PAULSEN, FRIEDRICH. — Philosopher, born at Langenhorn (East Silesia) on 16 July 1846, died at Steglitz (Berlin) on 14 Aug. 1908. He began studying theology at Erlangen, but abandoned it in 1867 to enroll in the Faculty of Philosophy in Berlin, where Trendelenburg was his teacher. He taught in Berlin from 1878.
Principal works: Einleitung in d. Philos. (Berlin 1892; Italian translation by L. Gentilini, Turin 1911);
I. Kant (Stuttgart 1892; Italian translation by B
A. Sesta, Palermo 1914); System der Ethik (2 vols., Berlin 1896); Philosophia militans gegen Klericalismus und Naturalismus (there 1901; Italian translation by L. Guglielminotti, Turin 1907).P.’s principal merit is that he disseminated Kant’s thought, which should be understood not only as the destroyer of earlier ideologies, but also as the defender of the rights of metaphysics, insofar as the effort toward the transcendent is generated by the insufficiency of empirical science and is the soul of philosophy: if philosophy were not also a faith, a tendency toward the sphere that lies beyond pure cognition, it would be reduced to being a simple science or a complex of sciences (cf. Einleitung ..., Italian translation, pp. 1–36; F. Tocco (v. BIBLICA), p. 455).
P., who adhered to freethinking, has bitter words against the religious tradition that takes the biblical narrative literally; but, like Hegel, he ultimately understands religion as the symbolic expression of what philosophy teaches speculatively (Gegen Klericalismus, etc., pp. 81–91). The Catholic Church is criticized as backward-looking and conservative, incapable of understanding the development of the modern world.