Examines the influence of Kant - and in particular the neglected influence of his moral and political philosophy - on the work of Coleridge.

This book aims at providing the answer to one question: what did Coleridge derive from Kant and the post-Kantians in his most productive intellectual period, i.e., from approximately the eighteen-twenties? The question has already been investigated by a number of scholars-Shawcross, Muirhead, Wellek, Winkelmann, Schrickx and Chinol, in chronological order. Upon their work my book is founded. -Book's Preface

Comprehensive and incisive, with three new chapters, this updated edition sees world-renowned scholars explore a rich and complex philosophical movement.

System of Transcendental Idealism is probably Schelling's most important philosophical work. A central text in the history of German idealism, its original German publication in 1800 came seven years after Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and seven years before Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English. Included are Schelling's "Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the Science of Knowledge" (1797), "System of Philosophy in General" (1804), and "Stuttgart Seminars" (1810). Of these texts, the "Treatise" constitutes the most comprehensive critical reading of Kant and Fichte by a contemporary thinker and, as a result, proved seminal to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's efforts at interconnecting English Romanticism and German speculative thought. Extending his early critique of subjectivity, Schelling's "System of Philosophy in General" and his "Stuttgart Seminars" launch a far more radical inquiry into the notion of identity, a term which for Schelling, increasingly reveals the contingent nature and inescapable limitations of theoretical practice. An extensive critical introduction relates Schelling's work both to his philosophical contemporaries (Kant, Fichte, and Hegel) as well as to the contemporary debates about Theory in the humanities. The book includes extensive annotations of each translated text, an excursus on Schelling and Coleridge, a comprehensive multi-lingual bibliography, and a glossary.

A study of the philosophical thought of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a focus on the central philosophical views and their underlying metaphysic that Coleridge strove to achieve and refine over the last three decades of his life.

Irony and Idealism investigates the historical and conceptual structure of the development of a philosophically distinctive conception of irony in early- to mid-nineteenth century European philosophy. The principal figures treated are the romantic thinkers Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. Fred Rush argues that the development of philosophical irony in this historical period is best understood as providing a way forward in philosophy in the wake of Kant and Jacobi that is discrete from, and many times opposed to, German idealism. Irony and Idealism argues, against the grain of received opinion, that among the German romantics Schlegel's conception of irony is superior to similar ideas found in Novalis. It also presents a sustained argument showing that historical reconsideration of Schlegel has been hampered by contestable Hegelian assumptions concerning the conceptual viability of romantic irony and by the misinterpretation of what the romantics mean by 'the absolute.' Rush argues that this is primarily a social-ontological term and not, as is often supposed, a metaphysical concept. Kierkegaard, although critical of the romantic conception, deploys his own adaptation of it in his criticism of Hegel, continuing, and in a way completing, the arc of irony through nineteenth-century philosophy. The book concludes by offering suggestions meant to guide contemporary reconsideration of Schlegel's and Kierkegaard's views on the philosophical significance of irony.