Büchner, Ludwig

BÜCHNER, LUDWIG. - German philosopher, b. in Darmstadt on 29 March 1824, d. there on 1 May 1899. A physician, he came under the influence of Moleschott to such an extent that he became one of the most illustrious popularizers of materialism. His work Kraft und Stoff (1855) achieved an extraordinary success and was the breviary of the new philosophical current throughout the second half of the nineteenth century; between 1855 and 1889 it went through 16 editions in German and numerous translations. The scandal it aroused, however, cost him his university chair, so that he returned to the practice of medicine in his native city. B.'s system is of an elementary simplism: everything is reduced to matter and force, eternal elements, which combined form the sum of the phenomena that we call the world. In matter all energies have their seat, even those called spiritual: it is therefore to be regarded as the original foundation of every existence.

Besides Kraft und Stoff B. wrote Natur und Geist (Leipzig 1876); Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur (ibid. 1889); Das goldene Zeitalter oder das Leben in der Geschichte (Berlin 1891); Darwinismus und Sozialismus (ibid. 1894), etc.

Felicissimo Tinivella