Rival Enlightenments
Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany

A 2001 reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history, treating the civil and metaphysical philosophers as rival intellectual cultures.

Ian Hunter (Author)

9780521025492, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

428 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.648 kg

'… a book Kant scholars should definitively take notice of. Based on intensive historical analysis, Hunter rejects the common notion that the German enlightenment found its high point in Kant. He does so in favour of a reconsideration of authors such as Pufendorf and Thomasius.' Kantian Review

Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical self-consciousness of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike.

Preface
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations and texts used
Note on conventions
Introduction
Part I. Rival Enlightenments: 1. University metaphysics
2. Civil philosophy
Part II. Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy: 3. Leibniz' political metaphysics
4. Pufendorf's civil philosophy
5. Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics
6. Kant and the preservation of metaphysics
Postscript: the kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom
List of references
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy [HP], European history [HBJD]