unserer gewohnlichen Erfahrung und ihrer apriorischen Struktur dadurch geliefert werden, dass eine systematische, d. h. durch ein Prinzip geleitete Stufenfolge der verschiedenen grundlegenden Handlungsweisen des menschlichen Geistes dargestellt wird. Es werden hier die konkreten Ausfuhrungen dieses Projekts in der Fichteschen Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre bzw. im Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre und in der Hegelschen Phänomenologie des Geistes, die er in der gleichnamigen Schrift und in der Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften vorlegt, erortert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass sich trotz mancher gemeinsamer Zuge diese zwei Auffassungen der idealistischen Geschichte des menschlichen Geistes sowohl in der Stellung, die ihr im Ganzen des philosophischen System zugewiesen wird, als auch in der Auffassung des „Mechanismus“, mittels dessen die Entwicklung des Geistes geschieht, unterscheiden. (shrink)

This new translation of The Science of Logic (also known as 'Greater Logic') includes the revised Book I (1832), Book II (1813), and Book III (1816). Recent research has given us a detailed picture of the process that led Hegel to his final conception of the System and of the place of the Logic within it. We now understand how and why Hegel distanced himself from Schelling, how radical this break with his early mentor was, and to what extent it (...) entailed a return (but with a difference) to Fichte and Kant. In the introduction to the volume, George di Giovanni presents in synoptic form the results of recent scholarship on the subject, and, while recognizing the fault lines in Hegel's System that allow opposite interpretations, argues that the Logic marks the end of classical metaphysics. The translation is accompanied by a full apparatus of historical and explanatory notes. (shrink)

In seiner ‘Existenzerhellung der Freiheit’ reflektiert Jaspers, das Problemfeld der Freiheit in einem Kontrast zu den Begriffen, Phänomenen und Bedingungen der Unfreiheit und der Grenzen der Freiheit. Dem Problemfeld der Freiheit kann man im Denken und Handeln nur dann gerecht werden, wenn man nicht nur zwischen den verschiedenen Begriffen und Phänomenen der Freiheit unterscheidet, sondern auch zwischen den verschiedenen Begriffen und Phänomenen von Grenzen der Freiheit, wie z.B. durch die allgemeine Naturgesetzlichkeit und die menschliche Natur, durch besondere Bedingungen in Natur, (...) Kultur und Gesellschaft, durch gesundheitliches Befinden und individuelle Persönlichkeit, durch situative Begrenzungen, normative Forderungen und konkrete Grenzsituationen, wie z.B. von Leiden, Kampf, Schuld, Wagnis und Tod zeigen. Jaspers hat sich zum Problemfeld der Freiheit sowohl in seiner Allgemeinen Psychopathologie, in seinen pathographischen Untersuchungen, in seiner Psychologie der Weltanschauung und in einigen seiner philosophischen Schriften geäußert. Im zweiten Band seines frühen Hauptwerkes Philosophie mit dem Titel Existenzerhellung hat er jedoch eine umfassende Abhandlung zu dem komplexen Problemfeld der Freiheit verfasst. Dort behandelt Jaspers fast alle wesentlichen Begriffe und Phänomene der Freiheit bis hin zu seiner Konzeption einer existenziellen Freiheit. Jaspers geht anfangs von einem unbestimmten Begriff der Freiheit aus, dem kein bestimmtes Phänomen entspricht und der deswegen nur Illusionen erzeugen und einem ideologischem Denken dienen kann. Dann aber unterscheidet Jaspers zwischen verschiedenen Begriffen und Phänomenen der Freiheit. Dabei scheint er nicht nur wie die meisten zeitgenössischen Philosophen an Locke und Hume, Kant und Brentano, Wilhelm von Humboldt und John Stuart Mill anzuknüpfen, sondern auch an die Konzeptionen des Selbstbewusstseins bei Hegel, Fichte und Schelling. Da sich Jaspers nicht zuletzt auch mit den Schriften von Kierkegaard und Nietzsche auseinandergesetzt hat, gelangt er zu einer besonders umfangreichen und differenzierten Diskussion des ganzen Problemfeldes der Freiheit in der Moderne. Jaspers hat jedoch nicht nur verschiedene Freiheitsbegriffe und -phänomene unterschieden, sondern er hat auch zu den überlieferten Denkweisen im Form einer existenzphilosophischen Erhellung der Freiheit Stellung genommen. Dabei hat Jaspers’ Stellungnahme anders als viele zeitgenössische Beiträge über Freiheit und Determinimus den deutlichen und bewahrenswerten Vorzug, dass sie die unverfügbare und irreduzible Subjektivität der Willensfreiheit anerkennt. Damit knüpft Jaspers an Kants Einsicht an, dass der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens und ihrer praktischen Wirksamkeit immer nur die subjektive Evidenz inneren Erlebens zukommen kann. Dies unterscheidet sie von der Wahl- und Handlungsfreiheit, die man auch in konkreten Handlungssituationen objektiv feststellen kann. Der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens kommt damit weder die Objektivität empirischer Erkenntnis noch metaphysische Notwendigkeit zu. Die subjektive Evidenz des Erlebens eines freien Willens spricht nach Jaspers jedoch auch gegen einen weltanschaulichen, methodischen oder metaphysischen Determinismus, der sie aufgrund seiner Annahme einer kausal geschlossenen Wirklichkeit leichtfertig für eine bloße Illusion hält. Eine deterministische Weltanschauung oder Philosophie kann der condition humaine zumindest dann nicht gerecht werden, wenn sie die evidente Subjektivität eines freien Willens nicht auf eine plausible Art und Weise integriert. Jaspers’ wird der potentiellen Freiheit des menschlichen Willens dadurch gerecht, dass er ihre unverfügbare und irreduzible Subjektivität versteht und akzeptiert und erst gar nicht den abwegigen Versuch macht, sie durch eine objektivierende Einstellung zu objektivieren, wissenschaftlich zu erklären oder gar zu beweisen. (shrink)

