The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics

frederick c. beiser

The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics contains all the essential political writings of Friedrich Schlegel, Schleiermacher and Novalis during the formative period of romantic thought (1797 to 1803). The early romantics had an ambition still relevant today: to find a middle path between conservatism and liberalism, between a community ethic and individual freedom. Frederick Beiser's edition comprises all kinds of texts, from essays to jottings from notebooks. All have been translated anew, many for the first time.

Genres philosophyromanticismpolitics

252 pages, Paperback

First published March 14,1996

This edition

Format: 252 pages, Paperback
Published: April 26, 1996 by Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521449519
ASIN: 0521449510
Language: English

About the author

frederick c. beiser

Frederick C. Beiser, one of the leading scholars of German Idealism, is a Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. Prior to joining Syracuse, he was a member of the faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington where he received a 1999-2000 NEH Faculty Fellowship. He has also taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Harvard and Yale University. Beiser earned his DPhil. degree from Oxford University under the direction of Charles Taylor and Isaiah Berlin.

Beiser's first book, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard, 1987) was widely influential in revising the commonly held, but notorious accounts of German Idealism. In this book, Beiser sought to reconstruct the background of German Idealism through the narration of the story of the Spinoza or Pantheism controversy. Consequently, a great many figures, whose importance was hardly recognized by the English speaking philosophers, were given their proper due.
Beiser has also written on the German Romantics and 19th century British philosophy.