It used to be that the world was divided between people that were unconsciously thinking like Plato and others that were thinking like Aristotle.This expressed itself in Religion and Politics from the time of Plato and Aristotle until Kant and Hegel. Since that time the world has been divided in this new way.
The old division was like you had some mystics like Rav Avraham Abulafia who were going with Plato and Neo Platonic thought as opposed to the Rationalists like the Rambam.
And this original division was based on the ancient question how is change possible? To Plato the forms were unchanging and this imperfect world changes. To Aristotle change is from potential to action.And action is the perfect thing. Aristotle changed the old paradigm in which change was considered imperfect.
This expressed itself in Christianity also staring from Augustine (Plato)-and going largely towards the Russian Church.The west went with Aquinas (Aristotle) and based on his theory of natural law evolved societies of based on natural rights.
Since Descartes however the major question has been the mind body problem and this found its major type of solution in Kant and Hegel.
Before Kant the question was between the rationalist and empiricists which was a natural division considering the mind body problem. But both thought the mind perceives. To Kant the mind has a
active part in the representation (that is the way Schopenhauer understands Kant). At any rate, Hegel did not think the mind had any limitations, but progress by a kind of dialectal process.
Since then the world has been divided between these two.
Where things are going to go from here is therefore simple. This same process will simply continue. There will be periods in which individual autonomy seems to be the dominant view. There will be other periods in which the State is the key factor.
I don't know why this is that after two great thinkers, that everyone after that seems to automatically adopt either one or the other's way of thinking, and considers it totally natural and simple common sense. Clearly Rav Kook was thinking about the State as some kind of Divine goal.
To some degree it is true that Kant opened the door to faith by limiting reason , but he also unwittingly opened it for people to believe in noise and fury.
The ancient question on which all philosophy was based how is change possible seems silly to us today. But the "Mind-Body" question is at the center of all philosophy, and you can't ignore the question of the "State-as opposed to the Individual" either.
I believe this thesis here is central to understanding the world we live in today and it is likely to be the key for the next thousand years of history. Then at some point some other question will arise and there again will be two thinkers that tackle it in two dramatically different way and they will determine the next thousand years of history etc.
That is the first question was how is change possible? That question had slow beginnings until it reached its peak in Plato and Aristotle. Then had a slow winding down process--resulting in the synthesis of Plotinus. Then the Mind Body Mind Soul problem came to its peak in Kant and Hegel and since then there also has been a kind of winding down process --trying to create synthesis of the approaches of both. At some point some other unforeseen question will arise and the same process will begin again.
It is important to listen to the Rambam about the importance of learning the Written Law תנ''ך the Oral Law גמרא Physics and Metaphysics. Though the Rambam was referring openly to Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus, still I think Kant and Hegel should be added.
Hegel has been treated unfairly. In my mind, he excels and goes beyond Kant. He was not a statist in the sense that Popper accused him being. In fact Popper's critique on him is mainly false
as Walter Kaufman pointed out.
