Frederick C. Beiser
{{short description|American philosopher|bot=PearBOT 5}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = Frederick C. Beiser
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| birth_name = Frederick Charles Beiser
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1949|11|27}}
| birth_place = Albert Lea, Minnesota, US
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| alma_mater = {{ubl | Shimer College | Oriel College, Oxford | Wolfson College, Oxford}}
| thesis_title = The Spirit of the Phenomenology: Hegel's Resurrection of Metaphysics in the Phänomenologie des Geistes
| thesis_year = 1981
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| doctoral_advisor = {{hlist | Isaiah Berlin | Charles Taylor}}
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| discipline = Philosophy
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| workplaces = {{ubl | University of Pennsylvania | Yale University | {{nowrap|Indiana University Bloomington}} | Syracuse University}}
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| thesis_url = https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:79320922-5f44-46a5-9d85-f80916af14c9
}}
Frederick Charles Beiser{{cite web |last=Beiser |first=Fred |year=2012 |title=Curriculum Vitae: Frederick Charles Beiser |url=http://thecollege.syr.edu/people/faculty/pages/phi/_CVs/beiser-fredCV2012.pdf |location=Syracuse, New York |publisher=Syracuse University |access-date=May 27, 2019 |archive-date=May 27, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190527233357/http://thecollege.syr.edu/people/faculty/pages/phi/_CVs/beiser-fredCV2012.pdf |url-status=dead }} ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|aɪ|z|ər}}; born November 27, 1949) is an American philosopher who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University. He is best-known for his work on German idealism and has also written on the German Romantics and 19th-century British philosophy.
Life and career
Beiser was born on November 27, 1949, in Albert Lea, Minnesota. In 1971, Beiser received a bachelor's degree from Shimer College, a Great Books college then located in Mount Carroll, Illinois.{{Cite book|title=Shimer College Catalog 1972–1973|author=Shimer College|year=1972|chapter=The Students|page=109}}{{cite book|title=Shimer College Faculty & Alum Directory 2000|year=2000|author=Shimer College}}{{verification needed|date=May 2019}} He then studied at the Oriel College of the University of Oxford, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, politics and economics in 1974. He subsequently studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1974 to 1975. Beiser earned his Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in philosophy at Wolfson College, Oxford, in 1980, under the direction of Charles Taylor and Isaiah Berlin. His doctoral thesis was titled The Spirit of the Phenomenology: Hegel's Resurrection of Metaphysics in the Phänomenologie des Geistes.{{cite thesis |last=Beiser |first=F. C. |year=1980 |title=The Spirit of the Phenomenology: Hegel's Resurrection of Metaphysics in the Phänomenologie des Geistes |url=https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/td:602337137 |degree=DPhil |location=Oxford |publisher=University of Oxford |access-date=May 19, 2019}}
After receiving his DPhil in 1980, Beiser moved to West Germany, where he was a Thyssen Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. He returned to the United States four years later.{{cite book|title=The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century|first1=Michael N.|last1=Forster|first2=Kristin|last2=Gjesdal|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2015|isbn=9780199696543|page=9}} He joined the University of Pennsylvania's faculty in 1984, staying there until 1985. He then spent the springs of 1986 and 1987 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and University of Colorado Boulder, respectively.
