From Kant to Post-Kantian Idealism: German Idealism: Sebastian Gardner

German idealism has been pictured as an unwarranted deviation from the central epistemological orientation of modern philosophy, and its close historical association with German romanticism is adduced in support of this verdict. This paper proposes an interpretation of German idealism which seeks to grant key importance to its connection with romanticism without thereby undermining its philosophical rationality. I suggest that the fundamental motivation of German idealism is axiological, and that its augmentation of Kant's idealism is intelligible in terms of its combined aim of consolidating the transcendental turn and legitimating the kind of (objectual) relation to value articulated in German romanticism.     

From Kant to Post-Kantian Idealism: German Idealism: Paul Franks

German idealists regard Spinozism as both the realism that outflanks Kant's idealism and the source of the conception of systematicity with which to fortify idealism. But they offer little argument for this view. To fill the gap, I reconstruct arguments that could underlie Jacobi's and Pistorius's tentative but influential suggestions that Kant is or should be a Spinozist. Kant is indeed a monist about phenomena, but, unlike Spinoza, a pluralist about noumena. Nevertheless, it is arguable that the Third Antinomy can be solved by a more thoroughgoing Spinozistic monism. The resulting Spinozism outflanks Kant by acknowledging Jacobi's charge that philosophy annihilates immediacy and individuality, whereas Kant's commitment to things in themselves can seem a half-hearted attempt to avoid the charge. However, the German idealist contention is that only a synthesis of such a Spinozism with Kantian idealism can retrieve immediacy and individuality, thus overcoming nihilism.     

German Idealism and the Concept of Punishment

This paper examines the Leibnizian background to Kant's critique of the ontological argument. I present Kant's claim that existence is not a real predicate, already formulated in his pre-critical essay of 1673, as a generalization of Leibniz's reasoning regarding the existence of created things. The first section studies Leibniz's equivocations on the notion of existence and shows that he employs two distinct notions of existence – one for God and another for created substances. The second section examines Kant's position in his early paper of 1763. My claim is that Kant's view of existence in 1763, namely that it is not a predicate, is strongly related to the logical notion of possibility, formulated by Leibniz and accepted by Kant.     

Horstmann, Siep, and German Idealism

Die Grenzen der Vernunft. Eine Untersuchung zu Zielen und Motiven des Deutschen Idealismus. By Rolf-Peter Horstmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Anton Hain, 1991, 321 pp. ISBN 3–445-08568-4
Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus. By Ludwig Siep. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992, 348 pp. ISBN 3–518-28635-8 pb     

Andrew Shanks,German Idealism,and the Speculative Redemption of Theodicy

In this review essay I discuss and critically evaluate the neo-Hegelian theologian Andrew Shanks’ Theodicy Beyond the Death of ‘God’ with regard to its central argument of the theological adequacy of the composite theodicy funded by Hegel, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) and F. W. J. Schelling and also its highly individual theological style. While I commend Shanks’ impulses to enlarge the Hegelian discourse by speculative discourses that are more mythopoetic, especially given Shanks’ long-standing interest in the critical and constructive power of poetry, I consider it to be an open question not only as to whether Shanks has sustained his case for the theological adequacy of the composite theodicy, but whether this composite speculative matrix has the capacity to enlist the prophetic discourses of both the Bible and modern poetry that Shanks thinks it has. In addition, while Shanks’ theological style is a unique blend of disciplined analysis with a more hortatory rhetoric, as rendered in this his latest book, the generally polemical tone and the tendency to dismissive judgments not only regarding particular philosophers and theologians, but also particular forms of historical Christianity such as Roman Catholicism, compromise – if not entirely invalidate – its repeated message of inclusion.     

The French Revolution and the New School of Europe: Towards a Political Interpretation of German Idealism

Abstract: In this paper I consider the significant but generally overlooked role that the French Revolution played in the development of German Idealism. Specifically, I argue that Reinhold and Fichte's engagement in revolutionary political debates directly shaped their interpretation of Kant's philosophy, leading them (a) to overlook his reliance upon common sense, (b) to misconstrue his conception of the relationship between philosophical theory and received cognitive practice, (c) to fail to appreciate the fundamentally regressive nature of his transcendental argumentative strategy, and, ultimately, (d) to seek to deduce his philosophy from a single first‐principle, one grounded in the immediate awareness of the subject's mental life.     

The Hubris of Transcendental Idealism

Jan Pato?ka’s early phenomenology, as presented in The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem, does not merely adopt Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld. The paper demonstrates the originality of Pato?ka’s appropriation of this concept, but also its internal tensions and difficulties. Seeking to elaborate a concept of a phenomenology allowing for a theory of the lifeworld stricto sensu, i.e. of the life of the world, Pato?ka’s book effectively shows that there is no ahistorical, absolute or “natural” starting point for phenomenology. Truth, as approachable through phenomenology, is not (pre)given, but must rather be developed. Elaborating on the concept of transcendental idealism, Pato?ka’s early phenomenology thus suggests a vivid idea of “intermeshing” monads ontologically grounding the world.     

The Location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism

Many philosophers have been puzzled by Kant's decision to insert the Refutation of Idealism into the second edition of the first Critique at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate. This article proposes a solution to the puzzle. It defends an explanation for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism that is plausibly expressed by Kant's claim at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate that the Refutation of Idealism is ‘here in its right place’ because ‘[a] powerful objection against these rules for proving existence indirectly is made by idealism’ (B274). According to this explanation, the Refutation of Idealism is Kant's response to the objection that the Second Postulate must be false since otherwise idealism is true. This article also considers and rejects a number of alternative explanations for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism.     

Absolute Time: The Limit of Kant's Idealism

I examine here if Kant can explain our knowledge of duration by showing that time has metric structure. To do so, I spell out two possible solutions: time's metric could be intrinsic or extrinsic. I argue that Kant's resources are too weak to secure any intrinsic, transcendentally‐based temporal metrics; but he can supply an extrinsic metric, based in a metaphysical fact about matter. I conclude that Transcendental Idealism is incomplete: it cannot account for the durative aspects of experience—or it can do so only with help from a non‐trivial metaphysics of material substance.     

Idealism and illusions

According to the idealist, facts about phenomenal experience determine facts about the physical world. Any such view must account for illusions: cases where there is a discrepancy between the physical world and our experiences of it. In this article, I critique some recent idealist treatments of illusions before presenting my own preferred account. I then argue that, initial impressions notwithstanding, it is actually the realist who has difficulties properly accounting for illusions.     

McDowell and Idealism

John McDowell espouses a certain conception of the thinking subject: as an embodied, living, finite being, with a capacity for experience that can take in the world, and stand in relations of warrant to subjects' beliefs. McDowell presents this conception of the subject as requiring a related conception of the world: as not located outside the conceptual sphere. In this latter conception, idealism and common‐sense realism are supposed to coincide. But I suggest that McDowell's conception of the subject scuppers this intended coincidence. The upshot is a dilemma: McDowell can retain his conception of the subject, but lose the coincidence; or he can keep the coincidence, but abandon his conception of the subject.     

Nominalism and Idealism

The article considers, in a historical setting, the links between varieties of nominalism—the extreme nominalism of the Quine-Goodman variety and the trope nominalism current today—and types of idealism. In so doing arguments of various twentieth century figures, including Husserl, Bradley, Russell, and Sartre, as well as a contemporary attack on relations by Peter Simons are critically examined. The paper seeks to link the rejection of realism about universals with the rejection of a mind-independent “world”—in short, linking nominalism with idealism.