Timeline of German idealism

Updated on Dec 31, 2024

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The following is a list of the major events in the history of German idealism, along with related historical events.

Background

1623 Jakob Böhme, The Way to Christ (see: Behmenism)

1641 René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (see: Modern Rationalism, Cartesianism)

1677 Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (see: Spinozism, Philosophy of Spinoza)

1686 Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics

1687 Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy")

1690 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (see: British Empiricism)

1710 Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (see: Subjective idealism)

1732 Wolff, Elementa matheseos universae (influenced Kant)

1748 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

1759 Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia (see: Counter-Enlightenment)

1762 Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (see: Age of Enlightenment)

1770s

1770 Kant, inaugural dissertation

1780s

1781

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (see: Transcendental idealism)

Death of Lessing

1783 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

1784 Kant, "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?"

1785

Jacobi, Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza

includes unauthorized publication of Goethe's poem "Prometheus". (see: Pantheism controversy, Sturm und Drang)

Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

1786 Reinhold, Letters on the Kantian Philosophy

1787

Second edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Jacobi, David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism

Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris (see: Weimar Classicism)

1788 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

1789

French Revolution begins

Second, expanded edition of Jacobi's Letters on the Teachings of Spinoza

1790s

1790

Kant, Critique of Judgment

Maimon, "Essay on Transcendental Philosophy"

Goethe, Metamorphosis of Plants

1792

Fichte, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation

Schulze, Aenesidemus

1793 Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone

1794 Fichte, Foundations of the Science of Knowledge

1795 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man

1797

Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right

Kant, Metaphysics of Morals

"The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism" (unsigned and unpublished essay written by Hegel, Schelling, and/or Hölderlin.)

Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (see: Naturphilosophie)

1798 Schelling, On the World Soul

1799

Napoleon overthrows the French Directory

Jacobi, Letter to Fichte (see: Atheism dispute)

Schleiermacher, On Religion (see: German Romanticism, Hermeneutics)

Schelling, First Plan of a System of the Philosophy of Nature

1800s

1800

Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism

Fichte, The Vocation of Man

1801 Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy

1804 Death of Kant

1807 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (see: Absolute idealism)

1808 Goethe, Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy

1809 Schelling, Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom

1810s

1810 Goethe, Theory of Colours

1811 Jacobi, Of Divine Things and Their Revelation (criticized Schelling)

1812 Hegel, Science of Logic part one ('The Objective Logic', part 1)

1813 Hegel, Science of Logic part two ('The Objective Logic', part 2)

1814

Death of Fichte

Defeat of Napoleon; Bourbon Restoration

1815 Schelling, On the Divinities of Samothrace (see: Winged Victory of Samothrace)

1816 Hegel, Science of Logic part three ('The Subjective Logic')

1817

Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (discusses Kant, Fichte, Schelling in English)

1818 Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

1820s

1820 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right

1825 Herbart, Psychology as Science

1830s

1830 Revolutions of 1830

1831 Death of Hegel

1832

Goethe, Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy

Death of Goethe

1833 Karl Daub, The Dogmatic Theology of the Present Time (see: Right Hegelians)

1834

Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (English novel which parodied German idealism)

Schelling's first public critique of Hegel is published in an introduction to a work by Victor Cousin

1835

Strauss, The Life of Jesus (see: Young Hegelians)

Heine, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany

Hegel's posthumously published Lectures on Aesthetics

1837

Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality

Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History

1839 Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will

1840s

1841

Schelling's Berlin lectures are attended by Søren Kierkegaard, Mikhail Bakunin, Jacob Burckhardt, Alexander von Humboldt, and Friedrich Engels

Kierkegaard, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (critiques Fichte, Schlegel, and Hegel)

Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity

1842 Bruno Bauer, Hegel's Teachings on Religion and Art

1843

Trendelenburg, The Logical Question in Hegel's System

Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (unpublished until after Marx's death)

Lotze, Logic

1844

Second expanded edition of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation

Marx and Engels, The Holy Family criticized the Young Hegelians

1846 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (unpublished until 1932) criticized the Young Hegelians

1848 Revolutions of 1848

1850s

1851 Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

1854 Death of Schelling

1860s

1860 Death of Schopenhauer

1865

Stirling, The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin Principle, Form and Matter (see: British idealism)

Lange, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance (Neo-Kantian work)

1870s

1874 Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator

1880s

1885 Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (see: Objective idealism)

Later

1903 G. E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism" (see: Analytic philosophy)

1907 Benedetto Croce, What is Living and What is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel

1912 Paul Tillich, Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling's Philosophical Development (see: Christian existentialism)

1916 Giovanni Gentile, The Theory of Mind as Pure Act (Developed a version of idealism which is amenable to fascism. see: Actual idealism)

1917 Franz Rosenzweig "Oldest System-Program of German Idealism" (first publication of lost 1797 unsigned document)

1929 Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

1936 Heidegger, Schelling's Treatise: On the Essence of Human Freedom

1945 Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (criticized Hegel's historicism as totalitarian)

1947

Jean Hyppolite, The Genesis and Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit

Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on Phenomenology of Spirit

1948 Lukács, The Young Hegel

1955 Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation

1963 Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies (see: Frankfurt School)

1966 P.F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (see: Ordinary language philosophy)

1974 Derrida, Glas (see: Deconstruction, Post-structuralism)

1975 Charles Taylor, Hegel

1992 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

References

Timeline of German idealism Wikipedia

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