Journal of the History of Philosophy

In continuity with the first volume of the series, edited by Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich, whose focus was on "Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics," this collection of essays carries on an impressive project in the history of thought and ideas that, due to its breadth and depth of analysis, can be compared to Dieter Henrich's monumental Konstellationen. Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789–1795) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991). Yet, while the latter's program aimed at tracing the personal and intellectual relations between the various figures of German idealism, here the goal is to bring out of the shadows the German panorama of the second half of the eighteenth century, which is very rich but often remains in the background because of the focus on Kant's transcendental turn and its French/Francophone or English/Scottish sources. Certainly, Hegel's later lashing judgment on the deutsche Aufkärung significantly contributed to its eclipse. Only a careful historical reconstruction seems able to rescue these author and topics from this partial oblivion. [End Page 179]

One of the merits of this collection is to let the concepts that innervate the German philosophical environment of these years emerge along two axes. The first, horizontal, is represented by the fields (aesthetics, history, politics, and religion) the twelve essays cover; the second, vertical, pertains to the extension of the term "contemporaries," in the title: it encompasses Kant's predecessors (born before 1724), his peers, those "born after Kant" and "who did not survive to him," and his earliest successors (2).

This framework is carefully established in order to demonstrate that, and how, concepts are inherently transversal, and give rise to the period's philosophical dynamism, with respect to which Kant is seen both as an essential reference and, sometimes, as a radical alternative. The underlying methodological criterion is well expressed at the beginning of Ian Hunter's essay on the opposite views of Kant and Johann Jakob Moser on public law and religious constitution: "the disposition of a thinker or field can be shaped no less powerfully by what they repudiate than by what they affirm" (150). Accordingly, figures such as Mendelssohn and Herder recur in several contexts with a variety of emphases.

Paul Guyer confronts Mendelssohn with Kant about the "the aims of art" (28–49) and highlights both the proximity between the two authors regarding the intellectual root of aesthetic pleasure, and the distance that separates them regarding the nature of beauty (Kant admits only strictly formal elements, whereas Mendelssohn supports a more "pluralist" view that allows room for material/sensible components in the determination of beauty). The same approach characterizes the entire section dedicated to aesthetics, since Colin McQuillan (13–27) also insists on the opposition between Baumgarten's as well as Georg Friedrich Meier's sensory oriented "aesthetic perfection," and the intellectually-rooted conception of the judgment of taste defended by Kant in his third Critique.

Interestingly, Mendelssohn comes again into play in Brian A. Chance and Lawrence Pasternack's essay, in the section on religion, on the still undetermined and problematic role played by Kant's Orientation-essay (1796) concerning the relation between morality and faith. Furthermore, in the section on politics, Kristi Sweet's essay contrasts Kantian reason as an instrument that operates in the history of humanity with the Mendelssohnian idea of rationality being chiefly aimed at achieving individual happiness.

As mentioned above, Herder's presence is also widespread throughout the essays. He is initially called into question in the section dedicated to history, in which Elisabeth Décultot emphasizes the young Herder's endorsement of the count of Caylus's position against Winckelmann's conception of the historical progress of arts. Décultot devotes the last part of her essay to the analysis of Winckelmann's influence on Kant, a topic that had already been addressed by Michael Baur in the first...