Rethinking German Idealism

The authors of Rethinking German Idealism contribute to the contemporary re-evaluation of German Idealism by offering new readings of Kant, Schelling and Fichte. Rethinking German Idealism argues that the philosophers known as ‘the German Idealists’ were not always idealists in the conventional sense, and their works need to be re-evaluated on their own terms. Individual chapters show that Kant was productive out of a commonly unregistered conception of philosophy; that Schelling was an aporetic thinker who explored objective difficulties and did not advance the straightforward positions often attributed to him; and that Fichte was an important political philosopher arguing on the basis of the spontaneity of reason. By providing a new view of Kant’s philosophical project, and introducing new ways of reading Schelling and Fichte, the authors argue that all three are important philosophers of freedom, and that the radicalism of their thought is not captured by conventional notions of ‘Idealism’.