14 Facts About German idealism

German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The philosophical meaning of German idealism are those properties we discover in objects that are dependent on the way that those objects appear to us, as perceiving subjects.

Immanuel Kant's transcendental German idealism consisted of taking a point of view outside and above oneself and understanding that the mind directly knows only phenomena or ideas.

German idealism wanted to restrict reasoning, judging, and speaking only to objects of possible experience.

German idealism's axiom was: "Representation is distinguished in consciousness by the subject from the subject and object, and is referred to both.

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German idealism thereby started, not from definitions, but, from a principle that referred to mental images or representations in a conscious mind.

German idealism gave the name of Ding an sich, or thing-in-itself to that which is represented.

German idealism understood the ideal as the subjective mental activities of thought, intellect, and reason.

Salomon Maimon influenced German idealism by criticizing Kant's dichotomies, claiming that Kant did not explain how opposites such as sensibility and understanding could relate to each other.

German idealism's work is theological in that it replaces the traditional concept of God with that of an Absolute Spirit.

German idealism's influence has continued in contemporary philosophy but mainly in Continental philosophy.

German idealism's philosophy attempted to account for an eternal consciousness or mind that was similar to Berkeley's concept of God and Hegel's Absolute.

However, the new-found "speculative thought", reason or thinking of German idealism "again became a field for a new brand of specialists committed to the notion that philosophy's 'subject proper' is 'the actual knowledge of what truly is'.

Slavoj Zizek sees German idealism as the pinnacle of modern philosophy, and as a tradition that contemporary philosophy must recapture: "[T]here is a unique philosophical moment in which philosophy appears 'as such' and which serves as a key—as the only key—to reading the entire preceding and following tradition as philosophy.