906 NINETEENTH-CENTURYPHILOSOPHY
worker and called for a change in the social and economic order. Marx also raised
questions about Hegel, focusing his attack on Hegel’s concept of “Idea.”
Toward the end of the century, Nietzsche added his voice to those of the skep-
tics about nineteenth-century progress. Nietzsche decried the lack of passion
brought on by the comforts of the Industrial Revolution. He called on thinking
persons to recognize that there are no standards, that “God is dead,” and he wished
them to assert their “will to power” in overcoming the comfortable mediocrity of
his age.
Though Nietzsche died in 1900, the nineteenth century really did not come to an
end, in terms of ideas, until 1914. In that year, all the impressive technology that had
been developed over the previous century was brought to bear in World War I with
the goal of killing people. A system of alliances that had been established in the
mid-nineteenth century on the basis of rational, pragmatic considerations ensured
that virtually the entire world was involved in the struggle. By the time the war
ended, the nineteenth-century optimistic assumption of progress had died.
There are a number of general introductions to nineteenth-century philosophy.
Among the classics in this area are Étienne Gilson,Recent Philosophy: Hegel to the
Present (New York: Random House, 1966); the appropriate works from Frederick
Copleston’s series,A History of Philosophy: Volume VII, Fichte to Nietzsche;
Volume VIII, Bentham to Russell;and Volume IX, Maine de Biran to Sartre(New
York: Image Doubleday, 1963, 1966, 1974); and from Emile Brehier’s series,The
History of Philosophy: Volume 6, The Nineteenth Century: Period of Systems,
1800–1850; Volume 7, Contemporary Philosophy, Since 1850,translated by Joseph
Thomas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Karl Löwith,From Hegel
to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought,translated by David
E. Green (1964; reprinted New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); and W.T.
Jones,Kant and the Nineteenth Century,2nd edition, revised (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1975). More recent general surveys include Roger Scruton,
A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein(London:
Routledge, 1984); Wallace I. Matson,A New History of Philosophy: Volume II,
Modern(San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987); and C.L. Ten, ed.,
Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 7: The Nineteenth Century(London:
Routledge, 1994). The following is a sampling of the many books on specific top-
ics from this era: William Barrett,Irrational Man(New York: Doubleday, 1958);
David Knight,The Age of Science: The Scientific World-View in the Nineteenth
Century(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); Robert C. Solomon,Hegel to Existentialism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); David Jasper and T.R. Wright, eds.,The
Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe: Essays in Nineteenth-Century Literature
and Religion(London: Macmillan, 1989); Mary Ellen Waithe,A History of Women
Philosophers: Volume III, Modern Women Philosophers, 1600–1900(Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1991); and Mark Francis and John Morrow,
A History of English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century(London:
Duckworth, 1994).
