German Idealism

6 Lecture Masterclass

You can now enrol in pre-recorded lectures or private seminars with Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser

“Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature” - Friedrich Schelling

The philosophical movement known as German Idealism is arguably one of the most important periods in modern philosophy. German Idealism roughly spans from the 1780s to the 1840s.

The study of this period as a whole is pivotal for anyone wishing to understand Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Hölderlin. German Idealism is also crucial for anyone wishing to achieve a more grounded understanding of accelerationism, Marxism, and 20th century phenomenology. Marx, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida, Sartre, and Nietzsche were all in different ways heavily influenced by German Idealism. If you wish to understand what is at the heart of the crisis of modernity, this course is for you.

German Idealism begins with Kant’s critique of reason and his new conception of transcendental idealism and finds its completion in Hegel’s Absolute Idea. 

German Idealism is not grey theory. It depicts rather an epoch in which the dimension of the human stands revealed most fully in all its spiritual glory. 

Thus, to study German Idealism means to delve into the cosmic-spiritual dimension of the human being and his Spirit.

A reawakening of Spirit brought about by Kant’s critical philosophy, which was nothing short of an earthquake - the presupposed unity of being and thought that had moved and sustained Western thinking since Parmenides and Plato was all of a sudden put under scrutiny.

Kant critiqued reason and favoured the understanding. Yet, it did not take long until three youngsters took the stage to articulate the Absolute Idea.

Through the popularisation of figures like Reinhold and Fichte, these three young thinkers came upon the quest to articulate the Absolute Idea again in a post-Kantian world.

Their attempt was to be able again to articulate what seemed unattainable for Kant: the cosmic-spiritual dimension of the human being and nature.

Those three young thinkers were Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel who, by an act of fate, happened to be students and roommates in Tübingen together in the late 18th century.

In this course you will learn the trajectory from Kant to Hegel across Fichte, Schelling, and Hölderlin. Central to our investigations via the primary texts will be the possibility of human freedom.

“Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.”

- Immanuel Kant

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“I want to get across what the impact of studying these great thinkers via your courses has been. It's beyond instrumentalism and certainly beyond self-help. It's more a change in mental outlook which then changes the way one lives. For example, my outlook towards work has changed a lot. I am now much more about seeing work as right livelihood and trying to reserve my energy for the enjoyable creative projects I'm engaged with.” – James Simpkin

"Your teaching has brought about a profound change in my belief about the ultimate nature of things. Previously, I was a thoroughgoing materialist and empiricist. No longer. Put simply, there is something else going on which is beyond us, though we are part of it." 

- David Ashton, MD, PhD