This is a partial list of schools of 19th-century philosophy (also known as
late modern philosophy).
German idealism One of the first philosophers to attempt to grapple with Kant's philosophy was
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose development of Kantian metaphysics became a source of inspiration for the
Romantics. In
Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte argues that the self posits itself and is a self-producing and changing process.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, a student of Fichte, continued to develop many of the same ideas and was also assimilated by the Romantics as something of an official philosopher for their movement. But it was another of Fichte's students, and former roommate of Schelling, who would rise to become the most prominent of the post-Kantian idealists:
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. His work revealed the increasing importance of historical thinking in German thought.
Arthur Schopenhauer, rejecting Hegel and also materialism, called for a return to Kantian transcendentalism, at the same time adopting
atheism and
determinism, amongst others. His secular thought became more popular in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, which coincided with the advents of
Darwinism,
positivism,
Marxism and
philological analysis of the Bible. In the second half of the 19th century, an even more orthodox return to Kantian thought was espoused by a number of
Neo-Kantian philosophers based in two main locations: the Marburg School and the Baden School. This trend of thought survived into the beginning of the next century, influencing 20th-century philosophical movements such as
neopositivism and
phenomenology. One of the most famous opponents of idealism in the first half of the German 19th century was
Ludwig Feuerbach, who advocated
materialism and
atheism.
Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a
consequentialist approach to
normative ethics that holds morally right actions are those that promote the most human happiness.
Jeremy Bentham, who created his version of the theory in 1829, and
John Stuart Mill who made his in 1861 are considered the founders of utilitarianism, though the basic concept predates either of the two philosophers. Utilitarianism remains as one of the more appealing and compelling approaches to normative ethics.
Marxism Developed by
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels in the mid-to-late-19th century, Marxism is a sociopolitical and economic view based on the philosophy of
dialectical materialism, which opposes
idealism in favour of the
materialist viewpoint. Marx analysed
history itself as the progression of
dialectics in the form of
class struggle. From this it is argued that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." According to Marx, this began with the phase of
primitive communism (
hunter-gatherer society), after which the
Neolithic Revolution gave way to
slave societies, progressing into the
feudal society, and then into his present era of the
Industrial Revolution, after which he held that the next step was for the
proletariat to overthrow the owners of industry and establish a
socialist society, which would further develop into a
communist society, in which class distinctions, money, and the state would have withered from existence entirely. Marxism had a profound influence on the history of the 20th century.
Existentialism Existentialism as a philosophical movement is properly a
20th-century movement, but its major antecedents,
Søren Kierkegaard and
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote long before the rise of existentialism. In the 1840s, academic philosophy in Europe, following Hegel, was almost completely divorced from the concerns of individual human life, in favour of pursuing abstract metaphysical systems. Kierkegaard sought to reintroduce to philosophy, in the spirit of
Socrates: subjectivity, commitment, faith, and passion, all of which are a part of the
human condition. Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche saw the moral values of 19th-century Europe disintegrating into
nihilism (Kierkegaard called it the
levelling process). Nietzsche attempted to undermine traditional moral values by exposing its foundations. To that end, he distinguished between
master and slave moralities, and claimed that man must turn from the meekness and humility of Europe's slave-morality. Both philosophers are precursors to existentialism, among other ideas, for their importance on the "great man" against the age. Kierkegaard wrote of 19th-century Europe, "Each age has its own characteristic depravity. Ours is perhaps not pleasure or indulgence or sensuality, but rather a dissolute pantheistic contempt for the individual man."
Positivism Auguste Comte, the self-professed founder of modern sociology, put forward the view that the rigorous ordering of confirmable observations alone ought to constitute the realm of human knowledge. He had hoped to order the sciences in increasing degrees of complexity from mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and a new discipline called "sociology", which is the study of the "dynamics and statics of society".
Pragmatism The
American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce and
William James developed the pragmatist philosophy in the late 19th century. This school of thought holds that the value of an idea is based upon its practicability or utility rather than the extent to which it reflects reality.
British idealism The twilight years of the 19th century in
Britain saw the rise of
British idealism, a revival of interest in the works of
Immanuel Kant and
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and a reaction against British
Empiricism and
Utilitarianism. The movement was partly kickstarted by
James Hutchison Stirling's two-volume work
The Secret of Hegel which helped facilitate the study of Hegel in England and introduced some elements that became characteristic of the British Idealist interpretation of Hegel. Besides incorporating varying portions of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, many British Idealists also took ideas from earlier thinkers such as
Aristotle and
Plato.
T. H. Green,
F. H. Bradley, and
Bernard Bosanquet are considered some of the major thinkers of
British idealism.
Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was rooted in
Immanuel Kant's
transcendence and
German idealism, led by
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau, who encountered German ideas through their readings of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
Thomas Carlyle. The main belief was in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.
Social Darwinism "Social Darwinism" refers to theories that apply the
evolutionary concept of
natural selection to
human society in fields such as sociology, economics, and politics. Two major thinkers of this movement were
Herbert Spencer and
Francis Galton.
Ontologism Ontologism is an ideological system, favored by many Catholic philosophers, which asserts that God and Divine ideas are the first object of our intelligence and the intuition of God the first act of our intellectual knowledge.
Nicolas Malebranche was a source for many philosophers of
Ontologism. In 1861, the Holy Office condemned Ontologism as unsafe for teaching (
tuto tradi non-possunt). Two major thinkers of this movement are
Vincenzo Gioberti and
Antonio Rosmini. == See also ==