[...]... contemporary philosophy in which the idealist intellectual heritage lives on PHILOSOPHY IN ITS TIME Let us step back from these questions of substance and take a look at the great German philosophy as a historical phenomenon in its epoch The impression of intellectual achievement is only intensified when one remembers the historical conditions under which idealism arose The intellectual climate in Germany... validity of idealist philosophy in favour of praxis, it was the powers of technical development and the wider influence of scientific progress that sowed the seeds of doubt about absolute speculation In particular, the metaphorical idiom and the distance from empirical phenomena that characterized the idealist philosophy of nature now seemed to make problematic the scientific claims of philosophy What... influential In 1821 he published his Elements of the Philosophy of Right After Hegel's death on 14 November 1831 his essential Berlin lectures were published by his pupils General Reading Beck, Lewis White: Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969 Beiser, Frederick C.: The Fate of Reason German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard... of the systems to become xxiv INTRODUCTION serious action In the step beyond idealist philosophy, then, the ideal of perfection lingered on as a motif On the other hand, reflection upon the knowledge that empirical sciences achieve independently of philosophy revalidated the premise that had marked the origin of the entire idealist movement in Kant's critique of reason The more idealism strove towards... sciences Thought, if it is to have any chance of survival at all, must succumb to their positivist creed The branch of philosophy that deliberately and carefully proceeds from scientific data is called philosophy of science Philosophy of science arose, like the movements that recruited philosophy for praxis and life, around the middle of the nineteenth century in an unambiguous confrontation with idealism... had, of course, been schools of philosophy in Germany Kant did pick up the themes and terminologies of Christian Wolff (16791754) and Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) But in its substance, Kant's transcendental philosophy was something completely new and unheard-of It was widely received as a Copernican revolution The intellectual sparks set off by his philosophy ignited in many places and brought... established back then still provide the essential arguments in the critique of idealism The end of idealist philosophy, however, seems to have been proclaimed too hastily In retrospect, it becomes more obvious than at the point of controversy itself that the two main streams which replaced classical philosophy in the nineteenth century were fed by ideas that had grown in the very lap of idealism On... The realization of the idealist intentions in Hegel's philosophy, which claimed to have fulfilled in an encyclopedic system the demands of true science by means of reason alone, suddenly seemed merely an illusion Philosophers were disillusioned as to the potency of their discipline Theories committed to historical praxis dismissed the World Spirit as the product of a professor of philosophy unable to... case, theories about our political and historical world cannot free themselves from an idealist heritage, because it was idealism that coined the central problems of their discipline The humanities and social sciences could hardly be imagined without the foundation laid by classical philosophy Even epistemology and philosophy of science, though affiliated to the natural sciences, have not been able to... Schelling Bowie, Andrew: Schelling and Modern European Philosophy An Introduction London: Routledge, 1993 Brown, Robert F.: The Later Philosophy of Schelling The influence of Boehme on the Works of 1809 — 1 815 Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1977 London: Associated University Presses, 1977 Esposito, Joseph L.: Schelling's Idealism and Philosophy of Nature London: Associated University Presses, . contempor- ary philosophy in which the idealist intellectual heritage lives on. PHILOSOPHY IN ITS TIME Let us step back from these questions of substance and take a look at the great German philosophy. the idealistic character of philosophy from Kant to Hegel. By recognizing the faith that idealism had in the capacity of pure thought, it is possible to understand in what way the great German philosophy. from Philosophy of German Idealism, edited by Ernst Behler (1987). F. W. J. Schelling: to Cambridge University Press, Peter Heath and Errol E. Harris (translators) for 'Ideas for a Philosophy