German classical philosophy

German classical philosophy can be considered

one of the peaks of world philosophy.
It reflected the
peculiarities and
contradictions of Germany
as the pretty backward
(отсталый) country in socio-
economic sense, divided
into more than 300 small
principalities (княжества), as
well into the Catholic and
Protestant churches.
19th-century map of Germany
Nevertheless, in Germany
idea of philosophy (had
almost been forgotten since
the ancient Greeks) began to
be developed. This point in
the German philosophy was a
reflection of a compromise of
German society with growth
of spirituality.
The French Revolution was a period of major social
upheaval that began in 1787 and ended in 1799.
It was related to the Enlightenment and the
French revolution. German idealists believed
that nothing exists without the mind.
German classical philosophy
consists of five thinkers:

•Immanuel Kant
•Johann Fichte
•Friedrich Schelling
•George Hegel
•Ludwig Feuerbach
Ancestor of
German classical
philosophy was
Immanuel Kant

(1724-1804)
Kaliningrad, Russian Federation
In his entire life Kant never travelled more
than seventy miles from the city of
Königsberg.
Kant created a new
perspective in
philosophy that had
widespread
influences on
philosophy continuing
till 21st century.
In Kant’s philosophy there are two periods:
1)Pre-critical
2)Critical.
During pre-critical period Kant
stayed on position of materialism
and cosmologism. This was a
combination of natural-scientific
materialism with the Leibniz’s
philosophy. As one of results of
this position was that in 1755
Kant wrote his work “General
Natural History and Theory of the
Celestial Bodies”
Along with Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Kant
proposed a theory of the Solar system
appearance from gas-dust cloud around the
Sun.
In the second period Kant moves to the
position of theoretical agnosticism, and in
many respects, idealism.
Critical period of Kant’s philosophy is marked
by publication of three Critiques...

“Critique of Pure Reason” (1781)

“Critique of Practical Reason” (1788)
“Critique of [Ability of] Judgment” (1790)
Critical period of Kant’s philosophy begins in
1770. The most known work of Kant is the
book Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der
reinen Vernunft) that Kant published in 1781.
In it which Kant explored possibilities of
human mind in cognition.
Kant called his way of thought “critique”, not
philosophy. Kant said that critique was a
preparation for establishment of real
philosophy. 
According to Kant, people should know what
human reason can do and which limits it has.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant wrote
several limits of human reason, to both feeling
and thinking something. 
In one of his friends (K.Schteudlin), Kant
declared main aim of his scientific plan, that
is to answer the questions:

What can I know? (metaphysics)

What must I do? (ethics)
What can I trust in? (religion)
For sensation, there are two limits inside of
human perception: space and time. We can
doubt in existence of physical objects, but
there are the limitations of our mind that
work whenever we feel something through
our senses.
For thinking, he said there are four fields of
pure rational concepts: quantity, quality,
relation and modality. Kant thought human
reason applied those ideas to everything.
Kant put the questions on certain knowledge which
has necessary and universal essence.
There are:

How can pure mathematics be?

How can pure science be?
How can metaphysics be as a science?
And he answers: reliable (достоверное)
knowledge is possible in mathematics and
natural sciences.
According to Kant, scientific knowledge is
based on two sources:
 a posteriori, that is, empirical data
 a priori forms of sensibility and reason.
A posteriori forms come to human mind due
to the ability to feel the outside reality. It is
result of outer surrounding.

A priori forms of sensibility are space and

time. Both they exist within us as conditions
of experience before any kind of experience.
Relationships among things, causality
(причинность) and regularity (закономерность ) as
qualities are understood beyond feelings.
One of the versions of how space and time operate
Kant divided cognitive
activity on senses
(чувства), intellect and
reason. Intellect is an
ability to construct logic
conclusions.
Considering the world as a set of
causes and consequences, Kant
reveals (обнаруживает) four
contradictions, which he calls
the antinomies.
Due to the fact that these
antinomies can be proved by
logical means, Kant shows that
human mind has come into
conflict with itself. Here, there
are limits of human reason to
cognize the ideas.
They are:

1. The world is limited in space and time

The world is infinite in space and time.

