Beneke, Friedrich Eduard

BENEKE, FRIEDRICH EDUARD. - Philosopher, b. in Berlin on 17 February 1798, d. there on 1 March 1854. B.'s work, spiritually connected with that of G. F. Fries (v.), develops in a twofold direction, negative and constructive. While indeed he combats Hegelian idealism (an aversion that from 1822 until Hegel's death caused his suspension from teaching), he opposes to it his psychologism, which places inner experience at the basis of all philosophy: «Philosophiæ scopum a cognitione per experientiam acquisita attingendum esse» (De veris philosophiae initiis, Berlin 1820). Starting from Kantianism, he seeks to amalgamate it with associationist empiricism and with the philosophy of the Scottish school (Die neue Psychologie, ibid. 1845). In his principal work, Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft (ibid. 1833), B. denies the existence of the soul in the sense of a substantial 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. A Herbartian in pedagogy, B. in Erziehungsund Unterrichtslehre (2 vols., ibid. 1835-36) gave proof of remarkable psychological penetration.