Germany Philosophy

A German Delicacy. German philosophy is like wurst: thick and difficult to digest. Immanuel Kant, the foremost thinker of the German Enlightenment, argued for autonomous rational calculation, positing reason as our highest moral safeguard, and insisting that we ask if our motivating principles can at any time be made into a universal law. Meanwhile Johann Gottlieb Fichte spearheaded the new German Idealist movement, which stressed the importance of a spirit or Geist in interpreting experience . G. W. F. Hegel proposed that history as well as the development of the individual consciousness could be understood as conflicts between thesis and antithesis, which produced synthesis—essentially the idea that from struggle comes growth. Hegel’s view of world history would, after some distortion, eventually provide a theoretical backing for German nationalism. Meanwhile, Johann Gottfried Herder pushed for romantic nationalism, asserting that the spirit of a nation could be found in its folklore and peasant traditions. Karl Marx turned Hegel around, asserting that class conflict was the stage on which the world was made, profoundly altering the course of 20th-century history.

Similarly controversial, Friedrich Nietzsche, influenced by pessimist par excellence. Arthur Schopenhauer, scorned the mediocrity of “resentful” Judeo-Christian masses and advanced the idea of the Übermensch (superman), a man who creates a moral code without reference to the standards of others.

Around the turn of the century, Max Weber wrote that the world was trapped in a bureaucratic iron cage. Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger made his name with Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). This notoriously cumbersome book insists that man understand the significance of questioning the meaning of life in a world where one-sided technology development has led to a crisis of existential alienation. The most celebrated post-war exponent of this school, Jürgen Habermas, has criticized German reunification, citing the danger of joining two nations that had adopted two very different cultures.