Wilhelm Traugott Krug

Wilhelm Traugott Krug (22 June 1770 – 12 January 1842) was a German philosopher and writer. He is considered to be part of the Kantian School of logic.[1]

Wilhelm Traugott Krug.

Life

Krug was born on June 22, 1770 near Wittenberg to a farming family.[2] He studied at Wittenberg under Franz Volkmar Reinhard and Karl Gottfried Jehnichen, at Jena under Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and at Göttingen.[3] After finishing his studies, he was employed as an adjunct professor at the University of Wittenberg.[2]

From 1801 to 1804 he was professor of philosophy at Frankfurt (Oder), after which he succeeded Immanuel Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he was professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig.[3] He fought in the War of Liberation (1813–14) as captain of mounted chasseurs. He became Kant's successor at the University of Königsberg after the faculty of philosophy elected him to Kant's chair of logic and metaphysics.[4]

He died at Leipzig on January 12, 1842.

Views

In philosophy his method was psychological; he attempted to explain the Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts of consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation in consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to Being. Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between transcendental, or pure, thought and things in themselves.[3]

Krug challenged Schelling to deduce his quill or pen from German Idealism's Philosophy of Nature. It was part of his empiricist objections to the new idealist philosophy.[5][4] In so doing, he challenged the thinking that particular, perceptually real things could be logically known from general concepts. It prompted Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to issue a critical response and forced him to deal with the issue of the knowledge of singulars.[4]

Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des XIX. Jahrhunderts (1835–1838) contains criticisms of Hegel and Schelling.[6]

He was a prolific writer on a great variety of subjects, excelling as a popularizer rather than as an original thinker. His work stimulated freedom of thought in religion and politics,[3] and he was a firm supporter of Jewish emancipation.[7]

Personal life

In 1804, Krug married Wilhelmine von Zenge (1780–1852),[8] the eldest daughter of a Prussian major-general. They had six children. Wilhelmine had previously been engaged to Heinrich von Kleist.[9]

Principal works
  • Briefe über den neuesten Idealism. Eine Fortsetzung der Briefe über die Wissenschaftslehre (1801)
  • Entwurf eines neuen Organon's der Philosophie oder Versuch über die Principien der philosophischen Erkenntniss (1801)
  • Fundamentalphilosophie (1803)
  • System der theoretischen Philosophie (1806–1810):
    • Denklehre oder Logik (1806)
    • Erkenntnisslehre oder Metaphysik (1808)
    • Geschmackslehre oder Aesthetik (1810)
  • Geschichte der Philosophie alter Zeit, vornehmlich unter Griechen und Römern (1815; 2nd ed., 1825)
  • System der praktischen Philosophie (1817–1819):
    • Dikäologie oder philosophische Rechtslehre (1817)
    • Aretologie oder philosophische Tugendlehre (1818)
    • Eusebiologie oder philosophische Religionslehre (1819)
  • Handbuch der Philosophie und der philosophischen Literatur (1820-1821; 3rd ed., 1828)
  • Meine Lebensreise (1825, 2nd ed., 1842), autobiography[10]
  • Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1827-1834; 2nd ed., 1832-1838)
  • Gesammelte Schriften (1830-1841; Collected works in 12 volumes):
    • 1-2: Theologische Schriften (1830)
    • 3-6: Politische und juridische Schriften (1834-1836)
    • 7-9: Philosophische Schriften (1839)
    • 10-12: Enzyklopädische und vermischte Schriften (1841)
  • Universalphilosophische Vorlesungen für Gebildete beiderlei Geschlechts (1831)
  • Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des XIX. Jahrhunderts (1835-1838):
    • Schelling und Hegel oder die neueste Philosophie im Vernichtungskriege mit sich selbst begriffen (1835)
    • Ueber das Verhältniß der Philosophie zum gesunden Menschenverstande, zur öffentlichen Meinung und zum Leben selbst, mit besonderer Hinsicht auf Hegel (1835)
    • Der hallische Löwe und die marzialischen Philosophen unserer Zeit oder neuester Krieg auf dem Gebiete der Philosophie (1838)

For a bibliography of Krug's writings see his autobiography Lebensreise (1842, pp. 343–360).

Notes
  1. Lapointe, Sandra (2019). Logic from Kant to Russell: Laying the Foundations for Analytic Philosophy. Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-18222-5.
  2. Klemme, Heiner F.; Kuehn, Manfred (2016). The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 441. ISBN 978-1-4742-5597-4.
  3. Chisholm 1911, p. 930.
  4. Giovanni, George Di; Harris, Henry Silton (2000). Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. p. 293. ISBN 978-0-87220-504-8.
  5. Stewart, Jon (2003). Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 637. ISBN 0521-82838-4.
  6. Chisholm 1911, p. 930. Reprinted in Krug's gesammelte Schriften, Neunter Band, Leipzig 1839.
  7. Gotthard Deutsch, S. Mannheimer, "Krug, Wilhelm Traugott", Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, New York 1904, pp. 578-579; Kayserling, M., Wilhelm Traugott Krug. Ein Blatt dankbarer Erinnerung, Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 56. Jg., Nr. 3, 15. Januar 1892, pp. 28-30. See also Levy, A., Geschichte der Juden in Sachsen, Berlin 1900, pp. 79, 91.
  8. Loch, Rudolf (2003). Kleist: eine Biographie (in German). Wallstein Verlag. p. 232. ISBN 978-3-89244-433-6.
  9. Heinrich von Kleist: Biography, Kleist Museum.
  10. Chisholm 1911, pp. 930–931.

References
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