Prior to Hegel’s portrayal of the French Revolution’s “fanaticism for destruction,” F. H. Jacobi criticized the impoverished, abstract conception of reason that he sees realized in the politics, philosophy, and broader intellectual culture of the era.Inaugurating a tradition of reflection in German thought, Jacobi labels this conception “nihilism.” While Jacobi identifies and analyzes both the theoretical and the practical sides of nihilism, its basic sense is practical.Practical nihilism equates ideal rationality with the realization of a pure form, minus the “way of sensing [Sinnesart]” that allows us to see what is at stake in any situation. Jacobi further argues that one’s “way of sensing” is the source of individuality and so of one’s irreplaceable value as a person. For Jacobi, the otherwise diverse group including the French philosophes, Kant, and Fichte all exemplify practical nihilism in some manner or other.This account starts from Jacobi’s initial reactions to the French Revolution, eventually captured by the letter “To Erhard O.” (1792). This discussion establishes the core of Jacobi’s objection to his era’s dominant conception of rationality.The open letter “To Fichte” (1799) in which the charge of nihilism first appears is explicable against this decades-old concern on Jacobi’s part.

By closely connecting “free” and “dutiful” action, Kant appeared to some of his contemporaries to have a serious problem with the imputability of immoral actions. K. L. Reinhold attempted to avoid this problem by introducing a sharp distinction between freedom of choice (Willkür) and practical reason (as expressed through Wille), such that any free action must involve a choice between “selfish” and “unselfish” drives. After Kant rejected Reinhold’s proposed distinction, Fichte defended it by introducing a new distinction between the original, purely “formal” freedom of every spontaneously self-positing I and the “material” freedom that every I strives to achieve.Whereas formal freedom concerns the choice of means to predetermined ends, material freedom determines the ends as well as the means of acting.Fichte provides a detailed account of how a formally free individual might acquire material freedom through a series of “reflections” upon formal freedom, at which point freedom of choice is supposed to coincide with the categorical demands of the moral law—and Willkür with Wille.Fichte’s distinction between kinds and degrees of freedom was introduced in order to resolve the conflict between Kant and Reinhold, but it raises new questions concerning how one might “freely” acquire material freedom.

The paper examines a set of critical arguments presented by Johann August Heinrich Ulrich in his 1788 book Eleutheriology or On Freedom and Necessity against Kant’s conception of transcendental freedom and the categorical nature of moral imperatives. Ulrich’s arguments are worth examining for a number of reasons. Historically, his criticism of transcendental freedom is of interest partly for its novel interpretation of the principle of sufficient reason and partly for the use he makes of it in presenting an early version of the so-called problem of luck, which features centrally in the contemporary discussion of libertarian accounts of freedom. Structurally, Ulrich’s criticisms cleverly target the delicate balance Kant seeks to establish between transcendental freedom and the moral “ought” and help bring into view the relations between practical and theoretical claims in Kant’s defense of transcendental freedom. I argue that a Kantian response to Ulrich’s criticism of transcendental freedom is possible and that the basis for Ulrich’s rejection of Kantian categoricity – a naturalistic conception of ethical necessity – is flawed. By the same token, however, my argument shows the importance of Ulrich’s book when it comes to engaging with Kant’s philosophy.

In a pair of texts published in 1795, the philosopher, physician, and public intellectual Johann Benjamin Erhard offered a broadly Kantian defense of the right to revolution under conditions of structural injustice. Erhard’s theory of revolution is of continuing interest, for Erhard’s theory touches on difficult practical questions related to what we might call the ethics of revolutionary action. The primary aim of my paper is reconstructive; I aim to give a philosophical account of the overall shape of Erhard’s theory of justified revolutionary action. In the course of my reconstruction of Erhard’s account, I focus especially on the central role of epistemic limitations regarding the consequences of revolutionary action in Erhard’s account. Erhard is focused on the fact that revolution is an inherently risky endeavor, with potentially enormous downsides for society, and for those on whose behalf revolutionaries purport to act. Erhard takes the problem of revolution’s dangerous unpredictability very seriously as an obstacle to the justification of revolutionary action. This is both a merit of his account, and the source of some interpretative and philosophical puzzles, which occupy me in the second half of the paper.

