German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 [Hardcover]

Frederick C. Beiser (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674007697 | ISBN-13: 978-0674007697 | Publication Date: June 10, 2002

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

(20030124)

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A] magnificent new book...That Beiser manages to keep the reader afloat as he steers through such deep and turbulent waters deserves the highest praise. Expository writing of unfailing lucidity is supported by reference to an unrivalled range of sources...I learned something from this book on almost every page...For anyone at all seriously interested in the topic this is now the place to start.
--Michael Rosen (Times Literary Supplement )

Frederick Beiser's new work provides English readers [with] a comprehensive and masterly explanation of the central forces that shaped the important philosophical movement known as German idealism. German Idealism is well written, exquisitely argued, and copiously researched. It easily outdistances much of the German scholarship and will serve as a benchmark for future English language scholarship. It is a must-read for scholars of the field, a helpful, accessible guide for the interested, and a valuable resource for all historians of philosophy.
--Grant Kaplan (Review of Metaphysics )

About the Author

Frederick C. Beiser is Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (June 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674007697
• ISBN-13: 978-0674007697
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,762,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars tous philosophous sozein (saving the philosophers), March 27, 2003

By 

Anthony Adler (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Hardcover)

Among the silliest of the many silly ways of criticizing something is to complain that it is not what it has no pretense of being. The title of Beiser's book, as well as its length and its rather hefty price, make it sufficiently clear that it is not intended as a general popular introduction to all German Idealism. Rather, it is scholarly inquiry into a phase of German Idealism that, while not altogether neglected, is too often regarded as merely a preparation for Hegel's triumphant system. That Beiser's study cuts off at 1801 relieves him of the need to deal with Hegel apart from his relation to Fichte and Schelling, and it no doubt reveals the bias of the reviewer from Cambridge that, seemingly having missed this point, he does not also accuse Beiser of neglecting to speak about Schelling's essay on the Human Freedom, his philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, Fichte's later systems, or perhaps even Solger's aesthetics, all of which also fall within the fold of German Idealism.
Granting the self-imposed temporal constraints of his inquiry, Beiser's aim is not to exclude or marginalize Hegel and deny his significance for German idealism, but rather to rescue the singular originality and grandeur of moments within the history of German Idealism that have fallen into the shadow of the leviathan to which they gave birth. While this very effort is somewhat compromised by Beiser's epistemological orientation, and I do not entirely agree with his ultimate reading of German Idealism as a neo-Platonism anticipating the Neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer, I nevertheless admire the rigor and clarity of this work, and would strongly recommend to all those who have a more than dilettantish interest in German philosophy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reconstructing German Idealism, November 25, 2009

By 

Samuel (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Paperback)

This work represents a major contribution to scholarship on German Idealism and will be necessary reading for specalists in that area. Potential readers may wonder, however, who the primary target of the book is and what it contributes to the existing literature.

First, this is not an overview of or introduction to German Idealism; if you want such a resource, the best ones are the Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (ed. Karl Ameriks), Beiser's The Fate of Reason (crucial for contextualizing German Idealism vis-a-vis Kant), and Terry Pinkard's The Legacy of Idealism (helpful for getting a long view that emphasizes GI's relevance for our contemporary situation). Thus, that it does not treat Hegel is not a legitimate criticism, and it is witless to accuse Beiser of ignoring Hegel when he provides excellent historical and methodological reasons for not advancing past 1801 and has written an entire book on Hegel.

This book advances a single thesis, which it proves conclusively: German Idealism, contrary to longstanding interpretations, is not a trajectory leading from Kant to subjectivism; it's just the opposite, it is a struggle against subjectivism. This may not be very meaningful to people who are not engaged in scholarship in Idealism, but it's a major revision of a traditional interpretation, and in proving it Beiser provides independently useful contributions to all of the thinkers and topics that he discusses, especially the early German Romantics and the origins and emergence of Absolute Idealism.

It's contributions to the existing literature are many, but I will highlight two. First, Beiser effectively demolishes views of Hegel and Schelling that assume one can ignore the role of Naturphilosophie and Absolute Idealism in their systems. These would include most of the popular Hegel scholars in the Anglophone context, such as Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard, to name only two. Beiser's demonstration in this book, which undergirds and supports his later book on Hegel (2005), that many positions attributed to a specific thinker, like Hegel, were in fact "in the air" and in no way unique to the alleged thinker, is important for understanding how badly misunderstood thinkers like Hegel still are, precisely because most readers know nothing about early German Romanticism and the intellectual context from which Schelling and Hegel drew many of their "distinctive" ideas. For anyone who thinks historical context is important, then, this book makes a major contribution to our understanding not only of the persons treated, but also of later developments in German Idealism.

A second contribution is to the development of a synthetic picture of post-Kantian Germany philosophy, one that is not indebted to Hegel's own picture but emerges from careful scrutiny of all the relevant thinkers in their cultural and intellectual contexts and tries to establish what they thought they were doing, why they were doing it, whether it worked, and what happened because of it. Beiser is uniquely positioned to do this; and for those who want to develop a historically sensitive picture of German philosophy after Kant, one could not do better, in the secondary literature, than to read The Fate of Reason; Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism; German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism; and then Beiser's book on Hegel, followed perhaps by Taylor's book on Hegel (1975).

In sum, this book is not the place to start if you want to begin studying German Idealism. Far from it; it will be most helpful and meaningful for those with a substantial background in the secondary literature and at least some first-hand knowledge of the major thinkers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) would prove helpful, but is not necessary. Nevertheless, Beiser's clarity and skill as a writer will make this book valuable to any reader trying to understand Idealism, but its length and scholarly depth will prove forbidding and potentially frustrating to those without the suggested background.

P.S. For an extended review by a major Idealist scholar, I recommend Karl Ameriks review article, "Beiser's German Idealism."

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beiser is a careful reader -, March 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Hardcover)

The review below which claims that Beiser says that Hegel is "tendentious" is not correct. Beiser's text reads, "Hegel's history of the period, which interprets it as a progression culminating in his own system, is tendentious philosophically, and anachronistic historically" (ix). This is certainly not the same as claiming that Hegel is tendentious. In addition, Beiser's criticism is quite correct; Hegel's history of philosophy is quite tendentious.

Another reviewer claims that Beiser omits Kant from this text. This is an absurd claim. The first section of the book, which spans 200 pages, is about Kant.