One common theme in post-Kantian philosophy was an attempt to overcome the remaining divisions between noumena and phenomena, and to reconcile the distinct faculties of sensibility and understanding in to a unified whole. According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), this was an ongoing and dynamic process, which recognized the fundamental inter connectedness of all things. Thus, human history it self is to be understood as the collective subject—the Geist—coming to a state of self-understanding through the dialectic process of overcoming opposition until it reaches Absolute Truth, in which lingering divisions are finally dissolved. It follows that the job of the Hegelian philosopher is to provide an encyclopedic assimilation of almost every branch of human knowledge as part of a rational reconstruction of human development toward the ultimate goal of achieving synthesis through the contention of thesis and antithesis.
These themes are perhaps best illustrated in Hegel’s political philosophy. Whereas Kant maintained that human freedom consists in a constant opposition between duty and inclination, Hegel argued that this is overcome in obedience to the state, a collective entity that is therefore better placed to realize our individual will. Nevertheless, while the metaphysical prioritization of the state over the individual followed from Hegel’s postKantian methodology, it was also symbiotic with the rise of German Nationalism and the increasing power of the Prussian State under Frederick II the Great.
Hegel remains one of the most influential post-Kantian philosophers. Perhaps most consequentially, his underlying dialectical metaphysics was recast in terms of economic processes and class consciousness in the philosophy of Marxism.
