I'll try to keep it short. As a consequence, some of these might be less than intelligible.
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Originally posted by duckznutz
In metaphysics, Kant's key thought was that, rather than reality shaping our thoughts, our thoughts shape reality. So what we perceive is not reality as it is in itself (he *did* think that this existed as well), but rather reality as it is for us. In ethics, the certain idea is the categorical imperative, "Always act in such a way as to treat others as ends in themselves, and not merely as means."
Heiddegger's main concern was to "ask the meaning of Being". His most famous work, "Being and Time", attempts to come to a formulation of the question through an analysis of the conditions of possibility of human existence.
Hume was an "empiricist", meaning he thought that all of our knowledge came from sense perception. On this basis, he denied the existence of causality and the self. He is also well known for an argument 'disprooving' the existence of miracles.
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4 Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel
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Hegel's main work, "The Phenomenology of Spirit", attempts to trace the development of the human spirit, which is, for Hegel, actualized through the constant tension between the way the self is "in itself" and "for itself". NB -- Sartre is essentially a pessimistic Hegel.
He held the position that, because of the success of science (since Galileo, philosopher have had problems with 'science envy'), the only tasks philosophy should busy itself with are 'language problems'. That is, figuring out how langauge works, and solving apparent contradictions.
Nietzsche believed that most people are sheep. I want to note that this was not because he was an elitist -- on some level, he certainly believed that all people were capable of leading a fulfilled life, but most choose not to. His version of the fulfilled life is notably characterized by virtues like strength and power -- he believed that the truth is frightening, and in order to face the truth, one must be strong.
The difficulty with Socrates is that he did not leave behind any written work. The only things we know about him come from Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (and principally Plato). He seems to have held a doctrine of 'forms', semi-mystical objects that instantiate various properties of objects -- for example, the form of justice, or redness, or whatever. The goal of the philosopher is to throw off the illusionary 'real-ness' of this world in order to view the world of the forms. He is also well known for the "Socratic Method", in which an instructor teaches a student by asking him/her questions.
Believed that the goodness of an action was dependent on its utility -- the best action would be the action that made the most people the happiest. Almost no philosophers today are pure utilitarians.
See Socrates.
Said something about everything. Probably the best known Aristotelian doctrines are that everything is composed of form and matter. The form makes something what it is, and the matter -- well, pretty clear what this is. In his ethical theory, he taught that every virtue is a mean between two extremes; so, for example, courage is a mean between cowardice and foolhardiness.
Hobbes believed that, in order to prevent violence within the state, the state needed to have a supreme monarch, one which had no duties to the people except maintaining his own power. His famous quote is that, in the state of nature (before government), the life of man is "nasty, brutish, and short".
He believed that, since what he had been taught contained many errors, it was best to start from the beginning, doubting everything that was possible to be doubted. He noted that one cannot doubt one's own existence, since the existence of the doubt presupposes someone to be doubting -- this is the origin of his famous
cogito ergo sum -- I think therefore I am.
So that's 3000 years of philosophy in a nutshell. Sorry, but I don't know anything about Schlegel, other than that he was a German philosopher of the 19th century.