Kant and Hegel

Infamously complex and widely regarded as one of the last influential philosophers of 'modern times', Immanuel Kant was born in early 18th Century Germany. His Critique of Pure Reason may be one of the most thought-provoking philosophical works of the past millenium, meticulously analysing and taking apart the mechanics of the human mind and its perception of the universe.

He was certainly not an empiricist, though neither was he an extreme rationalist. Kant effectively believed in the existence of two worlds; the noumenal and the phenomenal. People, animals, objects, (in fact the entire universe), exist initially within the noumenal world, one in which 'things' exist solely within themselves and are not perceived. Only when they enter the phenomenal, do they actively play a 'role' within space. This was a view that expanded somewhat upon those of predecessors, (such as those of Hume and Berkley), who believed that objects simply flash into existence when they come into contact with the sensory perceptions of another living being, before flashing back out again.

Kant was stating that the universe and everything within it, including not just perceptions, but also emotions, appear and feel the way they do through a perceptive apparatus that is received 'supernaturally' by the human mind, (perhaps his form of 'God'). In effect, nothing is actually real, but nor is anything non-existent to the brain. It takes objects from the noumenal world, and presses them into the phenomenal.

Almost a generation later, another German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, proposed a differing interpretation of Kant's views. He suggested that each idea of the Critique of Pure Reason implied its own negation; everything within the universe is subject to a changing cycle, and so he is thus proposing an undeniable progress of mankind to an ultimate 'bliss' and a reunion with God. Hegel greatly believed in the purpose of history and the role it has to play in the future, perhaps making him one of the first modern philosophers to openly propose an acknowledgement of what is commonly known today as, fate.

Both of these philosophers, as Bertrand Russell says, played great roles in the evolution of philosophy into what it is today. Their seemingly endless theories and proposals marked both the end of an era, which introduced to us the likes of John Locke, as well as the beginning of a new, modern one. When we consider such theories, for example, as Kant's Categorical Imperative, (which emphasised the importance of the results of one's actions, rather than one's intentions), and Hegel's views on thesis (existence), leading to the creation of synthesis (history), I get the feeling that we may have only just scratched the surface...