Bondeli, Martin. Kantianismus und Fichteanismus in Bern: Zur philosophischen Geistesgeschichte der Helvetik sowie zur Entstehung des nachkantischen Idealismus.

Pozzo, Riccardo

BONDELI, Martin. Kantianismus und Fichteanismus in Bern: Zur philosophischen Geistesgeschichte der Helvetik sowie zur Entstehung des nachkantischen Idealismus. Basel: Schwabe and Co., 2001. 419 pp. Cloth, 47.50 [euro]--On the background of this book on essence and development of Swiss philosophy lie the universalistic ideas of the "Republique des lettres" in its capacity of an ideal, nonofficial institution charged with the task of running philosophical endeavors and reconstructing its history. Such a general goal, which is supernational, is bent according to national, particular needs; that is, according to issues that are related to the specific "nature" of a certain nation, or to specific cultural heritages or traditions of teaching. For instance, the Swiss remake of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie, edited by Fortunato Barolomeo De Felice between 1770 and 1780, tried to adapt the original work to the context of Protestant Switzerland, thus taking considerable distance from the cosmopolitan approach of the French editors. Bondeli's book is concerned with a Europe-wide dimension on which the variety of national traditions interact with a set of background tendencies, whose more or less explicit aim during the nineteenth century was to direct the workings of the historians of philosophy toward opening up, defending, and reevaluating a country's specific national identity by means of a massive institutionalization of historic-philosophical studies. France and Germany, facing each other alongside the Rhine, took a center-stage position in this process, which had nonetheless a bearing also in England and in countries, such as Spain and Switzerland, that were more at the margins of philosophical geography. Bondeli presents as the oldest document testifying to Kant's reception in Switzerland a reference to the so-called Kantian scope of the kinds of representation (Kantischer Stufenleiter der Vorstellungsarten) sketched by Christian Gottfried Schutz (1761-1800) in his famous review in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of 12 and 30 July 1785 of Johann Schultz's Erlauterungen. The quote appears on the margin of a student transcript from the course on Logica theoretica given by the Bernese philosopher Johann Ith (1747-1813) starting with 1783. One should notice that Ith's logic course is still completely Leibnizian in both method and content, only the quote is Kantian. The hand that wrote it was that of Abraham Friedrich von Mutach (1765-1831), a student of Ith's at Bern, who then switched to Gottingen, where he received his degree in 1789. Bondeli does not have any supporting evidence to provide a closer dating of this quote. However, he suggests 1785, the publication year of Schutz's review, as terminus a quo, and the end of Mutach's student years in 1789, as terminus ad quem.

Bondeli delves into Ith's philosophic production with great detail (pp. 23-52). Ith delivers a psychologistical interpretation of Kant. In fact, he places the contents of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason before the exposition of the logic itself. He considers Kant's critical philosophy as a prodeutic (Praliminarlehre), because cognition comes before thinking. As a matter of fact, Ith follows very closely post-Kantian logicians such as Carl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Heinrich Abicht, and Johann Gottfried Carl Christian Kiesewetter. Ith is also the author of an anthropology that shows Kantian influences. Bondeli then considers Ith's direct disciple and fellow disseminator of Kantian doctrines, Philipp Albert Stapfer (1766-1840), who was the author of a philosophy of history occasioned by the rebirth of the Helvetian Republic in 1797 (pp. 155-255). Connected to Ith and Stapfer is also the question of the contacts that the young Hegel might have had during his stay at Berna and Tschugg in 1793 and 1794. While the question regarding Hegel's contacts is still open, we know much more about Fichte's stay in Zurich in the Spring of 1794, when he delivered the lectures of the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo in the house of Johann Kasper Lavater. In Bern, Fichte was welcomed by his German friend, Jens Baggesen (1764-1826), a Fichtean in philosophy (pp. 259-82), and from his disciple, Johann Rudolf Steck (1772-1805), also a Fichtean (pp. 283-369). This is a very learned book. Bondeli provides a very instructive contribution to the understanding of the essence and development of Swiss philosophy.--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.