Synopses & Reviews
In this rigorous historical analysis, Lauer challenges traditional readings that have reduced two of German idealism's most important thinkers to opposing caricatures: Hegel the uncompromising systematist blind to the novelty and contingency of human life and Schelling the protean thinker drawn to all manner of pseudoscientific charlatanry. Bringing together recent scholarship that is just beginning to realise Schelling's centrality in the overthrow of metaphysics and Hegel's openness to diversity and innovation, this book shows that both thinkers can be read as contributing to the Kantian project of showing both the utter necessity and the limitations of reason. In readings of texts spanning each thinker's career, Lauer shows that animating much of Hegel and Schellings' most passionate work is their recognition of the need neither for a canonization of reason nor for its overthrow, but for its 'suspension'. Their lifelong willingness to revisit both their definitions of reason and their accounts of its role in philosophy give these discussions a vitality and depth that few in the history of philosophy can match.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. The Surge of Reason: Faculty Epistemology in Kant and Fichte2. Ascendent Reason: The Early Schelling3. Metastatic Reason: Schelling's Nature Philosophy4. Synthetic Reason: The
System of Transcendental Idealism5. Reason as Reflection and Speculation: Hegel's Collaboration with Schelling6. 'The Sacred Abyss': Schelling's Identity Philosophy7. Space, Time, and Suspension: Hegel's 'Absolute Knowing'8. Suspended Reason: Hegel on 'The Certainty and Truth of Reason'9. Reason on the Periphery: Schelling's
Freedom Essay10. Reason's Systematic Excess I: Hegel's System11. Reason's Systematic Excess II: Schelling's Positive PhilosophyBibliographyIndex