David W. Wood

Issue number 4 of "SYMPHILOSOPHIE: International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism" is devoted to the Dutch philosopher François Hemsterhuis and 250th anniversary of the birth of the German romantics Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel. This fourth issue of the journal contains nearly 600 pages of new research articles, translations, review-essays, and book reviews. The main section on Hemsterhuis among the German Romantics was guest edited by Daniel Whistler (Royal Holloway, University of London).

Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg 52 contains an Introduction and 9 new research articles in French & English on Friedrich Schiller's philosophy in relation to German Idealism. All fully available online on Open-Edition and as free e-book. Edited and introduced by Henny Blomme, Laure Cahen-Maurel, & David W. Wood. With contributions by Frederick C. Beiser, María del Rosario Acosta López, Cody Staton, Jeremy D. Hovda, Laure Cahen-Maurel, Quentin Landenne, Katia Hay, Louis Carré, and Charlotte Morel. SOMMAIRE / CONTENTS Introduction: Friedrich Schiller, a German Idealist? (Henny Blomme, Laure Cahen-Maurel & David W. Wood) 1. Frederick C. Beiser. Schiller’s Humanism 2. María del Rosario Acosta López. Une dimension esthétique de la critique : la temporalité du beau dans les lettres de Schiller Sur l’éducation esthétique 3. Cody Staton. In Search of Play: Schiller’s Drive Theory as a Turn Away from Kant 4. Jeremy D. Hovda. Bildung between Kant and Schiller 5. Laure Cahen-Maurel. Fichte avec Schiller : La querelle des Heures à la lumière de Grâce et Dignité 6. Quentin Landenne. La Bildung chez Schiller et Fichte, entre esthétique et politique 7. Katia Hay. On the Tragic-Sublime and Tragic Freedom: Thinking with Schiller and Schelling 8. Louis Carré. Vicissitudes de l’État organique : Kant, Hegel, Schiller 9. Charlotte Morel. Conjoindre idéalisme et réalisme après Hegel : Les lectures de Schiller par Lotze et Lange Résumés / Abstracts

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) is now regarded by many readers and scholars not simply as a poet, historian, or playwright, but as a genuine philosopher in his own right. The following research articles in French and English are devoted to understanding the relationship between Schiller’s philosophy and German idealism, especially some of the chief figures associated with the inception and extended development of this movement: Kant, Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Lotze. In the last twenty years in particular, ground-breaking edited collections have appeared on the content and legacy of Schiller’s thought. The present volume of articles, however, is one of the first to attempt a broader investigation of Schiller’s connection to German idealism, in which the contributions have above all been written by scholars of German idealism itself. The aim of this volume is to furnish foundational material for better answering the question: To what extent should Friedrich Schiller be considered a German idealist? Naturally, the response to this question depends on one’s conception of German idealism, a point discussed below. This introduction provides a brief overview of earlier scholarship on this topic and summarizes the findings of our contributors.

Fichte-Studien 49 (2021), edited by David W. Wood, published by Brill/Rodopi, 471pp. Presenting new critical perspectives on J.G. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, this volume of articles in English by an international group of scholars addresses the topic of first principles in Fichte’s writings. Especially discussed are the central text of his Jena period, the 1794/95 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, as well as later versions like the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (1796-99) and the presentations of 1804 and 1805. Also included are new studies on the first principles of the particular sub-disciplines of Fichte’s system, such as the doctrines of aesthetics, nature, right, ethics, and history. The volume also contains a number of miscellaneous essays on Fichte research, as well as several book reviews.

The principal thesis in this review-essay is that the key linguistic terms in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre especially have two main meanings that appear at first sight to be almost in contradiction or opposed to each other. The reader of Fichte therefore has to work hard to overcome any apparent conflicts in the “double sense” of his philosophical terminology. Accordingly, I argue that Fichte’s linguistic method and use of language should be seen as part of his chief philosophical method of synthesis, where we have to carry out a similar procedure and attempt to reconcile opposites using the power of the imagination. This thesis is put forward by means of a number of practical examples and in the context of some critical reflections on the recently published Cambridge Companion to Fichte, eds. David James and Günter Zöller. Review essay published in Volume 15 (December, 2017) of the journal Revista de Estud(i)os sobre Fichte (ed. Emiliano Acosta).

This chapter argues that in his late writings Novalis (1772–1801) was one of the first thinkers to positively grasp the underlying mathematicity of Fichte’s _Wissenschaftslehre_. In a neo-Platonistic sense, both Novalis and Fichte acknowledged that mathematical and geometrical methods should form an ideal for all scientific philosophy, and that a proper philosophy of mathematics must take into account the intellectual activity of the mathematician. These elements of Fichte’s system only became more widely recognized in the twentieth century by philosophers of mathematics such as Hermann Weyl, Andreas Speiser, and Jules Vuillemin. This may be considered as a belated but independent confirmation of Novalis’s original insights on the relationship between mathematics and philosophy in Fichte’s _Wissenschaftslehre_.

The following text is a review essay of Fichte scholar Hartmut Traub's 1,000 page monograph on Rudolf Steiner’s early philosophical writings called Philosophie und Anthroposophie: Die philosophische Weltanschauung Rudolf Steiners. Grundlegung und Kritik (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2011). On the one hand, Traub’s book convincingly demonstrates the fruitfulness of locating Steiner’s philosophy within the tradition of German Idealism. On the other, his judgment of Steiner’s philosophical originality is for the most part negative. My point of departure were the questions: are there any other ways of understanding the Fichtean heritage in the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner than those proposed by Traub? And how can one objectively approach the topic of Steiner’s originality?

This monograph is a study of J.G. Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics and theory of geometry. It investigates both the external, formal & internal, cognitive parallels between the axioms, intuitions and constructions of geometry and the scientific methodology of the Fichtean system of philosophy. In contrast to 'ordinary' Euclidean geometry, in his Erlanger Logik of 1805 Fichte posits a model of an 'ursprüngliche' or original geometry. – That is to say, a synthetic and constructivistic conception of geometry grounded in ideal archetypal elements that are grasped through geometrical or intelligible intuition. Accordingly, this study classifies Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics as a whole as a species of mathematical Platonism or neo-Platonism, and concludes that the Wissenschaftslehre itself may be read as an attempt at a new philosophical mathesis, or a “mathesis of the mind.”

The first English translation of Novalis’s unfinished notes for a universal science, Das Allgemeine Brouillon. Composed of more than 1,100 notebook entries, this is the German romantic poet-philosopher's largest theoretical work. In it, Novalis reflects on numerous aspects of human culture, including philosophy, poetry, the natural sciences, the fine arts, mathematics, mineralogy, history, and religion, and brings them all together into a "Romantic Encyclopaedia”, or what he calls a “Scientific Bible”. Novalis, Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon. Edited, Translated and Introduced by David W. Wood, published by SUNY Press (State University of New York Press), Albany/N.Y., 2007, xxx + 290 pp.