The Wall or the Door: German Realism around 1800 De muur of de deur: Duits realism rond 1800 (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 19 juni 2017 des middags te 2.30 uur door Tom Giesbers geboren op 23 juni 1985 te ‗s-Hertogenbosch Promotor: Prof.dr. P.G. Ziche Co-Promotor: Dr. D.K.W. van Miert In memory of my father ISBN: 978-94-6103-062-7 Acknowledgements: This book was made possible through generous funding from the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), as part of the project ‗Thinking classified - Structuring the world of ideas around 1800‘ (project number 360-20-330). I want to thank Paul Ziche for his enduring support. Over the last four years, he has been exceptionally encouraging with regards to my own commitment to independent research and new ideas. I also want to thank Fred Beiser and Joan Farrenkopf for making me feel welcome during my stay in Syracuse, NY during my stay there as a Fulbright scholar. I am also grateful for Ives Radrizzani, for graciously making the manuscript of the Denkbücher available. Finally, in my personal life, I want to thank my partner, Eline Janszen, and my family and friends for their help, in providing invaluable warmth and leisurely activities during the last four years. Table of contents: Introduction 1 1. The Pantheismusstreit: proto-realist origins 17 2. Realism around 1800 as negative realism 40 2.1 Jacobi‘s negative realism 40 2.2 Herder as a realist 99 2.3 Reinhold as a realist 139 2.4 Johann Neeb: ‗the senses are not the gateways to things‘ 156 2.5 Conclusion 168 3. German realism and the origins of philosophical nihilism 175 4. Jacobi‘s practical philosophy in the Werke 215 5. The limits of philosophy 265 5.1 Fichte‘s response to realism in the 1804-1805 Berlin lectures 265 5.2 Krug‘s pen and the emergence of relativism 299 6. Realism around 1800 and realism in the 19th century 1800 313 Conclusion 351 Appendix 1: Biographical information 364 Appendix 2: Realist dictionary 373 Literature 376 Summary (in Dutch) 387 Introduction 1. Realism as a philosophical position One of the most prominent defenses of philosophical realism was put forward by George Edward Moore. In 1903, he presented his hands as external objects in the world and concluded from this that an external world with at least two objects in it exists. Moore here clearly understood realism as a common-sense attitude for which one can argue by relying on ordinary perception and understanding. For many decades, this kind of realism, argued for by common-sense arguments, has been an archetype of philosophical realism. Another important development in thinking about realism in the 20th century has been scientific realism, which is concerned with the specific truth of scientific theories. In more recent years, drawing on the German idealist, phenomenological and French philosophical traditions, a continental realism has emerged. Some adherents to this realism are Quentin Meillassoux and Markus Gabriel. The type of realism that I will cover within the space of this book will be familiar to none of these types of realists. First of all, it will seem unfamiliar because it is a reconstruction of realism in a time period and in a context (German philosophy in 1780- 1820) that is normally considered to be far from realist in outlook. Instead, the standard accounts of the history of philosophy characterize this period as the heyday of German idealism. Secondly, the realism covered in this book will seem unfamiliar because it is of a kind that no one today would readily associate with that term. In the Moore-tradition, we have come to associate realism with a resolutely common-sense approach. In everyday understanding, ―realism‖ came to mean that we take things at face value. Because the kind of realism I am going to present here is so alien to our assumptions, I have even heard some scholars of German philosophy claim that there was no German realism to match German idealism. If I can show that there is a kind of 1 German realism around this time, we will have to adjust our notion of what realism can be, as well as rethink the trajectory of the history of philosophy and the history of the concept of realism. And if we are not to quarrel over the meaning of the term ―realism‖, then we will have to admit at least another conception of realism alongside these more traditional and contemporary forms of realism. I therefore take up two general tasks for this book. First of all, I must make it plausible that there is indeed a realism or realist movement present in this period. One might expect this to be a difficult task considering my claim that German realism around 1800 is very different from what we now likely associate with realism. Fortunately, the historical material bears out this point beyond all doubt. This should be clear already from the fact that a number of books have ―realism― placed emphatically in their titles, such as Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi‘s David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787), Erhard Georg Friedrich Wrede‘s Antilogie des Realismus und Idealismus (1791), Joseph Rückert‘s Der Realismus, oder, Grundsätze zu einer durchaus praktischen Philosophie (1801) and Franz Joseph Molitor‘s Der Wendepunkt des Antiken und Modernen oder Versuch den Realismus mit dem Idealismus zu versöhnen (1805). The first clear indication that there was a realism around this time, and moreover that realism indeed formed a broader philosophical movement, can be found in Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi‘s claim in David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (1787) about what ‗we realists‘ believe (see [p.169]). This publication was enormously popular as well as influential for the early reception and criticism of Kant‘s philosophy. Jacobi will therefore be our principal figure, and I will show, throughout my book, that there are many other references to realism and many other uses of Jacobi‘s realist arguments in the public debate in Jacobi‘s time. My second task is to elaborate exactly what systematic commitments these realists have. In order to achieve 2 this, I will not compare it to a notion of realism that is familiar to today‘s readers, because this will not help us in understanding what concerns motivated the realists, and how these influenced their arguments and methodology. Since we tend to be much more aware of these concerns where today‘s types of realism are concerned, a direct comparison would not provide a very enlightening encounter, because we would hold realism around 1800 to our own standards without an attempt to reconstruct what their own standards were. Beyond these two concerns, which primarily aim at answering the reader‘s initial questions encountering this book, I also want to partialy answer the question likely to arise once a reader is satisfied with my answers to the above two concerns, namely, the question: Why, if the realists movement was really so important, have nearly all accounts of the history of philosophy forgotten German realism around 1800? There are some notable exceptions, such as, Zöller (2000) and Pluder (2012). But a first, tentative answer to this question has in fact already been given, at least in as far as today‘s accounts are concerned: Philosophical scholarship is not aware of this type of realism because it is so very different from today‘s versions of realism. It is so different in fact, that it is hard to identify as a realism at all, despite authors like Jacobi claiming that they are realists. We will, in part, show how German realism around 1800 was slowly changed into a, to modern eyes at least, more recognizable type of realism during the 19th century. For now, it is important to realize that realism around 1800 emerged in a period in which many terms were still without a canonical definition or a clear semantic range (cf. realism, empiricism) and many philosophical terms were only just being coined (cf. relativism, nihilism). The degree to which terminology changed, or was given novel meaning, is indicated by the fact that the realists, at no point in the debate, or in their private correspondence, make any effort to compare or connect their type 3 of realism to the medieval type, and Jacobi explicitly emphasizes that it is a wholly new kind of realism. The title of this book refers to a question that Johann Georg Hamann poses to Jacobi in response to the latter‘s attempt to formulate his philosophical position, which we will recount in chapter 1. Throughout the book we will, at times, return to this issue. Hamann gives us two options for reading a philosophical position, as a wall or as a door. This can still be worked out in several different ways, which is why I utilize this imagery as a versatile way of gauging the development of realism. The tension this imagery introduces between a wall and a door suggests a blockage and a passageway respectively, thereby giving the wall a negative connotation. However, in relation to the Kantian project, we can also construe the wall as a limiting project, which curtails illegitimate incursions and protects a sanctuary. The door then becomes an opening onto uncertain vistas. As I‘ll show, the full range of these vistas can be found with the realists.