Schultze, Gottlob Ernst

SCHULTZE, GOTTLOB ERNST. - Known under the name of Aenesidemus, German philosopher, b. at Heldrungen (Thuringia) on 30 Aug. 1761, d. at Göttingen on 14 Jan. 1833. He taught philosophy at Wittenberg, Helmstedt and Göttingen.

Schultze's early works are devoted to Stoic and Platonic philosophy; those that established his fame are directed, however, at the confutation of the dogmatic remnants of idealism (v.), which in his judgment is incapable of eliminating the deepest grounds of skepticism (v.). This « is nothing other than the assertion that in philosophy nothing can be established, according to irrefutably certain and universal principles, either concerning the existence or non-existence of things in themselves, or concerning the limits of human cognitive powers » (Aenesidemus oder über die Fundamente der von dem Herrn Prof. Reinhold zu Jena gelieferten Elementar-Philosophie nebst einer Vertheidigung des Skepticismus gegen die Anmassung der Vernunftkritik, 1792; ed. of the Kantgesellschaft, Berlin 1911, p. 18). A true overcoming would in fact require the possibility of constructing a science of things in themselves and the discovery of the real and ideal foundation of knowing. This did not come about with Kant, owing to the undue admission of the soul as the real foundation of a priori cognitions (v.), nor with Reinhold, whose deduction of the material and formal elements of knowledge falls back into the dogmatic vice of considering the representative power as the real cause of objective knowledge.

This criticism, rich in further developments, although in many points ineffective because of its narrow view of criticism (v.), was continued in numerous other works, among the principal of which are: Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie (2 vols., Hamburg 1801); Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Göttingen 1814); Psychische Anthropologie (ibid. 1816); Über die menschliche Erkenntnis (ibid. 1832).