b. 1957
Michael Forster is a contemporary philosopher specializing in the history of philosophy, German Idealism, and philosophical hermeneutics. He has produced major scholarly works on Hegel, Herder, and Fichte, with particular attention to questions of self-consciousness, language, and interpretation. He has held positions at the University of Chicago and the University of Bonn.
Authored landmark studies on Hegel's dialectical method and the Phenomenology of Spirit
Major contributions to scholarship on Herder as a founder of historicism and philosophy of language
Developed detailed accounts of the Fichtean self/not-self dialectic and strategies for its resolution
Pioneering work on the history of hermeneutics from ancient Greece through modernity
Influential reassessment of German Idealism's relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy