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Contemporary Philosophy

Kant's Legacy and the Origins of German Idealism

How unresolved difficulties in Kant's critical philosophy, above all the puzzle of the thing-in-itself, opened the door for the systems of 19th-century German Idealism that tried to complete his project.

Wikimedia Commons · Unknown (possibly Elisabeth von Stägemann, school of Anton Graff) · Public domain

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  1. Kant's Critical Philosophy and the Thing-in-Itself. Kant's three Critiques and his unresolved thing-in-itself set the agenda that post-Kantian idealism inherited and radicalized.
  2. From Practical Reason to the Seeds of Absolute Idealism. Kant's ethics, aesthetics, and doctrine of apperception each supplied a foothold the idealists used to build systems beyond his own restraint.

This is the starting point of Contemporary Philosophy: you don't need any prior knowledge of this subject to begin.

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1Kant's Critical Philosophy and the Thing-in-Itself
2From Practical Reason to the Seeds of Absolute Idealism

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Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason (P. Guyer and A. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1781/1787)
  • Kant, I. (1996). Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy (M. Gregor, Trans. and Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1788)
  • Kant, I. (2000). Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer and E. Matthews, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1790)
  • Beiser, F. C. (2002). German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Allison, H. E. (2004). Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (Rev. ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Guyer, P. (1987). Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Henrich, D. (2003). Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism (D. S. Pacini, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Pippin, R. B. (1989). Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.