Objective Idealism, Ethics, and Politics

Vittorio H`sle, touted as the German philosopher of the coming generation, exhibitshis wide range of scholarship in this, his first book published in America. AAlthough treating quite different subjects, these essays are linked together by a common philosophical project B the revitalization of the tradition of objective idealism. The conviction that we can have synthetic a priori knowledge, and that this knowledge discovers something that is independent of our mind, is of particular importance for practical philosophy. . . . The position here defended in systematic terms is also seen in the context of a philosophical history of philosophy, namely as a possible synthesis of realism and subjective idealism, of enlightenment and counter- enlightenment, and as the supposition of renewing the humanities tradition. B from the Preface. Not content with merely telling us how to find a way back to objective idealism, H`sle exhibits his philosophy in a wide-ranging series of essays on topics ranging from the greatness and limits of Kant's practical philosophy to the moral ends and means of world population policy, from moral reflection and the decay of institutions in the enlightenment and counter- enlightenment to a reflection on philosophical foundations of a future humanism in our world of overinformation.