German Idealism

What Hacker News says

1. cafardJul 2022
   I would suggest starting with The Vocation of Man, which is short and clearly written. If you wish to go on to The Science of Knowledge, I'd suggest reading up on Kant, and perhaps some Schelling: I found Fichte a lot less opaque after reading a couple of short volumes of Schelling.

   It has been a while since I read it, but it seems to me that Paul Beiser's account of Fichte in German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 was worth reading.

   [Edit: added inadvertently omitted "you".]

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2. Regular-FormerNov 2021
   Take a look at Frederick Beiser's works on Hegel & German Idealism overall, as he's very clear and competent about this whole period of German philosophy:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_C._Beiser#Works

   Also, it's much easier to start with Hegel's lectures (on aesthetics, history, religion etc.) and just go read the Phenomenology & Science of Logic after one has a sense of his style and general philosophy. It's foolish to start by the most difficult texts.

   And don't take Schopenhauer's criticisms of Hegel too seriously, as they are mostly due to personal misgivings and envy (Sch. couldn't stand Hegel's popularity, while Sch. barely managed to get any students for his classes).

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3. ctchoculaJun 2020
   The KantBot described in the article is a fascinating character. I didn't quite get the joke on how Trump's victory presaged the completion of German Idealism, but I could not help but look up his reading list for these troubled young men [1], which overflows with learnedness, so I think it would appeal to HN readers interested in liberal arts.

   [1] https://autisticmercury.com/2017/02/25/kantbots-critical-for...

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4. claudiawernerJul 2019
   Not the user you replied to, but there's no harm (and in my judgement great benefit) from diving right into Kant, or more generally, German idealism - so Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Marx is also worth visiting for his "Hegelian" materialism (in this case opposed to idealism). That'll provide the basics to know what Foucault was talking about.

   The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (I forget which year) is also highly recommended though I haven't looked into that myself.

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5. iorrusMay 2018
   This is an extremely personal question. I have extreme biases, I personally favour:

   Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer.

   German Idealism/The Fate of reason by Fredrick Beiser.

   Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Glenn Magee

   Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense by Allison

   Plato: Complete Works by John Cooper is good

   The Paidea series by Jaeger is amazing as is the four volume collection by Giovanni Reale if you're interested in ancient philosophies (like me)

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   The 'phenomenological' school is considered important.

   Making Sense of Heidegger by Sheehan

   Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy by Hass

   However I think most true Western thought is to be found in the great works of literature. Ovid/Dante etc. try reading Howard Blooms work "The Western Canon".

   Personally I find most western philosophy quite turgid.

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6. DiscourseFanMar 2024
   Contemporary anthropology is...not very good. Latour's critiques are still quite strong and very difficult to overcome; perhaps anthropology as a field is fundamentally flawed.

   I haven't read Diamond, but I could understand, if you're a liberal academic and you see a text, almost like Nietzsche's Geneaology of Morals, that just says that the strong always conquer the weak because of totally contingent conditions, it will seem horrifying because, as a liberal, you genuinely believe in personal agency and social justice and all that fun stuff. But go back and actually read Marx, go and read all your favorite Frankfurt school thinkers: they will say, the conditions that we have been placed in are a real illusion of nature: even if the so-called nature of things is a construction, it is one where the reality of it is undeniable for us. Therefore, the goal of critique, even in that Marxian, Kantian sense, is to raise consciousness to shatter that real illusion precisely by illuminating this so-called "natural" process.

   For Marx, revolution is a natural result of the development of Capitalism, but Capitalism also dissolved history, and temporality, so the naturality of revolution must be immanent in every moment of its development: its like Walter Benjamin said, we must bring about a real catastrophe, as opposed to the constant "accidents" of human suffering under the system that come about with almost mechanical regularity.

   In any case, I don't remember Marx ever being either an academic, or particularly hard to read in most cases, even if a thorough familiarity with German Idealism is a great help to understanding him more deeply. Even Foucault was technically an academic, but only because he helped organize a nearly successful revolutionary movement that managed to extract the concession of an entire university (Paris VIII) out of the government which he then ran, and is still being run by his students and colleagues to this day.

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