Abstract

Hartkopf’s monograph promises by virtue of its title to be a critical evaluation of both the continuity and discontinuity in Hegel’s thinking as he joins Schelling in Jena and publishes in 1801 his Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie. His question is to what extent the dialectical aspects of the Differenzschrift “are related to the dialectical traits already available in Hegel’s Frankfurt fragments as consequences or further developments, or whether these are inspired or even definitively co-determined by Schelling’s dialectic, which is already clearly further developed, especially his concept of identity which is in the making” Together the title and the question Hartkopf claims to be addressing lead us to expect a study of the Differenzschrift which extends and is comparable to Dilthey’s Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels. This is misleading. What we have instead, as the series title correctly indicates, is part of an ongoing study of the development of “modern dialectic.”