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The Russian historian Georgi Plekhanov (1940) viewed Spinozism as one of the direct, historical forerunners of Marxist dialectical materialism. The last of the great trio of classical rationalists was Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). A German philosopher, mathematician, lawyer, and diplomat, Leibniz was a tireless worker for scientific cooperation throughout the nations of Europe. He maintained active memberships in all three of the major European scientific academies: the Royal Society (of England), the French Academy, and the Prussian Academy.

Hegel was a firmly committed historicist. Because only “ideas” are “real,” what needed explaining was the history of the progression of ideas. Central to Hegel’s dialectic was the concept of contradiction or contradictory ideas. , freedom and slavery, democracy and totalitarianism, good and evil), Hegel propounded the radical causal proposition that every idea (or thesis) produces its contradiction (or antithesis) (Popper 1966, p. 315). The contradictory theses and antitheses engage in conflict and struggle, producing syntheses that contain elements of both contradictions.

161). He started by observing that no one would contend seriously that an idea such as “pain” or “itching” could exist independently from the one who experienced it. ) Similarly, ideas like “red” and “sweet” are inherently objects of perception. That is, are chairs and trees annihilated and then recreated during intervals when they are not being perceived? Berkeley’s answer was most ingenious. Because, to him, nothing could exist without its being perceived, in the time intervals when chairs and trees are not being perceived by human beings, they must exist in some other mind, which, for him, was the mind of God.