Johann Friedrich Herbart

From 1798, Herbart developed a ‘realistic’ alternative to the idealistic philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. His theoretical philosophy, which centres around metaphysics and psychology, is sharply critical of the idealistic concept of subjectivity. His practical philosophy rests on ethics and educational theory, each of which presumes the existence of the other.
Herbart laid the [...]

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55)
Although Kierkegaard’s name has come to be chiefly associated with writings on philosophical themes, his various publications covered a wide range that included contributions to literary criticism, discourses on specifically religious topics and forays into polemical journalism. Born in Copenhagen in 1813, he led an outwardly uneventful existence there until his [...]

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860)
Schopenhauer, one of the great prose-writers among German philosophers, worked outside the mainstream of academic philosophy. He wrote chiefly in the first half of the nineteenth century, publishing Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation ) , Volume 1 in 1818 and Volume 2 in 1844, but [...]

Jakob Fries

Fries, Jacob Friedrich (1773–1843)
Fries was a German post-Kantian philosopher, active chiefly in Jena and Heidelberg. He was a personal as well as a philosophical enemy of Hegel. Fries’ version of Kantian philosophy opposed the speculative idealism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, developing an ‘anthropological critique of reason’. Fries also emphasized subjectivity in ethics and religion. [...]

Johann Friedrich Herbart

Herbart, Johann Friedrich (1776–1841)
From 1798, Herbart developed a ‘realistic’ alternative to the idealistic philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. His theoretical philosophy, which centres around metaphysics and psychology, is sharply critical of the idealistic concept of subjectivity. His practical philosophy rests on ethics and educational theory, each of which presumes the existence of the [...]