1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ueberweg, Friedrich

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 Göttingen and Berlin, he qualified himself at Bonn as Privatdozent in philosophy (1852). In 1862 he was called to Königsberg 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.

Works.—System der Logik (1857; 5th ed., 1882; Eng. trans. of 3rd ed. by T. M. Lindsay, 1871); Grundriss der Gesch. der Phil. (1863–1866, 8th ed., M. Heinze, 1894–1898; Eng. trans., G. S. Morris, 1872; 4th ed., 1885); an essay (1861) on the authenticity and order of Plato’s writings, crowned by the Imperial Academy of Vienna; Schiller als. Hist. und Phil. (published by Brasch from his papers, Leipzig, 1884). See F. A. Lange, Friedrich Ueberweg (Berlin, 1871); M. Brasch, Die Welt- und Lebensanschauung Friedrich Ueberwegs (Leipzig, 1889).