← All schools🌀 1781 – 1831

German Idealism

From Kant’s Copernican revolution to Hegel’s Absolute Spirit — philosophy driven to its systematic summit inside fifty years.

Kant’s settlement of the rationalist-empiricist war was a Copernican revolution: objects conform to the mind’s a priori forms, not the mind to objects — so we know appearances only, never things-in-themselves. Hegel refused any no-entry sign before knowledge: truth is the whole, spirit unfolding itself through contradiction, history itself running on logic. The system-cathedral built in fifty years instantly became philosophy’s most fertile demolition site: Marx flipped the dialectic into historical materialism, Kierkegaard raised the single individual against the system, Schopenhauer handed reason’s throne to blind will.

Who belongs to it

⏰Kant1724–1804German Philosopher, Founder of German Classical Philosophy, Proposer of the "Copernican Revolution"🌀Hegel1770–1831German Philosopher, Builder of the System of the Dialectic and Absolute Spirit

Whom it opposed — and who opposed it

🔬 EmpiricismKant’s point of departure — the reply after Hume’s wake-up call 🚬 ExistentialismThe rebellion it provoked — Kierkegaard’s single individual against Hegel’s whole