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In the19th century, the philosophers of the 18th-centuryEnlightenment began to have a dramatic effect on subsequent developments inphilosophy. In particular, the works ofImmanuel Kant gave rise to a new generation of German philosophers and began to see wider recognition internationally. Also, in a reaction to the Enlightenment, a movement calledRomanticism began to develop towards the end of the 18th century. Key ideas that sparked changes in philosophy were the fast progress of science, includingevolution, most notably postulated byCharles Darwin,Alfred Russel Wallace andJean-Baptiste Lamarck, and theories regarding what is today calledemergent order, such as thefree market ofAdam Smith within nation states, or theMarxist approach concerningclass warfare between theruling class and theworking class developed byKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels. Pressures foregalitarianism, and more rapid change culminated in a period of revolution and turbulence that would see philosophy change as well.
With the tumultuous years of 1789–1815, European culture was transformed by revolution, war and disruption. By ending many of the social and cultural props of the previous century, the stage was set for dramatic economic and political change. European philosophy reflected on, participated in, and drove, many of these changes.
The last third of the 18th century produced a host of ideas and works which would both systematize previous philosophy, and present a deep challenge to the basis of how philosophy had been systematized.Immanuel Kant is a name that most would mention as being among the most important of influences, as isJean-Jacques Rousseau. While both of these philosophers were products of the 18th century and its assumptions, they pressed at the boundaries. In trying to explain the nature of the state and government, Rousseau would challenge the basis of government with his declaration that "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains". Kant, while attempting to preserve axiomic skepticism, was forced to argue that we do not see true reality, nor do we speak of it. All we know of reality is appearances. Since all we can see of reality is appearances, which are subject to certain necessary and subjective forms of perceptions, Kant postulates the idea of an unknowable (while at the same time limiting our use of science and the principle of causality to the appearances). Hegel's distinction between the unknowable and the circumstantially unknown can be seen as the beginnings of Hegel's rational system of the universe.
Yet another philosopher of the late Enlightenment that was influential in the 19th century wasPierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), whose formulation ofnomological determinism is famous up to this day.
This is a partial list of schools of 19th-century philosophy (also known aslate modern philosophy).
One of the first philosophers to attempt to grapple with Kant's philosophy wasJohann Gottlieb Fichte, whose development of Kantian metaphysics became a source of inspiration for theRomantics. InWissenschaftslehre, Fichte argues that the self posits itself and is a self-producing and changing process.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, a student of Fichte, continued to develop many of the same ideas and was also assimilated by the Romantics as something of an official philosopher for their movement. But it was another of Fichte's students, and former roommate of Schelling, who would rise to become the most prominent of the post-Kantian idealists:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. His work revealed the increasing importance of historical thinking in German thought.
Arthur Schopenhauer, rejecting Hegel and also materialism, called for a return to Kantian transcendentalism, at the same time adoptingatheism anddeterminism, amongst others. His secular thought became more popular in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, which coincided with the advents ofDarwinism,positivism,Marxism andphilological analysis of the Bible.
In the second half of the 19th century, an even more orthodox return to Kantian thought was espoused by a number ofNeo-Kantian philosophers based in two main locations: the Marburg School and the Baden School. This trend of thought survived into the beginning of the next century, influencing 20th-century philosophical movements such asneopositivism andphenomenology.
One of the most famous opponents of idealism in the first half of the German 19th century wasLudwig Feuerbach, who advocatedmaterialism andatheism.
Utilitarianism is aconsequentialist approach tonormative ethics that holds morally right actions are those that promote the most human happiness.Jeremy Bentham, who created his version of the theory in 1829, andJohn Stuart Mill who made his in 1861 are considered the founders of utilitarianism, though the basic concept predates either of the two philosophers.[1] Utilitarianism remains as one of the more appealing and compelling approaches to normative ethics.[2]
Developed byKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels in the mid-to-late-19th century, Marxism is a sociopolitical and economic view based on the philosophy ofdialectical materialism, which opposesidealism in favour of thematerialist viewpoint. Marx analysedhistory itself as the progression ofdialectics in the form ofclass struggle. From this it is argued that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." According to Marx, this began with the phase ofprimitive communism (hunter-gatherer society), after which theNeolithic Revolution gave way toslave societies, progressing into thefeudal society, and then into his present era of theIndustrial Revolution, after which he held that the next step was for theproletariat to overthrow the owners of industry and establish asocialist society, which would further develop into acommunist society, in which class distinctions, money, and the state would have withered from existence entirely.
Marxism had a profound influence on the history of the 20th century.
Existentialism as a philosophical movement is properly a20th-century movement, but its major antecedents,Søren Kierkegaard andFriedrich Nietzsche wrote long before the rise of existentialism. In the 1840s, academic philosophy in Europe, following Hegel, was almost completely divorced from the concerns of individual human life, in favour of pursuing abstract metaphysical systems. Kierkegaard sought to reintroduce to philosophy, in the spirit ofSocrates: subjectivity, commitment, faith, and passion, all of which are a part of thehuman condition.
Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche saw the moral values of 19th-century Europe disintegrating intonihilism (Kierkegaard called it thelevelling process). Nietzsche attempted to undermine traditional moral values by exposing its foundations. To that end, he distinguished betweenmaster and slave moralities, and claimed that man must turn from the meekness and humility of Europe's slave-morality.
Both philosophers are precursors to existentialism, among other ideas, for their importance on the "great man" against the age. Kierkegaard wrote of 19th-century Europe, "Each age has its own characteristic depravity. Ours is perhaps not pleasure or indulgence or sensuality, but rather a dissolute pantheistic contempt for the individual man."
Auguste Comte, the self-professed founder of modernsociology, put forward the view that the rigorous ordering of confirmable observations alone ought to constitute the realm of human knowledge. He had hoped to order the sciences in increasing degrees of complexity from mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and a new discipline called "sociology", which is the study of the "dynamics and statics of society".[3]
TheAmerican philosophersCharles Sanders Peirce andWilliam James developed the pragmatist philosophy in the late 19th century. This school of thought holds that the value of an idea is based upon its practicability or utility rather than the extent to which it reflects reality.[4]
The twilight years of the 19th century inBritain saw the rise ofBritish idealism, a revival of interest in the works ofImmanuel Kant andGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and a reaction against BritishEmpiricism andUtilitarianism. The movement was partly kickstarted byJames Hutchison Stirling's two-volume workThe Secret of Hegel which helped facilitate the study of Hegel in England and introduced some elements that became characteristic of the British Idealist interpretation of Hegel. Besides incorporating varying portions of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, many British Idealists also took ideas from earlier thinkers such asAristotle andPlato.[5]T. H. Green,F. H. Bradley, andBernard Bosanquet are considered some of the major thinkers ofBritish idealism.
Transcendentalism was rooted inImmanuel Kant'stranscendence andGerman idealism, led byRalph Waldo Emerson andHenry David Thoreau, who encountered German ideas through their readings ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge andThomas Carlyle. The main belief was in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.
"Social Darwinism" refers to theories that apply theevolutionary concept ofnatural selection tohuman society in fields such as sociology, economics, and politics. Two major thinkers of this movement wereHerbert Spencer andFrancis Galton.
Ontologism is an ideological system, favored by many Catholic philosophers, which asserts that God and Divine ideas are the first object of our intelligence and the intuition of God the first act of our intellectual knowledge.[6]Nicolas Malebranche was a source for many philosophers ofOntologism. In 1861, the Holy Office condemned Ontologism as unsafe for teaching (tuto tradi non possunt).[7] Two major thinkers of this movement areVincenzo Gioberti andAntonio Rosmini.[8]
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