Rousseau and German Idealism

Rousseau and German Idealism
Author: David James
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107037859

A systematic account of Rousseau's significance in relation to Kant's, Fichte's and Hegel's views on freedom, dependence and necessity.

Rousseau and German Idealism

Rousseau and German Idealism
Author: David James
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-08-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107292611

The claim that Rousseau's writings influenced the development of Kant's critical philosophy, and German idealism, is not a new one. As correct as the claim may be, it does not amount to a systematic account of Rousseau's place within this philosophical tradition. It also suggests a progression whereby Rousseau's achievements are eventually eclipsed by those of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, especially with respect to the idea of freedom. In this book David James shows that Rousseau presents certain challenges that Kant and the idealists Fichte and Hegel could not fully meet, by making dependence and necessity, as well as freedom, his central concerns, and thereby raises the question of whether freedom in all its forms is genuinely possible in a condition of human interdependence marked by material inequality. His study will be valuable for all those studying Kant, German idealism and the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas.

Being After Rousseau

Being After Rousseau
Author: Richard L. Velkley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2002-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780226852560

In Being after Rousseau, Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture—a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore. The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.

The Innovations of Idealism

The Innovations of Idealism
Author: Rudiger Bubner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2003-08-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521662628

Sample Text

Institutions of Education: Then and Today

Institutions of Education: Then and Today
Author: Paul Cobben
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2010-04-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004184155

The theme of “Institutions of Education: then and today” not only corresponds with the basic questions raised in German Idealism, but is also central to the question of whether it is legitimate to study German Idealism in our era. Elaborating on this project immediately raises the problem of institutional differentiation, which characterizes multicultural society. Does the variety of educational institutions not, by definition, exclude the shared conception and realization of adulthood that is presupposed by German Idealism? This book shows that German Idealism can still participate in the contemporary debate on education: it is not only helpful in raising relevant questions, but can also be transformed into positions which can deal with the pluriformity that characterizes contemporary society.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Author: Tracy B. Strong
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2002-04-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1461665612

Rousseau is most often read either as a theorist of individual authenticity or as a communitarian. In this book, he is neither. Instead, Rousseau is understood as a theorist of the common person. In Strong's understanding, Rousseau's use of 'common' always refers both to that which is common and to that which is ordinary, vulgar, everyday. For Strong, Rousseau resonates with Kant, Hegel, and Marx, but he is more modern like Emerson, Nietzsche, Eittegenstein, and Heidegger. Rousseau's democratic individual is an ordinary self, paradoxically multiple and not singular. In the course of exploring this contention, Strong examines Rousseau's fear of authorship (though not of authority), his understanding of the human, his attempt to overcome the scandal that relativism posed for politics, and the political importance of sexuality.

The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism

The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism
Author: Karl Ameriks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2017-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107147840

Comprehensive and incisive, with three new chapters, this updated edition sees world-renowned scholars explore a rich and complex philosophical movement.

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter
Author: Markus Gabriel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2009-10-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441115773

Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Žižek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom. Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, Gabriel, and Žižek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy. MARKUS GABRIEL is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, NY. He has published a number of books and journal articles in German, including Der Mensch im Mythos (De Gruyter, 2006), and Das Absolute und die Welt in Schellings Freiheitsschrift (Bonn University Press, 2006).

Fichte's Republic

Fichte's Republic
Author: David James
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2015-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107111188

An original interpretation of the connection between idealism, history and nationalism in Fichte's general philosophical, educational and moral project.

Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World

Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World
Author: Dieter Henrich
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1992
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804723671

This is a collection of four essays on aesthetic, ethical, and political issues by Dieter Henrich, the preeminent Kant scholar in Germany today. Although his interests have ranged widely, he is perhaps best known for rekindling interest in the great classical German tradition from Kant to Hegel. The first essay summarizes Henrich's research into the development of the Kant's moral philosophy, focusing on the architecture of the third Critique. Of special interest in this essay is Henrich's intriguing and wholly new account of the relations between Kant and Rousseau. In the second essay, Henrich analyzes the interrelations between Kant's aesthetics and his cognitive theories. His third essay argues that the justification of the claim that human rights are universally valid requires reference to a moral image of the world. To employ Kant's notion of a moral image of the world without ignoring the insights and experience of this century requires drastic changes in the content of such an image. Finally, in Henrich's ambitious concluding essay, the author compares the development of the political process of the French Revolution and the course of classical German philosophy, raise the general question of the relation between political processes and theorizing, and argues that both the project of political liberty set in motion by the French Revolution, and the projects of classical German philosophy remain incomplete.