In this rigorous historical analysis, Lauer challenges traditional readings that have reduced two of German idealism's most important thinkers to opposing caricatures: Hegel the uncompromising systematist blind to the novelty and contingency of human life and Schelling the protean thinker drawn to all manner of pseudoscientific charlatanry. Bringing together recent scholarship that is just beginning to realise Schelling's centrality in the overthrow of metaphysics and Hegel's openness to diversity and innovation, this book shows that both thinkers can be read as contributing to the Kantian...

In this rigorous historical analysis, Lauer challenges traditional readings that have reduced two of German idealism's most important thinkers to opposing caricatures: Hegel the uncompromising systematist blind to the novelty and contingency of human life and Schelling the protean thinker drawn to all manner of pseudoscientific charlatanry. Bringing together recent scholarship that is just beginning to realise Schelling's centrality in the overthrow of metaphysics and Hegel's openness to diversity and innovation, this book shows that both thinkers can be read as contributing to the Kantian...