Idealistic Studies

The point of this study is to reconsider the roots of German idealism in pre-Kantian German modern philosophy of the seventeenth and early eight eenth centuries, or in pre-Enlightenment philosophy, which paved the way for the Enlightenment. Considered for far too long as depending solely on Leibniz and stigmatized as dogmatic—all too often it is referred to and summed up as “Leibnizo-Wolffian”—modern German philosophy appears, under close examination, to bear the mark of scepticism. This scepticism is precisely embodied by Thomasius, who is in many ways the father of German modern philosophy and a contemporary opponent of Leibniz. The aim of this paper is to reconsider the important series of philosophical transformations from Leibniz to Kant. I will be arguing that the pervasive nature of scepticism in the thought of Thomasius and his followers enabled the striking spread of Hume’s philosophy in modern German philosophy, Wolff included. In this way, I hope to contribute to understanding the sources of modern philosophy through what can be called, with Foucault in mind, an archaeology of the Aufklärung, with the aim of rethinking Kant’s own contribution.

Building on the research of Manfred Kuehn, the author argues that, whatever influence the Scottish Common Sense Philosophy of Thomas Reid may have had on the development of Immanuel Kant’s refutation of idealism, it was filtered through the thinking of Kant’s largely forgotten German contemporary, Johann Nicolaus Tetens. While the importance of Tetens for understanding Kant is examined in connection with only one idea, the aim is to demonstrate that Tetens is a figure worthy of serious historical consideration.

The viability of Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity depends on the maintenance and cultivation of a reciprocal relationship between internal and objective reality. To stay on course Schelling assiduously checked the conceptual answers he derived from subjective thought against the objective measurements of contemporary physics. As the physicists of his day came to question the materiality of light, Schelling conceptualized it as the outer limit of what the intelligence is capable of grasping intuitively. At the same time he criticized Hegel for ignoring knowledge altogether and for propagating a philosophy of ignorance. More than a century later Jacques Derrida recognized this characteristic in Hegel, but drew a contrary conclusion. Where Schelling counseled that rational philosophy should alter course and set sail toward a higher empiricism, Derrida insisted that in pushing rationality beyond its limits Hegel had sprung a trap of incomprehension andindeterminacy from which no one would or could henceforward escape.This essay evaluates the competing claims of Schelling and Derrida in light of the revolutionary advances of twentieth-century physics. Is this work indeed bringing forth a new world the mind qua mind cannot conceive or measure and liberating man from a prior constraint, or are the emerging physical directives of four dimensional space-time and a flat universe themselves possible only within the cloture de la representation where Derrida presumes to detain human kind indefinitely?

This paper provides a synthesis and translation of Le strutture speculative della dottrina della scienza; Il pensiero di J.G. Fichte negli anni 1801–1807 (Genova: Pantograf, 1995) by Gaetano Rametta. The 1807 Wissenschaftslehre offers important insight into Fichte’s mittlere Phase (1801–1807). Fichte’s text and Rametta’s work on it remain untranslated into English; this translation, the notes to which offer a running commentary and defi nitions of key terms, intends to make the former known through the latter. Rametta focuses on Fichte’s analysis of vision, and the vision of vision. In his middle-period and later work, Fichte developed this theme far past the early Jena-period doctrine thereof, as treated by Dieter Henrich. Within this thematic context, Rametta also discusses the proof-structure of the 1807 WL, the distinction between Wahrheitslehre and Phänomenologie, and the concept of Weisheit or “wisdom.” The article concludes with a treatment of the significance of Fichte’s later philosophy for the philosophy of religion.

The study of Hegel’s ethical thought has focused traditionally on the Phenomenology, the early writing or his Philosophy of Right but has mostly ignored the treatment of the idea of the good in the Science of Logic. This paper is an attempt at a close reading of Hegel’s exposition in light of the methodological and foundational claims of speculative logic. It identifies several points of equivocation, in particular the notion of a reversal of the logical movement of the Concept back to the subjective standpoint, and the focus on goal and action which replace the proper logical explication of the notion of the good. The paper tries to assess the meaning and consequences of what we see as points of weakness in Hegel’s exposition and formulate questions for further discussion on a hitherto neglected subject.