SCHULTZE, GOTTLOB ERNST. – Known by the name of Aenesidemus, German philosopher, born at Heldrungen (Turingia) on 30 August 1761, died at Gottinga on 14 January 1833. He taught philosophy at Wittenberg, Helmstadt, and Gottinga.
S.’s earliest works are devoted to Stoic and Platonic philosophy; those that established his reputation, however, are directed toward idealism (v.), which in his judgment was incapable of skepticism (v.). The latter “is nothing other than the assertion that in philosophy nothing can be established according to principles that are incontrovertibly certain and universal, 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, Berlino 1911, p. 18). A genuine overcoming would in fact require the possibility of constructing a science of things in themselves and discovering the real and ideal foundation of knowledge. This did not occur with Kant, because of the unwarranted admission of the soul as the knowledge (v.), nor with Reinhold, whose deduction of the material and formal elements of knowledge falls into the dogmatic error of considering the representative faculty as the real cause of objective knowledge.
The critique, rich in further developments, although ineffective at many points because criticism (v.), was continued in numerous other works, the principal ones among them being: Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie (2 vols., Amburgo 1801); Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Gottinga 1814); Psychische Anthropologie (ibid. 1816); Über die menschliche Erkenntnis (ibid. 1832).