Critique in German Philosophy

María del Rosario Acosta López is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She has published several books, including Aesthetic Reason and Imaginative Freedom: Friedrich Schiller and Philosophy (coedited with Jeffrey L. Powell), also published by SUNY Press. J. Colin McQuillan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary's University. His previously published books include Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason.

"The contributors assembled in this very thorough and fascinating collection ably capture not only the complexity of aims and influences at work in Kant's seminal formulation of critique, but just how contested and dynamic that formulation proved to be in the hands of his successors. It makes the case that the notion of critique—its point, object, method, and relationship to the field of philosophy—has been perhaps the perennial concern of the German philosophical tradition since Kant, and the thread that unifies most of the major figures in this tradition." — Todd Hedrick, author of Reconciliation and Reification: Freedom's Semblance and Actuality from Hegel to Contemporary Critical Theory"In this splendidly comprehensive, challenging, and sometimes urgent collection, the great tradition of modern German philosophy is reconstructed from the perspective of critique, where critique is taken to be philosophy's self-consciousness as simultaneously bound by the demands of reason and the claims of human need."While Kant's philosophy incongruously but emphatically joined the critique of metaphysics with Enlightenment rationalism, beginning with Schiller, critique becomes the recurrent procedure and signature of a philosophical tradition committed to undoing the cruel rationalities that underlie and succor modern forms of domination; critique is the self-critique of reason as domination. Critique, steering a difficult course between dogmatic rationalism and skepticism, is the practice of philosophy as always self-critique for the sake of the emancipation of self and other. Critique means to expose hidden bias, challenge illusory authority, unsettle accepted meanings, destroy shibboleths, and defy power masked as reason. In critique, philosophy again and again seeks to forge the ties connecting reason to destitute humanity. This volume belongs on the bookshelf of every student of German philosophy." — J. M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroductionMaría del Rosario Acosta López and J. Colin McQuillan1. The Struggle between Dogmatism and Skepticism in the Prussian Academy: A Precedent for Kantian CritiqueCatalina González2. Pure Sensibility as a Source of Corruption: Kant's Critique of Metaphysics in the Inaugural Dissertation and Critique of Pure ReasonKarin de Boer3. Critique in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason: Why This Critique Is Not a Critique of Pure Practical ReasonAvery Goldman4. On an Aesthetic Dimension of Critique: The Time of the Beautiful in Schiller's Aesthetic LettersMaría del Rosario Acosta López5. Not Yet a System, Not Yet a Science: Reinhold and Fichte on Kant's CritiqueJ. Colin McQuillan6. Schelling's Philosophical Letters on Doctrine and CritiqueG. Anthony Bruno7. Critique With a Small C: Herder's Critical Philosophical Practice and Anticritical PolemicsRachel Zuckert8. Irony and the Possibility of Romantic Criticism: Friedrich Schlegel as Poet-CriticKarolin Mirzakhan9. Alexander von Humboldt: A Critic of NatureElizabeth Millán Brusslan10. Critique, Refutation, Appropriation: Strategies of Hegel's DialecticAngelica Nuzzo11. Abstraction and Critique in Marx: The Case of DebtRocío Zambrana12. Nietzsche's Project of Reevaluation: What Kind of Critique?Daniel R. Rodríguez-Navas13. Kantian Critique, Its Ethical Purification by Hermann Cohen, and Its Reflective Transformation by Wilhelm DiltheyRudolf A. Makkreel14. Transcendental Phenomenology as Radical Immanent Critique: Subversions and Matrices of IntelligibilityAndreea Smaranda Aldea15. From the Metaphysics of Law to the Critique of ViolencePeter Fenves16. Is There Critique in Critical Theory? The Claim of Happiness on TheoryRichard A. Lee Jr.17. Critique as Melancholy ScienceAmy Allen18. Reality and Resistance: Habermas and Haslanger on Objectivity, Social Critique, and the Possibility of ChangeFederica Gregoratto19. The Critique of Law and the Law of CritiqueChristoph MenkeWorks CitedContributorsIndex