American philosopher
Frederick Charles Beiser
[1]
(
; born November 27, 1949) is an American
philosopher
who is professor emeritus of
philosophy
at
Syracuse University
. He is best-known for his work on
German idealism
and has also written on the
German Romantics
and 19th-century
British philosophy
.
Life and career
[
edit
]
Beiser was born on November 27, 1949, in
Albert Lea
,
Minnesota
. In 1971, Beiser received a
bachelor's degree
from
Shimer College
, a
Great Books
college then located in
Mount Carroll
,
Illinois
.
[2]
[3]
[
verification needed
]
He then studied at the
Oriel College
of the
University of Oxford
, where he received a
Bachelor of Arts
degree in
philosophy, politics and economics
in 1974.
[1]
He subsequently studied at the
London School of Economics and Political Science
from 1974 to 1975.
[1]
Beiser earned his
Doctor of Philosophy
(DPhil) degree in
philosophy
from
Wolfson College, Oxford
, in 1980, under the direction of
Charles Taylor
and
Isaiah Berlin
.
[1]
His doctoral thesis was titled
The Spirit of the Phenomenology: Hegel's Resurrection of Metaphysics in the Phanomenologie des Geistes
.
[4]
After receiving his DPhil in 1980, Beiser moved to West Germany, where he was a Thyssen Research Fellow at the
Free University of Berlin
. He returned to the United States four years later.
[5]
He joined the
University of Pennsylvania
's faculty in 1984, staying there until 1985. He then spent the springs of 1986 and 1987 at the
University of Wisconsin?Madison
and
University of Colorado Boulder
, respectively.
In 1988, Beiser moved again to West Germany, where he was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. He returned to the United States in 1990 to take up a professorship at
Indiana University Bloomington
, where he remained until 2001. During his tenure at Indiana, he spent time teaching at
Yale University
. He joined
Syracuse University
in 2001, where he is now emeritus. He also taught at
Harvard University
during the spring of 2002.
[6]
He received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
for his research in 1994,
[7]
and was awarded the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
in 2015.
[8]
Philosophical work
[
edit
]
In 1987, Beiser released his first book,
The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte
(
Harvard University Press
). In the book, Beiser sought to reconstruct the background of German idealism through the narration of the story of the Spinoza or Pantheism controversy. Consequently, a great many figures, whose importance was hardly recognized by the English-speaking philosophers, were given their proper due. The work won the
Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize
for best first book.
[9]
He has since edited two
Cambridge
anthologies on Hegel,
The Cambridge Companion to Hegel
(1993) and
The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
(2008), and written a number of books on German philosophy and the English Enlightenment. He also edited
The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics
(Cambridge University Press) in 1996.
Beiser is notable amongst English-language scholars for his defense of the metaphysical aspects of German idealism (e.g.
Naturphilosophie
), both in their centrality to any historical understanding of German idealism, as well as their continued relevance to contemporary philosophy.
[10]
Publications
[
edit
]
Authored Books
[
edit
]
- The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte
. Harvard University Press. 1987.
- Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790?1800
. Harvard University Press. 1992.
- The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in Early English Enlightenment
. Princeton University Press. 1996.
- German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781?1801
. Harvard University Press. 2002.
- The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism
. Harvard University Press. 2004.
- Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination
. Oxford University Press. 2005.
- Hegel
. Routledge. 2005.
- Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing
. Oxford University Press. 2009.
- The German Historicist Tradition
. Oxford University Press. 2011.
- Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze
. Oxford University Press. 2013.
- After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840?1900
. Princeton University Press. 2014.
- The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796?1880
. Oxford University Press. 2014.
- Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860?1900
. Oxford University Press. 2016.
- Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography.
Oxford University Press. 2018.
- David Friedrich Strauß, Father of Unbelief: An Intellectual Biography.
Oxford University Press. 2020.
- Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy.
Oxford University Press. 2022
- Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920.
Oxford University Press. 2023.
Edited works
[
edit
]
- The Cambridge Companion to Hegel
. Cambridge University Press. 1996.
- The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics
. Cambridge University Press. 1996.
- The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
. Cambridge University Press. 2008.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
Beiser, Fred (2012).
"Curriculum Vitae: Frederick Charles Beiser"
(PDF)
. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on May 27, 2019
. Retrieved
May 27,
2019
.
- ^
Shimer College (1972). "The Students".
Shimer College Catalog 1972?1973
. p. 109.
- ^
Shimer College (2000).
Shimer College Faculty & Alum Directory 2000
.
- ^
Beiser, F. C. (1980).
The Spirit of the Phenomenology: Hegel's Resurrection of Metaphysics in the Phanomenologie des Geistes
(DPhil thesis). Oxford: University of Oxford
. Retrieved
May 19,
2019
.
- ^
Forster, Michael N.; Gjesdal, Kristin (2015).
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
. Oxford University Press. p. 9.
ISBN
9780199696543
.
- ^
"Curriculum Vitae: Frederick Charles Beiser"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on September 26, 2015
. Retrieved
October 3,
2012
.
- ^
Guggenheim Foundation.
"Frederick C. Beiser"
. Archived from
the original
on October 4, 2012
. Retrieved
October 3,
2012
.
- ^
"A Life Devoted to Philosophy - Germany honors Professor Frederick Charles Beiser"
. Archived from
the original
on March 4, 2016
. Retrieved
December 7,
2015
.
- ^
Harvard University Press.
"The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize"
. Retrieved
October 3,
2012
.
- ^
Beiser, Frederick. "Hegel and Naturphilosophie." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 34.1 (2003): 135-147.
External links
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