Critique in German Philosophy From Kantto Critical Theory : From Kant to Critical Theory

Critique has been a central theme in the German philosophical tradition since the eighteenth century. The main goal of this book is to provide a history of this concept from its Kantian inception to contemporary critical theory. Focusing on both canonical and previously overlooked texts and thinkers, the contributors bring to light alternative conceptions of critique within nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy, which have profound implications for contemporary philosophy. By offering a critical revision of the history of modern European philosophy, this book raises new questions about what it means for philosophy to be "critical" today. Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction • María del Rosario Acosta López and J. Colin McQuillan 1 The Struggle between Dogmatism and Skepticism in the Prussian Academy: A Precedent for Kantian Critique • Catalina González 2 Pure Sensibility as a Source of Corruption: Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics in the Inaugural Dissertation and Critique of Pure Reason • Karin de Boer 3 Critique in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason: Why This Critique Is Not a Critique of Pure Practical Reason • Avery Goldman 4 On an Aesthetic Dimension of Critique: The Time of the Beautiful in Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters • María del Rosario Acosta López 5 Not Yet a System, Not Yet a Science: Reinhold and Fichte on Kant’s Critique • J. Colin McQuillan 6 Schelling’s Philosophical Letters on Doctrine and Critique • G. Anthony Bruno 7 Critique With a Small C: Herder’s Critical Philosophical Practice and Anticritical Polemics • Rachel Zuckert 8 Irony and the Possibility of Romantic Criticism: Friedrich Schlegel as Poet-Critic • Karolin Mirzakhan 9 Alexander von Humboldt: A Critic of Nature • Elizabeth Millán Brusslan 10 Critique, Refutation, Appropriation: Strategies of Hegel’s Dialectic • Angelica Nuzzo 11 Abstraction and Critique in Marx: The Case of Debt • Rocío Zambrana 12 Nietzsche’s Project of Reevaluation: What Kind of Critique? • Daniel R. Rodríguez-Navas 13 Kantian Critique, Its Ethical Purification by Hermann Cohen, and Its Reflective Transformation by Wilhelm Dilthey • Rudolf A. Makkreel 14 Transcendental Phenomenology as Radical Immanent Critique: Subversions and Matrices of Intelligibility • Andreea Smaranda Aldea 15 From the Metaphysics of Law to the Critique of Violence • Peter Fenves 16 Is There Critique in Critical Theory? The Claim of Happiness on Theory • Richard A. Lee Jr. 17 Critique as Melancholy Science • Amy Allen 18 Reality and Resistance: Habermas and Haslanger on Objectivity, Social Critique, and the Possibility of Change • Federica Gregoratto 19 The Critique of Law and the Law of Critique • Christoph Menke Works Cited Contributors Index "Critique has been a central theme in the German philosophical tradition since the publication of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Some successors turned Kant's critique against itself and used it to challenge the authority of his system. Others extended his critique, applying it to aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy and generating new forms of criticism that were then taken up by Idealism, Romanticism, Marxism, Neo-Kantianism, Phenomenology, and Critical Theory. Yet these various legacies of Kantian critique are rarely brought into dialogue. Critique in German Philosophy seeks to address this problem by exploring the figures, works, movements, and philosophical subfields that have contributed to the development of the concept of critique in German philosophy, as well as their relation to one another. In so doing, it also challenges the standard ways philosophers have understood the task of philosophical critique. Attending to both canonical and previously overlooked texts and thinkers, the contributors bring to light alternative conceptions of critique in the German philosophical tradition with profound implications. In offering a critical revision of the history of modern European philosophy, the volume also raises new questions about what it means for philosophy to be "critical" today"-- Provided by publisher