Overview

Alfred Bäumler (1887 - 1968) was an Austrian-born German philosopher and scholar who propounded a realist philosophy emphasizing heroic rationalism and naturalist holism. In The Problem of Irrationality, Bäumler analyzes the tension between rationalism and emerging irrational elements in Enlightenment thought, tracing developments from Shaftesbury to Kant's Critique of Judgment. Drawing on historical texts, he argued that aesthetic intuition challenged strict logical formalism, positing irrationality not as mere anomaly but as a vital counterforce to mechanistic reason, influencing later vitalist philosophies. This work established his foundational critique of rationalist epistemologies, emphasizing intuitive and organic dimensions of knowledge over abstract deduction. From the preface: ""A clear idea of the development of feeling and thought in the period from about 1670 to 1830 is not only a demand rising from the current state of research in the humanities, but also a need that is vividly felt in the life of the individual. It is the epoch from which the greater part of our education originates [but] young people are turning away from it as a whole. They prefer to seek their leaders in Russia rather than Königsberg and Weimar; the precious possession of German idealism is in danger of becoming a more or less reverently regarded inventory piece of a bygone (""bourgeois"") epoch. In this situation, we only have the choice of either reacquiring the content of humanity contained in this legacy of German education or perhaps losing it forever.""

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