The Enlightenment period was dominated by French and British philosophies yet the German philosophers gained popularity only from the late 1780s. German philosophers were pioneers in thinking about the relationship between mind and body. Immanuel Kant – one of the first in the century – started the tradition of idealism, arguing that there must be two kinds of reality: the real world as we perceive it through our senses and a metaphysical realm of things that exist independently as they are in themselves. Unlike the philosophies of rationalism and empiricism that were rampant at the time, he argued that these two worlds couldn’t be separated because if they were, then we couldn’t see anything. Kant’s ideas influenced other thinkers including Johann Gottlieb Herder, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer. They all took different directions within idealism, while others argued against it altogether. Among those who continued the discussion were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who wrote a book entitled Materialism and Emporio-Criticism, and Ludwig Feuerbach, who developed a materialist approach. These thinkers helped establish the foundations of modern atheism, with the most famous works being that of Nietzsche with his declaration that ‘God is dead.’
Introduction
How do we really define Philosophy? The Greek word φιλοσοφία – Philosophia. Or as the term has been coined by modern Western language – Philosophy. The literal meaning of this word is relatively static. Derived from its Greek origin it comprises two separate words...
