In September 1973, on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of Feuerbach’s death, a four day symposium was held at Bielefeld University in West Germany. Atheismus in der Diskussion is the edited record of the proceedings.

This is a direct explication du texte of that section of Hegel’s Phenomenology which deals with Der seiner selbst gewisse Geist: Die Moralität—or, in Baillie’s translation, "Self-Assured Spirit: Morality.".

Insofar as it has been developed out of a doctoral dissertation, this study manifests both the virtues consequent upon such a birth, and—just as expectedly—the defects. The virtues are found in its careful organization and concern with documentation; the defects are but excesses of the virtues: an all too sober style coupled with some lack of speculative content—this leading to repetition rather than explication. Still, the work had not been intended as a speculative exercise but as an essay in intellectual (...) history, and was, in embryo, a history dissertation. In this regard, no fault can be found with Lipton’s careful tracing of the confused political and academic currents that swept modern Germany. (shrink)

This work is indeed, as Professor Wartofsky properly—if somewhat immodestly—claims "the first major full-length study of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach." In sum, it is a lengthy tour de force through most of Feuerbach’s works with the intention of illustrating the coherency of their development, or in the author’s words, "this work... proposes to set forth the development of Feuerbach’s thought as a dialectic." The main argument of the work is that Feuerbach’s work, taken as a whole and in the (...) course of its presentment, not only is the record of his own intellectual development but esoterically expresses the very dialectic it would attempt to repudiate. Feuerbach is also taken as an "epochal figure" in the history of thought as regards his effort to set philosophy within a radically humanistic context. (shrink)

Although much of the content of the present work is based upon his earlier and more extensive study Hegel, Taylor has sought to provide the reader with more than a mere digest of that work. To the extent that is a shorter work it has been intended to make his study of Hegel more "accessible," but otherwise it has "a quite different centre of gravity" than its predecessor. Here then, "the aim was to produce not just an exposition of Hegel, (...) but a view of the ways in which he is relevant and important to contemporary philosophers…to show how he still provides the terms in which we reflect on some contemporary problems." To this end, the text is divided into three sections. The first deals with the "problems and aspirations of Hegel’s generation" and Hegel’s dialectically conditioned solutions to the issues presented. The issues, as seen by Taylor, were focused upon the apparent irreconcilability of the Aufklärung emphasis upon individual autonomy and the romantic concern—as expressed in Herder—with man within and of his cultural matrix. The second section of the text treats of Hegel’s social and political thought both in itself and in relationship to contemporary issues—issues which are seen as similar to those which confronted Hegel. The third section of the study, which "largely reproduces the final chapter of the longer work," discusses the reasons why Hegel’s thought, although correctly orientated to the central problems of the contemporary social and political scene, is nevertheless—as a total system—unacceptable. In this rejection of Hegel’s whole system in favor of retaining his hermeneutic value, Taylor echoes the Young Hegelians. Hegel’s admirable flaw is to be found in his attempt to construct an all-encompassing philosophy, an attempt which Taylor takes as doomed from the start. Of course, all is not lost, for "once Hegel’s logo-ontology is set aside," his efforts to resolve the need of the moral community and individual freedom can still be appreciated as "an important step in the development of the modern notion of freedom.". (shrink)

All of the contributors to this collection are members of the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, which has been engaged in preparing a definitive edition of Hegel’s collected works.

In December, 1976, Freiburg University honored Martin Heidegger by sponsoring three lectures: Werner Marx spoke on "Thought and Its Concerns," Hans-Georg Gadamer on "Being, Spirit, God," and the physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker on "Heidegger and Natural Science." This volume, edited by Marx, contains the complete texts of those lectures.

The second French revolution of 1830 reconfirmed--at least in the hearts of Europe's liberal intellectuals--the final advent of the long-awaited political and cultural millennium. The first revolution, which Napoleon had perverted, would now be restored by the mass of people now first and fully conscious of their rights. Along with "Young Germany," the "Young Hegelians" expectantly searched out the first signals of this irresistible new tide of freedom, and among them, August von Cieszkowski was the first to decode the millennial (...) doctrine concealed in Hegel's philosophy. (shrink)

Three of Werner Marx’s articles on Schelling comprise this work, two of which have been previously published, and one which here appears for the first time. A brief introduction and index complement the articles, which run to about fifty pages each.

Despite Schelling’s recognized influence upon a wide spectrum of sciences and arts, only a small amount of his work has been translated into English. Earlier, Robert Brown’s The Later Schelling opened up a significant dimension to our understanding of Schelling. Now, with this first translation of The Deities of Somothrace, Brown has added substantially to the thin shelf of Schelling’s works now available to the English-language reader.

This work, which began as a doctoral dissertation, is now a substantial contribution to the slight collection of English-language studies of Schelling, and unlike most—in any language—it treats of him as more than a mere transitional figure set between Kant and Hegel.