A History of Western Philosophy Book 3

Book 3: The Nineteenth Century from German Romanticism and Idealism to Marxist Materialism and Darwinian Evolution
The nineteenth century saw a great expansion in the range of subjects deemed appropriate for philosophical investigation. Romanticism in Germany and England was a reaction to the growing scientific determinism. It emphasised emotion and imagination over reason as the most important guides to the truth of the human condition and focused on responses to nature in poetry, music and the literary arts. Romanticism led to Idealism, the belief that our reality is fundamentally mental rather than material. The major idealist philosopher was Georg Hegel who constructed a great metaphysical system of thought. His great virtue was his recognition of the important relationship between the processes of history and our lives and culture. Karl Marx built on Hegel’s philosophy of history and morality by reversing his mentor’s claim that the ideas in a society determined its forms of life and material production. Marx held that the ideological superstructure is determined by its economic base rather than being its cause.

Other major developments in the nineteenth century included Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution; Søren Kierkegaard’s insistence that religious faith was irrational, and that passion was a more reliable guide to truth than any provable belief; Arthur Schopenhauer’s claim that the human will was an evil and destructive power; and Friedrich Nietzsche who repudiated God and proposed that we have to make our own meanings from within ourselves.

ISBN 9781925169171

Author: Jack Thomson,
Publisher: Phoenix