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.

This is an excellent little book. As the title of the series to which it belongs indicates, it is intended as an account of the results of past and present research on Schleiermacher. The book opens with a brief statement of the contemporary relevance of this Romantic philosopher-theologian and of the difficulties of interpretation that his work presents. It then goes on with a detailed history of its reception, from early in the eighteenth century to the present. The history falls, roughly, into three periods. The first, which goes to the middle of the eighteenth century, is characterized by the fact that Idealism is still a living force in Europe. Schleiermacher’s work is then caught up in the general discussion between Hegelians and non-Hegelians—between those who considered his attempt at keeping faith and reason strictly separate as the product of an intellectual standpoint already superseded by history, and those others who thought instead that on the basis of Schleiermacher’s dichotomy, one could build a new and much more vital unity of tension. The second period is marked by a more historically detached attitude. Dilthey is the one who now set the tone. The life and the work of Schleiermacher are studied developmentally, and as examples of the spirit of an age. Dilthey called him the father of “Hermeneutics,” and it is precisely as a practitioner of this new discipline that in the third period he has finally acquired new relevance.

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms.

An International Fichte Congress was held at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat in Jena, September 26 to October 1, 1994, under the auspices of the Internationale Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte-Gesellschaft, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Wissenschaftslehre. Participants came from all corners of Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and the United States. Well over one hundred papers were read on all aspects of Fichte’s philosophy and Fichte’s heritage. Among the participants from North America some were well known faces from the HSA, such as Daniel Breazeale, George di Giovanni, Tom Rockmore, Jere Surber, and Michael Vater. They all made presentations. An excursion to Weimar proved an enjoyable diversion from the otherwise strict discipline of Fichtean science.

I have only two comments to make, both of which will appear incidental at first. Their full relevance to the paper you have just read will become clear at the end, as I hope.The first refers to Harris's remark that Jacobi, Schleiermacher and Herder “make strange bedfellows”. Actually, they do not. This is one more example, I believe, of Hegel's usual idiosyncratic yet conceptually sound classification of philosophers and philosophies. I am thinking especially of the Jacobi-Herder pair, but I suspect that what I have to say would apply to the third member of the trio as well. We must remember that, at the time of the writing of the Preface to the Phenomenology, the 1815 edition of Jacobi's dialogue David Hume on Faith, which Jacobi himself had overseen, did not exist. It is the edition that we are most likely to have read, because the wonders of photomechanical reproduction have made it easily available. Hegel, however, could only have read the dialogue in its 1787 edition, without the long new Introduction which Jacobi added in 1815 as an introduction to his collected works as well.