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Frederick C. Beiser Biography

Author

Frederick C. Beiser is a renowned figure in an unknown field, born on November 27, 1949. His life story and achievements are not well documented.

Related Quotes

“The years 1781 to 1793 are crucial for many reasons, but chiefly because they pose in an especially clear way the main problem of German philosophy for the next century. This is the old conflict between reason and faith which recurred during the pantheism controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn.”

Way Years Reason Philosophy Problem Next Clear Century Conflict Crucial Controversy Pantheism Mendelssohn German Philosophy

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“There is no comfortable middle path where we get to provide a rational justification for our basic moral, religious and common sense beliefs.”

Belief Religious Common Moral Path Middle Comfortable Common Sense Rational Justification Middle Path

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“There was no Prussian bastion to stop the Scotsman's swift conquest of the territory once claimed by reason.”

Reason Territory Conquest Scotsmen

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The connection between romantic politics and aesthetics is plain in Schiller's and Novalis's concept of the aesthetic or poetic state.”

States Concepts Connections Poetic Aesthetic Aesthetics

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The aesthetic dimension of the ideal state comes out in the idea of harmony, which is the classical idea of beauty as "concinnitas" or "unity-in-variety".”

Ideas States Ideals Harmony Unity Variety Dimensions Aesthetic

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“There is a sinister anachronistic interpretation of the aesthetic state as some kind of totalitarian regime that puts aesthetic over moral standards; one associates it with national-socialism. But this has nothing to do with the romantics, whose ideal of the aesthetic state has much more to do with the republican tradition.”

Kind States Moral Republican Standards Ideals Tradition Socialism Interpretation Aesthetic Regimes Associates Sinister Totalitarian Regimes

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Schiller is an important philosopher because he shows just how integral the idea of beauty is in normal life.”

Important Ideas Shows Normal Philosopher Normal Life

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“To live well is to live in harmony with ourselves, others and nature, and that idea of harmony is, of course, an aesthetic one.”

Wells Ideas Courses Harmony Aesthetic Live Well

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Schiller never wanted to replace the moral with the aesthetic but he did want the moral to be one part of the aesthetic. He rightly notes the aesthetic dimension of morality, that we use concepts like grace to characterise people who do their duty with ease and pleasure.”

People Want Use Wanted Pleasure Moral Grace Duty Morality Concepts Notes Ease Dimensions Aesthetic

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The idea of romanticising the world goes back to the idea of creating a harmonious whole where the individual will feel at one with himself, others and nature.”

World Feels Ideas Whole Individual Creating Harmonious

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The romantics were reacting against a modern culture that divided individuals from themselves (through specialisation in the division of labor), from others (the competitive market place) and from nature, which had been reduced down to a machine through technology. The antidote to such division is unity and wholeness, which means feeling at home again in the world.”

World Mean Feelings Home Culture Individual Technology Modern Labor Machines Unity Division Divided Wholeness Antidote Reacting Modern Culture Division Of Labor

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The romantics really did want to romanticise the world itself, and that meant re-creating the state, society and even nature so that it became a work of art.”

World Want Art States Creating Works Of Art

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Liberals and leftists are not wrong in describing romanticism as reactionary, because it did indeed become that after 1810. The problem is that they make that description true of the movement as a whole, as if romanticism were essentially reactionary.”

Ifs Whole Problem Movement Description Describing Romanticism Reactionaries Leftists

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“That Hegel is a metaphysician, and that he thinks metaphysics is fundamental to philosophy, is plain enough from his definition of philosophy.”

Thinking Enough Philosophy Fundamentals Definitions Metaphysics Hegel

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Since substance is infinite, the universe as a whole, i.e., god, Hegel is telling us that philosophy is knowledge of the infinite, of the universe as a whole, i.e, god. You cannot get more metaphysical than that. I think that Hegel scholars have to admit this basic fact rather than burying their heads in the sand and trying to pretend that Hegel is concerned with conceptual analysis, category theory, normativity or some such contemporary fad.”

Thinking Trying Philosophy Whole Facts Universe Theory Concerned Infinite Contemporary Substance Analysis Sand Categories Scholar Metaphysical Fads Hegel Burying

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“All the spookiness comes from giving a contemporary anachronistic sense to terms whose historical meaning is lost to us.”

Giving Lost Term Historical Contemporary

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“No one nowadays talks about the absolute, not even people with firm and deep religious convictions. The whole Hegelian project has no resonance for us, as it once had for the Germans in the 1820s and the British and Americans around the 1880s.”

People Whole Religious Projects Absolutes Conviction British Firm Resonance

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Hegel remains of great importance to understand ourselves, but essentially because we have all grown out of a reaction against Hegel.”

Importance Remains Reactions Hegel

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“Royce is the father of the thesis that German idealism is a story about the discovery and development of the Kantian transcendental ego - the "I" that accompanies all my representations - as an absolute cosmic supersubject who, god-like, creates the entire universe.”

Stories Universe Father Development Ego Discovery Absolutes Cosmic Representation Idealism Accompany Transcendental Thesis

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The absolute as the idea is neither subjective nor objective; it is the intellectual structure under which they are subsumed.”

Ideas Intellectual Absolutes Structure Objectives Subjective

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The struggle against subjectivism was the attempt to avoid the charge of what was then called "idealism" or "nihilism", i.e., that we know nothing more than our own representations.”

Knows Struggle Representation Idealism Nihilism Subjectivism

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“The great German idealists from Kant to Hegel saw this idealism or nihilism as a reductio ad absurdum of any philosophy, and so they struggled by all conceptual means to avoid it.”

Mean Philosophy Saws Ads Idealism Nihilism Idealist Hegel

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“You only have to talk to artists to see that they work according to rules, and that they know all too well that they can employ only certain means to achieve the ends they want.”

Knows Want Wells Mean Ends Artist Certain Achieve

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

“When Hume insists that taste is a matter of delicacy, that it is a matter of having a sensitivity to features of an object itself, he is very close to the rationalist doctrine. Hume was really a covert objectivist (or partial one) about aesthetic pleasure because that pleasure had to be based on the sensitivity to features in the object.”

Matter Pleasure Objects Taste Doctrine Features Aesthetic Sensitivity Delicacy Covert Hume

Author:Frederick C. Beiser

About the Author

Born: November 27, 1949
Known for: Author
Quotes: 24

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