Ueberweg

UEBERWEG, FRIEDRICH (1826-1871), German historian of philosophy, was born on the 22nd of January 1826 at Leichlingen, in Rhenish Prussia, where his father was Lutheran pastor. Educated at Gottingen and Berlin, he qualified himself at Bonn as Privatdozent in philosophy (1852). In 1862 he was called to Konigsberg as extraordinary professor, and in 1867 he was advanced to the ordinary grade. He married in 1863, and died on the 9th of June 1871. His compendious History of Philosophy is remarkable for fullness of information, conciseness, accuracy and impartiality. At first he followed Beneke's empiricism, and strongly opposed the subjectivistic tendency of the Kantian system, maintaining in particular the objectivity of space and time, which involved him in a somewhat violent controversy. His own mode of thought he preferred later to describe as an ideal realism, which refused to reduce reality to thought, but asserted a parallelism between the forms of existence and the forms of knowledge. Beneke and Schleiermacher exercised most influence upon the development of his thought.