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Two Fundamental Problems and Two Periods of German Speculative Idealism
DOI of the paper: 10.15382/sturI201557.41-55
Abstract
The author’s concerns are with the philosophical and theological problems integral to German Speculative Idealism. Two key ideas permeated the whole of German Idealism: the idea of divine self-realization / self-understanding and the idea of gravitating between the poles of theism and pantheism. The author attempts to explain how these two ideas are related throughout the course of German Idealism. He includes in this study not only Fichte /the elder/, Schelling, and Hegel, but also the so-called speculative theists (Fichte /the younger/ and others), whose thought in both ideology and methodology resembles that of Schelling and Hegel. The author demonstrates using the writings of the philosophers that the two ideas may be related though the concept of creativity . If God realizes himself in the world and through the world, then it makes sense to say that philosophical theology is replete with pantheism. But if the divine realization takes place ontologically before the process of creation and is in itself an act which takes place within the divine Being Himself, the process is then clearly theistic. Idealists of the older school do not link creation with the Absolute - they reject this point or they speak about creation in reference to the act of divine self-realization. Idealists of the younger generation, on the contrary, hold that the act of divine self-realization precedes that of creation. The author opines that it is this point which allows us to diff erentiate between a philosophical system which leans towards pantheism from one which tends toward theism. The older idealists were indeed mostly pantheists, while the younger generation was mostly theistic. In view of this, German Idealism may be considered to be divided into two periods
Keywords
Fichte (the elder), Schelling, Hegel, Fichte (the younger), Hermann Ulrici, R. Rothe, philosophical theology, divine self-realization, theism, pantheism, creation
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