Beiser Frederick. German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801

Cambride, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. — 752 p. — ISBN10: 0674027175; ISBN13: 978-0674027176.One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics — Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis — as the founders of absolute idealism.Kant’s Critique of IdealismIntroduction: Kant and the Problem of Subjectivism
Idealism in the Precritical Years
Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Realism
The First Edition Refutation of Skeptical Idealism
The First Edition Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism
The Second Edition Refutation of Problematic Idealism
Kant and the Way of Ideas
The Transcendental Subject
The Status of the Transcendental
Kant’s Idealism in the Opus postumumFichte’s Critique of SubjectivismIntroduction: The Interpretation of Fichte’s Idealism
Fichte and the Subjectivist Tradition
The Battle against Skepticism
Freedom and Subjectivity
Knowledge of Freedom
Critical Idealism
The Refutation of Idealism
The Structure of IntersubjectivityAbsolute IdealismAbsolute Idealism: General Introduction
The Dramatis Personae
Hölderlin and Absolute Idealism
Novalis’ Magical Idealism
Friedrich Schlegel’s Absolute IdealismSchelling and Absolute IdealismIntroduction: The Troublesome Schellingian Legacy
The Path toward Absolute Idealism
The Development of Naturphilosophie
Schelling’s Break with Fichte
Problems, Methods, and Concepts of Naturphilosophie
Theory of Life and Matter
Schelling’s Absolute Idealism
The Dark Night of the Absolute
Absolute Knowledge