Abstract
Thematically, modernity was characterized by its concern for the finite subject: the world and God only appear under its perspective. Formally, it was characterized by the tendencies of individualization and universalization. Methodologically, its fundamental feature was self-reference, which materialized in ethical and political thought as freedom. German Idealists unite all these traits within comprehensive, principle-based systems. However, as with all modernity before them, they neglect the particular: that which is neither purely individual nor purely universal, but specifically distinct. German Idealism can thus be seen as the turning point of modernity because it reaches the highest possible point of inidividuo-universalism and because philosophy after it is marked by the return of the particular. However, since post-idealist modernity gave up the project of a comprehensive, principle-based theory, its account of the particular remains one-sided. The lasting challenge of German Idealism is not to abandon the idea of systematic philosophy, but to integrate the particular—to comprehend the latter systematically, instead of only picking it up by concepts such as ‘plurality,’ ‘relativity,’ ‘context-dependence,’ or ‘language-games.’
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- 1.
We might mention da Vinci, Kepler, Bacon, and Galilei.
- 2.
This is one fundamental reason why the history of modernity essentially is a history of oppositions.
- 3.
See Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline Part l: Science of Logic, ed. and trans. Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121 f., §74), 132, §82, 239 f., §164; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, ed. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968–), 32–48.
- 4.
Just to make a contrast: typical examples of infinite realization would be the noesis noeseos of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, the begetting of the son by the father in Trinitarian theology, or the beatific vision of God in eternal life. The creation of the world also is infinite or at least non-finite realization if it is conceived of as the beginning of space and time—and not as an event in space and time.
- 5.
See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 157, B 423. Of course, more would have to be said about this. In Kant, for instance, the subject can know itself also objectively through inner perception. However, the point of reference for the identification of this objective, empirical information about myself can only be transcendental self-consciousness, which is non-objective (see B 155).
- 6.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 132, B 157.
- 7.
This is a conceptual possibility: The actualization must be such that, in principle, it can be accompanied by self-consciousness, such that it is conceptually compatible with the latter, or such that it can combined with self-consciousness in one discursive thought (like: ‘I think that this rose is red’). It need not be the case that every subject at every time is practically capable of effecting this thought. Very young children are incapable of it; adults while dreaming are incapable of it; so are most animals; and so on.
- 8.
F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 22 f., 48–51; SW, I/7: 331–416, see 351 f., 382–385. Citations of Schelling provide the pagination of the English translation followed by that of the Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols, ed. Karl Friedrich August Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856–61). References to the K.F.A. Schelling edition are given by the abbreviation SW, division, volume and page number.
- 9.
This is, of course, a very simplified account. Universals can apply not only to individuals, but to other universals as well.
- 10.
Likewise, those who fall under this extension are indifferent to one another with regard to this unity. They are not specifically united, just formally, abstractly united.
- 11.
Hegel holds that this is not true for all concepts. The concept of ‘concept,’ for example, necessarily falls under its own extension. This can be dialectically ‘inferred’ from this concept itself.
- 12.
Again, I leave subtleties aside: There are, for example, sentences without concepts, like ‘this is Peter’ or ‘Joseph Ratzinger is Benedict XVI.’ However, it seems like we cannot give or handle names without concepts, so even these sentences presuppose the use of concepts, even if they do not employ concepts themselves.
- 13.
At least, this is the basic dichotomy in Schelling’s mature identity-philosophy as exposed in: Presentation of My System of Philosophy [1801], in The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802), ed. and trans. Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012); SW, I/4: 105–212; Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things [1802], trans. Michael G. Vater (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984); SW, I/4: 213–332; System of the Entire Philosophy and the Philosophy of Nature [1804], SW, I/6: 131–214. Cf. also the earlier Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature [1797], trans. Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); SW, I/2: 1–345. I cannot enter here into the complicated discussion of the development of Schelling’s thought.
- 14.
See, for instance, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels Analytische Philosophie. Die Wissenschaft der Logik als kritische Theorie der Bedeutung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1992) or J.N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-Examination (New York: Humanities Press, 1958).
- 15.
See, for example, F.W.J. Schelling, Initia philosophiae universae. Erlanger Vorlesung WS 1820/21, ed. H. Fuhrmans (Bonn: Bouvier 1969). See also, Christian Iber, Das Andere der Vernunft als ihr Prinzip. Grundzüge der philosophischen Entwicklung Schellings mit einem Ausblick auf die nachidealistischen Philosophiekonzeptionen Heideggers und Adornos (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1994).
- 16.
And some other things.
- 17.
Historically speaking, this is the generalization of the romantic concept of the genius.
- 18.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, trans. David Pears and Brian McGuinness (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), proposition 7, 151. Even in those few instances in which the subject appears beforehand, it appears only as a limit, as an anticipation of the end of the Tractatus as a whole.
- 19.
This observation—as most of the others—is not new.
- 20.
If you understand ‘knowledge’ in the strict sense, they also need to be true and justified and maybe be characterized by some additional Gettier-inspired X, but this is not important for us now.
- 21.
J.G. Herder, Eine Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, vol. 8 of Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. Günter Arnold et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–2000), 303–604, cf. 568, 593; parts of which have been translated as ‘Selections from A Metacritique on the Critique of Pure Reason,’ in Metacritique: The Linguistic Assault on German Idealism, ed. and trans. Jere Paul Surber (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2001), 89–130. On Herder’s philosophy of language, see: Ulrich Gaier, Herders Sprachphilosophie und Erkenntniskritik (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog 1988).
- 22.
This point has been made and very well argued in Vittorio Hösle, Hegels System: Der Idealismus der Subjektivität und das Problem der Intersubjektivität, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner 1987), especially 263–275. I think that his analysis remains valid. Of course, German Idealists, especially Hegel, wrote a lot about social structures and political systems. However, they always linked individuals to one another by subsuming them under common universal concepts, such as ‘subject’ or ‘person,’ or concepts that express their union as in ‘family’ or ‘state.’ This leaves out the irreducible, particular alterity of other individual subjects.
- 23.
A fine example is L.B. Puntel in his late Struktur und Sein. Ein Theorierahmen für eine systematische Philosophie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).
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Utz, K. (2016). Beyond Modernity: The Lasting Challenge of German Idealism. In: McGrath, S., Carew, J. (eds) Rethinking German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53514-6_13
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