Maggs Bros.

An uncut and wide-margined copy of the rare first edition of Hegel’s first book, the so-called Differenzschrift, an important milestone in the development of German idealism post-Kant.

‘In The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, Hegel set out that difference in terms of a contrast between reflective and speculative philosophy. Dichotomy, rupture [Entzweiung], he argued, gives rise to the need for philosophy, a rupturing which reflective philosophy both seeks to resolve and exasperates. The understanding strives to enlarge itself to the absolute, but, in its finitude, it only reproduces itself endlessly, positing oppositions within itself and its products, and so mocks itself. The being of nature, in particular, is either dissolved into abstractions or remains but a deadly darkness within the intellect. Although Fichte was Hegel’s prime target here, much of contemporary philosophy was included in his critique. Hegel argued that the identity philosophy of Schelling, however, in which reason raises itself to speculation and provides a positive account of being, overcomes such finitudes and ruptures. The Kritische Journal der Philosophie that Schelling and Hegel launched from Jena in 1802, critical of the limitations of proliferating philosophical systems, sought to establish an objective philosophical criticism based upon such a speculative use of reason’ (Joan Steigerwald, Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 41, No. 4., 2002, p. 545).