Dieter Henrich (1) (1927–2022)

If you're looking for an introduction to german idealism, you can't go wrong. Of course, that's not the largest audience of all time. Anyway.

This book is focused on the structure of the arguments between the philosophers of the period, particularly with regard to their systems. There's not much on ethics or politics and so on. This actually clears things up though: you can find out *why* Kant says what he says in the second and third critiques, why Fichte tries what he tries in his ethical works.
Henrich's best when dealing with the early critics of Kant (Jacobi and Reinhold in particular) and Fichte. He states clearly and precisely the problems they found in Kant, the problems they failed to solve, and their important contributions to later philosophy. The early chapters on Kant were a little more confusing, I thought, although that's maybe because I knew a little more about Kant than Fichte. The last chapters on Hegel were very puzzling. Henrich focuses on 'negation' in Hegel, and seems to read him as much more of a metaphysician than a lot of recent commentary. He blames Hegel for not picking up on Fichte's 'original insight', the idea that mind is what it is insofar as it is essentially reflexive. But I thought that was Hegel's whole point. Henrich knows more than I do, I know that, but I have to disagree here. Still, if you're interested in this period of philosophy, it doesn't get any better.… (mehr)