One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism. Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Realism The Case for Subjectivism The First Edition Definitions of Transcendental Idealism Transcendental versus Empirical Idealism Empirical Realism in the Aesthetic Empirical Realism and Empirical Dualism 3. The First Edition Refutation of Skeptical Idealism The Priority of Skeptical Idealism The Critique of the Fourth Paralogism The Proof of the External World A Cartesian Reply Appearances and Spatiality The Ambiguity of Transcendental Idealism The Coherence of Transcendental Idealism 4. The First Edition Refutation of Dogmatic Idealism The Missing Refutation Kant's Interpretation of Leibniz The Dispute in the Aesthetic Dogmatic Idealism in the Antinomies 5. Kant and Berkeley The Göttingen Review Kant's Reaction Berkeleyianism in the First Edition of the Kritik The Argument of the Prolegomena Kant's Interpretation of Berkeley The Small but Real Differences? 6. The Second Edition Refutation of Problematic Idealism The Problem of Interpretation Kant's Motives The Question of Kant's Realism Realism in the Refutation The New Strategy The Argument of the Refutation Outer vis-à-vis Inner Sense Kant's Refutations in the Reflexionen, 1788-93 7. Kant and the Way of Ideas The Theory of Ideas Loyalty and Apostasy The Transcendental versus the Subjective The Question of Consistency The Doctrine of Inner Sense Kantian Self-Knowledge and the Cartesian Tradition 8. The Transcendental Subject Persistent Subjectivism Eliminating the Transcendental Subject The Criteria of Subjectivity The Subjectivity of the Transcendental Restoring the Transcendental Subject...