BENEKE, FRIEDRICH EDUARD. — Philosopher, born in Berlin on 17 February 1798, died there on 1 March 1854. The work of B., spiritually connected with that of
G. F. Fries (v.), develops in a twofold direction, negative and constructive. While he combats Hegelian idealism (an opposition that caused his suspension from teaching from 1822 until Hegel’s death), he opposes it with his psychologism, which places inner experience at the foundation of all philosophy: «Philosophiæ scopum a cognizione 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 anticipates positivism, leads him to deny the possibility of any rational cognition of the supersensible. A Herbartian in pedagogy, in Erziehungs- und Unterrichtslehre (2 vols., ibid. 1835–36) B. demonstrated considerable psychological insight.