Spinoza and German Idealism

Eckart Förster, Yitzhak Y. Melamed

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781107021983
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139786553
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• SPINOZA AND GERMAN IDEALISM
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 Rationalism, idealism, monism, and beyond
• CHAPTER 2 Kant’s idea of the unconditioned and Spinoza’s: the fourth Antinomy and the Ideal of Pure Reason
• CHAPTER 3 “The question is whether a purely apparent person is possible”
• CHAPTER 4 Herder and Spinoza
• CHAPTER 5 Goethe’s Spinozism
• CHAPTER 6 Fichte on the consciousness of Spinoza’s God
• CHAPTER 7 Fichte on freedom: the Spinozistic background
• CHAPTER 8 Spinoza in Schelling’s early conception of intellectual intuition
• CHAPTER 9 Schelling’s philosophy of identity and Spinoza’s Ethica more geometrico
• CHAPTER 10 “Omnis determinatio est negatio”: determination, negation, and self-negation in Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel
• CHAPTER 11 Thought and metaphysics: Hegel’s critical reception of Spinoza
• CHAPTER 12 Two models of metaphysical inferentialism: Spinoza and Hegel
• CHAPTER 13 Trendelenburg and Spinoza
• CHAPTER 14 A reply on Spinoza’s behalf
• Bibliography
• Index of references to Spinoza’s Ethics
• General index