German Idealism by BEISER Frederick C

Author:BEISER, Frederick C. [Beiser, Frederick C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

CHAPTER 2

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Hölderlin and Absolute Idealism

1. Philosophy versus Poetry

For absolute idealism to be born, it had to go four steps beyond Fichte’s critical idealism. First, it had to deny that subject–object identity consists in the self-consciousness of the ego alone, and it had to affirm instead that it exists only in the single universal substance, of which the subjective and objective are only appearances. Second, it had to dispute the purely regulative status of the absolute and to stress its constitutive role; in other words, it had to contend that the absolute is not only an ethical ideal but an existing reality. Third, it had to transcend the Kantian–Fichtean limits on knowledge and to claim cognition of the absolute. Fourth, it had to hold that nature is not a projection of consciousness, still less an obstacle to the will, but an autonomous organism having independent reality and inherent rationality.

Among the very first, if not the first, to take all these steps was Friedrich Hölderlin, the close friend and roommate of Schelling and Hegel from their days at the Tübinger Stift. While Schelling, Schlegel, and Novalis were still under Fichte’s magical spell, and while Hegel was busy applying Kantian ideas to religion, Hölderlin was already a critic of the Wissenschaftslehre, striving to move beyond its confines. As early as the spring of 1795, Hölderlin had argued against the subjective status of the principle of subject–object identity; he had postulated an aesthetic intuition of the absolute; he had criticized Fichte’s concept of nature; and he had given nature a standing independent of the ego. There is indeed good reason to think that it was Hölderlin who first impressed such views on Schelling and Hegel. For all these reasons, Hölderlin has been considered the father of absolute idealism.1

Hölderlin’s significance for the development of absolute idealism is not least apparent from his pivotal role in the formation of the Schelling–Hegel alliance. It was probably Hölderlin who forged the intellectual bond between Schelling and Hegel that eventually led to their collaboration from 1801 to 1804. For, otherwise, it is a very remarkable fact that Schelling and Hegel joined forces at all in 1801, given that they had not seen one another for several years, and given that they had developed in different directions after leaving the Tübinger Stift. From October 1793 to Autumn 1796, Hegel was preoccupied with a modern Volksreligion and the source of religious positivity, while Schelling had become involved in Fichte’s philosophy and the study of natural science. What eventually brought them together in 1801 to forge a united front against Fichte’s subjective idealism was probably Hölderlin’s common influence. Although Schelling and Hegel saw little of one another before their Jena period,2 Hölderlin saw them both. He had visited Schelling twice in Tübingen in 1795, and Schelling had come to see him in Frankfurt in 1796. Though we know little about these encounters, we do know that they were the occasion for philosophical dispute.3 After getting Hegel a position as a

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