ANSWER
Hegel built on Kant’s ideas by rejecting the strict separation between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. While Kant argued that we can only know the phenomenal world (shaped by our cognitive structures), Hegel claimed that reality is accessible to reason because it is inherently rational. He introduced the concept of Geist (Spirit or Mind), which evolves dialectically through history, reconciling subject and object, thought and reality. For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed (as in Kant) but develop dynamically through a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This means that universal and necessary knowledge is not just a product of static mental structures but emerges through the historical and logical unfolding of reason itself. In this way, Hegel transforms Kant’s transcendental idealism into absolute idealism, where reality and thought are ultimately unified.