Daniel Breazeale

Though the seminal importance of Karl Leonhard Reinhold for the development of German philosophy in the immediate aftermath of the Kantian revolution has never been in question, his actual writings have generally remained out of print and unread. Recently, however, this situation has begun to change dramatically, first, with the publication of new Felix Meiner “Philosphische Bibliothek” editions of the first and second volumes of Beiträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen (1790/1794), expertly edited by Faustino Fabianelli, and then with the first installment of a new multi-volume edition of Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens (1789),edited and with a ..

Daniel Breazeale - All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 665-667 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Daniel Breazeale University of Kentucky Paul W. Franks. All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 440. Cloth, $49.95. Paul Franks' All or Nothing is in no sense an introduction to or history of German idealism, but an immensely sophisticated philosophical engagement with a specific complex of problems that occupied Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and others—problems they believed themselves to have inherited from Kant's transcendental philosophy, as well as from its criticism by Jacobi, Maimon, Schulze, and others. According to Franks, these thinkers were involved in a common systematic project of "ultimate" or "absolute" grounding, while adopting various strategies to avoid "the Agrippan Trilemma," according to which any effort to justify an ultimate first principle must involve either the purely arbitrary assertion or stipulation of the principle in question, an infinite regress of explanatory principles, or a viciously circular justification of the principle in..

This issue 23 of FICHTEANA is dedicated to Daniel Breazeale, who passed away on 30 December 2023. "FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an annual online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book reviews. Editors: Daniel Breazeale (†) and David W. Wood; with associate editors Kienhow Goh and Gesa Wellmann.

As the author explains, the title of this work is intended to distinguish it from ordinary, Whiggish accounts of the development of German philosophy “from Kant to Hegel.” Instead, Heinrich treats the positions of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel as potentially viable alternatives, none of which must be viewed as aufgehoben by those that followed, and all of which deserve reconsideration by contemporary philosophers.Dieter Henrich is known for two things: first, for championing a minutely-detailed, revisionist approach to the history of post-Kantian philosophy; and second, for his insistence that the central problem of German idealism is that of self-consciousness. Both elements are well represented in this book, which is a revised version of a series of lectures delivered at Harvard in 1973. The text thus antedates many of the more recent discoveries and claims of Henrich and his student collaborators in the “Jena project,” though some of the results are alluded to in the useful footnotes and apparatus provided by David S. Pacini, who attended the original lectures and has expert knowledge of Henrich’s more recent work

IN 1787, six years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, one year before the publication of the Critique of Practical Reason, and three years prior to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment, Duke Karl August of Sax-Weimar was persuaded to establish at the University of Jena the world's first university chair designated for the promulgation and explication of the new Critical Philosophy associated with Immanuel Kant. The first occupant of this chair was Karl Leonhard Reinhold, an Austrian ex-monk, whose main qualification for the new position was his fame as the author of a series of well-received magazine articles promoting the new philosophy. At Jena, however, Reinhold's own "Kantianism" underwent an interesting metamorphosis; in the books and lectures that he wrote during his seven year tenure there he profoundly revised the Kantian system and produced a new version of it which he called "Elementary Philosophy." It is altogether appropriate that when Reinhold finally left Jena his successor should have been an even more innovative follower of Kant and admirer of Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy, J. G. Fichte. Fichte arrived in 1794 and immediately began constructing and laying before the public what is perhaps the most imaginative and remarkable of all the great post-Kantian speculative systems: his Wissenschaftslehre, or "Theory of Scientific Knowledge." Concurrent with the widespread revival of interest in German Idealism generally, interest in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre has increased remarkably in recent years. Often viewed as the first step "from Kant to Hegel," Fichte's system was in fact not the first attempt to convert Kant's philosophy into a more consistent and thoroughgoingly speculative system. The honor--or onus--of making the "first step" in this direction belongs to Reinhold, and the aim of this essay is to indicate why this is so by surveying the Elementary Philosophy and examining those of its features which most influenced other philosophers, most notably Fichte. Though it may be claiming too much to say that one cannot properly understand Fichte's early presentations of his system without some acquaintance with Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy, it is certainly true that a familiarity with the latter is a tremendous aid to anyone trying to penetrate the former. Though the chief purpose of this survey is to emphasize Reinhold's contributions to the development of German Idealism, an ulterior aim is to introduce contemporary readers, especially English-language readers, to Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy and to suggest reasons why this neglected and all but forgotten system might still merit serious study.

Karl Ameriks has recently devoted an entire volume to defending what he calls "orthodox" Kantianism against what he judges to be the "errors" of such post-Kantian idealists as K. L. Reinhold and J. G. Fichte and to exposing what he claims is the frequently unnoticed but always deleterious influence of post-Kantianism upon certain prominent strands of contemporary philosophy. In response, this paper challenges Ameriks' interpretation of Kantianism itself and of the "post-Kantian project", as well as his construal of transcendental idealism. This is followed by some remarks concerning Reinhold's and Fichte's actual "arguments" for transcendental idealism and a rejection of Ameriks' characterizations of the same. Ameriks' interpretation of "the primacy of the practical" within Fichte's philosophy is also analyzed and criticized, as are his unsubstantiated claims concerning the powerful "indirect" influence of the writings of Reinhold and Fichte upon contemporary philosophy.