In 1988, Beiser moved again to West Germany, where he was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. He returned to the United States in 1990 to take up a professorship at Indiana University Bloomington, where he remained until 2001. During his tenure at Indiana, he spent time teaching at Yale University. He joined Syracuse University in 2001, where he is now emeritus. He also taught at Harvard University during the spring of 2002.{{Cite web|url=http://asfaculty.syr.edu/pages/phi/_CVs/beiser-fredCV2012.pdf|title=Curriculum Vitae: Frederick Charles Beiser|access-date=2012-10-03|archive-date=September 26, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150926014153/http://asfaculty.syr.edu/pages/phi/_CVs/beiser-fredCV2012.pdf|url-status=dead}}
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research in 1994,{{Cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/989-frederick-c-beiser|title=Frederick C. Beiser|author=Guggenheim Foundation|access-date=2012-10-03|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004142213/http://www.gf.org/fellows/989-frederick-c-beiser|archive-date=2012-10-04}} and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2015.{{cite web|title=A Life Devoted to Philosophy - Germany honors Professor Frederick Charles Beiser|url=http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/GKs/NEWY/2015/11/10__Reiser.html|access-date=December 7, 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304043841/http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/GKs/NEWY/2015/11/10__Reiser.html|archive-date=March 4, 2016}}
Philosophical work
In 1987, Beiser released his first book, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard University Press). In the book, Beiser sought to reconstruct the background of German idealism through the narration of the story of the Spinoza or Pantheism controversy. Consequently, a great many figures, whose importance was hardly recognized by the English-speaking philosophers, were given their proper due. The work won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize for best first book.{{Cite web|url=http://www.hup.harvard.edu/news/thomas-j-wilson-prize.html|title=The Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize|access-date=2012-10-03|author=Harvard University Press}} He has since edited two Cambridge anthologies on Hegel, The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (1993) and The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy (2008), and written a number of books on German philosophy and the English Enlightenment. He also edited The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (Cambridge University Press) in 1996.
Beiser is notable amongst English-language scholars for his defense of the metaphysical aspects of German idealism (e.g. Naturphilosophie), both in their centrality to any historical understanding of German idealism, as well as their continued relevance to contemporary philosophy.Beiser, Frederick. "Hegel and Naturphilosophie." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 34.1 (2003): 135-147.
Publications
= Authored Books =
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=1987
|title=The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte
|publisher=Harvard University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=1992
|title=Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800
|publisher=Harvard University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=1996
|title=The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in Early English Enlightenment
|publisher=Princeton University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2002
|title=German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801
|publisher=Harvard University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2004
|title=The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism
|publisher=Harvard University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2005
|title=Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2005
|title=Hegel
|publisher=Routledge
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2009
|title=Diotima's Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2011
|title=The German Historicist Tradition
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2013
|title=Late German Idealism: Trendelenburg and Lotze
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2014
|title=After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840–1900
|publisher=Princeton University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2014
|title=The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796–1880
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|last=Beiser
|first=Frederick C.
|display-authors=0
|year=2016
|title=Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900
|publisher=Oxford University Press
}}
- Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford University Press. 2018.
- David Friedrich Strauß, Father of Unbelief: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford University Press. 2020.
- Johann Friedrich Herbart: Grandfather of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford University Press. 2022
- Philosophy of Life: German Lebensphilosophie 1870-1920. Oxford University Press. 2023.
= Edited works =
- {{cite book
|year=1996
|editor-last=Beiser
|editor-first=Frederick C.
|display-editors=0
|title=The Cambridge Companion to Hegel
|publisher=Cambridge University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|year=1996
|editor-last=Beiser
|editor-first=Frederick C.
|display-editors=0
|title=The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics
|publisher=Cambridge University Press
}}
- {{cite book
|year=2008
|editor-last=Beiser
|editor-first=Frederick C.
|display-editors=0
|title=The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
|publisher=Cambridge University Press
}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- Faculty page at Syracuse University [http://thecollege.syr.edu/people/faculty/pages/phi/beiser-fred.html]
- [https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/diotima-s-child "Diotima's Child"], an interview in 3:16 Magazine, first published 2012-09-21.
{{Authority control}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2019}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beiser, Frederick C.}}
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics
Category:American expatriates in Germany
Category:Harvard University Department of Philosophy faculty
Category:Indiana University faculty
Category:Philosophers from Colorado
Category:Philosophers from Connecticut
Category:Philosophers from Indiana
Category:Philosophers from Massachusetts
Category:Shimer College alumni
Category:Syracuse University faculty
Category:University of Colorado Boulder faculty
Category:Yale University faculty
Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany