Diotima's Children by Frederick C. Beiser

The rationalist tradition deserves re-examination because it is of great historical significance, marking the beginning of modern aesthetics, art criticism, and art history. It shows that the criticisms of Kant and Nietzsche of this tradition are largely unfounded. It is partly an historical survey of the central figures and themes of this tradition But it is also a philosophical defense of some of its leading ideas, viz., that beauty plays an integral role in life, that aesthetic pleasure is the perception of perfection, that aesthetic rules are inevitable and valuable. It is partly an historical sur… More.ĭiotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. The result is a wide-ranging, original, and surprising new account of German philosophy in the critical period between Hegel and the twentieth century.Beiser, Frederick C.: Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing - new bookĭiotima's Children is a re-examination of the rationalist tradition of aesthetics which prevailed in Germany in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Dilthey play important roles in these controversies but so do many neglected figures, including Ludwig Büchner, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Fraunstaedt, Hermann Lotze, Adolf Trendelenburg, and two women, Agnes Taubert and Olga Pluemacher, who have been completely forgotten in histories of philosophy. In this innovative concise history of German philosophy from 1840 to 1900, Beiser focuses not on themes or individual thinkers but rather on the period's five great debates: the identity crisis of philosophy, the materialism controversy, the methods and limits of history, the pessimism controversy, and the Ignorabimusstreit. But Frederick Beiser argues that the second half of the century was in fact one of the most revolutionary periods in modern philosophy because the nature of philosophy itself was up for grabs and the very absence of certainty led to creativity and the start of a new era. Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing, by Frederick C.

By contrast, the remainder of the century, after Hegel's death, has been relatively neglected because it has been seen as a period of stagnation and decline. Histories of German philosophy in the nineteenth century typically focus on its first half-when Hegel, idealism, and Romanticism dominated.

Diotima's Children by Frederick C. Beiser