18th- and 19th-century philosophy

Schlegel’s philosophical thought is characterized by opposition to the thought of Fichte. Schlegel constructs an anti-foundationalist philosophy against Fichte’s foundationalist philosophy which claims to reach inevitable conclusions from a first principle. He develops a conception of philosophy that has no definite starting point and no absolute first principle. In this approach, each principle supports and validates the others. Much like poetry, philosophy starts from the middle. Schlegel argues that the principles are not one but many and that they mutually establish themselves in interaction. He emphasizes that everything, including all principles, is in a constant state of change and transformation. This highlights the awareness of the impossibility of ultimately reaching the Absolute. The Absolute will shape all our efforts, even though it will never be attainable. Nevertheless, the effort to reach the Absolute will not be abandoned and philosophy, which acquires a literary/poetic character, will become the center of this effort. Schlegel's use of literary forms can thus be seen as a challenge. Aiming to erode the ways of philosophizing of his contemporaries, notably Fichte, Schlegel intends to establish a philosophy that gives life the respect it deserves. This new kind of philosophy will not remain a purely intellectual activity, but will be the central element in the effort to transform life and restore its lost enchantment.

This chapter explores the role of epic in the emergence of nationalism by
examining the intersection of Germanic myth and the Hebrew Bible. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, there was a growing fascination in and appreciation for the ancient customs of ‘natural peoples’. Among this esteemed group, which included nations like the Celts and Germans, the Hebrews were prominently featured, showcasing a culture in which the epic held great significance. It was during this period that biblical interpreters started to interpret Hebrew poetry as a means of creative expression, providing insights into the worldview of ancient humanity.

In imperial Transylvania, the Hungarian professors of philosophy served as models for the Romanian proponents of philosophy. Due to the official catholic hostility to Kant, Márton Istvan promoted the philosophy of Krug, of which he edited and translated a compendium into Latin. Krug was not a genuine Kantian, but an eclectic post-Kantian, influenced by Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. His metaphilosophy influenced a whole generation of Hungarian thinkers, most of them eclectics, who forged along its lines a broad concept of "critical philosophy", of which Kantianism was supposed to be just a species among others. "Critical philosophy" became the name of a new brand of eclecticism, integrating commonsensism, the main theses of the old ontotheological metaphysics, and elements of Kantian doctrine in diverse proportions. The Transylvanian Romanian teachers of philosophy imitated the example of their Hungarian models, went to Krug's texts, either in Latin or in German, translated them to the purpose of using them in their lectures, and sometimes published their translations. The first centre of diffusion of Krug's critical philosophy was the Blaj Gymnasium, at the end of the 1820s. Krug's philosophy reached Bucharest in the 1840s, through a graduate of Cluj Piarist Lyceum, and eventually Jassy, through a former Blaj teacher, in the second half of the 1850s, where it was taught until the end of the 1870s. Despite this relatively wide diffusion, Krug's critical philosophy was far from having on Romanians the same kind of impact it had on Hungarians. It left virtually no traces on the Romanian culture, with the exception of a political manifesto by Simeon Bărnuț (1842) and, most importantly, it was ineffective in generating interest in Kant's philosophy. Thus it cannot be said, as the accepted narrative holds, that the diffusion of Krug's works in Romanian marks a moment of the reception of Kant in Romania.

Eric Matthews. p. cm.-(The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-34447-6 1. Judgement (Logic)-Early works to 1800. 2. Judgement (Aesthetics)-Early works to 1800. 4. Teleology-Early works to 1800.

, marele medic și om de știință, fondatorul psihologiei analitice, a fost întrebat, în cadrul unui interviu ce i se lua la bătrânețe, dacă a fost credincios în tinerețile lui. A răspuns că a fost chiar un credincios practicant-fiu de preot fiind, era de așteptat răspunsul acesta. Următoarea întrebare a fost "Dar acum credeți?" Răspunsul lui, dat cu un zâmbet cald, a fost: "Acum nu mai trebuie să cred, acum știu!…" De ce a răspuns așa? Pentru că studiile sale de o viață întreagă asupra psihologiei oamenilor i-au arătat că în afară de conștient, de minte adică, omul se mai conduce în

Intellectual history and the history of political thought are siblings, perhaps even twins. They have similar origins and use similar materials. They attract many of the same friends and make some of the same enemies. Yet like most siblings, they have different temperaments and ambitions. This essay explores the family resemblances and draws out the contrasts by examining two major works by one of the most prominent political theorists of the past half-century, Alan Ryan, who has recently published two big books that intellectual historians will find rewarding and provocative.

