PHGA 7131: Between Kant and Hegel
Professor Michael Baur
Fall Semester 2006
Wednesdays, 7:00-9:00
Course Description:
Many contemporary philosophers, both continental and analytic, understand and appreciate – even if they do not ultimately accept – Kant’s philosophical arguments. By contrast, the claims made by Kant’s immediate successors – the so-called German Idealists – seem at first sight to be incredible and bizarre, if not altogether unintelligible. The general aim of this course will be to bridge this apparent gap between Kant and the German Idealists, and to show – contrary to some popular accounts – that the movement from Kant to German Idealism is not discontinuous at all, but rather a natural unfolding of the critical tensions and difficulties implicit in the Kantian system itself. While the post-Kantian Idealists engaged Kant on a number of different levels (moral, theological, aesthetic, etc.), this course will focus primarily on questions of epistemology and metaphysics, for example: “Did Kant really refute Hume’s skepticism?” “Did he properly understand the meaning of freedom and its relation to nature?” “Was Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories adequately transcendental, and was it really a deduction?” Against the backdrop of Kant’s Critical Philosophy, the course will focus mainly on the work of Fichte and Schelling; but we shall also examine some of the important contributions made by the so-called “lesser” figures between Kant and Hegel. The ultimate goal will be to understand the revolutionary systems of Fichte and Schelling, and how they set the stage for the idealism of Hegel.
Required Texts:
J.G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge with the First and Second Introductions, trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982/1994) [henceforth: SK]
F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1801), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1978/1994) [henceforth: STI]
Selected readings from other thinkers, to be made available during the course of the semester
Course Requirements:
In addition to regular class attendance and participation, students will be required to submit one long (20-25 page) research paper during the final week of the course.
Some Other Relevant Texts:
Ameriks, Karl, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Ameriks, Karl (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Baur, Michael and Daniel Dahlstrom (eds.), The Emergence of German Idealism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1999)
Beiser, Frederick, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)
Beiser, Frederick, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Breazeale, Daniel and Tom Rockmore, New Essays in Fichte’s Foundation of the Entire Doctrine of Scientific Knowledge (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2001)
Fichte, J.G. Early Philosophical Writings, trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988)
Fichte, J.G., Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, trans. Michael Baur, ed. by Frederick Neuhouser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Fichte, J.G. Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy – Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
Forster, Michael, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
Harris, H.S. Hegel’s Development, Vol. I and II (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1972 and 1983)
Hegel, G.W.F., The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. H.S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977)
Henrich, Dieter, Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S. Pacini (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)
Jacobi, F.H. Jacobi: The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, ed. and trans. George di Giovanni (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994)
Neuhouser, Frederick, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Pinkard, Terry, German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Royce, Josiah, Lectures on Modern Idealism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919)
Schelling, F.W.J. Bruno, Or on the Natural and Divine Principle of Things, ed. Michael Vater (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)
Schelling, F.W.J. Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F.W.J. Schelling trans. and ed. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)
Schelling, F.W.J., On the History of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Sedgwick, Sally (ed.), The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Snow, Dale, Schelling and the End of Idealism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996)
Williams, Robert, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992)