Mynster's "Rationalism, Supernaturalism" and the Debate about Mediation

G W F Hegel's so-called speculative logic was revolutionary since it attacked the basic laws of Aristotelian logic -- the laws of contradiction and excluded middle -- which stood as the foundation for the field for well over a millennium. He replaced these laws with the principle of mediation, which he used to redefine all the key terms of the discipline. In the 1830s this highly controversial theory was attacked by a number of philosophers in Germany and Prussia. These debates spilled over into Denmark in the late 1830s and early 1840s and represent one of the signal episodes in the Danish Hegel reception. This volume includes the main texts in this controversy. The debate proper was initiated by the article "Rationalism, Supernaturalism" by the theologian Jakob Peter Mynster, who attacked Hegel's criticism of the law of excluded middle. The poet Johan Ludvig Heiberg, and the then young theologian Hans Lassen Martensen, then came to Hegel's defense with articles which responded to Mynster's charges. Other interlocutors in the discussion were the philosopher Frederik Christian Sibbern and the religious writer Søren Kierkegaard. There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard's frequent critical discussions of mediation were significantly influenced by these debates.