THE LITERARY 



OF THE LINN/EAN ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 



Vol. l\. JULY, 1846. No. 9. 



GERMAN PIIILOSOPIIY. 



THE DOCTRINES OF KANT, FICFITE, SCHELLING AND HEGEL. 

 Bij C. Be Remusat, Member of the Institute of France. 



[In 1S36 the French Academy proposed prizes for the best Memoir upon Ger- 

 man Philosophy. In 1838 they received six works of the kind, two of which the 

 Committee appointed to examine them declared possessed of "undoubted merit," 

 but in order that they might attain that excellence of which tiiey regarded them as 

 containing the germs, the committee advised that the decision should be suspended 

 for two years longer. At the end of that tiine seven essays were presented, but the 

 Academy wishing to give the authors ample opportunity to perfect their work kept 

 the prize open until 1844. At this time three Memoirs were handed in and submit- 

 ted to the examination of the same committee, of which JVI. De Remusat was the 

 chairman, and upon these he made a loni;-, analytical, and critical Report, conclu- 

 ding with the proposition of the Resolution that "the Academy award the prize to 

 M. WiLLM, the author of Memoir* No. 2, and make most honorable mention of 

 M. GuiRAN, the author of Memoir No. 3, with the expression of regret that they 

 cannot make him some special recompense-" When this Report (occupying over 

 200 pages Svo.,) was published, M. Ue Remusat prefixed to it an "Introduction" 

 of near 160 pages additional, from which the following article is translated. The 

 high reputation which De Remusat has gained by his various philosophical writings 

 is here well sustained. — Tr.] 



"German philosophy has just completed a period comparable per- 

 haps to the half century which in Greece followed the founding of the 

 school of Socrates. Kant is the author of this great movement. His 

 modest life presents nothing that elevates him to the tragic heroism of 

 the son of Sophroniscus, although his virtue was no less pure ; but the 

 originality of his genius places him almost upon an equality with the 

 greatest names in the history of thought. It is he who more resolutely 

 than any one else has realized that idea of the moderns, that the mind 



♦This work of M. Willm is now published in Paris under the title "Histoire 

 de la Philosophic Allemande, depuis Kant jusqu' a Hegel, par M. Willm, Inspec- 

 teur de I'Academie de Strasbourg"— in four large vols. 8 vo. 

 24 



