Frederick Beiser: German Idealism. the Struggle Against Subjectivism

Elizabeth Millän-Zaibert (Chicago) Frederick Beiser. German Idealism. The Struggle against Sub jectivism, 1781-1801. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2002. XVI + 726 S. ISBN 0-674-00769-7. A recent surge of Anglophone inte cerning Lessing's alleged Spinozism rest in German Idealism and early (1780-85); the profound effects German Romanticism has resulted in which the publication of Kant's Cri nothing less than a publishing boom tique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) of studies in this area. Frederick Bei had upon the philosophical climate ser's work was crucial in preparing of the period; K.L. Reinhold's at the ground for this development of tempts to establish a foundation for English language studies of German Kant's Critique, which found their Idealism and early German Romanti fullest expression in his Über das cism. In The Fate of Reason: Ger Fundament des philosophischen Wis man Philosophy Between Kant and sens (1791); and the effects of Fich- Fichte (1987) and Enlightenment, te's Wissenschaftslehre (1794) on the Revolution, and Romanticism: The German philosophical mood of the Genesis of Modern German Political period. Thought (1992), Beiser made a com Beiser's work imbued the philoso pelling case that many German phi phical drama that unfolded on the losophers of the immediate post- German philosophical scene of the Kantian period and the issues that late 1700s and early 1800s with new they raised were worthy of much life. This reawakening of the key more attention than they had hitherto controversies and the figures who received in the English-speaking were crucial players in this drama world. has opened exciting new paths of The Fate of Reason not only wove study As a result of Beiser's innova a story of the themes that characteri tive work, the contributions of the zed the immediate post-Kantian peri early German Romantics (figures od (all centered around what Beiser such as Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich calls the „authority of reason"), but it von Hardenberg (Novalis), and Höl also provided a much needed context derlin), too long considered to be of which enabled the contributions of merely literary significance, are be the immediate post-Kantian philoso ginning to receive attention from phi phers to be appreciated. In The Fate losophers in the United States. of Reason, Beiser carefully analyzed: There has been a tendency to give the effects of the controversy bet Hegel all the credit for the great stri ween Mendelssohn and Jacobi con des in post-Kantian German philoso- German Idealism 245 phy, and Beiser's earlier work helped is, Beiser steers a middle path bet to correct this limited reading of the ween the two basic and „utterly irre history of German philosophy. His concilable" interpretations of Fichte: most recent study continues in a si the reading of him as a subjective milar vein: giving a voice to thinkers idealist and the reading of him as an who have been sorely neglected in absolute idealist. In the four chapters the English-speaking world and pre of Part III of the study, Beiser moves senting a well grounded alternative to an analysis of the absolute idea to the tradition of reading German lism that he argues characterized the Idealism as a movement shaped pri work of three important early Ger marily by Hegel. Beiser is an impres man Romantics, Friedrich Schlegel, sively astute philosophical historian Novalis, and Hölderlin. The book of philosophy who consistently of concludes with a treatment of idea fers a rich, historical framework with lism in the most protean figure of the which to come to a deeper, fuller ap period, Friedrich Schelling, a thinker preciation of key figures who are of who moved in and out of the Roman ten overlooked, and his most recent tic circle, and whose philosophical book is no exception. positions on thinkers such as Kant Beiser's study of German Idealism and Fichte were ever changing. Bei from 1781-1801 is divided into four ser connects each of these parts to parts; each part is so comprehensive tell his enlightening story of German and far-reaching that one can almost Idealism's struggle against subjecti speak of four books in one. Beiser vism. begins with ten detailed chapters on Beiser rejects the „seductively Kant's critique of idealism. In the fi simple" account of the history of nal chapter of this section on Kant, German Idealism, according to he carefully dispels the „stubborn which it is one long move towards an myth" that „Kant dropped off the inflated self-contained subjectivism, philosophical stage in the 1790s" (p. arguing that the „development of 180) and presents the Opus postu- German Idealism is not the culmina mum as an important contribution to tion but the nemesis of the Cartesian the history of German Idealism. Sec tradition (i.e., the doctrine that the tion II of the study