Enlightenment Revolution and Romanticism

“They show the greatest courage in thought for the most obedient character.” This is how Madame de Stael described German intellectuals in the late 18th century, and her view of this division between the intellectual and the political remained almost unchallenged for two centuries. This book buries the legacy of Madame de Stael, the myth of the apolitical German. In the narrative history of the thoughts that follow The Destiny of Reason , Frederick Beiser discusses how the French Revolution, along with world-changing rationalism and irrationalism, transformed and politicized German philosophy and its central concern: Authority and the limits of reason. In Germany, three contrasting political traditions developed in response to the violently destructive events in France: liberalism, conservatism, and romanticism.

Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism establishes the emergence and context of these traditions and illuminates their fundamental political ideas. Drawing on well-known figures such as Kant, Fichte, Jacobi, Forster, and Moser, Beiser summarizes the reactions of the main political thinkers of the period to the French Revolution. He investigates the sources of their political theories before the 1790s and assesses the importance of politics in their thought in general. Concentrating on a single decade that shaped socio-political life, Beiser aims to reveal the political values and aims underlying German thought in the late 18th century and ultimately to clarify the place of practical reason in the German philosophical tradition.

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Dough Type:

2nd

Dough

Size

:

13.5