Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism

In the second half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy came for a while to dominate European philosophy. It changed the way in which not only Europeans, but people all over the world, conceived of themselves and thought about nature, religion, human history, politics, and the structure of the human mind. In this rich and wide-ranging book, Terry Pinkard interweaves the story of "Germany" - changing during this period from a loose collection of principalities to a newly emerged nation with a distinctive culture - with an examination of the currents and complexities of its developing philosophical thought. He examines the dominant influence of Kant, with his revolutionary emphasis on "self-determination," and traces this influence through the development of Romanticism and idealism to the critiques of post-Kantian thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. His book will interest a range of readers in the history of philosophy, cultural history, and the history of ideas.

TERRY PINKARD is Professor of Philosophy and German at Northwestern University. His publications include Hegel's Dialectic: The Explanation of Possibility (Ig88), Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (1996), and Hegel (2000), as well as many journal articles.

TERRY PINKARD

Northwestern University

To Susan

Contents

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I

PART I KANT AND THE REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY

PART II THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED: POST-KANTIANS

PART III THE REVOLUTION COMPLETED? HEGEL

PART IV THE REVOLUTION IN QUESTION

Acknowledgements

Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press first gave me the idea for this book. Without her encouragement both at first and all along the way, the book would never have been written. That she also contributed many helpful suggestions on rewriting the manuscript as it was under way all the more puts me in her debt.