German idealism

German idealism was a philosophical movement in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and revolutionary politics. The predominant philosophers in the movement were Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Lesser lights include Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Schleiermacher. It is generally taken to have culminated with Hegel.

Hegel

Hegel (1770 - 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. After Kant had discredited proofs for the existence of the traditional God, Hegel published his Absolute Idealism. This abstraction represented a pantheism patterned after Spinoza's, but influenced by Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Impersonal mind or spirit (German geist) was thought to have brought forth the universe in accordance with reasonable, logical thought. All individuals were said to be part of the overall universal which always operated in accordance with a rigid three-step sequence. This pattern was named dialectical, after the usual way that dialogues, conversations or arguments were conducted. A thesis was proposed, which inevitably led to a countering antithesis. These were always resolved in a synthesis.

Related Topics:
Hegel - 1770 - 1831 - German - Philosopher - Stuttgart - Württemberg - Kant - God - Absolute Idealism - Pantheism - Spinoza - Mind - Spirit - Geist - Universe - Universal - Dialectical

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