Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Mythological Being of Reflection: Hegel and Schelling
2. Fichte's Laughter
3. Madness, Habit and Freedom in German Idealism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

A hugely important book that rediscovers three crucial, but long overlooked themes in German idealism: mythology, madness and laughter.

About the Author

Markus Gabriel is Chair in Epistemology and Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn, Germany. He has published a number of books and journal articles in German, including Der Mensch im Mythos (De Gruyter, 2006), Das Absolute und die Welt in Schellings Freiheitsschrift (Bonn University Press, 2006) and Skeptizismus und Idealismus in der Antike (Suhrkamp, 2009) and is also co-author, with Slavoj Zizek, of Mythology, Madness and Laughter (Continuum, 2009) Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor at the New York University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Reviews

"German post-Kantian idealism was designed to effectuate a shift from epistemology to a new ontology, but without simply regressing to pre-critical metaphysics, contend Gabriel and Zizek. They locate the gap between the alleged absolute thing-in-itself and the relative phenomenal world within the absolute itself. It is a crucial duty of contemporary post-Kantian idealism, to make sense of this shift, they say, in order to contribute to the overcoming of epistemology as prima philosophia. Hegel and Fichte are the idealist figures they concentrate most on." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.

"Zizek (Univ. of Ljublijana, Slovenia) offers two short essays, on Hegel and Fichte, which provide the same brisk thought-provoking blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, German idealism, and popular culture familiar to readers of his other works." -Choice

'Sheer intellectual exuberance' - Journal of European Studies

Reviewed in The European Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 4