PHIL30110 Post-Kantian German Philosophy

Academic Year 2020/2021

The most creative period in the history of philosophy can be found in Germany in the nineteenth century. Kant’s earlier work (late eighteenth century) stimulated both innovation but also enormous opposition. From that opposition new ideas that have completely shaped our sense of the world around us have emerged.

Many of the key concepts that lie behind the most existentially relevant philosophy, sociology, and political theory were either fully formed or initiated in this period.

Among the huge number of toweringly influential philosophers emerged during those times, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Marx. Without their work few of the ideas found in contemporary philosophy would exist.

This module will examine a selection of texts from those philosophers. We start with Kant on morality since reactions against his strictly rational account of the moral law gave rise to a huge amount of the philosophical innovation that followed.

Fichte saw Kantian philosophy as a revolutionary vision of political freedom. Hegel, in opposition, interpreted Kantian morality as narrow and contrary to full freedom. With Schopenhauer freedom became a matter – inspired by the Veda – of self-renunciation. Nietzsche by contrast urged us to affirm life and to reject the constraints of Kantian and Platonic morality. Marx’s notion of alienation is a diagnosis of a world where human beings are prevented from realizing their full, creative capacities.