David Friedrich Strauss is a central figure in 19th century intellectual history. The first major source for the loss of faith in Christianity in Germany, his work Das Leben Jesu was the most scandalous publication in Germany during his time. His book was a critique of the claims to historical truth of the New Testament, which had been the mainstay of Protestantism since the Reformation. As the father of unbelief, his critique of Christianity preceded that of Nietzsche, Marx, Feue...

Weltschmerz is a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living. This theory was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer, whose philosophy became very fashionable in the 1860s. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of...

Though little known today, Johann Friedrich Herbart was one of the leading philosophers of his age, the competitor of Schelling and Hegel. Although he was trained by Fichte, Herbart soon became a critic of the idealist tradition and developed a philosophy antithetical to it. His own philosophy was opposed to the idealist tradition in important respects: he defended a dualism between the factual and normative; he was an ontological pluralist rather than monist; and he accepted crucial Kanti...

Philosophy of Life explores the intellectual movement called Lebensphilosophie, which flourished in Germany from 1870 until 1920. Author Frederick C. Beiser focuses on its most prominent members: Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Georg Simmel. Lebensphilosophie appeared at a critical movement in Western culture; it was a response to several important cultural developments of the late 19th century: atheism, relativism, historicism and pessimism. The Le...

The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's o...

In Early German Positivism, Frederick C. Beiser explores a much neglected or forgotten period of the history of philosophy: the history of German positivism from 1860 to 1907. Almost all studies of positivism revolve around the Vienna Circle. Instead, this study covers positivism even before the first Vienna circle (1907). Beiser delves into figures almost completely forgotten in the German and Anglo-American worlds: Theodor Gomperz (1832-1912), Eugen Dühring (1833-1921), Ernst La...

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.

After a long struggle, Jewish emancipation was formally completed in Germany in 1871, when Wilhelm I abolished religious discrimination across the entire Reich. Yet the very same decade witnessed a new wave of antisemitism, one more vicious and virulent than anything before. At its centre was what is known as ‘The Berlin Antisemitism Controversy’. How can this rise of antisemitism be explained when further liberal reform was expected? Can it help us understand the tide of antisemitism that...

In this ground-breaking work, Frederick Beiser argues that Georg Simmel was one of the foremost yet overlooked philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whilst Simmel’s work was crucial in laying foundations for sociology, his several books, including The Philosophy of Money, were deeply philosophical. Simmel's doctorate was on Kant's philosophy and that his intellectual outlook was greatly influenced by his lifelong love of philosophy.It is this philosophica...

The Fate of Reason is the first general history devoted to the period between Kant and Fichte, one of the most revolutionary and fertile in modern philosophy. The philosophers of this time broke with the two central tenets of the modern Cartesian tradition: the authority of reason and the primacy of epistemology. They also witnessed the decline of the Aufklärung, the completion of Kant’s philosophy, and the beginnings of post-Kantian idealism.Thanks to Frederick C...

Frederick C. Beiser tells the story of the emergence of neo-Kantianism from the late 1790s until the 1880s. He focuses on neo-Kantianism before official or familiar neo-Kantianism, i.e., before the formation of the various schools of neo-Kantianism in the 1880s and 1890s (which included the Marburg school, the Southwestern school, and the Göttingen school). Beiser argues that the source of neo-Kantianism lies in three crucial but neglected figures: Jakob Friedrich Fries,

The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy examines Hegel within his broader historical and philosophical contexts. Covering all major aspects of Hegel's philosophy, the volume provides an introduction to his logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, social and political philosophy, philosophy of nature and aesthetics. It includes essays by an internationally recognised team of Hegel scholars. The volume begins with Terry Pinkard's article on Hegel's life, a conspect...