La presente these articule les deux categories fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion : le « moi » et le « divin », ce en dialogue avec deux interlocuteurs privilegies, Fichte et Nabert, chez lesquels cette double thematique fut exploitee de maniere originale et geniale. Fichte pense le « moi » comme le centre de l'interiorite et de la vie consciente de l'homme qui est une activite incessante vers l'unite de soi. Nabert, quant a lui, part du concept fichtien du « moi » pour elaborer la categorie du « divin » ; celui-ci apparait alors comme une demande de la conscience en sa structure fondamentale : elle le recoit alors qu'il s'affirme a meme le« moi». L'examen conjoint de de ces deux pensees apporte, nous cherchons a le montrer, une contribution majeure a la philosophie de la religion contemporaine : elle permet en effet a celle-ci d'avancer dans les reponses aux nombreux defis qu'il lui appartient de relever, soit : la redecouverte de certain...

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This article focuses on Novalis' understanding of the "I-nature" relationship demonstrating that he anticipates some aspects developed by later environmental and ecological philosophies. After an introductory part on Novalis' criticism against Fichte's conception of the Self, the article investigates the crucial role played by Spinoza for the reassessment of natural sciences (physiology in particular) in Novalis' philosophy and, as a consequence, for the conception of a "metaphysics of Having". This particular metaphysics implies that subjects and objects interpenetrate each other, and that this relationship precedes their respective identities. In the last part, the article sketches a parallel with the current philosophical debate on ecology.

History without literature and philosophy is chronicle; literature without history and philosophy is amusement; philosophy without history and literature is empty" (190). It is through a consideration of the imbrication of history, literature, and philosophy that Richard Eldridge situates his discussion of the possibility of freedom afforded the human subject in relation to both modern social institutions, as well as the idealized institutions conceivable in the Kantian imaginary. More precisely, Eldridge's text responds to the question "[h]ow are we [to] … best develop and pursue historically a moral image of the world?" (43). The two-sided nature of Eldridge's question as both development and pursuit accounts for his turning to two philosophers that Eldridge himself admits are strikingly different: Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin. Beginning with Kant, on whom he has written and published extensively, Eldridge broaches the question of the development of a moral image by asking what the role of ideals are in the conceiving of history (2). The answer that Eldridge develops is based in part on the distinction that Robert B. Louden makes between Kant's 'pure' and 'impure ethics' (79). This distinction foregrounds that ideals, in the form of the Kantian a priori, only tell half of the story and that a pure rational ethics is incomplete. Indeed, for Kant, impure ethics complement and actualize pure ethics in concrete social institutions, such as the "visible church" of religion in the example Eldridge provides (92). In providing an account of Kantian impure ethics, Eldridge's reading of Kant goes far beyond the three critiques and into Kant's anthropological texts, writings on religion, and of course his views on history, which, as Eldridge explains, is for Kant "a process of conflict-ridden but continuing transition … according to the claims of universal reason" (94). Kant's progressive, and decidedly positive, view of history is in stark contrast to Benjamin's in whom Eldridge locates the answer as to the pursuit of a moral image of the world. In other words, for Eldridge, where Kant develops an ideal towards which we must strive, it is in Benjamin that the means of pursuing this ideal can be found. More specifically, "[r]ather than being the product of reasonable, instrumental calculation," such as the Kantian pure ethics, for Benjamin, a meaningful relationship to history "can only be acquired through the cultivation of Anschaulichkeit" (104). Anschualichkeit is a concept that Eldridge reads Benjamin as borrowing from Friedrich Hölderlin, and is "a critical intuitive discernment of a possibility of action that is disclosed in an encounter with a material cultural object within the frame of social-historical life" which is to say that Anshualichkeit takes place in empirical material experience rather than as a product of abstract reasoning (104). Hölderlin is one of three German thinkers that Eldridge interprets as having specifically influenced Benjamin, the others being Kant and Johann Goethe. Eldridge goes on to credit Kant with providing Benjamin with the concept of critique, and Goethe with the notion of a daemonic nature respectively. Importantly, the Benjaminian Anschualichkeit, as intuitive attentiveness, can be produced by literature, which "is not only a beginning, middle and (tragic) end … but also the effort at attention on the part of a reflective subject, the author (as a model for the reader's attentions) likewise caught amid the strife of life" (130). Eldridge develops this notion of

