Search Results

The modern scholarly task of “biblical theology,” “theology of the Old Testament,” or “theology of the New Testament” may be historically traced from around 1800 and through the 20th century. Its goal was both to describe the theology contained in the Bible but also to use that historical construction as a foundation for modern Christian theological appropriation of the Bible. The task, though, led either to bad theology, bad historiography, or both. A robust, Christian, orthodox theology must move beyond the limits of modernism and practice more creative, innovative readings of scripture.

This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s argument about foundationalism and antifoundationalism in his Science of Logic, especially his insistence that the former is equivalent to the external reflection by which essence is distinguished in non-dialectical logics from its appearances or properties. After offering some general remarks about the ground, the chapter discusses Hegel’s repudiation of the two standard philosophical procedures of attempting to explain the world from the outside: first by means of a transcendent first principle or foundation, and second from the inside. It also expounds on Hegel’s acceptance of the traditional Parmenidean claim that being and thinking are the same. Finally, the chapter looks at the structure of the ground from two perspectives: as origin or process and as demonstrated within its product.

According to a general belief, it is a fundamental trait of modern philosophy to have articulated itself as a thinking grounded in the certitude of self-consciousness. Pioneered and launched by Descartes, this thinking is said to have climbed to its height with Kant and, more so, in Fichte’s philosophy. Romanticism has also been interpreted as part of this movement. However, since Dieter Henrich and his students published their investigations of previously unknown philosophical sources, it has become clear that these earlier interpretations are not entirely accurate. This chapter considers the constellation of early romantic philosophy, i.e., what was left out of Henrich’s research; or rather, it summarizes the results of Manfred Frank’s work over the last twenty-five years.

This chapter will attempt to resolve a dispute between Frederick Beiser and Manfred Frank about the relationship between romanticism and idealism. In German Idealism Beiser placed the romantics within the German idealist movement, seeing them as part of the same tradition as Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. This aroused the objection of Frank, which appears in his Auswege aus dem deutschen Idealismus, and others who follow him (viz., Elizabeth Millan-Zaibert in her Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy). They claim that romanticism and idealism are opposed movements because idealist is foundationalist whereas romanticism is antifoundationalist. This chapter argues that this debate partly rests on a confusion between methodological and metaphysical issues: that the romantics had an idealist metaphysics even though they did not share the methodology of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. There are other issues causing confusion, viz., who precisely do we want to regard as a romantic, which the chapter also attempts to sort out.