# German Idealism — Tradition German Idealism is the tradition running from [[Immanuel Kant]]'s "Copernican turn" (the mind constitutes experience) through Fichte and Schelling to [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]]'s system of dialectical reason and freedom. Its monuments are Kant's *[[Critique of Pure Reason]]* and Hegel's *[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]*. ## Why it matters on the right German Idealism is a **shared ancestor of opposed politics**, which is exactly what makes it interesting for this vault. The *left*-Hegelians produced [[Karl Marx]] and, downstream, [[Critical Theory]] — the right's chief intellectual enemy. But the *right*-Hegelian line bequeathed something the right has quietly drawn on: an organic, ethical conception of the **state** as the realization of a people's shared life, standing above the liberal contract of consenting individuals (see [[Contractarianism]]). This statist, anti-individualist strand resurfaces in nationalist and authoritarian-conservative thought and in the post-liberal critique of liberalism's thin, contractual self. ## Relationship It is the philosophical parent of both [[Critical Theory]] (via Marx) and the [[Philosophy of History]] branch (Hegel's directional history). See the [[Philosophy in Right-Wing Thought Hub]] MOC.