German Idealism

The explosive philosophical generation: Kant (1781), Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. In 50 years they rebuilt all of philosophy. Schelling is the crucial buried figure: his philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) proposed that nature itself is unconscious mind becoming conscious — the single idea that feeds into Bergson, James, Whitehead, and modern panpsychism. Hegel's dialectic became the framework for Marx. But the school collapsed under the weight of its own systematicity, and the analytic tradition defined itself explicitly AGAINST German Idealism.

· 1780– · dormant · influence 8/10