Philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi On the Contradiction between System and Freedom
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Birgit Sandkaulen is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Research Center for Classical German Philosophy / Hegel-Archive at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Her research focuses especially on Hegel and Jacobi. She is the editor of Jacobi’s Correspondence and co-editor of a new “Digital Jacobi Lexicon” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. She has published several books on Jacobi, including Grund und Ursache. Die Vernunftkritik Jacobis (2000).Written in a lively and elegant style, this<i> </i>is the best book on Jacobi I know of. It will quickly become the standard place for English speakers to begin exploring Jacobi's thought; its treatment of his relation to Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling will transform the Anglo-American reception of classical German philosophy.
Frederick Neuhouser, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA
Jacobi’s importance for modern German philosophy has long been downplayed in the Anglo-American tradition, and no one is more qualified than Birgit Sandkaulen to remedy this situation. Sandkaulen gives us an insightful, sympathetic discussion of Jacobi’s “practical realism”, thereby establishing not just his influence on figures such as Fichte and Hegel, but his impact on existentialism and post-modernism as well.
Sally Sedgwick, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University, USA
Sandkaulen’s unapologetic advocacy of Jacobi’s philosophy sets her book apart from previous monographs on the subject. Readers would be hard-pressed to find a study of Jacobi’s thought that is similarly authoritative, original, and substantively illuminating. Those seeking clarity regarding his central ideas and their significance in the context of classical German philosophy will find it in this book.
Brady Bowman, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University, USA
This is both a first-rate work in the history of philosophy, and the needed remedy for insufficient recognition of Jacobi and his influence on German Idealism. Sandkaulen argues powerfully for the importance of Jacobi’s complex double philosophy, and his grounding of philosophy in the experience of human action.
Jim Kreines, Professor of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College, USA
Birgit Sandkaulen’s collection of essays presents a masterful, engaging, and most welcome introduction to the thought of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, the éminence grise of the age of German Idealism, who, today too often neglected, initiated and shaped many of its key philosophical debates.
Charles Larmore, W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professor in the Humanities, Brown University, USA
The contemporaries of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) openly acknowledged his towering importance. Both Fichte and Hegel praised him in the same breath with Kant as having launched the philosophical revolution they sought to complete. Yet for more than a century, misrepresentations of Jacobi’s thought have stood in the way of a proper appreciation of his insights. In her study of this long-neglected German philosopher, internationally-renowned Jacobi expert Birgit Sandkaulen interprets his philosophical writings in their intellectual context. Originally published in German and translated into English for the first time, this is a major contribution to reading the life, work, and legacy of Jacobi. The biographical chapter on Jacobi’s life as a public intellectual was written specifically for this English edition.
Offering new perspectives on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, Sandkaulen focuses on Jacobi’s specific conception of practical realism. This conception, the source of Jacobi’s famous defense of faith and human freedom, matches his critique of the German Idealists: the post-Kantian systems of German Idealism were bound to fail. Sandkaulen shows us that long before 20th-century philosophers took up this line of thought, indeed at the very origin of the epoch-making developments of classical German philosophy, Jacobi articulated a practical, ethical, personal realism that is as philosophically appealing and relevant today as it was in its time.
Preface
Note on Translation
List of Abbreviations
Part I. Leitmotifs
1. Life and Work
2. Jacobi’s “Spinoza and Antispinoza”
3. Groundless Belief: A Philosophical Provocation
4. Does Spirit have Ésprit? On the Figures of Soul, Spirit, and Reason in Jacobi’s Philosophy
5. Between Spinoza and Kant: Jacobi on Freedom and Persons
6. That, What, or Who? Jacobi and the Discourse on Persons
7. Brother Henriette? Deconstructions of Friendship in Derrida and Jacobi
8. “I am and there are things outside me”. Overcoming the “Consciousness-Paradigm” with Jacobi’s Realism
9. The “Tiresome Thing in Itself.” Kant – Jacobi – Fichte
Part II. Critical Relations
10. I-hood and Person: The Fichtean Aporia and the Debate with Jacobi
11. Fichte’s Vocation of Man – A Convincing Response to Jacobi?
12. This Individual and No Other? On the Individuality of the Person in Schelling’s Freedom Essay
13. System and Temporality. Jacobi Contra Hegel and Schelling
14. Third Position of Thought Towards Objectivity: Immediate Knowing
15. Metaphysics or Logic? The Importance of Spinoza in Hegel’s Science of Logic
Bibliography
Proof of first publication
Index
Central and previously overlooked ideas and thinkers from the German Enlightenment Era are showcased in this series. Expanding research into areas that have been neglected particularly in English-language scholarship, it covers the work of lesser-known authors, previously untranslated texts, and issues that have suffered an undeserved life on the margins of current philosophical-historical discussion about 18th-century German thought.
By opening itself to a broad range of subjects and placing the role of women during this period centre-stage, the series not only advances our understanding about the German Enlightenment and its connection with the pan-European debates, but also contributes to debates about the reception of Newtonian science and the impact of Leibnizian, Kantian and Wolffian philosophies.
Featuring edited collections and single-authored works, and overseen by an esteemed Editorial Board, the goal is to enrich current debates in the history of philosophy and to correct common misconceptions.