The phrase “in the aftermath of German Idealism” refers to the intellectual period following the peak of German Idealism, particularly after the works of philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. German Idealism was a major philosophical movement that explored the nature of reality, consciousness, and the relationship between mind and world, emphasizing that reality is shaped by the mind’s activity.
The “aftermath” indicates a time when thinkers began to react to, critique, and move beyond German Idealism. Some philosophers tried to address perceived shortcomings or contradictions in Idealism, while others sought alternative approaches to the problems it posed. This period gave rise to new schools of thought, including Marxism, existentialism, and phenomenology, all of which, to varying degrees, grappled with German Idealism’s legacy.
Husserl’s phenomenology can be seen as a response to this aftermath. Husserl sought to address some of the unresolved problems of German Idealism, particularly the tension between subjectivity and objectivity. While German Idealists like Hegel emphasized the absolute unity of thought and being, Husserl sought to ground philosophy in the direct description of experience, emphasizing the intentionality of consciousness—how consciousness is always directed toward something. His method of epoché (bracketing assumptions) aimed to set aside metaphysical speculations about the nature of reality, returning philosophy to a study of phenomena as they appear to consciousness.
In this way, phenomenology can be seen as both a continuation of and a response to the issues raised by German Idealism, especially its focus on the role of the subject in constituting reality. Husserl, like the Idealists, was concerned with the conditions of knowledge and experience but took a different methodological path to address these questions.