THE QUESTION TO BE CONSIDERED is the relation of Hume's celebrated scepticism to his own constructive philosophical projects and analyses. Since Thomas Reid there have been those who detect an unresolved tension between, on the one hand, Hume's Enlightenment devotion to science with its attendent opposition to dogmatism and superstition and, on the other, his explicitly sceptical manner and principles. Some (e.g., Green and Kolakowski) find this tension unresolvable in principle and utterly subversive of Hume's positive ambitions; others (e.g., Flew and Passmore) propose revisionary interpretations of Hume that will mitigate the tension. Still others adopt the view made popular by Kemp Smith and Hendel, according to which the special virtue of Hume's philosophy is precisely his employment of the principle of "natural interpretation" to overcome the apparent conflict between science and scepticism. The reading of Hume proposed here fits comfortably into none of the traditions, largely because of the emphasis placed upon the changes, both in the character of Hume's scepticism and, more fundamentally, in his own conception of his philosophical project. I shall argue: that Hume began his study of human nature with reformist aspirations toward an accurate and serf-evident "science of man"; that the critical method adopted in pursuit of this goal occasioned corrosive doubts concerning the very possibility of science; that reflection upon the failure of his initial effort led Hume to replace his earlier scientific ideal with a less rigorous program of "natural, unforced interpretation"; that this new "academical philosophy" succeeded neither in providing workable criteria for distinguishing justifiable belief from superstition nor in avoiding the excesses of unmitigated scepticism; and, finally, that there is evidence that Hume was aware of and tacitly conceded these difficulties.

If it is true, as Prof. Seidel contends, that “Fichte is a philosophical genius of the first water”, so too is it true that he remains for contemporary readers one of the more inaccessible philosophical authors and that even his most important and celebrated work, the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, “cries out for a commentary”. No one who has struggled to come to terms with this fabulously abstract and frequently impenetrable text is likely to disagree with this judgment, and hence the appearance of an English language commentary on it is certainly a cause for celebration.

IN 1792 there appeared anonymously a book entitled, Aenesidemus, or Concerning the Foundations of the Elementary Philosophy Propounded in Jena by Professor Reinhold, including a Defense of Skepticism against the Pretensions of the Critique of Reason. This curious work, which takes the form of series of letter exchanged between an enthusiastic champion of the new transcendental philosophy and a skeptical critic of this same philosophy, created something of a sensation, appearing as it did at the height of the first wave of general enthusiasm for the Critical Philosophy. Though by no means the first published attack on Kantianism, Aenesidemus was distinguished from most of the other early criticisms by the detailed character of its scrutiny as well as by its willingness to examine the Critical Philosophy not only in its original form, but also in the more "advanced" version represented by K. L. Reinhold’s Elementary Philosophy. Aenesidemus claimed to be nothing less than a demonstration of the untenability of the new philosophy, specifically, of its failure to refute what the anonymous author called "Humean skepticism."

The summer of 1989 was an especially eventful one for Poland, but in the midst of all the political ferment some two dozen scholars from 10 countries —including the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, China, Bulgaria, Italy, Israel, and the USA—spent five days together in a guest house owned by the Polish Academy of Sciences in the tiny village of Mogilany, a half-hour’s drive from Krakow. They were assembled for a conference organized by Prof. Marek Siemek, Director of the Philosophical Institute of the University of Warsaw. Though the conference bore the general title, “Transcendental Philosophy and Dialectic,” almost all of the contributions were specifically concerned with aspects of the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. This was only fitting, since the ostensible occasion for the conference was to celebrate the 70th birthday of the world’s best-known Fichtean, Prof. Reinhard Lauth of the University of Munich. Since the majority of the participants had also participated in the two International Fichte Conferences held in Austria in 1977 and 1987 there was something of an air of a class reunion about the gathering, which made for an especially congenial conference.

In his recent All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism, Paul Franks defends Maimonian skepticism and explicitly criticizes Fichte’s response to the same. I argue that Franks’ interpretation of Fichte’s response to skepticism is fundamentally flawed in that it ignores or misinterprets the critically important practical/moral dimension of Fichte’s response. I also challenge Franks’ interpretation of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre as a »derivation holistic monism« and argue for a more modest interpretation of the same and one more in keeping with Fichte’s appreciation of the force of philosophical skepticism and the limits of transcendental philosophizing.

Fichte’s Ethical Thought follows a format familiar to those who have read Allen Wood’s books on the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel: Wood integrates Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work into topical chapters, each discussing an important component of Fichte’s ethical system. The text he focuses on, of course, is Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics, but Fichte scholars will likely be pleased to find that Wood discusses a wide range of Fichte’s Jena-era writings. Wood makes use of Addresses to the German Nation, The Closed Commercial State, and earlier works such as Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, especially in the final two chapters, which cover Fichte’s thought on public life, the...