DUHRING, KARL EUGEN. - Philosopher, b. in Berlin in 1833, d. in Nowawes in 1921. From 1863 to 1877 he was a Privatdozent in Berlin. A positivist, beginning from empiricism, he ended in dogmatic materialism: original universal matter progresses by an intrinsic law to the supreme form of consciousness. Human social autonomy is the highest ideal. Throughout his life he strove to disseminate and defend his optimistic evolutionism. Starting from his rigidly Marxist positions, Engels polemicized against those aspects of D.'s evolutionism that appeared to him bourgeois and optimistic (Herrn Eugen Dühring Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 1878).
Principal works: Natürliche Dialektik (Berlin 1865); Der Wert des Lebens (Breslau 1865, 8th ed. 1922); Kursus der National-und Sozialökonomie (Berlin 1873, 3rd ed. 1892); Der Ersatz der Religion durch Vollkommeneres (Karlsruhe 1883, 2nd ed. 1906).