PAULSEN, FRIEDRICH. - Philosopher, b. at Langenhorn (eastern Silesia) on 16 July 1846, d. at Steglitz (Berlin) on 14 Aug. 1908. He began the study of theology in Erlangen, which he left in 1867 to enroll in the philosophical faculty of Berlin, where his teacher was Trendelenburg. He taught in Berlin from 1878.
Principal works: Einleitung in d. Philos. (Berlin 1892; Italian trans. by L. Gentilini, Turin 1911); I. Kant (Stuttgart 1892; Italian trans. by B.-A. Sesta, Palermo 1914); System der Ethik (2 vols., Berlin 1896); Philosophia militans gegen Klericalismus und Naturalismus (ibid. 1901; Italian trans. by L. Guglielminotti, Turin 1907).
P.'s principal merit is that he spread Kant's thought, to be understood not only as the destroyer of previous ideologies, but also as the defender of the rights of metaphysics, inasmuch 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 trans., pp. 1-36; F. Tocco (v. bibl.), p. 455).
P., who adhered to free thought, has bitter words against religious tradition that takes the biblical narrative literally, but, like Hegel, he ends by understanding religion as a 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.
Bibliography5 works
Enzo Maccagnolo