This course begins with the ideas of Hegel concerning reason, reality, and historical development. Its next main focus is Marx, who began his intellectual life as a Young Hegelian. It then moves to Kierkegaard, who consciously eschewed the Hegelian approach to philosophy and religion, emphasized the subjective, and in the process emerged as one of the foremost precursors of existentialism. The course concludes with Nietzsche, who sought to uncover the true origins of conventional morality and religious belief and thus set the stage for an epochal revaluation of values.