JACOB FRIEDRICH FRIES. — Philosopher, b. at Barby (Saxony) on 23 Aug. 1773, d. at Jena on 10 Aug. 1843. He was educated in the schools of the Pietist brotherhoods and later studied at the Universities of Leipzig and Jena, where from 1816 he was professor of philosophy.
Fries sought to recover, in opposition to idealism, the doctrine of the spirit of Kantian philosophy. His interpretation, however, does not preserve the idea of a transcendent critique, since it transposes the deduction of the first principles of thought onto the psychological and anthropological plane. In his philosophy of religion, Fries enriched the moralistic conception of the Enlightenment with Pietist and Romantic motifs. His doctrine of a specifically religious mode of experiencing and ascertaining the Divine was accepted and developed by some of the most influential Protestant theologians (W. Bousset, R. Otto). The philosophy of Fries found a successor at the beginning of this century in L. Nelson, founder and leader of the so-called neo-Friesian school.
Principal works: *Handbuch der praktischen Philosophie*, I: *Ethik*... (Heidelberg 1818); II: *Religionsphilosophie*... (ibid. 1823); *Neue Kritik der Vernunft* (3 vols., 2nd ed., ibid. 1828-31); *System der Metaphysik* (ibid. 1824); *Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung* (new ed. ed. L. Nelson, Göttingen 1905).