Robert Stern

talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.

- AmirAli Maleki

Robert Stern FBA (1962-2024) was a British philosopher who served as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He sadly passed away from brain cancer on 21 August 2024 at the age of 62. We publish this interview as a tribute to his work, especially in the field of German philosophy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Professor Stern, in your opinion, what is the need to study the philosophy of German idealism in the modern world? Can this philosophy have a lesson for us?

Perhaps we first have to be clear what is meant by German Idealism here. In particular, is Kant included as a 'German Idealist', or do we mean primarily Fichte, Schelling and Hegel? ['Idealism' is the idea that the only things that ultimately exist are minds and their experiences, Ed.] If Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is included, I imagine no philosopher would seriously question the significance of German Idealism for the modern world, given Kant's continued influence, which is clear even today, particularly perhaps in ethics, even if there are few transcendental idealists still around [Kant's version of idealism, Ed]. But it might be thought that the place of the others is less obviously secure as compared to their heyday, when for example GWF Hegel (1770-1831) was the leading philosopher in Germany, or when the British Idealists took Hegel up at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, or when he was central to debates in critical theory in the 1950s and 60s, and so on. However, there is little doubt that interest in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel is again on a rise, at least as measured by philosophical activities such as conferences and publications, as well as the numbers of lecturers and graduate students interested in their work. When I worked on my PhD in the 1980s it was a rather isolated interest. Now it's much more popular and central.