Although influential in his own day, Karl Leonhard Reinhold's contribution to late 18th and early 19th century thought has long been overshadowed by the towering presence of Immanuel Kant, the thinker whose ideas he helped to interpret and disseminate. Today, however, a more nuanced understanding of Reinhold's contribution to post-Kantian thought is emerging. Apart from his exposition of Kant's critical philosophy, which played a significant role in the development of German idealism, Reinhold's role in the intellectual movement of Enlightenment and his contributions to early linguistic philosophy are now receiving scholarly attention. In the English-speaking world, where few translations of his work have been attempted, Reinhold has mostly been overlooked. This imbalance is corrected in the present work: the first translation into English of Reinhold's major work of philosophy, the New Theory of the Human Capacity for Representation (1789). The translators provide an overview of the main currents of thought which informed Reinhold's philosophical project, as well as notes on his reading of Kant and other important thinkers of Reinhold's day. A glossary of key terms, a bibliography of scholarly work on Reinhold and suggestions for further reading are also included.

Although influential in his own day, Karl Leonhard Reinhold's contribution to late 18th and early 19th century thought has long been overshadowed by the towering presence of Immanuel Kant, the thinker whose ideas he helped to interpret and disseminate. Today, however, a more nuanced understanding of Reinhold's contribution to post-Kantian thought is emerging. Apart from his exposition of Kant's critical philosophy, which played a significant role in the development of German idealism, Reinhold's role in the intellectual movement of Enlightenment and his contributions to early linguistic philosophy are now receiving scholarly attention. In the English-speaking world, where few translations of his work have been attempted, Reinhold has mostly been overlooked. This imbalance is corrected in the present work: the first translation into English of Reinhold's major work of philosophy, the New Theory of the Human Capacity for Representation (1789). The translators provide an overview of the main currents of thought which informed Reinhold's philosophical project, as well as notes on his reading of Kant and other important thinkers of Reinhold's day. A glossary of key terms, a bibliography of scholarly work on Reinhold and suggestions for further reading are also included.

Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought. The question of Heinrich von Kleist's reading and reception of Kant's philosophy has never been satisfactorily answered. The present study aims to reassess this question, particularly in the light of Kant's rising importance for the humanities today. It argues not only that Kleist was influenced by Kant, but also that he may be understood as a Kantian, albeit an unorthodox one. The volume integrates material previously published by the author, now updated, with new chapters to form a greater whole. What results is a coherent set of approaches that illuminates the question of Kleist's Kantianism from different points of view. Kleist is thereby understood not only as a writer but also as a thinker - one whose seriousness of purpose and clarity of design compares with that of other early expositors of Kant's thought such as Reinhold and Fichte. Through the locutions and idioms of fiction and the essay, Kleist becomes visible for the first time as an original contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian ideas. Tim Mehigan is Professorial Chair of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and Honorary Professor in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Friedrich Schiller is justly celebrated for his dramas and poetry. Yet, above all, he was a polymath, whose writings enriched a range of fields including history and philosophy. Until now, no comprehensive accounting of this philosophy has been undertaken. The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Friedrich Schiller makes good this desideratum, treating Schiller's poetry, prose, and dramatic work alongside his philosophical writings and reviewing his thought not only in connection with those who influenced him, such as Kant, Reinhold, and Fichte, but also those he anticipated, such as Hegel, Marx, and the Neo-Kantians. Topics treated in this volume include Schiller's philosophical background, his theoretical writings, Schiller's philosophical writing in light of his entire oeuvre, and Schiller's philosophical legacy. The Handbook also includes an overview of the main topics Schiller addressed in his philosophical writings including philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, moral philosophy, politics and political theory, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of education. Bringing together the latest research on Schiller and his thought by leading scholars in the field, the Handbook draws attention to Schiller's undiminished importance for philosophical debates today.

A major new study of Robert Musil by one of the world's leading Musil scholars. Musil's extraordinary works, the study reveals, emerged from the problem of the "two cultures." The modern era is marked by the separate life of two cultures of understanding, one derived from art and its discourses, the other from science and its practices. This "problem of the two cultures" (as coined by C.P. Snow) describes the difficulty of bringing these distinct ways of understanding the world together. The works of the Austrian author Robert Musil (1930-33) represent the most distinguished treatment of this problem in the modern era. Nevertheless, doubts persist about Musil's true intentions. Did he maintain that the separation between art and science could be resolved? Or did he rise above the problem by advocating a new order of being or "other condition" that would dispense with it altogether? Mehigan's study moves these questions to center stage. He lends new clarity to the debate about Musil's position in regard to the two cultures by shining a light on ethical questions the author ultimately wished to clarify. It is the shape of a hard-won ethics, Mehigan argues, that provides the key to an effective response to the problem of the two cultures - an ethics, in the end, that can only be put forward as a new kind of art. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German and Deputy Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia.

New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader. J. M. Coetzee is perhaps the most critically acclaimed bestselling author of imaginative fiction writing in English today. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and is the first writer to have been awarded two BookerPrizes. The present volume makes critical views of this important writer accessible to the general reader as well as the scholar, discussing Coetzee's main works in chronological order and introducing the dominant themes in the academic discussion of his oeuvre. The volume highlights Coetzee's exceptionally nuanced approach to writing as both an exacting craft and a challenging moral-ethical undertaking. It discusses Coetzee's complex relation to apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, the land of his birth, and evaluates his complicated responses to the literary canon. Coetzee emerges as both a modernist and a highly self-aware postmodernist - a champion of the truths of aliterary enterprise conducted unrelentingly in the mode of self-confession. Contributors: Chris Ackerley, Derek Attridge, Carrol Clarkson, Simone Drichel, Johan Geertsema, David James, Michelle Kelly, Sue Kossew, MikeMarais, James Meffan, Tim Mehigan, Chris Prentice, Engelhard Weigl, Kim L. Worthington. Tim Mehigan is Professor of Languages in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand and Honorary Professor in the Department of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

New essays examining the intellectual allegiances of Coetzee, arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of fiction in English today and a deeply intellectual and philosophical writer. Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringing leadingfigures in the philosophy of literary fiction and ethics together with leading Coetzee scholars. The book is organized into three parts: the first part evaluates Coetzee with respect to notions of truth and justification. At issue is how the reader is to understand the ground on which Coetzee builds his ethical commitments. The second part considers the problem of language, in which ethics is rooted and on which it depends. The chapters of the third partposition Coetzee's writing with respect to notions of social and moral solidarity, where, in regard to literature as such or experience as such, philosophy and literature together exercise an unrivaled right to be heard. Contributors: Elisa Aaltola, Derek Attridge, David Attwell, Maria Boletsi, Carrol Clarkson, Simon During, Patrick Hayes, Alexander Honold, Anton Leist, Tim Mehigan, Christian Moser, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Stockhammer, Markus Winkler, Martin Woessner. Tim Mehigan is Deputy Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Christian Moser is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn.

A study of the most significant international scholarship on Musil's famous novel. The Austrian writer Robert Musil ranks among the foremost novelists of the 20th century. Despite a series of lesser but well-regarded shorter works, his literary reputation rests almost entirely on his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities), a life-work in the truest sense, which became the focus of all his energies and thinking from 1924 until his death in 1942. This study analyzes the principal trends in scholarship on the novel from the 1960s to the present. It contrasts earlier criticism, which foregrounded the eponymous central character's search for identity against the background of subject theory or mysticism, with more recent criticism, whichhas focused on aesthetic and ethical approaches to the novel within the broader context of theories of value. A focal chapter in the study centers on the persistent difficulty critics have encountered with the idea of "Eigenschaftslosigkeit," the state of being without qualities named in the novel's title. Tim Mehigan is Associate Professor of German and Head of the Department of Germanic Studies and Russian at the University of Melbourne.

New essays employing a multitude of approaches to the works of Kleist, in the process shedding light on our present modernity. Modernity, according to some views, poses the problem of homo politicus -- the problem of how to act in a moral universe without a "master narrative," without a final foundation. From this angle, the oeuvre of Heinrich vonKleist -- novellas, dramas, and essays -- addresses problems emerging from a new universe of Kantian provenance, in many ways the same universe we inhabit today. This volume of new essays investigates Kleist's position in ourever-changing conception of modernity, employing aesthetic, narrative, philosophical, biographical, political, economic, anthropological, psychological, and cultural approaches and wrestling with the difficulties of historicizingKleist's life and work. Central questions are: To what extent can the multitude of breaking points and turning points, endgames and pre-games, ruptures and departures that permeate Kleist's work and biography be conceptually bundled together and linked to the emerging paradigm of modernity? And to what extent does such an approach to Kleist not only advance understanding of this major German writer and his work, but also shed light on the nature of our present modernity? Contributors: Sean Allan, Peter Barton, Hilda Meldrum Brown, David Chisholm, Andreas Gailus, Bernhard Greiner, Jeffrey L. High, Anette Horn, Peter Horn, Wolf Kittler, Jonathan W. Marshall, Christian Moser, Dorothea von Mucke, Nancy Nobile, David Pan, Ricarda Schmidt, Helmut J. Schneider. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German at the Ohio State University. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the Department of Languagesand Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

A collection of essays examining the influence of Kant on Heinrich von Kleist. The great and eccentric German writer Heinrich von Kleist, famous for his enigmatic dramas and novellas, read the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1801. A series of letters written around this time speak of the distresshe felt as he absorbed the implications of Kantian thought. This sense of distress -- long considered important to understanding Kleist's subsequent works -- has become known to Kleist scholars as the 'Kant crisis,' and marks Kleist's abandonment of the hope of gaining metaphysical certainty about his life. But it has never been established which texts of Kant Kleist actually read, how well he understood them, and why they precipitated such despair. Kleisthimself -- aside from one paraphrasing of Kant in a letter of 1801 -- was never explicit about what he called this 'sad philosophy.' Yet the distress seems never to have left him and remains an abiding preoccupation throughout his dramas and stories. This collection of essays, all in German language, represents the most recent work of prominent scholars in the field. It takes the pervasive sense of metaphysical crisis in Kleist's works as a startingpoint. In the context of Kleist's response to Kant, the essays deal with his subversive treatment of the literary motifs and genres of his day, and with the ambiguity of truth in his works -- for his characters and readers alike.In tracing the source of crisis to specific writings of Kant and to other Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Wieland, the essays show Kleist's complex dialogue with the Enlightenment to be an important new approach to understanding this notoriously difficult writer. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand.