The German Genius

general methodology of the humanities.” 9
    Idealism was developed in Königsberg, Berlin, Weimar, and Jena. Only Berlin was a city of any size—130,000 or so then. Both Herder and Fichte studied under Kant, later moving on to live near Goethe, who was sympathetic to Kant’s approach. Karl Leonhard Reinhold proved to be an excellent popularizer of Kant in the nearby university town of Jena, and he was followed by Fichte, Schelling, and, eventually, Hegel. They developed their own varieties of Idealism and at the same time forged alliances with the literary giants of the era—Schiller, Hölderlin, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), and Friedrich Schlegel. They were further augmented by the arrival of a new generation of talented individualists: Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Tieck, Jean Paul Richter, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea (Veit) Schlegel, Caroline (Böhmer) Schlegel, and Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, “a relentlessly creative group.” 10 Most of them moved on eventually to settle in Berlin when the new university was established there (see Chapter 10). Following Napoleon’s stunning victory at Jena in 1806, German Idealism contributed to Prussia’s recovery and in particular to the rise of nationalism and conservatism within Germany. 11
    “German Idealism deserves the attention it has received. It fills an obvious gap generated by traditional expectations of philosophy and problems caused by the rise of the unquestioned authority of modern science.” Idealism had the highest aims, seeking a synoptic understanding of all our most basic predicaments in a unified and autonomous approach. For the Idealists, philosophy should not be a series of ad hoc solutions to abstract technical puzzles. Ultimately, Idealism saw “culture” and “nation” as “higher” moral communities, stretching beyond individualism, the wholesome reflection of Christian duty. 12 It went beyond religion and incorporated politics.
    At its simplest, Idealism argues that the bodily organs that allow humans to understand the structure of nature must be phenomena that are “built in” to nature to begin with. It follows from this that there must be limits to reason and therefore limits to what we know and to what we can know. Idealism echoes clearly the Platonic notion of “ideas,” that “there is another level or realm of reality that exists beyond the common sense level in which we normally ‘experience’ life. For the idealists the world exists not quite in the manner that we assume it does…there is a set of features or entities that have a higher, more ‘ideal’ nature.” 13 Kant called this realm the “noumenal” realm to distinguish it from the “phenomenal” realm, the realm of phenomena as we perceive them.
    Kant’s early works had more to do with science than philosophy. 14 Following the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, he produced a theory of earthquakes; he also conceived a theory of the heavens which predated Pierre-Simon Laplace’s nebular hypothesis—that the solar system was formed by a cloud of gas condensing under gravity. But it is as a philosopher that Kant is chiefly known, and in his philosophy he identified—and then sought to clarify—what were for him the three most important questions facing mankind. First, he addressed the problem of Truth : How do we know the world and is it a true representation? Second, Goodness : What principles should govern human conduct? Third, Beauty : Are there laws of aesthetics, conditions which nature and art must satisfy in order to be beautiful? 15
    Kant addressed the first question in what is generally regarded as his most important book, Kritik der reinen Vernunft ( Critique of Pure Reason ), published in 1781 in Riga. It came after ten years of rumination and reflection—years that, as more than one critic has observed, did not improve his writing style. Kant rarely seems to have thought it necessary to give illustrations of his abstract points, never imagining that it would make his arguments easier to follow. His starting point was what for him was the crucial difference between two kinds of judgment. When someone says: “It is warm in this room,” what he or she really means is: “It seems to me warm in this room—others might not find it so.” On the other hand, the mathematical proposition that the sum of the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles of 180 degrees is correct