Krause Karl Christian Friedrich (1781–1832), German philosopher representative of a tendency to develop Kant’s views in the direction of pantheism and mysticism. Educated at Jena, he came under the influence of Fichte and Schelling. Taking his philosophical starting point as Fichte’s analysis of self-consciousness, and adopting as his project a ‘spiritualized’ systematic elaboration of the philosophy of Spinoza (somewhat like the young Schelling), he arrived at a position that he called panentheism. According to this, although nature and human consciousness are part of God or Absolute Being, the Absolute is neither exhausted in nor identical with them. To some extent, he anticipated Hegel in invoking an ‘end of history’ in which the finite realm of human affairs would reunite with the infinite essence in a universal moral and ‘spiritual’ order. See also FICHTE, PANTHEISM , SCHELLIN. J.P.Su.