In The Phenomenology of Mind, idealist philosopher Georg Hegel (1770 1831) defied the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and developed his own dialectical alternative. Remarkable for the breadth and profundity of its philosophical insights, this work combines psychology, logic, moral philosophy, and history to form a comprehensive view that encompasses all forms of civilization. Its three divisions consist of the subjective mind (dealing with anthropology and psychology), the objective mind (concerning philosophical issues of law and morals), and the...

Hegel wrote this classic as an introduction to a series of lectures on the "philosophy of history" -- a novel concept in the early nineteenth century. With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of its age, fashioned by its antecedents and contemporary circumstances, and serving as a model for the future. The author himself appears to have regarded this book as a popular introduction to his philosophy as a whole, and it remains the most readable and accessible...

What is morally permissible, and what is morally obligatory? These questions form the core of a vast amount of philosophical reasoning. In his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant developed a basis for the answers.
In this landmark work, the German philosopher asks what sort of maxim might function as a guide to appropriate action under a given set of circumstances. By universalizing such a maxim, would morally permissible behavior not become clear? Suppose that everyone were to behave in accordance with this maxim. If everyone followed the maxim in...

This 1790 polemic by one of philosophy's most important and influential figures attempts to establish the principles that support the faculty of judgment. Kant's third critique after Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Pure Reason remains one of the most important works on human reason. The Critique of Judgment informs the very basis of modern aesthetics by establishing the almost universally accepted framework for debate of aesthetic issues.
As in his previous critiques, Kant seeks to establish a priori principles. The first part of this work...

Complete and unabridged, this edition of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 1821 classic offers a comprehensive view of the philosopher's influential system. In the "Philosophy of Right, " Hegel applies his most important concept the dialectics to law, rights, morality, the family, economics, and the state. The last of Hegel's works to be published in his lifetime, this volume combines moral and political philosophy to form a sociologic view dominated by the idea of the state. Hegel defines universal right as the synthesis between the thesis of an individual acting in accordance with the law and...