BENEEK, FRIEDRICH EDUARD

BENEEK, FRIEDRICH EDUARD. – Philosopher, b. in Berlin on 17 Feb. 1798, d. there on 1 Mar. 1854. B.’s work, spiritually connected with that of G. F. Fries (q.v.), unfolds along a twofold path, negative and constructive. While indeed he combats Hegelian idealism (an opposition which, from 1822 until Hegel’s death, cost him suspension from teaching), he opposes to it his own psychologism, which posits inner experience as the foundation of all philosophy: “Philosophiae scopum a cognitione per experientiam acquisita attingendum esse” (De veris philosophiae initiis, Berlin 1820). Starting from Kantianism, he seeks to blend it with associationist empiricism and with the philosophy of the Scottish school (Die neue Psychologie, 1845). In his principal work, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft (ibid. 1833), B. denies the subsistence of the soul in the sense of a sustained psychic reality, admitting only a series of predispositions (faculties) activated by external stimuli. His empiricism, which already foreshadows positivism, leads him to deny the possibility of any rational cognition of the supersensible. In pedagogy, a follower of Herbart, B. in Erziehungs- und Unterrichtslehre (2 vols., ibid. 1835–36) gave proof of notable psychological insight.