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German Idealism begins with Kant's Copernican turn.
Kant objects to the emphasis on divine infinity in rationalist philosophy, and he puts man at the center.
For Kant, this finitude divides into three moments: theoretical reason, practical reason, and the power of judgment.
Kant creates a system, although this system does not have an ultimate foundation,
which is why his successors will attempt to locate such a ground.
This can be done through the pure subject, as in Fichte, nature or art, as in Schelling,
or perhaps as in Hegel, by understanding the system itself as a self-reflexive totality.
Hegel introduces two moments: first, that all the elements of the system define each other,
second, that this self-definition is a historical movement.
Hegel can in this way be said to complete the system of German idealism.
After Hegel, philosophers like Schelling, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche
would try to locate a moment in the system that cannot be integrated into its order,
which is why one can on the one hand say that German Idealism is the completion of absolute subjectivity,
on the other hand pushes it towards it limit.
In this sense, modern philosophy with its emphasis on finitude and the fractured subject
can be understood as a continuation of the program of German Idealism.