THE SINGULAR IN GERMAN IDEALISM

Western metaphysics, from its Greek origins till the great post-Cartesian systems, has never been able to do justice to the particular, the singular. The intelligibility of the singular could be conceptualized only through the rehabilitation of time and image in the Critical philosophy. It is in the great esthetical philosopheme of Genius that the singular appears in Kant. Hegel "deduces" it in his Philosophy of Law in the guise of the Prince. And the second Schelling brings the notion back into philosophical theology via the manifestation of God affirming his personality by renouncing his own being in favour of the being of the world.