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German Idealism

Carrying on the work began, beyond the limits he drew: no longer opposing mind and world, but thinking freedom, nature and history together.

1781 – 1831

FichteSchelling

A grand post-Kantian system which, from through to , radicalizes 's critical turn while crossing the limit he had set: where Kant declared the thing in itself unknowable, German Idealism holds that reason, unfolded into a system, can reach the absolute itself. The real is no longer opaque matter but , or a subject that posits itself and comes to understand itself at the end of a dialectical movement. In Hegel this unfolding becomes history: Spirit realizes itself in time as the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Carried by the French Revolution and the momentum of , the current dies out with Hegel's death in 1831, at once overturned by , who sets it "back on its feet", and by , who sets the singular existing individual against it.

3 / 80 axescoverage 4%
See the 7 quotations

WikipediaWikidata

Relation to truthRelation to othersRelation to the worldUnderstanding the world — The point of philosophy (Structuring position)Directional meaning — The meaning of history (Structuring position)Idealism — Nature of reality (Structuring position)Understanding the worldDirectional meaningIdealism3OF 80 AXES4% covered
radius ∝ commitment◎ structuring position○ rim = uncovered
The essentialsthe positions at the core of this system of thought

  1. The ground of the real is not matter but thinking itself: substance is also subject.

    Idealism95%Nature of realitysee the position →

  2. Reason, unfolded into a system, can know the absolute that declared out of reach.

    Understanding the world85%The point of philosophysee the position →

  3. History has a direction: it is the progress of Spirit in the .

    Directional meaning95%The meaning of historysee the position →
Relation to truthWhat can be known1/1 positioned
Major
85
10
0
5
Justification

For German Idealism, philosophy is neither an exercise of life nor a critique of language: it is the knowledge that within a system. Against the limit Kant imposed on reason, it claims to know the absolute itself, no longer beyond appearances but as the whole of what unfolds. gives it its famous image: thought comes to understand its age only once that age is complete.

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface

Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Preface) · Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Relation to oneselfWho I am, how to live0/0 positioned
— no positions recorded
Relation to othersWhat we owe each other1/1 positioned
Major
−0.9
Justification

Above all in , history has a : not a string of accidents but the rational unfolding of Spirit, "the progress of the consciousness of freedom". Peoples and great men are the instruments through which the universal advances, often unbeknownst to them, by the cunning of reason. This philosophy of history, in which contradiction is the engine, will be the movement's most explosive legacy: keeps its directed march while substituting the relations of production for Spirit.

Hegel, Reason in History (Lectures on the Philosophy of History)

Relation to the worldWhat there is1/1 positioned
Major
0
95
5
Justification

German Idealism carries to its summit: the ground of the real is not matter but mind. Yet it is no longer the idealism of a , for whom things exist only insofar as they are perceived by finite minds: it is an absolute idealism, in which nature and history are the moments of one and the same Spirit that thinks itself and recognizes itself in its other. posits the identity of nature and mind; makes substance a subject.

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the true not only as substance, but equally as subject.Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface) · Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism