WEISSE, Christian Hermann. - Right-wing Hegelian philosopher, b. in Leipzig on 10 Aug. 1801, d. there on 19 Sept. 1866. In Leipzig he held the chair of philosophy from 1844 until his death.
Under the influence of Hegel (v.) and Schelling (v.), his thought sought to employ idealistic positions and integrate them into the spiritualist and Christian tradition, with the aim of preserving the concept of the personality of God (whose existence W. considered proven by the cosmological argument: Philos. Dogmatik, I, p. 340). His starting point is the concept of freedom; logical necessity, with its dialectical progression, allows only the constitution of general schemes, devoid of real content. To reach reality, a free creative act is required, which is first posited by God. In God, logic constitutes the forms of the possibility of existence, and is connected with imagination and will. The triad of absolute spirit is thus conceived as Truth, Beauty, Good. In the figure of Christ, W. sees God humanized as a stimulus to the moral progress of humanity, which aspires, as an ideal, to communion with the kingdom of heaven.
Important are his aesthetic doctrines. Aesthetics is divided into: 1) doctrine of the concept of the beautiful; 2) doctrine of art, as the objectification of the beautiful; 3) doctrine of genius, understood also in its objective form, i.e., natural beauty, customs, and sexual love (Geschlechtsliebe). The aesthetic faculty, in man and in God, is imagination (Gemüt).
Principal works: Die Idee der Gottheit (Dresden 1823); De Platonis et Aristotelis in constituendis summis philosophiae principiis differentia (Leipzig 1827); Darstellung der griech. Mythologie (ibid. 1829); System d. Ästhetik als Wissenschaft. V. d. Idee des Schönen (ibid. 1830); Grundzüge der Metaphysik (Hamburg 1835); Die evangelische Geschichte (2 vols., Leipzig 1838); In welchem Sinne die deutsche Philos. jetzt wieder an Kant sich zu orientieren hat (ibid. 1847); Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums (3 vols., Leipzig 1855-62).