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Extends the boundaries of Romantic culture from its pre-Kantian past to contemporary theory and beyond.
Idealism without Absolutes offers an ambitious and broad reconsideration of Idealism in relation to Romanticism and subsequent thought. Linking Idealist and Romantic philosophy to contemporary theory, the volume explores the multiplicity of different philosophical incarnations of Idealism and materialism, and shows how they mix with and invade each other in philosophy and culture. The contributors discuss a wide range of major figures in the long Romantic period, from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, as well as key figures defining the contemporary intellectual debate, including Freud, Heidegger, Adorno, Lyotard, Derrida, de Man, and Deleuze and Guattari. While preserving the significance of the historical period extending from Kant to the early nineteenth century, the volume gives the concept of Romantic culture a new historical and philosophical meaning that extends from its pre-Kantian past to our own culture and beyond.
"…this volume does a good job in making the case for rethinking idealism and offers several very compelling and provocative readings … this is an extremely valuable volume of essays. Rather than offering an overall thesis of 'Idealism without Absolutes,' it offers specific readings of individual texts or clusters of texts meant to incite conversation and provoke thought." — H-Net Reviews (H-German)
"…it is the de-absolutizing of Hegel … that remains the core of this volume and its chief merit … There is no essay without something worthwhile for any reader compelled by the subject." — University of Toronto Quarterly
"In providing a first push in the direction of rethinking idealism, as emancipated from the traditional story of absolute positing and absolute understanding, the authors succeed in opening up new avenues for further thought and writing." — H-Net Review
"This book is a timely revisiting of German Romantic Idealism that energetically explores the implications of the twin propositions of an Idealism without absolutes and a materiality without matter." — Orrin N. C. Wang, author of Fantastic Modernity: Dialectical Readings in Romanticism and Theory
"This book revitalizes Idealism as a viable mode of literary theory, which enriches our developing understanding of Romantic culture. In this sense, the book rejuvenates the field of Romanticism as the paradigm maker for literary analysis." — Denise Gigante, Stanford University
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Tilottama Rajan
Romanticism and the Invention of Literature
Jan Plug
Allegories of Symbol: On Hegel's Aesthetics
Andrzej Warminski
Toward a Cultural Idealism: Negativity and Freedom in Hegel and Kant
Tilottama Rajan
Mediality in Hegel: From Work to Text in the Phenomenology of Spirit
Jochen Schulte-Sasse
Beyond Beginnings: Schlegel and Romantic Historiography
Gary Handwerk
Curvatures: Hegel and the Baroque
Arkady Plotnitsky
Three Ends of the Absolute: Schelling, Holderlin, and Novalis
David Farrell Krell
Schopenhauer's Telling Body of Philosophy
Joel Faflak
Sacrificial and Erotic Materialism in Kierkegaard and Adorno
John Smyth
Absolute Failures: Hegel's Bildung and the "Earliest System-Program of German Idealism"
Rebecca Gagan
Futures of Spirit: Hegel, Nietzsche, and Beyond
Richard Beardsworth
Conclusion: Without Absolutes
Arkady Plotnitsky
Contributors
Index