is dedicated to an subject has an immediate knowledge examination of Fichte's critique of only of its own ideas, so that it has subjectivism, an examination that at no knowledge beyond its circle of tempts to clear the waters that have consciousness)" (p. 2). In Beiser's muddied a clear reception of Fichte's history of German Idealism, it is not thought and of German Idealism. In subjectivism that triumphs, but rather the eight chapters that constitute this the struggle against subjectivism that part of the study, Beiser takes on the emerges triumphantly, a struggle that difficult tasks of showing, „how Beiser characterizes in terms of an Fichte evades both solipsism and a „intense effort to break out of the cir transcendent metaphysics" and of ex cle of consciousness" or „egocentric plaining „[Fichte's] idealist princi predicament". ples and his teaching about the limits The egocentric predicament is the of human knowledge" (p. 218). That problem created by the transcenden- 246 Elizabeth Millän-Zaibert ce of our ability to know whether our confines of the subjectivist interpre ideas of the world and the world ac tation to which it has all too often be tually correspond, a problem that en doomed. might leave us trapped in an utterly In Beiser's version, „the story of subjective world with no real con German Idealism becomes a story nection to external reality. According about the progressive de-subjectivi- to Beiser, German Idealism is com zation of the Kantian legacy, the gro pelling not because it leads us to the wing recognition that the ideal realm subject, trapping us there, but becau consists not in personality and sub se it leads, surprisingly perhaps, to jectivity, but in the normative, the ar the development of a robust realism chetypical, and the intelligible" (p. and naturalism. German Idealism has 6). Beiser's story of German Idea suffered because of the general mi- lism is told in terms of the unfolding sperception that all forms of idealism of neo-Platonism, with its „ultimate amount to anti-realism. The connec heirs" identified as the Marburg Neo- tion that Beiser makes between rea Kantians, Hermann Cohen, Paul Na- lism and idealism, seemingly odd torp, and Emst Cassirer. bedfellows, at least for those bred on Throughout the four parts of the the Anglo-American philosophical study, Beiser maintains a focus on tradition, can only be made because the meaning of idealism itself and Beiser vehemently rejects any sub- the reaction against subjectivism car jectivist interpretation of German ried out by the idealists of the period Idealism. under consideration. Beiser's sustai He claims that the general tenden ned attention to the very meaning of cy to read German Idealism as a idealism does indeed reveal that Ger form of vulgar subjectivism is rooted man Idealism from 1781-1801 was in a failure to distinguish between not a „grandiose form of subjecti two very different forms of idealism: vism", but rather a reaction against „the two versions of idealism corre any sort of subjectivism, a reaction spond to two senses of the term „ide whose final goal was to break out of al", the ideal can be the mental in the egocentric predicament and do contrast to the physical, the spiritual nothing less than prove the reality of rather than the material, or it can by the external world. In short, the batt the archetypical in contrast to the ec- le against subjectivism, leads Ger typical, the normative rather than the man Idealism towards a robust rea substantive. Idealism in the former lism. sense is the doctrine that all reality Beiser's study is also dedicated to depends upon some self-conscious correcting the widespread misper- subject; idealism in the latter sense is ception that the young Romantics the doctrine that everything is a ma played merely a transitional role in nifestation of the ideal, an appearan the post-Kantian period. Beiser con ce of reason" (p. 6). Featured in Bei- vincingly argues that the young Ro ser's story is idealism in the second mantics were crucial players in the sense mentioned above, and so a development of German Idealism: fresh, new story of German Idealism indeed, „the early romantics [not He emerges, one which frees it from the gel, as commonly believed] were the German Idealism 247 true founders of absolute idealism4' to do with sweeping claims regar (viii). The absolute idealism that Bei- ding the dependency of reality upon ser imputes to the Romantics is a the self-conscious subject. Their kind of objective idealism, one that idealism was far less subjective, and attempts to explain the reality of the while it did commit them to the external world on the basis of idealist claim that „everything is a manifest principles, but which does not attach ation of the ideal, an appearance of the forms of experience to a subject, reason", they did not conceive of this but rather to the realm of pure being manifestation of the ideal as a sub as such.

Load more