This essay remarks upon a seeming paradox in the philosophical anthropology of Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821). He presents a traditional Platonic asymmetry of reason and the passions. This is put to the service of an Origenisticuniversalistic theology that revolves around questions of guilt, punishment and redemption and a theory of sacrifice. Maistre is far from being the irrationalist that many political theorists observe, even if he presents an antagonistic relationship between reason and passions, the rational self and its desires. The apparently grim and sanguinary Platonism of the Savoyard Count can be neatly compared with Kant and contrasted with Hume's sanguine, if not breezy, view of reason as a slave to the passions.

A celebratory essay, on S. T. Coleridge's 250th anniversary, of his theory of ideas interpreted in a cosmic sense. This essay explores Coleridge metaphysics of universal ideas and what he meant by 'the Ideas of Being, Form, Life, the Reason, the Law of Conscience, Freedom, Immortality, God!' ‗[T]he ideas of … eternity, … will, absolute truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite'. For Coleridge, ‗an Idea … is not merely formal but dynamic', clarifying, in Greek, that ‗every Idea is a Power'. Ideas as powers evolve through energies, forces, and accidents to circle back up to the idea of ideas: lógos, which for Coleridge included Heraclitus's Logos, the constant intelligence behind the universal flux, and the Christian Word, which was in the beginning, and is with God, and is God. This ‗Logos, Idea Idearum', essentially the archetype or apex of all ideas, has been exalted, opposed, submerged, but never irrelevant.

Gottfried Gabriel’s concise introductory book aims, in his own words in the preface, “to offer a clear and at the same time problem-oriented presentation of Kant’s philosophy with a view to the architectonics of the complete work” (p. 9). To this end, the book is divided into twenty-one short chapters, which offer an overall picture of Kant’s philosophy, ranging from the central themes of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics to the more peripheral ones of his philosophy of religion and philosophy of history. Despite this comprehensiveness, Gabriel’s presentation revolves especially around the three critiques (Critique of Pure Reason [KrV],
Critique of Practical Reason [KpV], and Critique of the Power of Judgment [KdU]) and how
they integrate with each other. The large number of other Kantian works cited throughout the book – pre-critical or otherwise – are mainly, although not exclusively, mentioned in reference to the critiques and the system they encompass. Our purpose is to offer a descriptive analysis of the book, focusing on the main doctrines of Kant – we will thus omit many of the standard comments regarding the connection of Kant to the 19th and 20th centuries.

Aproape toată omenirea se ghidează astăzi după o cultură a minții, care a dus-o la realizări științifice și tehnice extraordinare, dar și la mari pericole. Se știe că există deja pericolul ca oamenii să distrugă natura ori să se distrugă reciproc în războaie a-tot-nimicitoare. De aceea, cultura minții ar trebui îmbinată cu acea cultură a sufletului, care, de vreo două secole deja, a fost pierdută. Pentru că numai o cultură a sufletului îl poate ajuta pe om să știe viețui după principiul armoniei cu lumea sa, și nu exclusiv după un principiu al profitului obținut chiar cu prețul unor periculoase distrugeri. O astfel de cultură a sufletului în foarte puține locuri ale lumii se mai păstrează. Unul dintre locurile acestea este în România profundă, în România satelor care își mai respectă tradițiile, a satelor în care mai există acea omenie și acel bun simț, pe care oamenii le căpătau printr-o bună educație a sufletului, dată în primul rând de credință, dar și de relația lor nemijlocită cu natura. Printre alte consecințe grave, neglijarea totală a sufletului a dus și la ridicarea unor elite false la putere, a unor elite care nu sunt înrădăcinate în sufletul colectiv al celor pe care îi conduc, care nu-și simt responsabilitatea față de ei, care nu-și știu asculta decât mințile axate pe urmărirea jalnicelor lor profituri personale. Dar faptul că mai nou se încearcă în toată lumea, pe cele mai diferite căi, regăsirea unei culturi a sufletului, ne dă speranța că va urma o revenire la bunele relații ale oamenilor între ei și la un real respect al omului față de natură.

