German Idealism develops its philosophy of history as the theory of becoming absolute and as absolute knowledge. Historism also originates from Hegel's and Schelling's discovery of absolute historicity as it turns against Idealism's philosophy of history by emphasizing the singular and unique in the process of history. German Idealism and Historism can be considered as the central German contribution to the history of ideas. Since Idealism became most influential for modern philosophy and Historism for modern historiography, they are analyzed in this volume in a collaboration of philosophers and historians. German Idealism is presented in Schelling and its critics Schlegel, Baader, and Nietzsche; Historism in Ranke, Droysen, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. The volume further presents the impact of Idealism and Historism on present German approaches to the philosophy of history and outlines the debates on the possibility of a philosophy of history and on the methodology of the historical sciences.

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the goal underlying historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project.

The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century is the first collective critical study of this important period in intellectual history. The volume is divided into four parts. The first part explores individual philosophers, including Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, amongst other great thinkers of the period. The second addresses key philosophical movements: Idealism, Romanticism, Neo-Kantianism, and Existentialism. The essays in the third part engage with different areas of philosophy that received particular attention at this time, including philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and hermeneutics. Finally, the contributors turn to discuss central philosophical topics, from skepticism to mat-erialism, from dialectics to ideas of historical and cultural Otherness, and from the reception of antiquity to atheism. Written by a team of leading experts, this Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone working in the area and will lead the direction of future research.

This book provides the English-speaking world with a comprehensive account of the still largely unknown work of Schelling’s philosophy of mythology and revelation. Its achievement, however, is not archival but philosophical, elucidating the relation between Schelling and onto-theology. It explains how Schelling dealt with the problem of nihilism and onto-theology well before Nietzsche and Heidegger, arguing that Schelling surpasses onto-theology or the philosophy of presence a century prior to Heidegger. Overall, the author provocatively suggests that Heidegger is perhaps Schelling’s genuine heir and by comprehensively interpreting Schelling’s multifaceted late lectures he analyzes issues as diverse as the Ancient relation between thinking and Being, the Medieval debate between voluntarism and intellectualism, the overcoming of modern subjectivism and German Idealism as well as many themes in contemporary philosophy. The presentation is systematic rather than thematic, following Schelling’s ages of the world through the Past, Present and Future. The results are daring, departing from the half-century long canonical reading of the late Schelling since Walter Schulz. This book is valuable for Schelling-scholars, historians of philosophy and theologians alike.

This book covers the basic guidelines of Vittorio Benussi’s research during the period at Graz and at Padua. It does so in the light of a thorough study of his Nachlass. The book re-evaluates Benussi’s work as a historical piece, and shows how his work is still relevant today, especially in the areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. The volume deals with this original and ingenious - though largely ignored - scholar and discusses his work as a leading experimental psychologist. Benussi’s contributions as discussed in this book were particularly relevant in the fields of visual and tactile perception, time perception, forensic psychology, hypnosis and suggestion, unconscious, and emotions. His classical papers are impressive in their originality, energy, range of approaches, experimental skill, the wealth of findings, and the quality of theoretical discussions. This book demonstrates that Benussi was ahead of his time and that his themes, experiments and research programmes are highly relevant to contemporary cognitive psychology.

In the context of increasingly numerous cultural and political contradictory debates, humanities are facing the difficult responsibility of removing the veil of ambiguity and doubt. However, they cannot fulfil this task without first undertaking a rigorous return upon themselves, their own fundaments, methods and targeted objects. This book investigates the influence of G.W.F. Hegel on these sciences during their long and controversial process of transformation and consolidation. For this purpose, the author developed, on Gadamer’s suggestions, a dialectical-hermeneutical method able to overcome the insufficiencies of both historical and systematic approaches and to properly take into account the significant references to authors of the Modern Age and the Contemporary Era. In his attempt to advance a speculative model for the present-day social and political sciences, the author brings a new light on some renowned topics including agency in history (Napoleon – Weltgeist or Weltseele on horseback?), the inner structure of the interpreter (Gadamer between Hegel and Heidegger) and the critical concept of alienation (an overthrow or continuity of absolute idealism?), among others.

This book examines contemporary artistic practices since 1990 that engage with, depict, and conceptualize history. Examining artworks by Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Zarina Bhimji, Michael Blum, Matthew Buckingham, Tacita Dean, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Omer Fast, Andrea Geyer, Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno, Hiwa K, Amar Kanwar, Bouchra Khalili, Deimantas Narkevičius, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Walid Raad, Dierk Schmidt, Erika Tan, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions since 1990 undertakes a thorough methodological reexamination of the contribution of art to history writing and to its theoretical foundations. The analytical instrument of anachrony comes to the fore as an experimental method, as will (para)fiction, counterfactual history, testimonies, ghosts and spectres of the past, utopia, and the "juridification" of history. Eva Kernbauer argues that contemporary art—developing its own conceptual approaches to temporality and to historical research—offers fruitful strategies for creating historical consciousness and perspectives for political agency. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography, and contemporary art. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 license.