Rethinking the Absolute: Recent Enquiries into German Idealism

The expression «German Idealism» often evokes the idea of a «golden age» within European philosophical relection. This era is commonly placed between the end of the eighteenth century and the irst half of the nineteenth, and it is characterized by an expounding, a rethinking, and even a correction of Kant’s transcendental Idealism. Unavoidably the protagonists of this period are identiied with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, to whom are respectively matched the subjective, objective and absolute phases of this Idealism. Such a schematic exposition, though useful for didactical goals, misses a great part of the richness of a period whose chronological limitations cannot be so univocally ixed. Furthermore, it would be too narrow to identify German Idealism with some of its most important igures. Instead, one should delve into the cultural atmosphere that sets the stage for the multifarious debate that reveals the dynamic nature of this age.