As a founder of conservatism, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) made crucial contributions to historical thinking. Conceptualising history both as a conduit of human self-improvement and as a criterion of philosophical judgment, his conservatism was irretrievably historical. His theories of constitutions and of European government depended on a model of institutional development across time. His epistemology, historicised knowledge, and his sociology of violence posited that history arises out of the self. This paper reconstructs Maistre's historical thought by gathering together the five strands of it that he developed throughout his career, from his early essays on Rousseau to his posthumous mystical works. The aim is to describe the origins of a Francophone tradition of historical thought that crossed political boundaries easily and that has remained unexplored until now.

Analogical thoughtisakey concept in Herder'swork, providing acontinuous thread from his earlier writingsuptothe latest ones. Herder'saesthetics, his theory of knowledge,a nd his theory of mind rely on the thesis that human beingsa re the 'centre' of anyp ossible knowledge and onlyk now by means of an analogical relation between the world and themselves. Herder develops these ideas in amore systematic wayinhis Ideen (1784-1791), combininghis anthropologicalv iews with his philosophyo fn atural history and of the history of humankind to provide to these latter not onlyauniversal law, but also concreteness and usefulness. Fort his reason, the notion of 'type' as well as models, examples, analogies from the world of nature and the culturalworld are the basis of anyk nowledge which pursues the goal of enhancing humankind.

Abstract. The neutral monism suggested by Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a theoretical frame intended to match the general idea of Kant's apriorism with the results reached by physics and psychology at the beginning of the 20th Keywords: transcendental aesthetic; consciousness in general; empirical consciousness; psychophysical parallelism; phenomenal ontology; scientistic ontology;

This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word "freedom" (amagi ), or "liberty." It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 b.c. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. Introduction, note on the present edition, annotations, bibliography, index,

Draft of an introduction to the thinking of a little-known Romanian process philosopher, scheduled for publication in the Annals of the "Dunarea de Jos" University (Galati, Romania), 2010, before the philosophy series of the Annals ceased to appear.  Published later in the online journal Argo.

This chapter argues that, on Kant’s account, aesthetic pleasure is an exercise of rational agency insofar as, when proper, (1) it involves consciousness of its ground (the reasons for having it) and thus of itself as properly responsive to its object, and (2) actually feeling this pleasure involves its endorsement as an attitude to have. I claim that seeing this clearly requires that we divest ourselves of the following dilemma: either pleasures are the noncognitive, passive ways through which we are affected by objects or they are cognitive states by virtue of the theoretical beliefs or practical desires they involve. On my reading of Kant, this dilemma is false. Aesthetic pleasure is neither passive, nor theoretically or practically cognitive, and yet, it is an exercise of rational agency by virtue of belonging to a domain of rationality that is largely overlooked in the history of philosophy: aesthetic rationality.

Kant's CJ, creation and appreciation of fine art are tied to the concept of free play and to a particular kind of freedom. The relationship of poetry and play deserves closer attention because it throws light on what Kaulbach calls "aesthetic freedom", as opposed to "intellectual" or "moral freedom" 1 , expressed by subjecting our choices and actions to moral law and precepts we prescribe to ourselves. Aesthetic freedom is realized by creation of and response to a work of fine art. The former forms the matter of a "creation aesthetic", the latter of a "reception aesthetic". 2 In production of an artwork, the artist unites conscious design with unconscious regularity of natural processes to achieve a singular imaginative representation of ideas. The result seems as if it were a product of nature, despite our recognition that it is product of the artist's intention. As such, the work of art and our response to it form a counterpart to the experience of the beautiful and sublime in natural phenomena, which give the appearance of being products of intentional design, though we recognize them to have been produced by necessary processes according to universal natural laws. The fortuitous purposiveness of the work of art resonates with the harmonious functioning of our sensitive, imaginative and intellectual powers, bringing them into free play with one another. The pleasurable experience of playful purposiveness which this unexpected harmonisation affords serves not only to strengthen and "enliven" our faculties, and further their cooperation, but also forms the basis for aesthetic judgment. To the extent that these relationships are governed by natural causality, the idea of aesthetic freedom remains problematic. Kant's concepts of genius and freedom of the imagination offer some clarification. His idea of an intellectus archetypus provides an analogy and possible solution. Kant attributes to poetry the highest rank among the fine arts. 3 His sparse indications point to poetry's ability to elicit the highest pleasure, and to embody the highest degree of aesthetic

