Continental Idealism

Paul Redding, University of Sydney, Australia

• Acknowledgments, Introduction, 1 The Seventeenth-Century Background to the Emergence of Continental Idealism, 2 The Monadological World of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 3 Kant’s Development from Physical to Moral Monadologist, 4 Kant and the “Copernican” Conception of Transcendental Philosophy, 5 The Moral Framework of Metaphysics, 6 The Later Kant as a “Post-Kantian” Philosopher?, 7 Jena Post-Kantianism: Reinhold and Fichte, 8 The Jena Romanticism of Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling, 9 Hegel’s Idealist Metaphysics of Spirit, 10 Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the Ambiguous End of the Idealist Tradition, Postscript: Idealism after the End of (Its) History, Notes, Bibliography, Index

Paul Redding’s Continental Idealism is a lucid account of the development of German philosophy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a contribution to current philosophical debates. Its originality lies in stressing the foundational importance of Leibniz, and in offering clear and compelling explanations of the different kinds of metaphysical commitments within idealist philosophy. Redding casts new light on the relation of Hegel to Kant and Fichte, situates the German Romantics in this body of thought, and traces the subversion of these traditions in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Redding is also attentive to contemporary philosophical issues, arguing that idealism, properly understood, remains viable as an alternative to the reductive naturalism that characterises much current thinking. – Douglas Moggach, University of Ottawa