George Di Giovanni

Two conferences recently held in Europe, one on Reinhold and the other on Jacobi, reflect this new development. Both testify to the present high degree of maturity reached by the scholarship on the subject. In both, the two philosophers finally emerge as figures spanning the distance between the late Aufklärung and the nineteenth century. In some respects, Jacobi and Reinhold are closer in mental attitudes to our contemporary world than any of the idealists. So far as the present writer is concerned, the most interesting development noted in the conferences was however the repeated references made in the presentations to “common sense” philosophy, to the influence that this originally Scottish phenomenon had on the Aufklärung in general, and to the more specific influence that Thomas Reid had on both Jacobi and Reinhold. Manfred Kühn is of course the one who wrote the now classic work on the Scottish “common sense” background of Kant’s philosophy. But it now appears that the same background also extended to, and influenced, the post-Kantian developments. Hegel’s disparaging remarks regarding common sense philosophy, and his sharp criticisms of both Jacobi and Reinhold, are well known. One should not however make the mistake, in reading these remarks, of concentrating exclusively on their negative tone, and thereby forgetting that, in engaging in controversy with his chosen opponents, Hegel was at the same time defining his own problematic—by implication, therefore, making his own the opponents’s themes and problems. I have already said that Jacobi and Reinhold shared many of our contemporary mental attitudes. It might well be that one way of undercutting historically the normally assumed opposition between the analytical tradition of philosophy and the more idealistic, as well as phenomenological traditions, is to recover the common ground of them all in the philosophical discourse of the late Enlightenment.

Up to 1800, before Jacobi was diverted into a simplistic distinction between understanding and reason, he had what amounted to the sketch of a potentially interesting theory of experience. The theory had its source in the Herzensmensch side of Jacobi’s persona. It was summed up in a formula “Wie die Triebe, so der Sinn; und wie der Sinn, so die Triebe,” which Jacobi used first to confront Lessing, and then Mendelssohn. In the Dialogue David Hume, he further argued that Kant’s categories can be derived a posteriori on the basis of a feeling of resistance which Hume had also recognized. Reason is but a form of life. However, without an adequate concept of precisely this very reason, such as Jacobi obviously lacked, the theory was vulnerable to the danger of both historicizing and naturalizing truth. These were consequences that Jacobi could not accept. It is no surprise that the original sketch of a theory went nowhere.

Hegel and the Challenge of Spinoza explores the powerful continuing influence of Spinoza's metaphysical thinking in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German philosophy. George di Giovanni examines the ways in which Hegel's own metaphysics sought to meet the challenges posed by Spinoza's monism, not by disproving monism, but by rendering it moot. In this, di Giovanni argues, Hegel was much closer in spirit to Kant and Fichte than to Schelling. This book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in post-Kantian Idealism, Romanticism, and metaphysics.

In a transcendental argument, a judgement ≫S is P≪ is unpacked into the two reflective claims: ≫I say that S is P≪, and ≫What I say is indeed the case≪; and the truth of the second is made to rest on the authority of the ≫I say≪ of the first. The argument has all the features of a testimony, where the reliability of the testimony depends on the extent to which, in being rendered, it conforms to stipulated canons of objectivity. As presented in 1804, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre can be interpreted as a protracted argument of this kind, inasmuch as, since its avowed subject-matter, the One, is ex hypothesi ineffable, its validity as a narrative about it depends solely on its internal logic as narrative. Such a narrative can only be one which, in constructing any schema about its transcendent subject-matter, at the same time de-constructs it: in the course of this process it methodically and exhaustively uncovers the genesis of otherwise merely accepted facts of experience, manifesting them for what they truly are, and also allowing the necessarily unspoken evidence of the One to shine through. The Wissenschaftslehre 1804 is a type of apophantic theology. It is a Spinozism, but one developed from the standpoint of a finite subject who knows that he exists in a universe where, in truth, there is no explainable room for finitude.