Friedrich Schlegel and Roland Barthes's shared preference for the fragment as a form of writing is closely related to their diverging interests in the category of the whole. While Schlegel uses fragmentary forms to evoke the idea of a comprehensive wholeness, which contrasts the contemporary experience of differentiating discourses of knowledge and a growing gap between the culture of experts and the world we live in, Barthes regards such an all-integrating wholeness only as monstrous. Writing under different historical conditions, the French poststructuralist is interested in using the form of the fragment to break up the idea of supposedly homogeneous wholes, such as the bourgeois subject, history, or the work of art. In this context, it has not yet been recognized enough how much both authors understand their writing as a vivid communication and dynamic interaction with the reader: by means of the fragment, both aim at creating evental reading effects that interrupt the continuum of time and involve the recipient in a surprising way. The result of the sudden perception of unexpected connections, according to Schlegel, is "Witz"; of the sudden perception of breaks, colliding codes or the new, according to Barthes, it is "jouissance." The present essay links Schlegel and Barthes's theories of the fragment with their aesthetics of eventality, and shows how the fragmentation of the text is connected with a fragmentation of time.

has written of Emerson's engagement with Kant. The engagement is defined by what Cavell calls Emerson's "most explicit reversal of Kant": his reversal of Kant's denial of intellectual intuition. 1 If such a reversal is true of Emerson, it certainly does not originate with him. Among the first generation of Kant's successors, especially among the romantics, some such reversal was rather common. But the curious thing about encouraging our philosophical reconsideration of Emerson in light of this sort of engagement with Kant is that those writers, especially those most likely to be acknowledged as Emerson's forebears, now tend to be taken as marginal figures in the history of philosophy. And prominent among the reasons for their philosophical obsolescence is surely their insistence on a faculty of intellectual intuition, which to some makes them look less engaged with Kant than simply reactionary, or pre-Kantian. But whatever the merits of such a dismissal, before we level this kind of criticism against Emerson it makes sense to ask whether the early romantic revival of intellectual intuition resonates at all with Emerson's alleged reversal. I will argue that there is indeed a substantial likeness between Emerson and the philosophical convictions of the early German romantics Hölderlin and Novalis, indicating a possible line of critical engagement with Emerson's philosophical vision. Of course, no one denies a certain kinship between Emerson and the romantics, forged largely by way of Coleridge. Indeed, Emerson's earliest critics damned him explicitly as too "German." But it is a slightly different matter to argue that a specific philosophical doctrine, or at least aspiration, made its way to Emerson and that reading him in light of this aspiration will be fruitful. That is the cue I

German early Romanticism was an intellectual movement that originated in the era between the great French Revolution of 1789 and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803. Usually, it is defined in contrast to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is presented as the age of reason, criticism and scientific naturalism, while the Romantics are portrayed as its reactionary enemies. According to a still customary prejudice, Romanticism was the age of exaggerated emotions, authoritarian dogmatism and mystical superstition. However, our notion of the Enlightenment has undergone changes in recent decades. Because the traditional antagonism between Aufklärung and Frühromantik has become questionable, the Romantic revival of religion needs reconsideration. In this paper, I propose an argument why the Romantics did not fall into reactionary irrationalism. My discussion focuses on one person, Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829). I will present how two vital presuppositions of the Enlightenment, n...

Les dernières sections de L'Immanence des vérités-les sections VI, VII, VIII et IX-abordent la question de l'oeuvre et du déchet. Depuis le début nous retenions cette question : comment se décide qu'un ouvrage fini est une oeuvre ou un déchet. Badiou nous dit que cette décision est déjà contenue dans l'Idée-constructible ou non constructible-qui est à l'origine de cette production. À la non-constructibilité-et donc au type d'infini qui empêche le recouvrement par l'ordre établi-s'ajoute l'index « qui se montre de lui-même », visible par une sorte de grâce dans l'oeuvre finie. À supposer que cette différence entre l'oeuvre et le déchet apparaisse effectivement au regard de quelques-uns d'entre nous, comment peut-elle apparaitre à la vue de l'homme ordinaire, celle du commun des mortels, celle de celui qui sera peut-être appelé un jour à appartenir au Sujet, c'est-à-dire à devenir l'un des militants de L'Idée, militants dont il est requis qu'ils soient nombreux?

