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A painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, "Tower of Babel," depicts a strange minaret-like structure, ramshackle, unfinished, and already decaying. The project has miscarried, according to the Biblical tale on which the painting is based, due to the confusion of languages imposed by a wrathful divinity on vain humankind. In the distant background is a noble and placid succession of mountains, providing an effective foil to the frenzied but ultimately pointless activities of the linguistically confused builders, assembled together from the surrounding depopulated plain and swarming around their structure like so many droning insects. This strikes me as an apt image for the predominant attitudes underlying the vast majority of readings of the tradition of German Idealism, beginning already early in the 19th century and continuing unbroken to today. Like the majestic peaks rising in the distance of Bruegel's work, the great systems of German Idealism have generally been regarded as pinnacles of modern metaphysical speculation, proceeding with their sublime business admirably unconcerned by and oblivious to the mindless hordes, both historically preceding and succeeding them, who have fallen into the trap of focusing upon language and its never plumb resources rather than "the eternal truths" themselves.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9446-2_18

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