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Grazing in the Sunlight: On H. S. Harris's “The Cows in the Dark Night”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

George di Giovanni
Affiliation:
McGill University

Extract

I have only two comments to make, both of which will appear incidental at first. Their full relevance to the paper you have just read will become clear at the end, as I hope.

The first refers to Harris's remark that Jacobi, Schleiermacher and Herder “make strange bedfellows”. Actually, they do not. This is one more example, I believe, of Hegel's usual idiosyncratic yet conceptually sound classification of philosophers and philosophies. I am thinking especially of the Jacobi-Herder pair, but I suspect that what I have to say would apply to the third member of the trio as well. We must remember that, at the time of the writing of the Preface to the Phenomenology, the 1815 edition of Jacobi's dialogue David Hume on Faith, which Jacobi himself had overseen, did not exist. It is the edition that we are most likely to have read, because the wonders of photomechanical reproduction have made it easily available. Hegel, however, could only have read the dialogue in its 1787 edition, without the long new Introduction which Jacobi added in 1815 as an introduction to his collected works as well.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 Jacobi, F. H., David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus, in Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke, zweiter Band (Leipzig: bei Gerhard Fleischer d. Jüng., 1815Google Scholar; reprinted, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968).

2 Jacobi, F. H., David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus (Breslau: bei Gottlieb Löwe, 1787).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 221–222.

4 Ibid., 5.

5 E.g., ibid., 124, 154, 189.

6 Cf. Jacobi, , David Hume (1815), 219, 220, 222223, 263.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 237ff.

8 von Schelling, F. W. J., Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft, in von Schelling, K. F. A., ed., F. W. J. von Schelling's Sämmtliche Werke, 14 vol. (Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta Verlag, 18561861)Google Scholar, §1. vol. 2.

9 Ibid., 20ff.

10 Hegel, G. W. F., “[Ueber] Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis Werke, Dritter Band”, Werke 4 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 429–461Google Scholar. The review originally appeared in the Heidelbergische Jahrbücher der Literatur, Nos. 1 & 2 (1817).Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 446–447.

12 Cf. Jacobi, Letter 360, “An Johann Neeb in Niedersaulheim. München, 30 Mai 1817”. in Roth, F., ed., Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's auserlesener Briefwechsel, in zwei Bänden (Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer, 18251827), vol. 2, 466468.Google Scholar

13 Schulze, G. E., Aenesidemus, oder über die Fundamente der vor Herrn Prof. Reinhold in Jena gelieferten Elementar-Philsopphie (no place of publication or publisher given, 1792)Google Scholar; reprinted, Aetas Kantiana (Brussels: Culture et Civilization, 1969), 386388.Google Scholar

14 He tells Reinhold that, because of the sickness from which he suffers, he can expect a short life but a painless death. Letter of C. G. Bardili to C. L. Reinhold, Nov. 6, 1803, in Reinhold, E., ed., Karl Leonhard Reinhold's Leben und litterarische Wirken, nebst eine Auswahl von Briefen Kant's, Jacobi's, und andrer philosophierenden Zeitgenossen an ihn (Jena: Fromann, 1825), 318320.Google Scholar

15 Bardili, C. G., Grundriss der ersten Logik (Stuttgart: bei Franz Christian Löflund, 1800)Google Scholar. The book actually appeared in the Michaelismesse of 1799.

16 Cf. the full title of the book (my tr.): Outline of First Logic, purified of the mistakes of all previous logicians, the Kantian ones in particular; not a critique but a medicina mentis, tobe used especially for Germany's Critical Philosophy. The dedication is on i. For the story of how Bardili came to write his book, see Garbeis, F. W., Bibliographie zu Christoph Gottfried Bardili (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1979), 1517.Google Scholar

17 Garbeis, , Bibliographie, 30.Google Scholar

18 Reinhold, E., ed., Reinhold's Leben, 120.Google Scholar

19 Reinhold, C. L., ed., C. G. Bardilis und C. L. Reinholds Briefwechsel über das Wesen der Philosophie und das Unwesen der Speculation (München: bei Josef Leutner, 1804)Google Scholar, Letter 12, Reinhold to Bardili, Sept. 1, 1800, 247–251.

20 Reinhold, C. L., Sendschreiben an I. C. Lavater und J. G. Fichte über den Glauben an Gott (Hamburg: bei F. Perthes, 1799Google Scholar; the preface is dated March 28, 1798).

21 I am basing my brief summary on the following: Bardili, Gritndriss der ersten Logik; Reinhold, C. L., ed., Bardilis und Reinholds Briefwechsel, Letter 1, January 1, 1800, 867Google Scholar; Reinhold, C. L., “Neue Darstellung der Elemente des rationalen Realismus”, Beiträge zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophie beim Amfange des 19. Jahrhunderts, Reinhold, C. L., ed. (Hamburg: bei F. Perthes, 1802), III.3, 128168Google Scholar; “Populäre Darstellung des rationalen Realismus”, Beiträge zur leichtern Uebersicht (1803), V. 1, 122Google Scholar. I must stress that I have deliberately used older scholastic language in order to bring out, in one paragraph, the ancestry of Bardili's doctrine.

22 Cf. Fichte, J. G., “Rezension von Bardili's Grundriss der ersten Logik”, Erlanger Literatur-Zeitung, Nos. 214 & 215 (1800)Google Scholar, in Fichte, I. H., ed., Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Veit, 1845), V, 495501Google Scholar; Fichte, J. G., Antwortschreiben an Hernn Professor Reinhold auf dessen … Sendschreiben an der ersteren (Tübingen: in der J. G. Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1801), 504534Google Scholar; Reinhold, C. L., “Beilage zum Sendschreiben an Fichte, aus einem Briefe Bardilis, 3 Feb. 1800”, Beiträge tur leichtern Uebersicht (1801), VI, 7Google Scholar; and Reinhold's reply to Fichte, ibid., 161–162.

23 Cf. Garbeis, , Bibliographie, 24ff.Google Scholar

24 Reinhold, C. L., “Ueber das absolute Identitätssystem, oder den nuesten reinen Rationalismus des Hernn Schelling und dessen Verhältniss zum rationalen Realismus”, Beiträge zur leichtern Uebersicht (1800), III.4, 168Google Scholar; cf. also, Reinhold, E., ed., Reinhold's LebenGoogle Scholar, Letter of Bardili to Reinhold, April 26, 1805, 316–318.

25 Bardili, C. G., Timaeus der Lokrier, von der Weltseele, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Füllerborn, G. G., ed., vol. 3 (Jena: Fromann, 1799)Google Scholar; 1856–1861 ed., §1, vol. 2.

26 Cf. Reinhold, C. L., “Ideen zu einer Heautogonie oder natürliche Geschichte der reinen Ichheit, genannt reine Vernunft”, Beiträge zur leichtern Uebersicht (1801), 1.6, 134154Google Scholar; “Ueber die Autonomie als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie der Fichtischschellingschen Schule”, ibid., 104–140.

27 Cf. note 26. See also, Reinhold, C. L., “Einige Gedanke über philosophische Systeme überhaupt und insbesondere die Wissenschaftliche”, Beiträge zur leichtern Uebersicht (1801), II.4, 141178.Google Scholar

28 The connection between Hegel and his Jena colleague Jakob Friedrich Fries, who systematically tried to psychologize Kant's Transcendental Logic and wrote on Reinhold and Jacobi at the same time as Hegel, needs exploring.