Historian Thomas Nipperdey on one reason why German philosophy came to prominence in American intellectual life:
“Until 1830 it was the general rule that talented and curious young minds gravitated to Paris; but from then on they came, in ever-increasing numbers (American students, for example) to Germany, to Berlin.”
For more on the meaning and implications of Nipperdey’s remark, see p. 77 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault.
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