Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) German idealist philosopher.  Hegel constructed his philosophical system in the wake of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. He is often seen as a supremely metaphysical thinker who attempted to defend metaphysics against Kant’s assault. But his relationship to traditional metaphysics is complex. He does not straightforwardly accept or straightforwardly reject it; he “sublates” (aufhebt) it, that is at once destroys, preserves and elevates it. Hegel associates “metaphysics” and the “metaphysical” with thinking and with thoughts or …

existentialism existentialism In the narrower and more popular of its several senses, “existentialism” designates the worldview and depiction of the human condition advanced by Sartre and others (notably Camus (1913–60)) in the shadow of World War II. More broadly and significantly conceived, it refers to the radicalized “subjective turn” initiated by the mid nineteenth-century reaction of Kierkegaard (1813–55) against Hegel’s idealism, and developed during the second quarter of the twentieth century in opposition to objectivity-oriented (naturalistic and positivistic as well …

Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976) Heidegger defined his life project as asking the“question of being” – the question, “What makes entities of various sorts (rocks, tools, thoughts, numbers, etc.) the entities they are?”  In Being and Time (1927), he argues that the question of being must be prior to all other philosophical questions. “Regional”or “ontic” inquiries of various sorts (e.g., psychology, physics, epistemology, poetics) always operate with a set of tacit assumptions about the nature of the entities they study. These uncritical …