FROHSCHAMMER, JACOB. - Philosopher, born on 6 January 1821 at Illkoven (Ratisbona), died on 14 April 1893 at Bad Kreut. Ordained a priest in 1847, he taught at the University of Munich, from 1850 as a Privatdozent, from 1854 as an extraordinary professor of theology, and from 1855 as an ordinary professor of philosophy.
A book published in 1854 on the origin of the human soul (Über den Ursprung der menschlichen Seele), in which he defended traducianism, was placed on the Index in 1857. Three further writings—Einleitung in die Philosophie und Grundriss der Metaphysik (1858), Über die Freiheit der Wissenschaft (1861), and the first annual volume of the philosophical journal Athenaeum (1862)—were prohibited by the letter of Pius IX Gravissimus inter of 1 December 1862 to the archbishop of Munich (Denz-U, 1666–76). In it, F. was reproached for two errors: attributing to human reason a natural capacity to know philosophically certain truths of the supernatural order; and affirming the absolute and unlimited independence of philosophy from the authority of the Church. F. did not retract and was therefore suspended in 1862. Subsequently, in various writings, he attacked the Church and the papacy, especially papal infallibility.
F.’s philosophy is a mixture of constructive idealism and rationalistic naturalism. Philosophy, according to him, must not be limited to epistemology alone; it is the science of ideal truth. It must begin from a single universal principle, the imagination, while relying on inner and outer experience, and on the facts of nature and history. In the universe there is an objective, unconscious cosmic imagination, a creative and formative force that was initially intimately linked to matter. Under its influence ■ the evolution of the world takes place. The cosmic process is God’s objective imagination, from which it proceeds without, however, being identified with him: God would therefore be conceived as subjective, conscious imagination, distinct from the world. In man, imagination becomes individual and self-conscious, and is also the principle of psychic life in him. The human spirit, produced by the evolution of cosmic imagination, shares, in the generative function, the creative capacity to produce the entire individual, body and soul.