This article re-examines Herder's status as one of the founders of nationalism in the light of both older and more recent literature. The article focuses specifically on Herder's position with regard to the classical nationalist thesis that state and nationality should be coterminous. It argues that a close reading of Herder's oft cited and most explicit statement apparently lending support to this thesis has been misunderstood. The existing literature underestimates Herder's concern regarding the question of governance. For Herder there can be no case for statehood without just governance. As earlier drafts of his work confirm, Herder was deeply critical of the states he knew and denounced their overly bureaucratic and despotic character. He thought that nations could and should exist without being states. Depending on the circumstances, however, states might fulfil temporary functions to strengthen and preserve the national character, that most essential attribute ...

Abstract: This article re-examines Herder's status as one of the founders of nationalism in the light of both older and more recent literature. The article focuses specifically on Herder's position with regard to the classical nationalist thesis that state and nationality should be ...

Résumé Fichte caractérise la seconde partie de sa Doctrine de la science de 1804 à l’aide du terme « phénoménologie », auquel il assigne une double signification : théorie de l’apparence et théorie du phénomène. Si le premier volet de sa définition rappelle la conception de Lambert, inventeur de la phénoménologie comme discipline philosophique, le second volet correspond à l’idée que se fait Kant de la phénoménologie, notamment dans les Premiers principes métaphysiques de la science de la nature. La question qui se pose est alors la suivante : est-il possible d’intégrer dans une même discipline l’apparence (Schein) et le phénomène (Erscheinung) ? Si Fichte parvient à réunir ces deux volets dans sa phénoménologie, c’est peut-être parce qu’en cela il suit le chemin frayé par Reinhold dans ses Beyträge de 1802-1803.

Is there tension in a view of the conditions of being in a proper position to make aesthetic evaluations that is committed to aesthetic autonomy and norms of exposure? I define 'aesthetic autonomy' in terms of the Kantian idea that in order to make a proper aesthetic evaluation, one must rely on oneself rather than on any outside source. I define 'norms of exposure' in terms of the Humean idea that practice and aesthetic education are conditions of proper aesthetic evaluation. Prima facie, these two commitments point toward competing accounts of whether exposure is a condition of being in a position to make proper aesthetic evaluations. However, I argue that a closer look at the Kantian position reveals that aesthetic exposure is a condition of being able to make aesthetic evaluations in an autonomous way in the Kantian framework.

Entre 1770 et 1800 se diffuse en Allemagne un ensemble de réflexions concernant l’art et la subjectivité. C’est la philosophie du romantisme. Elle amorce la transformation révolutionnaire européenne. L’essor intellectuel allemand commence par un dialogue avec les Lumières françaises chez Lessing, Herder et leurs successeurs avant de s’infléchir en une réflexion sur l’originalité des expressions culturelles. Radicalisée par Kant, Schelling ou Goethe, cette pensée de la subjectivité, où l’esthétique voisine avec la morale et la métaphysique, englobe la littérature, la philosophie et la religion. Par ses aspirations comme par ses conséquences, elle a modelé la modernité et a ouvert la voie aux formes d’action communicationnelle de cénacles spécialisés dont nos interactions numériques ont retrouvé le fil. Après ce premier article présentant ce mouvement culturel européen, un second traitera de la philosophie du romantisme allemand et de sa transformation académique avant qu’un troisième...

Le présent essai tente de dégager les structures fondamentales de la philosophie de la religion de Fichte après 1800. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse (1806) et à la Doctrine de l’État (1813). La connaissance théorique, la version johannique de la chrétienté, ainsi qu’une nouvelle conception de l’État sont interprétées ici comme autant de visages différents d’un système philosophique strictement interconnecté. Dans sa période berlinoise, Fichte n’a plus conçu le sujet comme le premier principe de sa Doctrine de la science, mais plutôt comme l’« image » transcendantale au travers de laquelle s’écoule le flot d’une vie indivisée et spirituellement transfigurée.

