Von Kant bis Hegel

What it is

This two-volume scholarly work by Richard Kroner was published in Tübingen by J. C. B. Mohr in 1921. It belongs to a series of outlines of the philosophical sciences edited by Fritz Medicus and others. The first volume is titled 'Von der Vernunftkritik zur Naturphilosophie', from critique of reason to philosophy of nature. The second is 'Von der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie des Geistes', from philosophy of nature to philosophy of spirit. The copy in the record was digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from the University of Toronto.

Why it matters

Kroner's book is one of the early twentieth-century studies that placed Hegel at the end of a line of German thinkers running from Kant. It shows how scholars organised the history of philosophy, with Hegel as the culmination of a development rather than an isolated figure. Reading it alongside Hegel's own texts helps students see how later writers built their own accounts of his thought.

Look closer

• Why might a historian of philosophy place Hegel at the end of a sequence that begins with Kant?
• What does the book's title suggest about the author's view of how ideas develop?
• Which of Hegel's own works would you need to read to test Kroner's account?