Francois Hemsterhuis and the Writing of Philosophy / / Daniel Whistler.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Whistler, Daniel,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.)

Resets the scholarship on the philosophical practice and style of François HemsterhuisOnly the second ever English-language monograph devoted to Hemsterhuis’ philosophy and the first for 45 years. Feeds into an upsurge of interest in Hemsterhuis around celebrations of the tricentenary of his birth and the publication of the first ever English translations of his writings by EUP. Makes substantial use of the recently published complete edition of Hemsterhuis’ correspondence.Focuses on Hemsterhuis’ uses of myth, dialogue and imagery in his late dialogues which were so influential on the later Idealists and Romantics, including Novalis and the Schlegels.François Hemsterhuis (1721-1790) was the most significant Dutch philosopher after Spinoza. Daniel Whistler argues that Hemsterhuis’ philosophy matters and that its exclusion from the canon of modern philosophy has been unjust. This is not just because of its reception history - its influence on later German thinkers, such as Goethe, Hamann, Hegel, Herder, Hölderlin, Jean Paul, Kant, Jacobi, Novalis, Schelling, the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, Wieland - but is primarily because Hemsterhuis’ philosophy contains a rich assemblage of ideas and philosophical practices. Whistler looks specifically at Hemsterhuis’ reflections on philosophical style and the strategies he employs to communicate ideas in his late dialogues. Taking seriously Hemsterhuis’ newly-published complete correspondence as a significant philosophical text, he contends that Hemsterhuis deserves to be placed alongside Shaftesbury, Hamann, Friedrich Schlegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as one of the preeminent philosophical stylists of modernity.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface: Reasons to Read Hemsterhuis -- Part One. Preliminaries -- 1 Philosophy and Poetry -- 2 Rupture -- Part Two. Untimely Demands -- Introduction -- Chapter One. Socrates and Newton -- 3 ‘Born Greek’ -- 4 Geometrical Method -- 5 A System of Times -- Chapter Two. Analysis and Poetry -- 6 ‘Poet-Philosophers’ and ‘Humble’ Analysts -- 7 Sentimental Certainty -- 8 The Platonic Sublime -- 9 The Myth of Prometheus -- Part Three. A History of Organs -- Introduction -- Chapter Three. Organs, Instruments and Insects -- 10 Insectification -- 11 The Plasticity of Philosophy -- 12 Perfectibility -- 13 The Analogy to Morality -- 14 Organology and Style -- Chapter Four. Writing after Materialism -- 15 Diderot Reads Hemsterhuis -- 16 Hemsterhuis Reads Diderot -- 17 Palingenesis and the Subversion of Materialism -- 18 Post-Bonnetian Style -- Part Four. Time-Images -- Introduction -- Chapter Five. The Past and the Present -- 19 The Optimum -- 20 Epistolary Style -- 21 Genealogy -- 22 Irony and Anachronism -- Chapter Six. The Archaic and the Prophetic -- 23 Dreams and Shadows -- 24 In the Style of Hope -- Conclusion: Four Characters in Search of a Philosophy -- Bibliography -- Index