The Transformation of Reason: Studies on System, Myth, and History in German Idealism (Critical Studies in German Idealism, 33)

Through skepticism and dialectics, German idealism transformed our understanding of the world and ourselves. This book shows how Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel revolutionized reason and made possible the critical reversal of values present in 20th-century philosophy. Contents Introduction 1 From Transcendental Philosophy to Dialectics: the Path of German Idealism 1 The Antinomy as a Condition of Possibility for Systematic Philosophy 2 Regarding Incompleteness in Fichte’s Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/1795 3 On Fichte’s Late Transcendentalism 4 Reason and Negativity According to Hegel 5 The Idealistic Strife and Its Crossroads: Schelling’s “Ground” Part 1: Kant: between the System of Pure Reason and the Antinomies 2 Subjectivity and Critical Method in Kant: toward a Dialectical Reading 1 Kant’s Models of Subjectivity 2 Criticism and the Faculties of Reason 3 Concluding Remarks on the Method of the Critique 3 Antinomies and System in Kant and Hegel 1 The Unity of the Critique of Pure Reason 2 The Shock of the Antinomies and the “Apparent Humiliation” of Reason 3 The Dialectical Solution of the Antinomies and the Systematic Unity of the Critique 4 The Hegelian Project of a Generalized Antinomy of Reason 5 Systematic Consequences 6 Historical-Philosophical Perspective 4 Sufficient Reason and Contradiction in Kant and Hegel 1 The Pre-critical Approach 2 The Criticism of the Principle of Sufficient Reason 3 The Principle of Reason According to Hegel 5 Skepticism through Maimon, Fichte, and Hegel 1 Maimon against “Dogmatic Criticism” 2 Fichte: against Skepticism, the Radicalization of Skepticism 3 Hegel, Ancient Skepticism, and Post-Kantian Skepticism 4 Concluding Remark on Skepticism and Philosophy Part 2: The Transformations of the Science of Pure Thought in Fichte and Hegel 6 The Transformation of Fichte’s Philosophy: the Outset of the Theory 1 An Unchanged Topic in the Wissenschaftslehre 2 On the Evolution of Fichte’s Transcendentalism 2.1 From the Foundation of the Wissenschaftslehre (1794/1795) to the Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo (1796/1798) 2.2 From the Wissenschaftslehre Nova Methodo to the Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/1802 2.3 The Outset of Fichte’s Image Theory in 1804 and 1805 7 Developing the Image Theory: Being and Image in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre of 1805 1 Two Conditions for the Wissenschaftslehre 2 Fichte’s Transcendental Analysis of Predication: Proposition as Image 3 Image, Existence, and Transcendental Entropy 4 What Is an Image? 5 Conclusion: Is Existence Necessary? 8 Hegel and the Transformation of Logic into Metaphysics 1 On the Phenomenological Critique of Knowledge 2 Knowledge in the Jena Logic 3 Why the Two Disciplines Merged? 4 On the Jena Metaphysics and Its Transformation 5 On the Place of Metaphysics after the Phenomenology of Spirit 6 Perspective and Concluding Remark 9 Possible Experience: on the Reception of the Critique of Pure Reason 1 Critique, Transcendental Logic, and Conceptual Analysis 2 Hegel’s Logic and Kant’s Analytics of Principles 3 The Analysis of the Possibility 4 On the Further Divisions of the Critique of Pure Reason and Conclusions Part 3: The Transformations of the Principle of Ground in Schelling’s Late Philosophy 10 The “Ground of Actual Freedom” in Schelling’s Investigation 1 The Farthest Station in the Quest for Grounds: Schelling’s Investigations 2 Onto-Ethical Consequences of the Principle of Ground 3 The Latency and Transitivity of the Ground 4 The Ground of Actual Freedom 11 Schelling’s Stuttgart Private Lectures as a System Outline 1 The Problem of the “Self-Differentiation” of the Absolute 2 The Ground as Real Mediation 3 The Mediation of the Irrational 4 The Stuttgart Lessons as a Dialectic of Reason Part 4: On Some Post-Schellingian Developments: Concluding between Myth, History, and Reason 12 Myth, History, and Reason, between Schelling and Adorno 1 The Concept of Consciousness in German Idealism 2 The Ruins of the Past and the Schellingian Malin Génie of History 3 Philosophy and Mythology 4 The Cunning of Language 5 History and Crisis: Husserl’s Thesis 6 Myth and Aufklärung: from Husserl to Adorno and Horkheimer 7 Concluding Remarks on the Philosophy of Identity and the Non-identical: the Case of Other Cultures 13 Returning to Hegel: Realism and Reconciliation in the Philosophy of History 1 History as the Core of German Idealism 2 Retrieving the Facts 3 Evil and Reconciliation 4 From the Facts, Back to Reason Appendix Bibliographical References Name Index Subject Index Critique, skepticism, conflict, incompleteness, nothingness, irrational abyss, evil, and even genocide... That is what German idealism is also about. Trying to chart human reason as an architectural system, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling uncovered that the most significant problems lie beneath the ground, in the foundations. Can reason survive the discovery of what lies at its depths? And should it? This book ventures into these foundations, addressing the keen philosophical innovations of German idealists. Through comparative and development studies, it presents fresh interpretations of how these leading thinkers reconstructed reason on unexplored territories. The greatest hazard was triggering an enduring inversion of values.