Current Concepts Of Ontology Modern rationalism and the ideas of the Enlightenment reached their climax in the German idealism of Kant and Hegel. German idealists were convinced of the harmonious order of the real world, and they emphasized human dignity and freedom. However, in our own times, as the defects of capitalism came to light, social unrest spread, and as natural science developed to a high degree, the influence of idealism lessened. Karl Marx and his followers thought that matter alone was existence or the final cause. Logical positivists reject problems concerning beings or final cause because to them, these problems have no real meaning in philosophy, but rather belong to the realm of metaphysics.
Pragmatism also rejects the problems of essential nature because they are transcendental.
The pragmatists' view of God is that one can recognize the existence of God if using that concept gives one some practical effect of moral or emotional satisfaction. In Husserl's phenomenology, we have to exclude all preconceived ideas about the concept of recognition, and have to deal with the object itself as real fact. We have to use the method of phenomenological epoche. This Sache Selbst is dealt with as the concept of being by Husserl.