Now that the edition of Fichte's works is complete, and those of Hegel's and Jacobi's practically complete, it is comforting to see that the edition of Reinhold's works, begun in 1983 with a first volume of his correspondence, but subsequently dormant, has finally been resumed in earnest. The two books under review are Reinhold's Letters on Kantian Philosophy that make up the two parts of the second of the twelve volumes now planned for the edition. An editorial board is supervising the project, but general editorial control will fall on Martin Bondeli, who has just produced this second volume. Including the multiple parts of individual volumes, there will be sixteen books altogether, 2019 being the foreseen completion date. This Schwabe publication will also incorporate in some form or other the work already done by Faustino Fabbianelli in editing the Beiträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Mißverständnisse der Philosophen of 1790 and 1794. As for Reinhold's correspondence, the first volume of 1983 was followed in 2007 by a second covering the 1788–1790 period, both published by Frommann-Holzboog. This series will proceed independently, but in cooperation with the.

It is a curious feature of Hegelian studies in English that its practitioners seem incapable of tackling their subject without first disclaiming any adherence to the more metaphysical side of Hegel's thought, be it called “speculative metaphysics,” “dialectical logic” or whatever. I say “curious” because I doubt that the same scholars would feel obliged to enter an equivalent disclaimer at the head of a study on, say, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza or even Newton—even though all of these classics have a metaphysical side at least as abstruse as any of Hegel's worse romantic excesses. Hegel himself, if he could witness the practice, would be flattered by it. He would not see it as an indication that “the problems of [his] logic remain alien and artificial to us in ways that the problems of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy do not” but, on the contrary, as a hidden acknowledgement that, whether for good or bad, his philosophy is still alive, still so close to our culture that we instinctively feel the need of exorcizing it ritually, like a demon capable of frightening us.

There is no doubt that the Philosophy of Nature constituted in Hegel’s mind an integral part of his system. Even in the early years of collaboration with Schelling at Jena, when Hegel’s contribution was to be the formulation of a logic consistent with Schelling’s new idealism, Hegel repeatedly produced sketches of a theory of nature. Though that early creative period in fact culminated with the Phenomenology of Spirit, a Philosophy of Nature eventually found its canonical place in the Encyclopedia, and remained there through the various editions that the work underwent in Hegel’s lifetime. Yet, despite its obvious structural importance, this part of Hegel’s system has been the spot most vulnerable to the attacks of its enemies, and also, on the part of the sympathetic critics, the place where their different lines of interpretation have clashed the loudest.

Whether transcendental arguments are possible or not is a question that has received wide attention in the analytical literature of recent years. It is important to distinguish carefully, however, between Kant’s own Transcendental Deduction and the kind of reasoning which has lately been dubbed “transcendental.” Eva Schaper has accurately defined the difference some years ago. The “transcendental arguments” to which we have recently been accustomed are arguments that seek to establish the logical preconditions of empirical enquiry. They all start from the fact that we conceptualize experience in a certain way, and then proceed to uncover the conditions necessary to our process of conceptualization. Kant’s own Transcendental Deduction, on the other hand, is concerned with “the wider task of showing the conditions of what is to count as experience at all.” While it is always possible to render a “transcendental argument” of the contemporary type pointless simply by refusing to accept the peculiar manner of conceptualizing experience from which it starts, the conclusion of Kant’s Deduction would be irrefutable. To deny it would be tantamount to denying the possibility of experience itself. The notorious difficulties that accompany the Deduction are to be seen precisely in the light of the strong claim to proof that it makes.

This Volume contains seven works of Kant, newly translated and edited, with Introductions. What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? 1786 (Allen Wood) On the miscarriage of all philosophical trials in theodicy. 1791 (George di Giovanni Religion within the boundaries of mere reason. 1793 (George di Giovanni) The end of all things. 1794 (Allen Wood) The conflict of the faculties. 1798 (Mary J. Gregor & Robert Anchor) Preface to Reinhold Bernhard Jackmann's examination of the Kantian Philosophy of Religion. 1800 (Allen W. Wood) Lectures on the philosophical doctrines of religion (1817) (Allen W. Wood