Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Schelling's discovery and Schleiermacher's appropriation of Plato -- Aristotle and Schelling on the question of God -- Hegel's science of logic: the completion or sublation of metaphysics? -- Hegel's political anthropology -- Transcendental philosophy and the problem of history -- Hegel's concept of phenomenology -- Rousseau, Hegel, and the dialectic of enlightenment -- Closure and the understanding of history -- From Fichte to Schlegel -- The dialectical significance of romantic irony -- Is there a Hegelian theory of aesthetic experience? -- Hegel and Goethe.

This collection of essays, first published in German in 1995, has been written by the foremost representative of the hermeneutical approach in German philosophy. It offers a quite original interpretation of the tradition of German Idealist thought - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Rüdiger Bubner seeks to cast fresh light on the genuine philosophical innovations in the complex of issues and aspirations which dominated German intellectual life from 1780 to 1830. His major question is: in what way did the Idealists change philosophy, reformulate traditional issues, and especially, reinterpret traditional figures? His answer to this question involves focusing on the literary and cultural spirit of the time, thus broadening the question of philosophical innovation and locating it within the wider framework of innovations and continuities within the Western intellectual tradition itself. This collection will be of special interest to students of German philosophy, literary theory and the history of ideas.