Karl Christian Friedrich Krause: Ausgewählte Schriften

Krause‘s philosophy of right is the most forceful part of his work. Drawing on natural law traditions, Krause, unlike Kant, identified right positively as the totality of the external conditions of the reasonable life of human beings and society. This results in surprisingly modern demands, such as for example women’s rights and the rights of nature as well as as a cosmopolitanism based on philosophy. This volume includes: ›Grundlage des Naturrechts‹, Jena 1803; ›Entwurf eines europäischen Staatenbundes. Reprint of the first edition in the ›Deutschen Blättern‹‹, (1814); ›Abriß des Systemes der Philosophie des Rechtes, oder des Naturrechtes‹, Göttingen 1828.

Published during his lifetime, this book is Krause’s most important philosophical-systematic work. Due to its unique division into two main parts, the ›Subjektiven, Einleitenden‹ (subjective, introductory) and the ›Objektiven, (objective) Grunderkennenden‹ (perception of fundamentals), Immanuel Hermann Fichte was one of those who gave Krause’s ›System‹ high praise. For those wishing to understanding Krause’s unique and highly interesting ›Panentheismus‹ (panentheism), this book is indispensable. Everything in the intuition of evidence is based on the absolute as a basic essence, and the absolute is present in each finite and historical development. This volume renders Krause’s basic philosophy, its metaphysical foundations as well as its stimulus for life comprehensible.