Karl Marx (contd-5)

German Ideology paved the way to German bourgeois revolution at the end of 18th century and the beginning of 19th century. The following persons took the lead in this respect.

Immanuel Kant ( 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was aGerman philosopher who is considered the central figure of modern philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts of the human mind structure human experience, that reason is the source of morality, that aesthetics arises from a faculty of disinterested judgment, that space and time are forms of our understanding, and that the world as it is "in-itself" is unknowable. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy, akin to Copernicus' reversal of the age-old belief that the sun revolved around the earth. 
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (

 May 19, 1762 – January 27, 1814), a German philosopher, became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings ofImmanuel Kant. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often erroneously attributed to Hegel.















                               Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was aGerman philosopher of the late Enlightenment. He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the continentaltradition of philosophy, has become increasingly influential in the analytic tradition as well. Although he remains a divisive figure, his canonical stature within Western philosophy is universally recognized.
Hegel was a lecturer in Berlin University from 1818 to 1831. He performed outstanding work in the expansion of Dialectical Methods. He explained history as the process of Dialectical processes. But his Philosophy was based on consciousness or supreme power.Concerning the rational structure of the Absolute, Hegel, following the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, argued that “what is rational is real and what is real is rational.” This must be understood in terms of Hegel’s further claim that the Absolute must ultimately be regarded as pure Thought, or Spirit, or Mind, in the process of self-development. The logic that governs this developmental process is dialectic. The dialectical method involves the notion that movement, or process, or progress, is the result of the conflict of opposites. Traditionally, this dimension of Hegel’s thought has been analysed in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Although Hegel tended to avoid these terms, they are helpful in understanding his concept of the dialectic. The thesis, then, might be an idea or a historical movement. Such an idea or movement contains within itself incompleteness that gives rise to opposition, or an antithesis, a conflicting idea or movement. As a result of the conflict a third point of view arises, a synthesis, which overcomes the conflict by reconciling at a higher level the truth contained in both the thesis and antithesis. This synthesis becomes a new thesis that generates another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis, and in such a fashion the process of intellectual or historical development is continually generated. Hegel thought that Absolute Spirit itself (which is to say, the sum total of reality) develops in this dialectical fashion toward an ultimate end or goal. 
For Hegel, therefore, reality is understood as the Absolute unfolding dialectically in a process of self-development. As the Absolute undergoes this development, it manifests itself both in nature and in human history. Nature is Absolute Thought or Being objectifying itself in material form. Finite minds and human history are the process of the Absolute manifesting itself in that which is most kin to itself, namely, spirit or consciousness. In The Phenomenology of Mind Hegel traced the stages of this manifestation from the simplest level of consciousness, through self-consciousness, to the advent of reason.  

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872) was a Germanphilosopher and anthropologist best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity which strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated liberalism, atheism, andmaterialism. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development ofdialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx