The story of German philosophy from the Middle Ages to todayThis concise but comprehensive book provides an original history of German-language philosophy from the Middle Ages to today. In an accessible narrative that explains complex ideas in clear language, Vittorio Hösle traces the evolution of German philosophy and describes its central influence on other aspects of German culture, including literature, politics, and science.Starting with the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, the book addresses the philosophical changes brought about by Luther's Reformation, and then presents a detailed account of the classical age of German philosophy, including the work of Leibniz and Kant; the rise of a new form of humanities in Lessing, Hamann, Herder, and Schiller; the early Romantics; and the Idealists Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The following chapters investigate the collapse of the German synthesis in Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. Turning to the twentieth century, the book explores the rise of analytical philosophy in Frege and the Vienna and Berlin circles; the foundation of the historical sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey; Husserl's phenomenology and its radical alteration by Heidegger; the Nazi philosophers Gehlen and Schmitt; and the main West German philosophers, including Gadamer, Jonas, and those of the two Frankfurt schools. Arguing that there was a distinctive German philosophical tradition from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the book closes by examining why that tradition largely ended in the decades after World War II.A philosophical history remarkable for its scope, brevity, and lucidity, this is an invaluable book for students of philosophy and anyone interested in German intellectual and cultural history.

Translator's Note ix
Preface to the English Translation xi
1 Does German Philosophy Have a History? And Has There
Ever Been a "German Spirit"? 1
2 The Birth of God in the Soul: The Beginnings of German-language Philosophizing in the Middle Ages in the Work of Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa's Consummation and Demolition of Medieval Thought 13
3 The Change in the Philosophical Situation Brought about by the Reformation: Paracelsus's New Natural Philosophy and the "No" in Jakob Böhme's God 29
4 Only the Best Is Good Enough for God: Leibniz's Synthesis of Scholasticism and the New Science 39
5 The German Ethical Revolution: Immanuel Kant 57
6 The Human Sciences as a Religious Duty: Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, the Early Romantics, and Wilhelm von Humboldt 82
7 The Longing for a System: German Idealism 97
8 The Revolt against Christian Dogmatics: Schopenhauer's Discovery of the Indian World 129
9 The Revolt against the Bourgeois World: Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx 139
10 The Revolt against Universalistic Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche 156
11 The Exact Sciences as a Challenge and the Rise of Analytic Philosophy: Frege, the Viennese and Berlin Circles, Wittgenstein 176
12 The Search for a Foundation of the Human Sciences and the Social Sciences in Neo-Kantianism and Dilthey, and Husserl's Exploration of Consciousness 193
13 Is Philosophy Partly to Blame for the German Catastrophe? Heidegger between Fundamental Ontology and the History of Being 217
14 National Socialist Anthropology and Political Philosophy: Arnold Gehlen and Carl Schmitt 232
15 The Federal Republic's Adaptation to Western European Normality: Gadamer, the Two Frankfurt Schools, and Hans Jonas 241
16 Why We Cannot Assume That There Will Continue to Be a German Philosophy 263
Index of Names 269