Allen W. Wood presents the first book-length systematic exposition in English of Fichte's most important ethical work, the System of Ethics. He places this work in the context of Fichte's life and career, of his philosophical system, and in relation to his philosophy of right or justice and politics. Wood discusses Fichte's defense of freedom of the will, his grounding of the moral principle, theory of moral conscience, transcendental deduction of intersubjectivity, and his conception of free rational communication and the (...) rational society. He develops and emphasizes the social and political radicalism of Fichte's moral and political philosophy, and brings out the philosophical interest of Fichte's positions and arguments for present day philosophy. Fichte's Ethical Thought argues that Fichte is a major thinker in the history of ethics, and the most important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy in the past two centuries. (shrink)

The book presents Fichte’s position on free will as a form of compatibilism that has not yet been explored in the literature. Due to early rationalist convictions, Fichte is as much concerned with reconciling freedom with a logical and a theological determinism as he is with a causal determinism. He sees in Kant’s novel concept of a pure practical reason a new form of rationalism, one consisting of a system of moral rather than natural necessitating grounds. At the same (...) time, he adopts a more radically libertarian stance on free will than Kant. Every member in a sequence of free actions is a “first and absolute member” and could be other than it is given the same antecedent natural events and natural laws. The interest of Fichte as a theorist of freedom lies in how he brings together freedom and predetermination in a way that challenges our assumption about their mutual exclusivity. The book provides an overview of Fichte’s philosophical system – the so-called “Doctrine of Science” – from 1793 to 1800 with the aim of contextualizing his theory of free agency and destiny. In doing so, it sheds light on how consideration of these issues in turn shapes the system. (shrink)

The article shows that Fichte's conception of human rights implies concrete guidelines for the economic organization of states and international relations. First, I elucidate Fichte's view on human rights at the domestic level. Fichte's complex theory of human rights consists in a meta-right to live in a state that secures at least two “original rights”: a right to bodily inviolability and a right to sufficient property. I focus on the latter. Due to Fichte's unorthodox view of property rights as rights (...) to actions rather than objects, this amounts to a right to work. This right, according to Fichte, must be realized in a planned economy. Second, I focus on the global level. Fichte's right to sufficient (unorthodox) property has implications for three dimensions of global justice: cosmopolitan right, the right of nations and commercial relations. Third, I draw some insights from thinking through Fichte's global material constitution for long observed conceptual tensions regarding his political and legal philosophy, namely between freedom and security as well as cosmopolitanism and nationalism, and for current debates in politics and political theory. (shrink)

Despite the abundance of works and debates concerning the concept of freedom, whether individual, collective or metaphysical, it is noted that the questions surrounding the topic are inexhaustible and subject to reflection. Mainly with regard to Hegel, since his philosophy does not address the concept of freedom and its consequences as isolated parts, as if there were several types of freedom. On the contrary, freedom in Hegel appears as the essence of the subjective spirit that expresses itself in (...) the world in the form of the objective spirit, that is, in history. This, in turn, appears as an action of the spirit itself through individuals. These are guided by reason progressively to the self-knowledge that freedom is an intrinsic condition for all men. Thus, the present article aims to clarify Hegel's concept of freedom from the Fundamental Lines of the Philosophy of Law (2022) and its relationship with the concept of history. (shrink)

The basic problem of Fichte, both in his philosophy and in his life, is the problem of freedom. Kant’s criticism frees Fichte from the deterministic conceptions of his youth. The Doctrine of science is for Fichte the system of freedom. After the year 1800 the idea of freedom seems to have a less significant role in comparison to the doctrine of the absolute; but the subsequent Fichte’s reflections show that the problem of reconciling individual freedom with the ultimate aim of (...) reason remains a central one. Fichte’s aim is to realize the freedom not only on a philosophical level but on the political one as well; yet he doesn’t find a solution that satisfies him under this respect. (shrink)

Rejecting the tendency to regard Fichte as merely a transitional figure in the development of German idealism, the following paper argues that, in the years following his dismissal from Jena, Fichte will come to map out a unique and compelling philosophical trajectory. This will be demonstrated, in particular, through a close reading of the Erlanger lectures Institutiones omnis philisophiae of 1805: in these texts, which undertake the pedagogical task of introducing his students to philosophy and indeed achieving a “transformation” of (...) perspective, Fichte makes a fundamental philosophical breakthrough. This becomes possible precisely because his focus on the pedagogical task draws his attention to the most fundamental subjective or even “existential” conditions of philosophical insight, leading him, in turn, to a theorization of the capacity of understanding, by producing contradictions, to open up a space of negativity; a negativity that is itself the essence of human freedom, and through which truth is yielded rather than either discovered or produced. Whereas Hegel and Schelling regard Kant’s residual dualism as a philosophical scandal, Fichte, through this notion of a radical freedom born from the unresolved negativity of the understanding, will seek not to overcome dualism through a higher perspective but to recognize its absolutely binding character. (shrink)

Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian thought and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the specific arguments he offers (...) in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics—a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others—are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life. (shrink)