Si nous nous basons sur les textes catalogués par François Laruelle sous le titre de "Philosophie II" (1), de fortes analogies se présentent entre la pensée de Fichte et la non-philosophie, en particulier sur le rapport de la science et de la philosophie. Alors que J.G.Fichte développe une Doctrine de la Science, - eine Wissenschaftslehre (W.L.)-, parle de l'homme en sa destination, - Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800) - , et débouche simultanément sur une morale, une théo-logie et une philosophie du droit, F.Laruelle envisage une science de la philosophie permise par une science de l'Un, les deux orientant vers une science de l'essence de la science qui ne peut être pensée que dans le cas où l'essence de l'homme n'est plus envisagée par la philosophie, mais en son identité avec l'essence de la science.

Texte publié dans:
La non-philosophie des contemporains, Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida, Fichte, Kojève, Husserl, Russel, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Paris, éd. Kimé, 1995, col. "Bibliothèque de la non-philosophie", p. 107-124

In this paper we present and discuss the main Romanian attempts in philosophical psychology in the first decades of the 19th century, with a special focus on the mind–body problem. Whereas the issue of the relationship between the mind or soul and the body, comprising the existence or inexistence of the soul, its materiality or immateriality, its mortality or immortality etc. is discussed in sufficient detail by the authors of this epoch, the narrow mind–body problem, concerning the difficulty for a material thing and an immaterial thing to causally interact, is curiously underestimated and unsatisfactorily treated. We explain this by the interplay of a sensualist philosophical outlook and a pre-modern, basically religion-informed, world-view. The resulting thought, we argue, misses the modern concept of Spirit, hence of mind as spiritual. Therefore, the narrow mind–body problem does not arise for it.

On the title page of Emerson’s Society and Solitude (with “society” receiving preeminence of place), the reader is informed that the book consists of “twelve chapters.” The distinctness of the chapters is emphasized in, and over, the unity of the book in the original 1870 edition. The customary running header for the book title goes missing, and instead the chapter titles appear at the top of both the righthand and the left-hand pages. Though there is certainly weaving of themes and
figures of thought through the twelve essays, and the dual theme of the title essay appears repeatedly, overall thematic unity is not greatly emphasized. According to the Memoir written by his son, Edward, “through all his life,” Emerson weighed “the claims of the scholar’s two handmaids, Society and Solitude,” but “always favored the latter.” Accordingly, in the present book, Emerson resists the excesses of his own stronger inclination: the solitude of the scholar (and its unifying insight). Moral and intellectual failings connected with excesses of solitude are warned of on the opening pages in the story of the “humorist” who believed that the penalty of learning is to become as intolerant as an executioner who would kill the last man but one.

Complex aesthetic perception, according to Mendelssohn's writings between 1755 and 1771, is most alluring if it showcases a breach in the order of perfection. With this, Mendelssohn introduces a shift in our understanding of the artistic act of imitation: Artistic semblance is always lacking, and a painting that does not point to this fact is, in fact, displeasing. This is also the main reason why we enjoy non-beautiful art: in the artistic rendering of an unpleasant 'object' we focus on the artistic act itself, on its formal features, and its effects on us as the perceiver. Thus, a representation that evokes the mixed feelings of pleasure, appreciation, and rejection is superior to 'pure' beauty, in that it better refers us to higher forms of perfection: the perfection of the perceiving and creative subject (hence, including both artist and audience). It is the nagging, near-painful impression of mixed sentiments that, according to Mendelssohn, guides our self-perfection, the highest aim of all human endeavors.

This paper investigates the anthology of Volkslieder collected and published by Johann Gottfried Herder, variously considered a cultural nationalist, a relativist, and a universalist. He is credited as having introduced the idea that a Muttersprache (mother tongue) was an anthropological necessity, key to the identity of the Volk. I examine how he deployed hierarchies structuring cultural and linguistic diversity in order to refine a Muttersprache that could be transmitted to German poets. Per Herder, each Muttersprache had its own untranslatable, originary "vital tone," which he attempted to translate in his Volkslieder, a collection of poems from a diverse array of linguistic cultures.