The German Historicist Tradition

Frederick C. Beiser (born November 27, 1949), one of the leading scholars of German Idealism writing in English, is a Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. Prior to joining Syracuse, he was a member of the faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington where he received a 1999-2000 NEH Faculty Fellowship. He has also taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Harvard and Yale University. Beiser earned his DPhil. degree from Oxford University under the direction of Charles Taylor and Isaiah Berlin.

Beiser's first book, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Harvard, 1987) cast new light on German Idealism. In this 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.

Beiser has also written on the German Romantics and 19th century British philosophy.