Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: “Germany” and German philosophy
- PART I KANT AND THE REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY
- PART II THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED: POST-KANTIANS
- Introduction: idealism and the reality of the French Revolution
- 4 The 1780s: the immediate post-Kantian reaction: Jacobi and Reinhold
- 5 The 1790s: Fichte
- 6 The 1790s after Fichte: the Romantic appropriation of Kant (I): Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Schlegel
- 7 1795–1809: the Romantic appropriation of Kant (II): Schelling
- 8 1801–1807: the other post-Kantian: Jacob Friedrich Fries and non-Romantic sentimentalism
- PART III THE REVOLUTION COMPLETED? HEGEL
- PART IV THE REVOLUTION IN QUESTION
- Conclusion: the legacy of idealism
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction: idealism and the reality of the French Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: “Germany” and German philosophy
- PART I KANT AND THE REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY
- PART II THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED: POST-KANTIANS
- Introduction: idealism and the reality of the French Revolution
- 4 The 1780s: the immediate post-Kantian reaction: Jacobi and Reinhold
- 5 The 1790s: Fichte
- 6 The 1790s after Fichte: the Romantic appropriation of Kant (I): Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Schlegel
- 7 1795–1809: the Romantic appropriation of Kant (II): Schelling
- 8 1801–1807: the other post-Kantian: Jacob Friedrich Fries and non-Romantic sentimentalism
- PART III THE REVOLUTION COMPLETED? HEGEL
- PART IV THE REVOLUTION IN QUESTION
- Conclusion: the legacy of idealism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is worth noting again the dates of Kant's early works: the first Critique appeared in 1781, and the new, and in some places radically reworked edition, in 1787. In 1785, he had published the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, which was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason in 1788. However, as Kant was forging ahead with his work with the German reading public somewhat anxiously following each new intellectual explosion coming out of Königsberg, another event took place that was just as important both to the reception of Kant's thought and to development of post-Kantian philosophy as the intellectual currents circulating in the universities and journals: the French Revolution of 1789.
Kant's own philosophy in some ways helped to prepare people for a certain type of reception of the Revolution. The dual consciousness that characterized so many reflective Germans during the pre-Revolutionary period had been reformulated by Kant in a manner that quite surprisingly had made philosophy the inheritor of the energies that Werther had unleashed. In Kant's own distinctions between the phenomenal world and the world of things-in-themselves – and thus between ourselves as pushed around by nature and society, and ourselves as noumenal, autonomous agents – people found both an explanation of their condition and (something that Werther did not give them) an inkling of a way out of that condition.
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- Information
- German Philosophy 1760–1860The Legacy of Idealism, pp. 82 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002