German thought from the Enlightenment onward provided a basis for rethinking the world. In this course, we will investigate the history of these ideas throughout the long nineteenth century, from Kant's ground-breaking three "Critiques" (1781-90) to Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (1856-1939). Our goal will be threefold: 1) to provide a solid basis in the history of German thought, much of which defines theoretical debates to this day; 2) to consider the literary style of these thinkers; and 3) to question the course's own title by asking what it means to construct a history of ideas, of the mind, or of the spirit ("Geist"). Do ideas have their own history? If yes, how might we construct this, especially within German-speaking Central Europe in the long nineteenth century? And how might our own philosophies of history determine this kind of history of philosophy? Finally, how do the great German/Austrian thinkers from the second half of the nineteenth century put such a history into question — by unseating "ideas" and "philosophy" from their lofty positions and replacing these with dialectical materialism, radical historicism, and the psychology of the unconscious?