Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Rammenau, May 19, 1762-Berlin, January 29, 1814) was a German philosopher of great importance in the history of Western thought. As a follower of Kant's critical philosophy and a forerunner of both Schelling and Hegel's philosophy of spirit, he is considered one of the fathers of so-called German idealism. He is the creator of the dialectical triad in his thesis-antithesis-synthesis terminology, which is usually attributed to Hegel, although he used the name abstract-negative-concrete.