- Hardcover: 752 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (Jun 10 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674007697
- ISBN-13: 978-0674007697
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.8 x 4.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,164,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
[A] magnificent new book...That Beiser manages to keep the reader afloat as he steers through such deep and turbulent waters deserves the highest praise. Expository writing of unfailing lucidity is supported by reference to an unrivalled range of sources...I learned something from this book on almost every page...For anyone at all seriously interested in the topic this is now the place to start.
--Michael Rosen (Times Literary Supplement )
Frederick Beiser's new work provides English readers [with] a comprehensive and masterly explanation of the central forces that shaped the important philosophical movement known as German idealism. German Idealism is well written, exquisitely argued, and copiously researched. It easily outdistances much of the German scholarship and will serve as a benchmark for future English language scholarship. It is a must-read for scholars of the field, a helpful, accessible guide for the interested, and a valuable resource for all historians of philosophy.
--Grant Kaplan (Review of Metaphysics )
--Michael Rosen (Times Literary Supplement )
Frederick Beiser's new work provides English readers [with] a comprehensive and masterly explanation of the central forces that shaped the important philosophical movement known as German idealism. German Idealism is well written, exquisitely argued, and copiously researched. It easily outdistances much of the German scholarship and will serve as a benchmark for future English language scholarship. It is a must-read for scholars of the field, a helpful, accessible guide for the interested, and a valuable resource for all historians of philosophy.
--Grant Kaplan (Review of Metaphysics )
Product Description
One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.
(20030124)
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
tous philosophous sozein (saving the philosophers),
By
This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Hardcover)
Among the silliest of the many silly ways of criticizing something is to complain that it is not what it has no pretense of being. The title of Beiser's book, as well as its length and its rather hefty price, make it sufficiently clear that it is not intended as a general popular introduction to all German Idealism. Rather, it is scholarly inquiry into a phase of German Idealism that, while not altogether neglected, is too often regarded as merely a preparation for Hegel's triumphant system. That Beiser's study cuts off at 1801 relieves him of the need to deal with Hegel apart from his relation to Fichte and Schelling, and it no doubt reveals the bias of the reviewer from Cambridge that, seemingly having missed this point, he does not also accuse Beiser of neglecting to speak about Schelling's essay on the Human Freedom, his philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, Fichte's later systems, or perhaps even Solger's aesthetics, all of which also fall within the fold of German Idealism.Granting the self-imposed temporal constraints of his inquiry, Beiser's aim is not to exclude or marginalize Hegel and deny his significance for German idealism, but rather to rescue the singular originality and grandeur of moments within the history of German Idealism that have fallen into the shadow of the leviathan to which they gave birth. While this very effort is somewhat compromised by Beiser's epistemological orientation, and I do not entirely agree with his ultimate reading of German Idealism as a neo-Platonism anticipating the Neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer, I nevertheless admire the rigor and clarity of this work, and would strongly recommend to all those who have a more than dilettantish interest in German philosophy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beiser is a careful reader -,
By A Customer
This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Hardcover)
The review below which claims that Beiser says that Hegel is "tendentious" is not correct. Beiser's text reads, "Hegel's history of the period, which interprets it as a progression culminating in his own system, is tendentious philosophically, and anachronistic historically" (ix). This is certainly not the same as claiming that Hegel is tendentious. In addition, Beiser's criticism is quite correct; Hegel's history of philosophy is quite tendentious.Another reviewer claims that Beiser omits Kant from this text. This is an absurd claim. The first section of the book, which spans 200 pages, is about Kant.
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
A general study of German idealism that omits Hegel?,
By spinoza (North Shore, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Hardcover)
Beiser notes, almost nonchalantly, that "this study of German idealism omits Hegel, and it is indeed a reaction against the Hegelian legacy" because he regards Hegel as "tendentious" and "unoriginal" (claims, of course, that can be made for any well-known historical figure). Setting aside the question whether ignoring Hegel in such a work is useful or even valid (I personally don't), attempting a general introductory text on German idealism using this approach is simply absurd. I could never recommend this book for someone wishing to gain a better understanding of German idealism, since it would be so misleading as to be false. If it wasn't the author's intent to write such an introduction, then he should have structured his work differently (including using a different title, such as "German Idealism Before Hegel"). If the reader clearly understood that this work was far from being a general overview, then it could be read with beneficial results. The way it stands, however, it would be like claiming to write an introduction to Greek philosophy, but to not include Plato and Aristotle, since their only value was to bring together and recapitulate the major ideas of the Pre-Socratics.
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