1001Philosophers

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel vs Immanuel Kant

Hegel's philosophy is the great post-Kantian completion of the Kantian project, an attempt to push critical philosophy to its absolute fulfillment. The relation between Kant and Hegel structures all of nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental philosophy.

At a glance

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelImmanuel Kant
Dates1770 – 18311724 – 1804
NationalityGermanGerman
EraModernModern
Movements German Idealism, Continental Philosophy German Idealism, Enlightenment
Profile Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel → Immanuel Kant →

Where they agree

Both held that the analysis of human cognitive and practical faculties is the central task of philosophy, both treated freedom as the highest practical category, and both held that knowledge is mediated rather than immediate. Hegel's vocabulary is unintelligible without Kant's behind it.

Where they disagree

Kant restricted knowledge to appearances and held that things in themselves are unknowable; the categorical imperative is the moral law as it constrains a finite rational will from outside its empirical desires. Hegel rejected both restrictions: the thing in itself is not unknowable but rather the appearance grasped in its full development; the moral law is not opposed to the empirical agent but realized in the rational institutions of social life. Kant's philosophy is a philosophy of finite reason; Hegel's is a philosophy of reason that develops to its own absolute self-knowledge.

Representative quotes

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  • “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”

    Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counter

  • “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”

    What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

  • “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

    Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. | Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

Immanuel Kant

  • “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

    Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

  • “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

    Der kategorische Imperativ, der überhaupt nur aussagt, was Verbindlichkeit sei, ist: handle nach einer Maxime, welche zugleich als ein allgemeines Gesetz gelten kann.

  • “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

    Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6. | Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built. | From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. | Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.

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