Chapter 3: Knowledge
The Battle in Europe after Kant:
Relativism and Absolutism
Introducing Philosophy, 10th edition
Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins, and
Clancy Martin
Hegel (1770-1831)
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• German philosopher
• During the age of Napoleon, wrote his
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which
was the single most-powerful influence in
European philosophy—after Kant’s
works—for the next hundred years
• Argued there are many different views of
the world; none of them should be thought
to be wholly correct or incorrect in
exclusion of the others, but these various
views could still be compared and
evaluated according to a “dialectic,” in
which some views are shown to be more
developed, more inclusive, and more
adequate than others
New Theory of
Truth and Consciousness
• Rejects many key metaphors that have
ruled modern philosophy, especially
“correspondence” metaphors
• A holistic worldview in which
consciousness and the world are not
separate but rather are inseparably
integrated; there is no world apart from
consciousness
• Consciousness and the self [AU1: singular
is for compound predicate?]is not
• The truth “is the whole”—that is, the unity
of all of our consciousnesses and the world
• There is no saying what the world might
be apart from our conceptions of it
• This does not invite skepticism because
the world is nothing but the synthesis of
all possible conceptions of it
Absolute Idealism
• Reality is the product of mind—the cosmic
mind, Spirit
• Hegel rejects the division of reality
(introduced by Kant) into forms of
intuition and categories
• He provides a series of possible
conceptions of the world—or forms of
consciousness
Absolute Idealism
• These forms of consciousness emerge from
one another by way of improvement or
opposition, and there is always the
necessary sense that they are moving
toward a final end—the correct view, or
“absolute knowing”
Dialectic
• Truth is not static but rather develops, as
the human mind develops
• Truth is not being but rather becoming
• Knowledge develops through conflict: a
dialectic
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• German philosopher and social theorist
who formulated the philosophical basis for
one of the most cataclysmic political
ideologies of the twentieth century
• Received a doctorate in philosophy but
could not teach in Germany because of his
radical views
• Spent most of his life abroad, developing his
theories and writing for various journals and
newspapers
• His savage attacks on established beliefs and
advocacy of revolution were constant
throughout his life and forced him into exile
• As a young man, Marx wrote a devastating
critique of G. W. F. Hegel, whom he had
studied and followed as a young student and
whose concept of “dialectic” he used in
developing a social-political philosophy of
class conflict and economic determination
• Marx thought that Hegel had turned the
dialectic of history upside down
• It is not ideas that determine world history
but rather the details of history that
determine ideas
• From this notion of dialectic Marx
developed his view of history as class
conflict, replacing Hegel’s abstract “forms
of consciousness” with the
day-to-day battles of wages, jobs, and
profits
Spirit and God
• Spirit is God, but the concept embraces all
of humanity, history, and nature as well;
because the world itself develops and
changes, what is true for one generation
may become inadequate to the next
• But this is not relativism because we are
approaching an ever-more-adequate
conception of a truth that Hegel calls
Freedom
• Freedom is God’s purpose developing
through history and humanity
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
• German philosopher, famous pessimist, and
man of letters; his main work, The World as
Will and Idea, was an elaboration on Kant’s
philosophy
• Irrationality of the will became the
centerpiece of Schopenhauer’s philosophy
• The book was first published in 1819 but did
not become popular and earn its author the
fame he much desired until the second half of
the nineteenth century
Will and Illusion
• Elaborates on Kant’s central idea, the
distinction between the constituted world
of our experience and an underlying
reality, which could be found in the realm
of the Will
• Disagrees with Kant’s confidence in the
truth of the world of our experience
Will and Illusion
• Invoking the Buddhist conception of the
“veil of Maya,” Schopenhauer declares our
experience of the world to be largely
illusion; meanwhile, the Will, which Kant
takes to be rational, becomes an irrational,
impersonal, inner force in Schopenhauer
Will and Suffering
• The most evident manifestation of the Will
is sexual desire, the urge to reproduce
• Schopenhauer, like the Buddha, stresses
the futility of desire, and his philosophy
aims at giving us relief from the Will,
especially through the power of art
• But the Will is ultimate reality, and within
its purposeless striving dwell all of
humanity and nature
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• German philosopher who declared himself the
archenemy of traditional morality and
Christianity and spent much of his life writing
polemics against them; his most vicious attack
is in his book, Antichrist (1888)
• Although he is generally known as an
immoralist (a name he chose for himself),
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is actually an
attack on one conception of morality in order
to replace it with another
• The morality he attacks is the morality of
traditional Christianity as defined by Kant
• The morality he seeks to defend is the
ancient morality of personal excellence, as
defined by Aristotle
• Nietzsche refers to the former as “slave
morality,” suggesting that it is suitable
only for the weak and servile, and to the
latter as “master morality,” suggesting that
it is the morality of the strong and
independent few
Nietzsche on Truth and Relativism
• Attacks the traditional notions of truth and
argued that there can be as many equally
“true” worldviews as there are creative
people and societies
• Rationality begins to feel the threat of
relativism: not only is truth out the
window, but also coherence and
pragmatism are forced to take second
place
Nietzsche on Truth and Relativism
• A paradox: truth is error
• Emphasis on excitement, adventure,
heroism, creativity, and what Nietzsche
generally calls the will to power
Wilhelm Dilthey and Historicism
• Dilthey’s historicism: truth and rationality
are relative to particular peoples at
particular times in history, and overall
comparison of them, with the intention of
finding out which is “true,” is totally
mistaken
• The apparent relativistic character of
historicism provoked a reaction in the
form of the phenomenology of
Edmund Husserl