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Utilitarianism, though formalized earlier in the end of 18^th century, continued as an influential philosophy with John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism published in the mid-19^th century. Utilitarianism is a philosophy that seeks to maximizes utility or pleasure (often, with questionable accuracy, retold as the most good for the most people). A revival of interest in Kant occurred: his philosophy was a deontological (philosophies emphasizing the intentions with which an action is carried out, not its effects) categorical imperative; it’s the idea that some actions are categorically morally impermissible regardless of circumstance. A similar revival occurred regarding Hegel’s existentialist ideas. Comte’s positivism, a philosophy of science and rationality, grew to prominence during this period.

                The 1800s also saw the high mark of the Industrial Revolution, and many of these philosophies grew out of that. Most notably, Marx was heavily influenced by the Industrial Revolution, and while he produced an incredible quantity of philosophical thought, his eponymous political philosophy gained the most attention—the idea that societies pass through a number of stages of economic distribution, where the ideal end and equilibrium is a stateless, equal community (socialism). In contrast, transcendentalism lashed back against this sort of economic and factual determinism, arguing instead that higher levels of human understanding could be occurred by transcending the limits of reason and logic.