• Examines Germany's transition from a traditional feudal society to a modern, industrialised society, exploring how philosophy relates to the social and historical developments
• Discusses the idea that German philosophy forms one of the most enlightening responses to the problems of 'modernity'
• Covers all the significant thinkers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, but also includes some of the lesser known philosophers of the time
• Highlights the rather neglected ideas of early German Romantic philosophy, including the works of Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schleirmacher, and Schelling

  
German philosophy remains the core of modern philosophy. Without Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Husserl there would be no Anglo-American 'analytical' style of philosophy. Moreover, without Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the 'Continental Philosophy' of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou, and Zizek, which has had major effects on humanities subjects in recent years, is incomprehensible. Knowledge of German philosophy is, then, an indispensable prerequisite of theoretically informed study in the humanities as a whole. 
 
German Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction discusses the idea that German philosophy forms one of the most revealing responses to the problems of 'modernity'. The rise of the modern natural sciences and the related decline of religion raises a series of questions, which recur throughout German philosophy, concerning the relationships between knowledge and faith, reason and emotion, and scientific, ethical, and artistic ways of seeing the world. 
 
There are also many significant philosophers who are generally neglected in most existing English-language treatments of German philosophy, which tend to concentrate on the canonical figures. This Very Short Introduction will include reference to these thinkers and suggests how they can be used to question more familiar German philosophical thought.