Determinacy, Indeterminacy, and Contingency in German Idealism

This paper addresses debates in German idealism that arise in response to the modal shift in logic, proposed by Kant, from a logic of thinking to a logic of experience. With the Kantian logic of experience arises a problem of radical contingency or 'rhapsodic determination' for logic. While Fichte and Hegel attempt to resolve the problem of contingency by constructing rational systems aimed at established the grounds for logic, I show how Schelling brings into view, in a proto-existentialist movement, the way in which the indeterminacy of the will undergirds rational system construction and, thereby, presents a limiting problem for the question of the value of system-building itself.