My aim in this chapter is to address what looks like a tension in Fichte’s derivation of ethical content for the moral law in his System of Ethics. In the first place, Fichte seeks to derive the content of our duties from our “natural drive [Naturtrieb],” which he defines in terms of our striving for enjoyment. But later in the book we find a second argument that derives the content of our duties from what Fichte calls the conditions of our “I-hood [Ichheit],” namely, our embodiment, intelligence, and sociality. I argue that a careful re-reading of Fichte’s notion of a natural drive is consistent with this second derivation. The key to this reading lies in Fichte’s effort to reframe the natural drive through the category of “reciprocal interaction [Wechselwirkung],” which allows us to view the natural drive as a “formative drive [Bildungstrieb]” that is both active and passive. For Fichte, the formative drive amounts to a striving for self-organization, and this striving, I argue, prefigures what becomes the ethical drive to engage in reciprocal interaction with other members of the rational community.

Traditional histories of German philosophy often present the development of German Idealism as a linear, teleological progression from Kant, through Fichte and Schelling, to Hegel. This approach originates in Hegel’s own history of philosophy, which portrays the history of German Idealism as a cumulative, dialectical progression that terminates – rather conveniently – in Hegel’s own absolute idealism. Over the past twenty years, there has been a growth of scholarship on the development of post-Kantian idealism, and a reappraisal of figures who were afforded only minor, supporting roles in the traditional narrative (figures such as K. L. Reinhold, S. Maimon, F. Schlegel, and Novalis). The effects of this revisionary scholarship have been salutary: it has resulted in a more nuanced picture of the development of German Idealism that challenges the standard Hegelian narrative; it has led to the recovery of important philosophical arguments and insights; it has made salient previously neglected continuities with earlier traditions (e.g., the Leibnizian-Wolffian and Spinozist traditions); and it has led to a deeper understanding of the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel by revealing their positions to be responses to hitherto unnoticed debates and questions.

This chapter examines the relationship between Kant’s political thought and that of Elise Reimarus (1735-1805), a prominent member of the Hamburg Enlightenment. Kant and Reimarus both ground their political philosophies on the concept of freedom. Yet, although Kant grounds his political philosophy on freedom, he also controversially claims that people must live in obedience to unjust states and may not rebel against them. This chapter argues against a prior interpretation from Curtis-Wendlandt that assimilates Elise Reimarus’s own views regarding rebellion to those of Kant. The chapter argues that Elise Reimarus’s views regarding rebellion differ significantly from Kant’s own and provide an interesting 18th-century alternative for people attracted to Kant’s emphasis on freedom but skeptical of his views regarding obedience and rebellion.

This chapter argues that key aspects of Hegel’s critique of the French revolution were anticipated by the German Burkeans. In a debate on theory and practice in the 1790s, conservatives including Rehberg, Gentz, and Möser argued that the abstract ideals of the rights of man and popular sovereignty, which they associated with Kant and the Enlightenment, resulted in the Terror when put into practice. This assessment resonated in Hegel’s critique of Kant’s supposed abstract arbitrary will and voluntarism, on which he blamed the revolution’s excesses. In the process of making this claim, Hegel misquoted Kant in a way that suggests he was primarily arguing against the view Kant set out in 1793 in the debate with the Burkeans. The theory and practice controversy gives a new angle on key aspects of Hegel’s mature philosophy, such as the Doppelsatz, which seeks to reconcile conventionalist aspects defended by the conservatives with an appeal to rational justification associated with Kant.

