Abstract

The essays consistently elaborate the continuity between the “innovations” of Idealism and current practices in hermeneutics. Demonstrating the essential role of German Idealism in the constitution of the interpretive human sciences is Bubner’s salient achievement. The organization of his essays into three groups under the headings “system,” “history,” and “aesthetics” gives evidence of his discernment of the distinctive and lasting achievement of German Idealism. At the core of his conception, Idealism was the fruit of the engagement between metaphysics and history, with aesthetics emerging as the principle of organization that compensated for the overreaching elements of system in Idealist thought. To see philosophy as always caught up in the expression of its time and yet essentially concerned with systemic questions that push its discourse beyond the immediate is to conceive dialectics as a real force, as well in historical change as in philosophical development. That is the legacy of Idealism that Bubner decisively affirms.