Italy Secondaria di secondo grado – classe 5ª (esame di Stato) Philosophy

1. Contemporary philosophy

Reactions to Hegel · Positivism and science · 20th-century philosophy (at least four)

• Reactions to Hegel: Four Thinkers Who Answered Back – Hegel taught that reason drives history step by step. In the 1800s four thinkers disagreed in four ways. Schopenhauer said the world runs on a blind will. Kierkegaard said each person must choose for themselves. Marx said work and the economy, not ideas, move history. Nietzsche said old values can crack and people must make new ones.
• Positivism: Only What We Can Check Counts as Knowledge – Positivism says that real knowledge comes from observation and measurement, not from guesses about gods or hidden essences. Auguste Comte described three stages of thinking: religious, metaphysical and positive. Later thinkers asked how we know, how a claim is tested, and what happens when one counter-example appears. Reactions to positivism ask what science cannot reach.
• 20th-Century Philosophy: A Map of Main Schools – The 1900s were full of new schools. Husserl asked us to study experience as it appears. Freud found a large unconscious mind. Heidegger asked what it means to be. Wittgenstein showed that meaning lives in how words are used. Pragmatists tested ideas by results. Others added Marxism, political and Christian philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of language and hermeneutics.