ÜBERWEG, Friedrich. — Philosopher, b. 22 Jan. 1826 at Leichlingen in the Rhenish Prussia, son of an Evangelical pastor, d. at Königsberg 9 June 1871. Privatdozent at Bonn, later ordinary professor at Königsberg.
Initially a follower of Beneke (v.) TRENDELENBURG, FRIEDRICH ADOLF (v.), he later inclined toward materialism under the influence of Czolbe (v.), though without abandoning teleology (v.). He opposed Kant, arguing that the a priori forms of sensibility and the category of causality are not imposed by the subject upon a chaotic material, but belong originally to natural and spiritual reality, from which they derive to subjective consciousness through experience and thought (cf. Über Idealismus, Realismus und Idealismus, in Zeitschr. f. Philos. u. philos. Kritik, 34 [1859]). ÜBERWEG’s name is especially associated with works on the history of philosophy, notably his Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie—the most valuable general course on the history of philosophy for the breadth and accuracy of its information—which he edited in the first four editions (1st ed. in 3 vols., 1862–66; 12th ed., Berlin 1923–1928; 13th stereotype ed., Graz 1951 ff.) and his System der Logik und Geschichte der logischen Lehren (Bonn 1857; 5th ed. ed. J. B. Meyer, ibid. 1882).