Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, studied with Russell in Cambridge from 1911 to 1914 and worked again in Cambridge (with some interruptions) from 1929 to 1947.
His first book, [...]

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 [...]

Gottlob Frege

A German philosopher-mathematician, Gottlob Frege was primarily interested in understanding both the nature of mathematical truths and the means whereby they are ultimately to be justified. In general, he held that what justifies mathematical statements is reason alone; their justification proceeds without the benefit or need of either perceptual information or [...]

Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey saw his work as contributing to a ‘Critique of Historical Reason’ which would expand the scope of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by examining the epistemological conditions of the human sciences as well as of the natural sciences. Both kinds of science take their departure from ordinary life and experience, but whereas the [...]

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900)
Appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Basel when he was just 24 years old, Nietzsche was expected to secure his reputation as a brilliant young scholar with his first book, Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy ) (1872). But that book did not look much like a [...]

Wilhelm von Humboltd

Humboltd, Wilhelm von (1767–1835)
Along with Schiller and Goethe, Humboldt was one of the chief representatives of Weimar classicism, a movement that aspired to revive German culture along the lines of ancient Greece. Humboldt’s philosophical significance resides mainly in two areas: political theory and the philosophy of language. In political theory he was one of the [...]

Johann Gottfried Herder

Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803)
Herder was a central figure in the German intellectual renaissance of the late eighteenth century. His achievement spanned virtually every domain of philosophy, and his influence, especially upon Romanticism and German idealism, was immense. In social and political philosophy he played a prominent role in the development of historicism and nationalism. In [...]

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich (1743–1819)
Polemicist and literary figure, Jacobi was an outspoken and effective defender of individualism. He accused philosophers of conceptualizing existence according to the requirements of explanation, thus allowing no room for individual freedom or for a personal God. In a series of polemics that influenced the reception of Kant, Jacobi applied his formula, [...]

Johann Georg Hamann

Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88)
Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, [...]

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 [...]