Millán Brusslan focusses upon what was unique about Schlegel’s philosophical lens, a lens uniquely suited to capturing social injustice. She undertakes an examination of the roots of Schlegel’s philosophical pluralism and his project of blending philosophy and poetry. She argues that Schlegel’s push to blend disciplines was part of a project to reform our approach to truth, a topic explored in Sections One and Two of the paper.The new philosophical lens developed by Schlegel allowed him to see what other thinkers overlooked and to address urgent social issues that needed attention, especially the exclusion of women from philosophy.The reforming spirit of Schlegel’s thought is most systematically developed in an essay on Kant’s Perpetual Peace, and so in Sections Three and Four of the paper, Kant’s essay and Schlegel’s critique of it are analyzed to highlight the political implications of Schlegel’s thought.

This chapter explores the problem of public opinion in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I argue that for Hegel, the problem of public opinion is closely related to the problem of ideology critique, representing a departure from the Kantian approach to publicity as a path to enlightenment, and the development of a nascent critical theory. First, I provide an overview of Hegel’s understanding of public opinion by taking up its positive and negative aspects. Hegel’s departure from Kantian themes is clearly discerned in his understanding of the formation and function of public opinion, which traces its origins to the estates, leading to a conflict between private interests based on social status and the public good. With Hegel’s understanding in view, I then assess the extent to which this represents the development of a concept of ideology by drawing on Raymond Geuss’ definition. I show that public opinion has certain epistemic, functional, and genetic features that are connected with ideology, and further, that Hegel’s account of social practices helpfully contributes to contemporary debates. Finally, I turn to the Natural Law essay and argue that Hegel’s objections against empiricism and formalism in political theorizing share important affinities with critical theory.

In his Foundations of Natural Right, J. G. Fichte advances the innovative thesis that the theory of right is independent of, or separate from, moral theory. Although Fichte is concerned to stress the originality of his approach, he refers approvingly to some “excellent hints” in the writings of J. B. Erhard. Given the recent scholarly interest in Fichte’s account of the relationship between right and morality, it is surprising that Erhard’s position is seldom discussed. Where it is discussed, it is often presented as merely a hesitant precursor of Fichte’s position. This paper provides a corrective to that view by arguing that Erhard’s account of the relationship between right and morality constitutes a distinctive and philosophically compelling position. In the first two sections, I reconstruct Erhard’s account of the relationship between right and morality. I argue that Erhard’s position is best characterized as focusing on the dynamic interplay between the theory of right and the requirements of morality as articulated by Kantian moral theory. In the third section, I demonstrate the coherence and significance of Erhard’s position by considering it in relation to a central debate in the philosophy of law—the debate between legal positivism and natural law theory.

The 1786 review of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Hermann Andreas Pistorius raised the objection that Kant's categorical imperative is an "empty formalism" that needs an antecedent conception of the good long before Hegel made the same charge in 1802.  Kant's explicit response to Pistorius in the Critique of Practical Reason is just to double-down on the priority of the right over the good.  However, I suggest that Kant's characterization of humanity as an end in itself as the "ground of a possible categorical imperative" in the Groundwork, on the one hand, and his account of the highest good as the complete object of morality in the second Critique, on the other, together provide a much fuller and satisfactory response to the "empty formalism" objection.

The debate in 1792-94 between Wilhelm von Humboldt and Karl von Dalberg focuses on the legitimacy and limits of the state’s promotion of welfare for its subjects. It represents a clash between the Kantian school and advocates of the Leibniz-Wolff philosophy. Dalberg advocates a strongly interventionist state, while Humboldt circumscribes narrowly the scope of rightful political action. Humboldt’s post-Kantian perfectionism aims to maximise freedom and its conditions, rather than to promote happiness, as older perfectionisms had done. Dalberg, in contrast, appeals to Wolff’s defence of enlightened absolutism, viewing the state as the agency for eliminating obstacles to individual and social thriving, or the good life. While illustrating the reception of Kant’s critiques of previous ethical systems, and the persistence of Wolffian themes, the debate is also indicative of the diversity of political positions advocated by Kantians in the aftermath of The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). In conceiving the individual as a spontaneous monad with a unique developmental trajectory, Humboldt shares with Dalberg a revised version of Leibniz. The blending of Leibnizian and Kantian concepts constitutes the central theoretical interest of the political thought of this period.