Überweg, Friedrich

ÜBERWEG, FRIEDRICH. - Philosopher, b. 22 Jan. 1826 at Leichlingen in Rhenish Prussia, the son of an Evangelical pastor, d. at Königsberg on 9 June 1871. Privatdozent at Bonn, full professor at Königsberg.

At first a follower of Beneke (v.) and of Trendelenburg (v.), then, under the influence of Czolbe (v.), he inclined toward materialism, though he could not bring himself to renounce teleology (v.). He opposes Kant, maintaining that the a priori forms of sensibility and the category of cause are not introduced by the subject into a chaotic material, but belong originally to natural and spiritual reality, from which they pass to subjective consciousness by virtue of experience and thought (cf. Über Idealismus, Realismus und Idealrealismus, in Zeitschr. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, 34 [1859]). Ü.'s name is especially commended for works on the history of philosophy, in particular the Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie — the most valuable general course of the history of philosophy, for the breadth and accuracy of its information — of which he edited the first four editions (1st ed. in 3 vols., 1862-66; 12th ed., Berlin 1923-1928; 13th stereotyped ed., Graz 1951 ff.) and the System der Logik und Geschichte der logischen Lehren (Bonn 1857; 5th ed. edited by J. B. Meyer, ibid. 1882).

Andrea Ferro