2) The world consists of simple particles of matter

The world contains complex particles of matter.
They are:

3) There is freedom in the world

There is no freedom.

4) There is necessary essence of the world (God)

There is no original cause.
Something that goes beyond the limits of
such knowledge, Kant calls transcendental
knowledge.
Kant considered external world and its forms
as divided into:
“thing in itself” (noumenon-essense)

“thing for us” (phenomenon-accidence).

God, the eternity of soul, life after death,
such things belong to “thing itself”, so they
were not right objects of philosophy
according to Kant, although people had liked
to discuss them from ancient times.
So, Kant wrote that he limited the sphere of
reason, to make place for faith.
Agnosticism
The basic idea of “Critique
of Pure Reason” is to
understand how to
construct a priori synthetic
judgments (how to
combine space and time in
human mind).
That is why Kant doesn’t believe in power of
logical thinking making “Copernican turn”. It
is when the nature should be corresponded
to human cognition while before they
proclaimed human perception had to be
appropriated to the nature.
In his opinion, the world influences on
human mind, as well as human comprehends
the world.
Mind is a true source of
morality. Morality is derived
(выводится) from the concept
of duty.
Book:
“Critique of Practical
Reason”
Categorical imperative:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you
can, at the same time, will that it should become a
universal law”.
A categorical imperative is an unconditional
obligation; that is, it has the force of an
obligation regardless of our will or desires.
“Critique of the Power of
Judgment” is the third
work of Kant. It is a project
of foundations for
aesthetics as sensibility.
In this book, Kant states that beauty
is not a property of an artwork or
natural phenomenon, but is the
“free play” of the imagination. Even
though it appears that we are using
reason to decide what is beautiful,
the judgment of beauty is not a
cognitive judgment.
Johann Gottlieb
Fichte

(1762-1814)
Inspired by his reading of
Kant, Johann Fichte
developed systematic
version of transcendental
idealism, which he called
Wissenschaftslehre of
“Doctrine of Scientific
Knowledge.”
Main source of human’s
existence is his
fundamental freedom.
Freedom is based on self-
awareness.
Self-awareness is the
awareness (осознание) that
human exists as an
individual being.
Subject (I, or Me) is the only one who is real
and absolute. All other world including the
nature world, is a product of activity of “Me”

Me = Me (Subjective world)
Me = not Me (Objective world)
Me = synthesis of Me and not Me = (self-
identity)
Self-awareness is the awareness
(осознание) that human exists as an
individual being.
Fichte stands on the position of subjective
idealism. Fichte rejects “thing in itself”, replacing it
with “not-Me” (nature) that exists within “Me”.
Nature is a sensuous nature of man.
Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schelling

(1775-1854)
There are four periods of his
philosophy:
1. Gnoseological,
2. Naturphilosophical
3. Transcendental,
4. Philosophy of revelation
(откровение).
Gnoseological period is to understand the
abilities of human cognition. An object is not
main element in cognition, as well as a
subject doesn’t determine the cognition. The
point is to combine both object and subject,
where cognitive process depends on concrete
situation and individual features of human.
Naturphilosophical period is consideration
reality as separated self-advanced spiritual
nature. In nature, there are many
processes, which purely connected. Thus,
man have to find general principle for
structural organization of his knowledge
about nature.
Main principle is unity of nature, which has
many branches of its development.
Transcendental period is to
define identical parallels
between man and nature in
cognition. We can do this
through intellectual
intuition. It helps us to go
up till free action of
understanding of nature.
Intellectual intuition
become the object of
scientific research.
Philosophy of revelation is
the period, when Schelling
considered religion as the
highest form of human
attitude to nature. Religion
appears because of depth of
the essence of nature and
limits of human cognition.
The essence of God is in his self-
expression. Man must develop
himself to discover and
understand God’s self-expression
for the aim to get real freedom.
That’s why in the fourth period,
Schelling moves to the position of
Theosophy, combining
philosophy, mythology and
religion.
Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel

(1770-1831)
Hegel compiled (обобщил) many rational
ideas of classical German philosophy in the
field of dialectics.
Hegel criticized the subjective idealism of
Fichte and Kant’s agnosticism, saying that the
world is knowable and there is no
unknowable “things in itself”.
Hegel begins from
intelligence (рассудок),
which allows us to differ
moments of world as
fundamental motion, as
well as the elements of
nature.
Intelligence gives birth to
thesis that has its
antithesis. Both of them
are unified in synthesis.
This is a formulae of
primary dialectic. We use
it in frames of daily
common sense.
Hegel takes Absolute Idea
as a dialectical beginning
that goes through three
stages:
- Logical idea (before the
creation of nature);
- Nature;
- Spirit.
Introduction to Hegelian philosophical system
is his “Phenomenology of spirit” (1807).
Hegel seeks to overcome the opposition of
man and nature. This opposition can be
solved by the consideration of consciousness,
in which individual consciousness comes the
path that mankind has passed during its
history. As a result, man is able to look at the
world and himself as at the ending of the
history of the world, in which there is an
absolute identity of thinking and being.
Reaching the absolute
identity, philosophy achieves
its true state of pure thought,
inside which, according to
Hegel, all definitions of
thinking find themselves from
thinking as itself. This is the
field of LOGIC (first step of
Hegel’s system), where
understanding of nature is
being realized in pure from.
Hegel’s “The Science of Logic”
consists of :

Volume One: The Objective Logic

- The Doctrine of Being
- The Doctrine of Essence

Volume Two: The Subjective

Logic
- The Doctrine of the Notion
In this book Hegel begins from
pure being, then moving to
the essences of the things
tried to define human notion
about ready and understood
nature. Finally, human
understanding reaches a level
of Absolute Idea.
After individual logic Absolute
Idea turns to PHILOSOPHY OF
NATURE (second step of
Hegel’s system), which
contains:
•Mechanics
•Physics
•Organics
PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT (third step
of Hegel’s system) also passes
through three stages:
1.Subjective spirit
(anthropology);
2.Objective spirit (jurisprudence,
morality, history)
3.Absolute spirit
(art, religion, philosophy).

Thesis – antithesis – synthesis

Ludwig Andreas
von Feuerbach

… is the only
representative of
materialism in German
classical philosophy.
(1804-1872)
Feuerbach criticized idealism or religion, has
developed a materialistic doctrine of the
nature of knowledge and man.
Idealism is a rationalized religion. God is the
alienated (отчужденный) essence of man.
Philosophy should be transformed into
doctrine of man, anthropology. Feuerbach
regarded human as natural, physiological
being, who is located out of history.

Anthropological materialism
But Feuerbach wanted to
create a religion of love.
Feuerbach called his
philosophy as philosophy
of future.
 Questions for review
• In which socio-political conditions was formed German classical philosophy?
• What problems were in the focus of I.Kant in "subcritical" period of his work?
• What problems I.Kant puts in "critical" period of his life?
• How is solved the problem of a man and morality in Kant's doctrine?
• What means "thing in itself" and “ thing for Us " in the philosophy of I.Kant?
• Reveal the essential features of science study of I.Fihte.
• Reveal the content of philosophical doctrine of F.Shelling
• What is the essence of Hegel's absolute idealism?
• Expand the basic principles of dialectical thinking of Hegel.
• What is the essence of anthropological materialism of L. Feuerbach?
• Reveal the main provisions of the ethics of love of L. Feuerbach.
 Abstract topics
• Kant's categorical imperative and principle of
humanism in philosophy.
• Hegel’s "Phenomenology of spirit".
• Hegel's idealistic dialectics, its content and
meaning.
• Anthropological materialism by L.Feyerbah
• Love ethics by L.Feyrebah.
• Problem of "the world-a man" in German classical
philosophy.