After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840–1900 1st Edition by Frederick C. Beiser (PDF)

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Histories of German philosophy in the nineteenth century typically focus on its first half—when Hegel, idealism, and Romanticism dominated. By contrast, the remainder of the century, after Hegel’s death, has been relatively neglected because it has been seen as a period of stagnation and decline. But Frederick Beiser argues that the second half of the century was in fact one of the most revolutionary periods in modern philosophy because the nature of philosophy itself was up for grabs and the very absence of certainty led to creativity and the start of a new era. In this innovative concise history of German philosophy from 1840 to 1900, Beiser focuses not on themes or individual thinkers but rather on the period’s five great debates: the identity crisis of philosophy, the materialism controversy, the methods and limits of history, the pessimism controversy, and the Ignorabimusstreit. Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Dilthey play important roles in these controversies but so do many neglected figures, including Ludwig Büchner, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Fraunstaedt, Hermann Lotze, Adolf Trendelenburg, and two women, Agnes Taubert and Olga Pluemacher, who have been completely forgotten in histories of philosophy. The result is a wide-ranging, original, and surprising new account of German philosophy in the critical period between Hegel and the twentieth century.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A really outstanding study of the period, by a scholar who knows the field extremely well.A very good study. It pays to read the volumes Beiser has written in sequence and the the reader gets an excellent overview of German Idealism and German philosophy as it developed. German Idealism and German philosophy has needed a thorough historian for some time, and this work is another volume in his ongoing project.

⭐Beiser is an important scholar of German philosophy living today. Here he discusses an often overlooked period of German philosophy that ought to be discussed more in the present.

⭐Completely enlightening

⭐This short book worked well for me. Beiser challenges both Hegel’s view of German idealism as culminating in his own system and Karl Löwith’s interpretion of the reaction against Hegel as leading to the Marxism and existentialism of the early 20th century. Instead, Beiser covers five “controversies” in several of which Schopenhauer plays a major role. Other figures covered are Trendelenburg and Lotze (on both of whom he has written elsewhere), Eduard von Hartmann, Friedrich Lange and Wilhelm Dilthey. The controversies concern the boundaries of philosophy (as an academic discipline); materialism; the limits of natural science; the nature of history; and the wide-ranging debate on Schopenhauer’s pessimism.Briefly, he thinks the decline of Hegel’s absolute idealism led to a revival of a more naturalistic world view in which the concept of purpose (Aristotle’s “final cause”) still retained a role in interpreting the human mind and perhaps also the universe as a whole. The background in natural science was Helmholtz’s “principle” of conservation of energy and Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Beiser summarizes the reception of Schopenhauer’s pessimism against this backdrop. In my view, faith in providence quietens the will more surely than aesthetic contemplation and Schopenhauer’s pessimism was a literary pose. However, the debate gave rise to significant discussions on love, friendship and social reform.The method of covering controversies works well in showing ideas in relation. Reading Schopenhauer’s

⭐first would give the reader preliminary knowledge of a central primary text. Beiser has little to say on political philosophy and does not address Rudolf Haym’s biographical approach to philosophy (which led to Nietzsche’s saying “Look at the philosopher”). Those with particular interests in Hegel, history, etc might look at Beiser’s other books, as he is a diligent and productive scholar. The book gave me a livelier idea of some bulky tomes that never seem to make it to the top of my reading list.

⭐This is the last good book I finished in 2014. Frederick Beiser’s After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840-1900 was a really fascinating read from beginning to end about a period in German philosophy usually thought to be but a dormant interlude between Hegel and Nietzsche, with an occasional retrospective bone thrown to Schopenhauer. Between these milestones, the intrepid may, at best, have gained an additional (fragmentary) grasp of the precursors to the neo-Kantian schools that solidified in the twentieth century. It seems, though, that the 19th-century giants we now know are not the ones then most highly-regarded, merely the ones most translated because they fit a certain narrative about the development of philosophy. But even that narrative will be enhanced by these gaps being filled by Beiser’s history. For instance, I have often been at pains to find more information in English about Eduard von Hartmann, whose work in the philosophy of science is interesting in itself but who will also immediately be recognized as a precursor to Nietzsche and Freud. But rather than this being an exercise in antiquarianism, Beiser shows that many of the questions being asked at the time are ones being discussed again today. He covers the crisis concerning the purpose of philosophy after the decline of Idealism, including, but not limited to, the Materialist Controversy, the Historicist Controversy, the Pessimism Controversy, and, perhaps most interesting, the Ignorabimus Controversy–which dealt with questions concerning whether the limits of human understanding had been reached in our inquiries into matter and mind. Along the way he contextualizes the more familiar neo-Kantian and positivist movements as parts of larger conversations happening inside and outside the German academy. Many of the positions outlined in these controversies will seem strikingly similar to those taken by philosophers over the last forty years or so. The benefits of seeing the dialectic unfold here might come from being newly able to think about the issues differently, perhaps more clearly and less rigidly, as they are allowed to become unbundled from each other in the highly-nuanced arguments of the time. I would say a good deal of confusion in Continental philosophy comes from insufficient knowledge of where the outsized personalities of the twentieth century were coming from. By highlighting the “precursors” of Continental philosophy as being more than precursors this book does some much needed work in undermining their mystique and providing a basis for critique.

⭐Outstanding account of neglected period of philosophy. Very readable and well researched.

⭐Impeccable scholarship – as always – from M. Beiser.

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