George Di Giovanni

The World, understood as a system of meaningful relations, is for Hegel the exclusive product of the human mind. In this, Hegel stands together with Kant in direct opposition to the Christian metaphysical tradition, according to which reality reflects God's ideas. For both Kant and Hegel, faith and religion therefore acquire new meaning. Yet, that meaning is just as different for each with respect to the other as it is for both with respect to the Christian tradition. This paper explores these differences, taking Kant's and Hegel's differing attitudes towards evil as the litmus test for differentiating their respective idealism.

It is not just rhetoric to ask why we should still be reading the Young Hegelians today. In spite of their commitment to action, their influence on the politics of the times was marginal at best; and even as philosophers, the movement of thought which they represented was all but dead by 1848. Now that we read them at a distance of over a century, it is clear that for once at least the fate meted out by circumstances was well deserved. The writings of the Young Hegelians appear painfully thin in insight and force of argument. This global judgment must of course be qualified. Protestant theology has not been the same since David Strauss, and Feuerbach’s conception of man stands as the first statement of modern scientific humanism. Still, the ideal of humanity that inspired either of them has none of the historical richness of Hegel’s “spirit”; in the case of Feuerbach there is also none of the scholarship that redeems at least some of Strauss’ work. The value of both men’s writings lay mostly in their iconoclastic nature. They cleared the air, though at the cost of grave oversimplifications, of the illusion that after Hegel things could quite ever be the same again - as if the speculative comprehension of the Christian faith that Hegel claimed to have achieved could have left that faith undisturbed. But now that the profane has become the commonplace, there is little to recommend them in our eyes; and now that we have also had plenty of opportunity to notice how quickly the spirit of revolution degenerates into faction and anarchy, there is even less to recommend the rest of the Young Hegelians. The later Marx stands out intellectually in comparison to them precisely because he succeeded in breaking free from their ideological hold. I sometimes wonder whether his figure has really been enhanced by the post-war attempt at reinterpreting Capital in the light of his supposed earlier “humanism.” Sidney Hook’s statement that the late Marx was a scientist, and that his theory is to be proven either right or wrong on strictly historical and empirical evidence, might be a bit far-fetched perhaps; it still is in my mind the best compliment that one can pay to Marx.

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.

Despite the radically different interests that motivate Emil Fackenheim’s and Henry Harris’s respective interpretations of Hegel, the two have significant points of commonality. They in fact come the closest precisely at points where they seem to differ most. The need and the possibility of ‘reconciliation’ is the theme that animates both interpretations, and both also agree in their assessment of Hegel’s treatment of ‘evil.’ There are nevertheless crucial differences separating the two, which the essay details. The essay concludes wondering, on the one hand, how seriously Harris recognizes that, in a post-Holocaust world, ‘reconciliation’ calls for existential conditions such as Hegel could never have imagined; and on the other hand, how much Fackenheim would be willing to admit that his immersion into history will necessarily bring violent consequences in train for which there will have to be an accounting.

In this essay, I reply to the above four critics of In Defense of Kant’s Religion (IDKR). In reply to George di Giovanni, I highlight the interpretive differencesthat divide the authors of IDKR and di Giovanni, and argue that di Giovanni’s atheist reading of Kant does not follow, even granting his premises. In reply to Pamela Sue Anderson, I show that if her reading of Kant is accurate, Kant’s own talk of God becomes empty and contemptible by his own lights, and I then show how her empirical bias prompts a significant misreading of IDKR. In reply to Stephen Palmquist, I expose four fallacious maneuvers in his paper, which comprise the bulk of his essay. And in reply to Michalson, I address a series of minor concerns raised in his essay, and then set the record straight on the motives behind IDKR in general and my own take on Kant’s compatibility (or lack thereof) with Christianity in specific.

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.

The theologians of the late German Enlightenment saw in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason a new rational defence of their Christian faith. In fact, Kant's critical theory of meaning and moral law totally subverted the spirit of that faith. This challenging new study examines the contribution made by the Critique of Pure Reason to this change of meaning. George di Giovanni stresses the revolutionary character of Kant's critical thought but also reveals how this thought was being held hostage to unwarranted metaphysical assumptions that caused much confusion and rendered the First Critique vulnerable to being reabsorbed into modes of thought typical of Enlightenment popular philosophy. Amongst the striking features of this book are nuanced interpretations of Jacobi and Reinhold, a lucid exposition of Fichte's early thought, and a rare, detailed account of Enlightenment popular philosophy.

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.

The reader of Joseph Navickas’s recent book will be disappointed if he expects the author to keep the promise made in the note on the back cover: “The book combines a textual analysis with a new constructive interpretation of the Phenomenology.” And the note goes on to say, “The complete working out of the notion of subjectivity requires a re-examination of the phenomenological transitions and a re-investigation of some allegedly insignificant achievements of the subject.” In point of fact there is nothing particularly new in Navickas’s interpretation. His book actually repeats certain misunderstandings which one would think were the stock of older text-books. And as for the promised “textual analysis”, it consists mostly in a textual exposition of uneven quality. Some sections of Parts IV and V are lucid and accurate. Others, notably the sections of Part II, are woefully cursory, and often misleading. For instance, the theme of the “inverted world” is treated in these words

This is good news for those of us who have tried for years to teach Hegel’s Logic only to discover each time that by the end of term we have not gone past the first few pages. We have finally a book on which we can rely to lead our students through the intricacies of at least some of its sections. Burbidge’s handling of the parts of the Logic which he has singled out for his commentary is detailed, lucid, accurate, and penetrating. For this reason alone his book will no doubt become standard reference for anyone, beginner and professional alike, interested in Hegel’s Logic. But the book is more than simply an explication of the Hegelian text. It is also a highly original statement about the nature of the Logic made in direct opposition to other interpretations, notably those of Mure, Findlay and Taylor. This aspect of Burbidge’s book is bound to be controversial; I shall claim for my part that it is seriously flawed. On the other hand, since Burbidge’s meta-logical reflections are closely linked to a detailed analysis of Hegel’s own text, they bring with them their own corrective. In spite of any objection one might want to raise against them, they are more likely to initiate an instructive debate on what the nature and the value of the Hegelian Logic truly are than any other commentary has done in the past. For this reason too the book deserves credit, and an important place in the literature of Hegelian interpretation.

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.

Heinz Kimmerle’s dating in 1967 of the Jena writings [“Zur Chronologie von Hegels Jenaer Schriften”, Hegel-Studien, 4, 125–176.] which definitely places at 1804–05 the fragment of a Reinschrift on Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Nature previously thought to belong, on the authority of Rosenkranz, to the earlier Frankfurt period, throws a new light on the development of Hegel’s thought during the crucial Jena years. The fact that, throughout that period, Hegel was so much concerned with the Logic is significant both for an understanding of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and retrospectively, for a proper estimate of the meaning that the Logic must have had for him as early as 1801. Many studies have recently appeared that re-examine both the Phenomenology and the early Logic. Dusing’s latest book follows on their wake. Its main concern is the Logic; it differs greatly, however, from the other recent works on the same subject both in historical and philosophical scope. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the Jena writings, it follows the vicissitudes of Hegel’s conception of the Logic from its pre-history in the Frankfurt period all the way down to the form it finally assumed in 1812–1816. Düsing also makes a definite proposal as to what value the Logic might still have. I shall first give a sketch of the development of the Logic as it appears from Düsing’s reconstruction.