The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German PhilosophyHank-McMahon Professor of Philosophy Karl Ameriks, Karl Ameriks, Dieter Sturma Contemporary thought often claims the "death of the subject," and postmodernists typically contend that the standpoint of human subjectivity has been surpassed as a foundation for philosophy. A proper appreciation of these influential claims requires an understanding of the main tradition in which the standpoint of subjectivity was articulated, namely the classical philosophy of German Idealism. This book provides such an understanding. The authors assess what is dead and what is alive today in the philosophy of subjectivity, and offer the most thorough study available on the background of the postmodern assault on the primacy of the subject. Tracing this assault back to reactions to Kant, they elucidate the historical and systematic details of the development of the concept of the self in Classical philosophy from Kant to Fichte and Hegel. Manfred Frank, one of Europe's most prominent and prolific writers on neo-structuralism, provides two major contributions--an account of the philosophical foundations of the reaction to Kant in early romanticism (especially Novalis), and a defense of the ineliminability of self-consciousness against its critics in current analytic philosophy. Essays by other contributors-including Henry Allison, Robert Pippin, Daniel Breazeale, Guenter Zoeller, Ludwig Siep, Veronique Zanetti, and Georg Mohr--relate the concept of the self to topics such as freedom, teleology, modernity, and intersubjectivity. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Spontaneity and Autonomy in Kants Conception of the Self | 11 |
Freedom and the Self From Introspection to Intersubjectivity Wolff Kant and Fichte | 31 |
Teleology and the Freedom of the Self | 47 |
Philosophical Foundations of Early Romanticism | 65 |
Check or Checkmate? On the Finitude of the Fichtean Self | 87 |
Original Duplicity The Ideal and the Real in Fichtes Transcendental Theory of the Subject | 115 |
Individuality in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit | 131 |
Hegels Ethical Rationalism | 149 |
Is Subjectivity a NonThing an Absurdity Unding? On Some Difficulties in Naturalistic Reductions of SelfConsciousness | 177 |
Self and Reason A Nonreductionist Approach to the Reflective and Practical Transitions of SelfConsciousness | 199 |
From Kant to Frank The Ineliminable Subject | 217 |
Selected Bibliography | 231 |
Contributors | 241 |
243 | |